30 years ago, humanity could have disappeared if not for this man from Fryazino:

In the photo Stanislav Evgrafovich Petrov (born 1939) - Soviet officer, retired lieutenant colonel.

Wikipedia gives fairly dry facts about the events of 30 years ago. I found a good description of those events at wildmale :
"On the night of September 26, 1983, the country was asleep. The world was alarmed, cold war reached its climax, two weeks ago a South Korean passenger Boeing was shot down, accidentally violating the border of the USSR. America and the entire “progressive” world have become angry at the “evil empire”.

And suddenly. At the Serpukhov-15 command post, the latest space-based missile detection system detects the launch of several intercontinental ballistic missiles from US territory aimed at Russia.
“The siren at the checkpoint is roaring with all its might, the red letters are blazing. The shock, of course, is colossal,” Petrov later said. “Everyone jumped up from behind the consoles, looking at me. What am I doing? Everything is according to the instructions for operational duty officers, which I wrote myself. We did everything that was necessary. We rechecked the functioning of all systems. Thirty levels of verification, one after another, reports are coming: everything matches, the probability is two.
Petrov knew that he had to immediately report the situation to the highest leadership of the country, at that time Andropov. I understood that with a 99.9% probability, Andropov, who was not prone to reflection, would give the order for a large-scale retaliatory strike.
Seconds are ticking by. EVERYONE IS LOOKING AT PETROV.
“You can’t really analyze anything in those two or three minutes,” says Petrov many years later. “What remains is intuition. I had two arguments. Firstly, missile attacks do not start from one base, they take off from all of them at once. Secondly, a computer, by definition, is a fool. You never know what it can mistake for a launch."
Later, American journalists inquired from which exact base the Russian satellite detected the missile launch: “What difference does it make to you? There would be no America anyway,” Petrov replied.
Relying on intuition, Petrov took the future fate of the world under his own responsibility, turned off the alarm and recorded the start of the super-sophisticated system as a “false positive.”
It soon became clear that he was right. The missile detection system responded to sun glare from high clouds, mistaking them for the fiery trail of a missile.

The next day, Serpukhov-15 was full of commissions. In the heat of the moment, Petrov was promised numerous awards, but they soon realized it - after all, he violated the regulations, being a cog, he began to think and make decisions. Besides, I didn’t fill out the combat log on time.
Yuri Votintsev, then commander of the USSR's anti-missile and anti-space defense, interrogated Petrov. “He asks why your combat log was not filled out at that time?” - recalls Petrov. “I explain to him that in one hand I had a receiver, through which I reported the situation, in the other, a microphone, which amplified my commands for my subordinates. There was nothing to write about. But he doesn’t let up: “Why didn’t he fill it out later, when the alarm was over?”
In short, Petrov did not receive any reward for preventing World War 3. Got a scolding. What Petrov understands:
- If you reward me for this incident, then someone must have suffered very greatly for it. First of all, those who developed the early warning system. Great academics who were allocated huge billions. It’s also good that I didn’t completely ruin the magazine.

The story was kept secret. For many years, even his wife did not know that Petrov, whom she habitually nagged for unclosed pasta and scattered socks, had once saved the world.
Declassified in 1998.
Petrov remained a lieutenant colonel and soon after that story he resigned - saving the world a second time was too much even for him.
In our country, for many reasons (including: violation of military regulations, failure of the space system), this story is not advertised.
I accidentally found an article about Petrov on the English-language Wikipedia and used English-language sources.

In 2006, at the UN headquarters in New York, Petrov was given a baseball cap and a figurine of “Hand Holding the Globe” with the engraved inscription: “To the man who prevented nuclear war".
It is still gathering dust next to Soviet crystal and herring racks in the sideboard of a modest panel in Fryazino, where retired lieutenant colonel Petrov now lives.
Stanislav Evgrafovich, you are a holy man. Thank you."

For this incident, he received severe stress, several months in hospitals, dismissal from the army, an apartment on the outskirts of Fryazino near Moscow and a telephone without a queue.

