That’s the title of this short piece in Wired. The story itself is one that I find myself feeling incredibly grateful for, despite only just learning of it this morning:

1983: A Soviet ballistics officer draws the right conclusion — that a satellite report indicating incoming U.S. nuclear missiles is, in fact, a false alarm — thereby averting a potential nuclear holocaust.

Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov was duty officer at Serpukhov-15, the secret bunker outside Moscow that monitored the Soviet Union’s early-warning satellite system, when the alarm bells went off shortly after midnight. One of the satellites signaled Moscow that the United States had launched five ballistic missiles at Russia.

Given the heightened tensions between the two countries — the alarm coincided with the beginning of provocative NATO military exercises and barely three weeks after the Russians shot down a South Korean airliner that had wandered into Soviet air space — Petrov could have been forgiven for believing the signal was accurate. The electronic maps flashing around him didn’t do anything to ease the stress of the moment.

I was five years old. I remember, as a kid, watching a commercial about the nuclear threat from Russia on the nightly news with my dad. A little girl sat near the window of her bedroom, singing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” as one star, in particular, grew larger, and larger, and larger…

It was a scary idea. It was a plausible idea. And it looks like I owe Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov a debt of gratitude for keeping it from turning from an idea into a reality.

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