The Man Who Literally Saved the World

99luftballon writes "Today is an important anniversary for Russian hero Stanislav Petrov, the Soviet missile commander who saved the world from nuclear destruction in 1983. Sadly there are plenty of other examples of this kind of thing. How long will we keep getting lucky?"

Comments

Why Only U.S. & Russia?

[eldavojohn]

Although these were a very solid twenty mishaps that almost lead to nuclear war, why are they all tied to the U.S. & Russia?

I'm sure there are other countries with nuclear weapons. The current count on nuclear weapons from Wikipedia comes to:

The former chair of the United Nations disarmament committee states there are more than 16,000 strategic and tactical nuclear weapons ready for deployment and another 14,000 in storage. The U.S. has nearly 7,000 ready for action and 3,000 in storage and Russia has about 8,500 on hand and 11,000 in storage, he said. China has 400 nuclear weapons, France 350, Britain 200, Israel 200, India 95 and Pakistan 50. NATO has stationed 480 U.S. nuclear weapons in Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany and Turkey, with several other countries in pursuit of an arsenal of their own (1).

Frankly, the India/Pakistan development of a nuclear arsenol worries me more than what happened historically between the U.S. & Russia. And don't even get me started on chemical and biological weapons.

Gratitude

[suso]

The Soviet military did not punish Petrov for his actions, but did not reward or honor him either. His actions had revealed imperfections in the Soviet military system which showed his superiors in a bad light. He was given a reprimand, officially for the improper filing of paperwork, and his once-promising military career came to an end. He was reassigned to a less sensitive post and ultimately retired from the military.

That's gratitude for you.

Thank you Petrov.

Re:How much to people trust America now?

[dan828]

Don't be daft. The Russians didn't trust the US in 1983 at all. They'd just told their operatives to expect a nuclear war after they'd shot down a civilian airliner and their strategic nuclear forces where on high alert. Petrov noticed that the patern of missile launches were not what would be expect in a preempive strike and concluded that it was a computer glitch. He didn't trust that his country hadn't been launched on by the US, whom I doubt he trusted at all, he used logic and determined that the data he was getting was bogus.

All propaganda to the contrary, the dislike and distrust of the US is not markedly different now than it was 23 years ago.

Re:Sting said it best

[DerekLyons]

I couldn't say it better than Sting:
 
What might save us, me, and you
Is that the Russians love their children too

And Hitler loved his mistress and Mussolini his. Stalin doted on his daughter.
 
The lesson of history? That dictators can have tender feelings and still be homicidal maniacs.

Here's a question.

[O'Laochdha]

Let's say that by some series of events, it actually happened. Somewhere in the world, a nuclear weapon hit a hostile nuclear power. What would happen?

Here is the traditional answer: "There would be a retaliatory strike. Allies of both parties would get in on the act. The two sides would lob nukes at one another until everyone involved were destroyed, with serious, possibly apocalyptic damage to the world at large."

That made perfect sense in the Cold War, when the two largest powers were the US and Russia and nearly every other nuclear power took one side or the other. Nearly the entire world would be bombed outright, and the sheer area of the US and Russia alone would create a shitload of radiation. Nowadays, however, it seems more likely that at least one side of the war will be a small nation or alliance of small nations. It's unlikely that more than a few countries will be drawn in. How much radiation would there actually be at the end?

Also, how willing would other nations be to go into this? There's not a clear-cut capitalist/communist distinction anymore. It doesn't seem unlikely that only two nations would fight the war, especially if one of them were the US. To enter into a nuclear war would be certain death for every man, woman, and child in your country. Treaties be damned, I can't imagine many countries jumping at the chance.

Finally, what guarantee is there that it would become a nuclear war at all? The last thing a sane leader would want after a nuclear strike would be for the situation to escalate. Obviously, they couldn't just sit there, but I'd imagine that the retaliation would be primarily conventional, or one or two surgical blasts.

I just want to say that a nuclear war doesn't need to turn into Dr. Strangelove. It is quite possible for it to end with a whimper.

the "saved lives" myth

[SuperBanana]

Case in point. Japan started the fight and they would not surrender. Very conservative estimates of an invasion of Japan's homeland put American deaths at a million and Japanese deaths as a multiple of that. As horrific the destruction caused by the 2 atomic bombs, those bombs saved American and Japanese lives.

This is the common lie/myth, as is the western belief that the Japanese would "fight to the death to protect the emperor." It's all a bunch of crap. YES, the emperor was advised that his 'house' was in danger if he continued the war...but the Japanese leadership was worried about a coup or revolt, NOT setting up plans for farmers with pitchforks to fight off GI Joe to the death.