However, the world understands and knows about him, although they mainly give figurines:
1. On January 19, 2006 in New York at the UN headquarters, Stanislav Petrov was presented with a special award from the international public organization “Association of World Citizens”. It is a crystal figurine “Hand holding globe" with the inscription "To the man who prevented nuclear war" engraved on it.
2. On February 24, 2012 in Baden-Baden, Stanislav Petrov was awarded the German Media Prize for 2011.
3. On February 17, 2013, he became a laureate of the Dresden Prize, awarded for the prevention of armed conflicts. (€ 25.000)

An interview with Petrov appeared on the BBC today. This is what he looks like now.

MOSCOW, September 21 – RIA Novosti. Soviet Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, who recognized an erroneous signal about an American nuclear missile strike on September 26, 1983 and prevented the launch of missiles against targets in the United States, received a scolding from his superiors instead of encouragement and was forced to resign from his job. military service, scientific director of the Russian Military Historical Society (RVIO) Mikhail Myagkov told RIA Novosti on Thursday.

Sun ray like a rocket

Stanislav Evgrafovich Petrov was born on September 7, 1939 in Vladivostok. Graduated from the Kiev Higher Engineering Radio Engineering School. In 1972, he was sent to serve at the Serpukhov-15 command post near Moscow. His responsibilities included monitoring the proper functioning spacecraft missile attack warning systems.

On the night of September 26, 1983, he was at the operational duty post of the system. A message appeared on the computer of the information processing center from the satellite with high degree reliability of the launch of five nuclear-equipped intercontinental ballistic missiles from US territory.

“Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, who was on duty at that time, was in a state where the fate of the whole world could depend on the decision of one person, had he made a decision that was laid down according to the rules. He had to notify his command, then the Soviet leadership was notified and the retaliatory strike system was put into action ", said Myagkov, noting that, having engineering knowledge and analytical mind, Petrov was able to calculate that the Americans launched the missile from one point - this could not happen in the event of a massive attack.

"He began to doubt and eventually accepted the right decision that this is a system error. As it turned out later, the sun’s rays, reflecting from the clouds, illuminated the Soviet detection sensors,” said the scientific director of the Russian Military Research Institute.

The agency's interlocutor noted that the lieutenant colonel's commanders did not appreciate his contribution to strengthening peace.

“Stanislav Petrov then received a scolding from his superiors, was forced to quit, was in the hospital. And international awards They found him only a short time later. But this is really the one unique case“When we were on the verge of a catastrophe due to an error made by technology, but it was the human factor that was able to save us, our country, and the whole world from a nuclear disaster,” Myagkov said.

Awarded abroad

Due to the secrecy regime, Petrov’s act became known only in 1993. In 2006, at the UN headquarters in New York, he received an award from the public organization "Association of World Citizens" with the engraving "To the person who prevented nuclear war." In 2012, in Baden-Baden, Germany, Petrov was awarded the German Media Prize. In 2013, he was awarded the Dresden Prize for the Prevention of Conflict and Violence in Germany.

Petrov died on May 19, 2017 in the Moscow region, which became known only in September 2017.

The USSR was forced to answer

Myagkov believes that there probably would not have been such a fierce confrontation and such risks if the United States had not pursued a policy of dragging the Soviet Union into the arms race and had not escalated conflicts related to nuclear weapons to the limit.

"Soviet Union was forced to respond,” he emphasized, adding that the “Cold War” was a confrontation between two blocs, Soviet and Western, which used all resources to acquire geopolitical, ideological and economic superiority in the world.

“In my opinion, the source of the Cold War was the results of the Second World War. Here the main responsibility lies with the United States, because it was they who became the first owners of nuclear weapons, used them in Japan and, since the end of 1945, developed a plan for a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union. Of course, The nuclear factor played a key role in the Cold War,” Myagkov noted.

According to him, by the early 1960s, the USSR had an order of magnitude fewer nuclear warheads and was at a disadvantage, which prompted the Soviet leadership to take tough economic measures in order to increase its military, primarily nuclear, potential.

“Nevertheless, during the Cold War there were a number of crisis moments that we are studying today and drawing conclusions in order to prevent such a confrontation from happening again, when the world stood on the brink of a nuclear disaster and could turn to ashes. This is the period Korean War, when the United States dominated us in the number of nuclear weapons, this is the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when the war was literally just a hand away. In both cases, a large share of responsibility lies with the United States,” said the scientific director of the RVIO.

Lesson for America

According to Myagkov, “Americans must draw conclusions from this situation.”