The Japanese were on the verge of surrendering already. Go study WW2 history- it's patently obvious Japan was already losing AND that they knew it. The atomic bombs were almost completely unnecessary, except to establish US dominance in the world theater by demonstrating god-like firepower.

Try this google search on for size.

Incidentally, does the political division and the emperor's "stay the course" position sound familiar to you? Those who do not study history, blah blah.

Re:That list is clearly missing one

[JackieBrown]

As a result of this win-less battle, WOPR learns the only winning move is not to play

The next day the Soviets launch, and WOPR sat back and watched secure in the knowledge he had gained from tic-tac-toe

Re:How much to people trust America now?

[AHumbleOpinion]

Agreed. The GP was quite revisionist. I recall quite clearly the hatred of Reagan, the labeling of him as an idiot cowboy, a religous nut who will bring about a theocracy, ... He was the "antichrist" to the American and European left. I recall the massive protests (as it turns out partly KGB funded, indirectly and covertly through greens and others) at Reagan's plans for modernizing NATO so that it could stand against the Warsaw Pact forces. I recall the horror for the notion that the Soviet state was something to oppose and do away with rather than peacefully coexist with.

In short, for those of you who were not in high school and college during Reagan's years, he was treated and referred to much like Bush Jr. today. However Reagan was a far better public speaker and came off a little better. Hated and reviled by the left much as the right hates and reviles Clinton.

Thinking the unthinkable/places/individual cost

[hey!]

Because both the United States and Russia blew up hundreds, if not thousands of atomic and hydrogen bombs during testing?

The thing to remember is that from a human point of view, not all places are equal. A temperate site near a river with regular and moderate rainfalls is greatly more useful than a ice-scorched plain of arctic permafrost or a sun blasted desert. Humans, who are adaptable and clever can live in those places, so there is no danger of species extinction. But clearly, we have colonized the most useful places on the planet, and have mixed our labor with them to create vast pools of civilization capital.

What I'm trying to say is this: place matters.

Those bombs, used in a nuclear war, wouldn't be targetted at places deliberately chosen to have the minimum impact. Leaving aside "counter-force" strikes, they are targetted to achieve the greatest damage possible to that part of human society occupying the "enemy" country. I put "enemy" in quotes because looked at from the post-war side, residents of the countries engaged in nuclear war will feelgreater kinship with each other than there former leaders.

Another thing to remember is that the Earth is full of dynamic processes, many of which release energy into the environment, and a few of which even release radiation (radon spurs). A typical thunderstorm is equal to a Hiroshima sized bomb in its energy output. However, it releases that energy over thousands of square miles and several days, not in milliseconds in the space of a cubic yard or so. Even so, if you had the knack of being at just the point where individual bolts of lightning strike, you probably wouldn't survive long. It's the fact that we mostly deal with those strikes averaged over a huge area and long time, not in the split second at the poitn of contact, that makes human life adaptable to the fact of thunderstorms. We adapt to energy and radiation that is released at moderate rates when averaged over the places that are significant to us.

So, what I'm saying is not only place, but rates, and the geographic concentration of events that fall in those places, that matter.

Putting this together, it's quite probable that a thousand nuclear bombs detonated in the course of war that lasts a few hours could destroy civilization, even if those same warheads detonated in remote places over the course of decades did not.

Yet even so, there is no danger of human extinction. Between pardise and an environment so poisoned by nuclear fallout that human life is simply not possible, there are infinite gradations, although many of them can fairly be described as "living hells". But living they would remain. It is possible that a future chronicler of our species would have seen the war averted by Col Petrov as a signficant, but not cataclysmic event in the history of our species. Perhaps our population and technology levels would be set back one or two thousand years, put in the context of a civilization that is about 5000-6000 years old, and a species that is 200,000 years old. In other words, losing about 40% of the temporal gains of our civilization, and about 1% of the gains of our species.

This kind of thinking used to be known as "thinking the unthinkable". It is possible to construct scenarios under which we recoup much of the losses in a relatively short time, given adequate preparation. Some of these scenarios are even plausible, if not likely, given adequate preparation. From the point of view of our species, we would suffer a misfortune, but not a cataclysm.

The problem with the "thinking the unthinkable" mode of thought is that it ignores the fact none of us as individuals experience the fate of our species. We only experience our own fates. A nuclear war that is a bearable setback for the species is comprised of billions of individual cataclysms.

We must not forget that when remember what the Colonel has done for us, if not our species.