“After all, both the USSR at that time and today’s Russia are ready to deliver a retaliatory nuclear strike in the event of an attack. Let’s ask ourselves, could there be such people (like Lieutenant Colonel Petrov - ed.) in American headquarters and in American technical missile detection points? This is also an important lesson not only for us, but also for them,” said RIA Novosti’s interlocutor.

Answering a question about the possibility of perpetuating the memory of Petrov in Russia, he said that “the Russian Military Historical Society is ready to consider such an initiative.”

Released in 2014, the film by Danish director Peter Anthony The man who saved the world featured Hollywood stars: Kevin Costner, Robert De Niro, Ashton Kutcher and told the world community about the events in Russia on the night of September 26, 1983. Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, operational duty officer of Serpukhov-15, a command post a hundred kilometers from Moscow, made a decision on which the preservation of peace on Earth largely depended. What happened that night and what significance does it have for humanity?

Cold War

The USSR and the USA, two superpowers, became rivals for influence in the post-war world after the end of World War II. Insoluble contradictions between two models social structure and their ideologies, the ambitions of the leaders of the victorious countries and the absence of a real enemy led to a long confrontation that went down in history as the Cold War. Throughout this time, countries found themselves in close proximity to the outbreak of the Third World War.

It was possible to overcome 1962 only as a result of the political will and efforts of the presidents of two countries: Nikita Khrushchev and John Kennedy, shown during personal negotiations. The Cold War was accompanied by an unprecedented arms race, in which by the early eighties the Soviet Union began to lose.

Stanislav Petrov, who by 1983 had risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel of the air defense of the USSR Ministry of Defense, found himself in the situation of a new round of confrontation between the great powers due to the USSR getting involved in the war in Afghanistan. The United States ballistic missiles are located in European countries, to which the Soviet Union immediately withdraws from the Geneva disarmament negotiations.

Downed Boeing 747

Ronald Reagan (USA) and Yuri Andropov (November 1982 - February 1984) in power brought relations between the two countries to the highest point of confrontation since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The situation with the downing of a South Korean airliner on September 1, 1983 while flying a passenger flight to New York added fuel to the fire. Having deviated from the route by 500 kilometers, the Boeing was shot down over the territory of the USSR by the Su-15 interceptor of captain Gennady Osipovich. A ballistic missile test was expected that day, which could have led to a tragic mix-up in which an airliner with 269 people on board was mistaken for a spy plane.

Be that as it may, it is difficult to believe that the decision to destroy the target was made at the level of someone who later rose to the rank of Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force and Air Defense. There was a real commotion in the Kremlin, because US presidential candidate Larry MacDonald was on board the downed airliner. Only on September 7, the USSR admitted responsibility for the death of the passenger plane. An ICAO investigation confirmed the fact that the plane deviated from its route, but no evidence of preventive actions on the part of the Soviet Air Force has yet been found.

Needless to say that international relations were extremely spoiled at the moment when Stanislav Petrov once again took up duty. 1983 was the year when the USSR's early warning system (missile attack warning system) was in a state of constant combat readiness.

Night duty

A detailed description of the events with the downed Boeing can best be illustrated: in the event of unforeseen circumstances, it is unlikely that General Secretary Andropov’s hand would have trembled when pressing the trigger button for a retaliatory strike in the event of an enemy nuclear attack.

Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, born in 1939, being an analytical engineer, took up his next duty at the Serpukhov-15 checkpoint, where missile launches were monitored. On the night of September 26, the country slept peacefully, for there were no signs of danger. At 0:15 a.m., the early warning system siren roared loudly, highlighting the frightening word “Start” on the banner. Behind him appeared: “The first rocket has launched, the highest reliability.” It was about a nuclear strike from one of the American bases. There is no regulation on how much a commander should think, but what happened in his head during the subsequent moments is scary to think about. Because according to protocol, he was immediately obliged to report the launch of a nuclear missile by the enemy.

There was no confirmation of the visual channel, and the officer's analytical mind began to work out the possibility of a computer system error. Having created more than one machine himself, he was aware that anything was possible, despite 30 levels of verification. They report to him that a system error has been ruled out, but he does not believe in the logic of launching a single missile. And at his own peril and risk he picks up the phone to report to his superiors: “False information.” Despite the instructions, the officer takes responsibility. Since then, for the whole world, Stanislav Petrov is the man who prevented world war.

The danger is over

Today, a retired lieutenant colonel living in the town of Fryazino near Moscow is asked many questions, one of which is always about how much he believed in his own decision and when he realized that the worst was behind him. Stanislav Petrov answers honestly: “The chances were fifty-fifty.” The most serious test is the minute-by-minute repetition of the early warning signal, which announced the launch of the next missile. There were five of them in total. But he stubbornly waited for information from the visual channel, and the radars could not detect thermal radiation. Never before has the world been so close to disaster as in 1983. Events scary night showed how important the human factor is: one wrong decision and everything can turn to dust.

Only after 23 minutes the lieutenant colonel was able to exhale freely, having received confirmation that the decision was correct. Today one question torments him: “What would have happened if that night he had not replaced his sick partner and in his place was not an engineer, but a military commander, accustomed to obeying instructions?”

After the night incident

The next morning commissions began working at the control point. After a while, the reason for the false alarms of the early warning sensors will be found: the optics reacted to sunlight reflected by clouds. A huge number of scientists, including honored academicians, developed computer system. To admit that Stanislav Petrov did the right thing and showed heroism means to undo the work of an entire team the best minds countries demanding punishment for poor quality work. Therefore, at first the officer was promised a reward, but then they changed their mind. They realized that by starting to think and make decisions, he violated the charter. Instead of a reward, there was a scolding.

The lieutenant colonel had to make excuses to the air defense commander Yu. Votintsev for the unfilled combat log. No one wanted to admit the stress experienced by the operational duty officer, who in a few moments realized the fragility of the world.

Dismissal from the army

Stanislav Petrov, the man who prevented world war, decided to leave the army by submitting his resignation. After spending several months in hospitals, he settled in a small apartment received from the military department in Fryazino near Moscow, receiving a telephone without waiting in line. The decision was difficult, but the main reason was the illness of his wife, who passed away a few years later, leaving her husband with a son and daughter. It was a difficult period in life former officer, fully realized what loneliness is.

In the nineties, the former commander of anti-missile and anti-space defense, Yuri Votintsev, the incident at the Serpukhov-15 command post was declassified and made public, which made Lieutenant Colonel Petrov famous person not only at home, but also abroad.

Recognition in the West

The very situation in which a soldier in the Soviet Union did not trust the system, influencing the further development of events, shocked the Western world. The Association of World Citizens at the United Nations decided to award the hero. In January 2006, Stanislav Evgrafovich Petrov was presented with an award - a crystal figurine: “The man who prevented a nuclear war.” In 2012, German funds mass media awarded him a prize, and two years later the organizing committee in Dresden awarded him 25 thousand euros for preventing armed conflict.

During the presentation of the first award, the Americans began to initiate the creation of a documentary film about the Soviet officer. IN leading role Stanislav Petrov himself was filmed. The process dragged on for many years due to lack of funds. The film was released in 2014, causing a mixed reaction in the country.

American PR

Official version Russian state events of 1983 was expressed in documents submitted to the UN. It follows from them that the SA lieutenant colonel did not save the world alone. For the Serpukhov-15 command post is not the only facility that monitors missile launches.

On the forums there is a discussion of the events of 1983, where professionals express their opinion about a kind of PR inflated by the Americans to take control of the entire nuclear potential of the country. Many question the awards, which, in their opinion, were given to Stanislav Evgrafovich Petrov, absolutely undeservedly.

But there are also those who consider the actions of Lieutenant Colonel Petrov to be unappreciated by their own country.

Quoted by Kevin Costner

In the 2014 film, the Hollywood star meets the main character and becomes so imbued with his fate that he gives a speech to the film crew, which cannot leave anyone indifferent. He admitted that he only plays those who are better and stronger than him, but the real heroes are people like Lieutenant Colonel Petrov, who made a decision that influenced the life of every person in the whole world. By choosing not to retaliate by launching missiles towards the United States when the system reported an attack, he saved the lives of many people who are now bound forever by this decision.

In recent months, Russian-American relations have sharply deteriorated. Political scientists talk about the possibility of a nuclear conflict between powers as a reality. Forgetting how much in a heated atmosphere depends on even a random spark...

September 25, 1983. "Special zone"

In the Center for Observation of Celestial Bodies near Moscow, in fact, no one observed the celestial bodies. Under the sign of the Center behind a reinforced concrete fence with barbed wire and armed soldiers at the checkpoint were hiding one of the most secret objects of the USSR Ministry of Defense. It was here that, figuratively speaking, the watchful eyes of the country’s armed forces were located, watching the territory of the United States and the adjacent waters of the World Ocean around the clock with only one goal: to detect the launch of a ballistic missile in time.

Construction of the center began in the early seventies, and it was put on combat duty only ten years later. And this is not surprising. Indeed, in addition to a military town with schools, shops and residential buildings for officers, the expensive project provided for the creation of a so-called “special zone”, the existence of which the civilian residents of the town guessed from a huge white ball towering over the forest like a monstrous champignon.

And only the military knew for sure that the “zone” was connected with Moscow by a special encrypted communication, and the 30-meter locator hidden under the “champignon” was connected with the orbital space constellation of spy satellites; that the launch of any American missile will be detected at the start and at the same instant the glowing “tail” from the nozzle will be seen on the monitors of the command post near Moscow; that the giant M-10 computer will process information received from satellites in a split second, determine the launch site, indicate the class of the rocket, its speed and coordinates.

If a nuclear war happens, those in the “special zone” will be the first to know about it.

September 25. Combat crew

That evening, forty-four-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Evgrafovich Petrov, grabbing a stack of sandwiches, fragrant crumble tea leaves and a bag of yellow sugar - provisions for night duty, left the entrance of house No. 18 on Tsiolkovsky Street and, holding his cap with his hand, ran to the bus stop, where the tattered service “groove” puffed furiously. At home, the lieutenant colonel left his sick wife and two children.

The bus jolted along the potty concrete road for a long time until it reached the only stop - the “special zone”. The entire combat crew gradually arrived here - nearly a hundred people, half of whom were officers. At 20.00, strictly according to schedule, the combat crew lined up next to the flagpole, on top of which a red banner fluttered. Petrov checked the presence of people and, as expected, said in his non-commanding voice:

“I order you to take up combat duty for the protection and defense of the air borders of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.”

He ran fifty meters to the glass doors of the command post, several flights of stairs, and now he was already at the Central Command Post (CPC). Everything is as usual here: dead calm. The indicator lights are blinking, the screens of video control devices (VCU) are flickering, the special communications phones are silent, and behind the thick display glass that covers the entire wall of the operations room, two electronic maps glow with a ghostly greenish light: the USSR and the USA - the fields of future nuclear battles.

From time to time, when combat exercises were taking place at the command post and the developers were running various versions of simulation programs through the M-10, Petrov observed future war, as they say, live. Then the launch site of the ballistic missile was highlighted on the American map, and a bright “tail” from its nozzle flashed on the VKU screen. At these moments, the lieutenant colonel tried to imagine what would happen if this actually happened. And he immediately realized that any thoughts on this matter were meaningless: if a global nuclear mess began, he would have a couple of minutes left to issue the necessary commands, and another minute to smoke the last cigarette.

While the new combat crew was replacing the previous one, or, to use the TsKP slang, was “sewn into” the work, Petrov and his assistant cooked a strong seagull on an electric stove and settled more comfortably in their command chairs. There were about two hours left before the next satellite entered the work area.

September 25. Starting a communication session

At that time, we had an orbital group of spacecraft deployed in space. The satellites spin around in space like a carousel and monitor everything that happens in the United States of America, which we at that time called the “missile danger area.” At that time, the Americans had nine bases that housed ballistic missiles. These are the bases we monitored.

Most often, the Americans launched their missiles from the Eastern and Western ranges. From the West they fired Tridents and Minutemen into the water area Pacific Ocean. And launch vehicles were launched from Vostochny. Eastern test site near Cape Canaveral, so, quite naturally, we monitored the launches spaceships. It must be said that a rocket launch cannot be confused with anything. First, a bright dot lights up at the start, grows, lengthens, and then, like a squiggle, goes behind the “hump” of the Earth. During my service at the facility, I saw such “squiggles” dozens, or even hundreds of times - they cannot be confused with anything.

The work, in general, is dreary. The satellite covers the working area in six hours. Then he is replaced by the next one. So all we have to do is properly coordinate the spacecraft in orbit. Then you get bored again. It's even sickening. You listen to the operators talk, and sometimes read a book - that’s all the entertainment. By the way, that day I turned out to be the operational duty officer at the Central Control Center by accident. Replaced a friend.

Somewhere there, at an altitude of 38,000 kilometers, the Soviet satellite Kosmos-1382 was slowly floating towards the place where it would be reliably picked up by the invisible tentacles of a giant locator. A moment before the start of the telemetry communication session, Lieutenant Colonel Petrov glanced at the VKU monitor. Half of the “pink” was still brightly illuminated by the Sun. On the other night it was night. Between them is the terminator line. It was this line that most often caused trouble for the operational duty officers of the Central Control Commission. This is where the computer crashed most often. And not only because at the border of night and day the launch of a missile is barely noticeable, but also because the warning system itself about the launch of ballistic missiles, despite the fact that thousands of specialists in secret Soviet design bureaus worked on its creation, still remained crude . The Americans put their warning system on alert much earlier. Ours were in a hurry...

Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov:

On July 13, 1983, scheduled maintenance work was carried out at the central control center. On a special computer, disconnected from all notified objects, we spent the whole day running one combat program through simulation systems and in the end even prepared an acceptance certificate for this program with the modifications made. But when they tried to run the program through a working computer, due to a malfunction in one of the blocks of the exchange system, the machine produced false information about the mass launch of ballistic missiles. The chief of staff of the army, General Zavaliy, gave a verbal order to remove all developments from service. The developers, and they are civilians, categorically refused to carry out the general’s order and left the site. Then the military removed these developments with their own hands. I think this incident was directly related to what happened here in September.

September 25. The start of "Minuteman"

On the roof of the command post, the flywheels of the turning mechanisms rumbled, and the three-hundred-ton radar turned its steel “plate” with such force that the command post building shook quite distinctly. “One hundred and one. This is one hundred and two,” the voice of the chief control operator was heard in the intercom speakers, “functional control and telemetry are in order, the antenna is removed, trajectory measurements have been carried out. The equipment is working normally.”

This means that Cosmos-1382 has successfully entered its operational phase.

“One hundred and two, one hundred and three. One hundred and one speaking.” Now Petrov also gave orders to the chief intelligence operator. “One thousand three hundred and eighty-two apparatus is working properly. Start processing information.”

The lieutenant colonel leaned back in his chair and closed his eyelids peacefully. You can relax until five in the morning.

The deafening ringing of the buzzer tore up the drowsy silence of the central control center. Petrov looked at the remote control, and his heart almost shattered into pieces from a deafening dose of adrenaline. A red spot pulsated steadily before my eyes. Like a naked heart. And one word: “Start”. And this could only mean one thing: there, on the other side of the Earth, the cast-iron doors of the mine opened, and an American ballistic missile, spewing out clouds of spent fuel and fire, rushed into the sky, towards the USSR.

It was not a training alert, but a combat alert.

Through the display glass of the Central Command Centre, the lieutenant colonel now also saw an electronic map of America. The impassive M-10, in its soft green computer handwriting, confirmed the launch of a Minuteman-class nuclear-tipped ballistic missile from a military base on the US West Coast.

“It’s about forty minutes to fly,” Petrov involuntarily flashed through his head. “To the entire combat crew,” he shouted into the microphone the next moment, “check and report on the functioning of the means and combat programs. One hundred and third! Report the presence of a target in the visual direction!”

Only now did he look at the VKU monitor. Everything is clean. No "tails". Infection, maybe the terminator line is blocking it?

“One hundred and one, one hundred and first!” the speakers screamed. “This is one hundred and two. Ground assets, spacecraft and combat programs are functioning normally.” “One hundred and one. One hundred and three speaking,” was heard next, “the target was not detected by visual means.” “I understand,” Petrov replied.

Now, despite the prohibitions, he was dying to swear directly on air. Why doesn't he see the rocket? Why does the computer report startup if all systems are working normally? Why? But there was no time for rhetorical questions. He knew that information about the Minuteman's launch automatically went to the command post of the missile attack warning system. The operational duty officer of the SPRN (missile attack warning system) command post already knew about the Minuteman's launch. “I see,” he shouts, “I see everything! Let’s keep working!”

Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov:

And then - a new flash, a new start. And here we have it: if the system detects one missile launch, the machine qualifies it as a “launch,” and if more, then as a “nuclear missile attack.” “This sucks,” I think, “it sucks.”

September 25. Third launch, fourth!

In fact, if the missile is really flying towards the Soyuz, the presence of the target will immediately be confirmed by above-horizontal and over-horizontal detection means, after which the early warning control command will automatically transmit information to the notified objects, and the red displays will light up in the Secretary General’s “nuclear suitcase”, on the Minister’s “crocuses” defense, chief of the General Staff, commanders of military branches. Immediately after this, the operators will launch the gyroscopes of Soviet ballistic missiles, awaiting the decision of the country's highest military-political leadership to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike. As soon as this decision is made, the commander-in-chief missile forces By automatic system communications with the troops will transmit a coded version of the retaliatory strike and a cipher to remove the lock from the missile launchers, and the commanders of the combat complexes will only have two keys to simultaneously open the safes with punched program cards, enter them into the ballistic weapons computer and press the start button.

And then a nuclear war will begin. In just forty minutes.

Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov:

A few moments pass, and then the third launch. And after him - the fourth. Everything happened so quickly that I was not even able to realize what had happened. I scream: “Oh my, I can’t do it anymore!” The operational duty officer at the early warning control center - such a nice guy - calms me down. “Work,” he shouts, “work calmly!” How calm it is here. I look into the hall. The combat crew transmits information, but they themselves turn around and look in my direction. To be honest, in these seconds the information from the “visualists”, ordinary soldiers who spend hours sitting in front of screens in dark rooms, turned out to be decisive. They did not see the launches of American missiles. I didn't see them on my screen either. It became clear that this was a "false". I shout to the operational duty officer: “We are giving out false information! We are giving out false information!” But the information has already gone out.

September 26. "Lozhnyak"

“At night, the command post called my apartment on Universitetsky Prospekt and reported that an emergency had occurred at the facility; the system had produced false information,” recalled the former commander of the missile and space defense forces, retired Colonel General Yuri Vsevolodovich Votintsev, in a conversation with me. “I immediately called a service car and drove to the place. The journey took about an hour and a half. In the morning, after the preliminary investigation, I reported everything to the Commander-in-Chief, reported the emergency to Ustinov orally, and I dictated the following code for the Minister of Defense.

"September 26, 1983 at 00 hours 15 minutes due to a glitch in the program computer on board the spacecraft, there was a fact of generating false information about the launch of ballistic missiles from US territory. The on-site investigation is being conducted by Votintsev and Savin."

Almost immediately it became clear that the reason was a computer failure. But not only that. As a result of the investigation, we brought to light a whole bunch of shortcomings in the space warning system for the launch of ballistic missiles. The main problems were the combat program and the imperfection of spacecraft. And this is the basis of the entire system. All these shortcomings were eliminated only by 1985, when the system was finally put on combat duty."

To be fair, it must be said that similar emergencies happened to potential enemies at different times. According to the Soviet military intelligence(GRU), American systems warnings were issued by “false people” much more often than ours, and the consequences from them were more tangible. In one case, alerted US Navy bombers with nuclear weapons on board even reached the North Pole to launch a massive attack on the territory of the USSR. In another, the Americans, mistaking the migration of flocks of birds for Soviet missiles, put their ballistic missiles on alert. But fortunately, neither we nor they got to the start button. The competition of high technologies either brought the two superpowers closer to the fatal line, or again brought them to a safe distance.

What if it’s not a “fake”? - I asked Colonel General Votintsev. - What if the Americans actually started a nuclear war that night?

“We would have time to strike back,” he replied, “both at the American mines and at their cities.” However, Moscow would be doomed. The capital's missile defense system was inactive from 1977 to 1990 - almost thirteen years. All this time, at the launch positions, instead of anti-missile missiles, there were refueling complexes - transport-loading containers with dummies - at an angle of sixty degrees. And instead of fuel and nuclear warheads, they were filled with ordinary sand...

The will of Lieutenant Colonel Petrov

The last time we met with Stanislav Evgrafovich Petrov was in 1991. The command did not notice his feat on a September night. Based on the results of the internal investigation, Petrov was not punished, but he was not rewarded either. The lieutenant colonel lived on the very edge of the city of Fryazino, in a small apartment with his son and his weak wife. I recently knocked out my phone and almost cried with joy...

After my first publication, a lot changed in his life. Petrov began to be invited to the West on paid trips, and was given prizes and awards. Danish filmmakers Jacob Staberg and Peter Antoni filmed feature film"The Man Who Saved the World" starring Kevin Koestner. At a Hollywood party in New York, Kevin introduced him to Robert De Niro and Met Damon...

While preparing this material for Rodina, I tried to find traces of the officer. But neither in his native Fryazino, nor in the regional military registration and enlistment office, nor in the local administration, nor in the veterans council, no one even remembered this name. And when I finally found his phone number through colleagues from Komsomolskaya Pravda, the phone did not answer.

A month later the phone answered with a sad voice: “Dad died last week.”

We met with Dmitry Stanislavovich Petrov in the same, now completely destroyed apartment, where I talked with his father 26 years ago, in the same kitchen with a view of the end of the summer. My son told me about his father's death. Petrov underwent emergency surgery on his intestines, but the four-hour anesthesia completely destroyed his nervous and spiritual system. He became delirious, struggled with visions, fell into a trance.

Dmitry took a vacation and looked after his ailing father for a month, spoon-fed him baby food...

The man who saved the world died alone. Without confession and communion, without faith and even without my son, who went to work that day. He died quietly and unnoticed by the world he saved. He was buried in the same way. In the far grave of the city cemetery. Without military bands and farewell fireworks.

His words, which I wrote down many years ago, sound today like a testament to everyone on whom peace on Earth depends:

After that story in September 1983, I began to look at my service with slightly different eyes. On the one hand, there is a combat program, on the other, a person. But no combat program can replace your brain, eyes, and finally, just intuition. And at the same time, does a person have the right to independently make a decision on which, perhaps, the fate of our planet depends?

Over the next few minutes, markers for five more missiles appeared on the computer screen. At this time, the Cold War was at its peak - three and a half weeks earlier, a South Korean Boeing 747 was shot down.

According to the instructions, in the event of a missile attack, the duty officer was obliged to immediately notify the country's leadership, who made the decision on a retaliatory strike. The flight time of a ballistic missile from the continental United States to the USSR was about 30 minutes, so Petrov had a very limited choice: either report to the Secretary General, who would have to make the final decision using his nuclear briefcase, or report to his superiors: “We are giving out false information” and be responsible for the consequences yourself. Considering that Andropov had only 15 minutes to make a decision, it is safe to say that he would have believed Petrov and pressed the button for a retaliatory nuclear strike. But Petrov did not take responsibility for the billions human lives and did not follow the instructions - did not press the button, despite the fact that all 30 checks gave a positive result.

Guided by common sense (they say, 5 missiles are too few for the first strike in a war), Petrov decided that the computer had malfunctioned. As a result, this brave man was right: there was indeed a failure in the warning system. After a year-long secret investigation into the incident on September 26, 1983, it was concluded that the system readings that shocked Petrov and his duty shift were caused by a rare but predictable effect of signal reflection from the surface of the Earth. The reason was that the satellite sensors were illuminated by sunlight reflected from high-altitude clouds. Later in space system Changes have been made to eliminate such situations.

However, the system failed again in 1995, when the Russians briefly mistook a scientific rocket launched from Norway for an incoming American nuclear missile. There have been cases when launches of meteorological satellites, the rising of the full moon, or flocks of geese were mistaken for a missile attack. They intended to solve the problem of failures in the warning system by deploying a joint early warning control center in Moscow, but they never had time to build it.

Today, the United States and Russia still maintain thousands of fully alert nuclear missiles aimed at major cities each other. Therefore, there is a possibility that similar false alarms may occur again. And this could provoke a real retaliatory strike.

In January 2006, the international public organization The "Association of World Citizens" for the Prevention of Nuclear War presented retired Colonel Stanislav Petrov with its prize - the "Hand Holding the Globe" figurine.

If another person had been in Stanislav Petrov’s place, we might no longer exist.
It’s not hard to say, but now Stanislav Petrov lives in a tiny apartment, almost unsociable. He tries not to remember that incident... Maybe the consequences of those checks affected...