A poignant anniversary
It’s one of my personal holidays today.
Long-time readers of my old livejournal and even occasionally Twitter willl have heard me speak of this before, but today is the 39th anniversary of Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov Saves The World Day, because on this in 1983, Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov saved the world.
I had just turned twelve years old, and he saved my life (probably) and the lives of countless others. Because on this day in 1983, when he was the duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early-warning system in what was then the Soviet Union, that early warning system reported that the United States had fired multiple nuclear missiles at the Soviet Union without warning.
Petrov looked at the evidence (Tensions between the US and the USSR were running high at that point) and decided that the report was a system error. He did not report it up the chain of command as an attack, thus preventing a pre-emptive retaliation that would almost certainly have led to a nuclear war.
Thank you for my life, Lt. Col. Petrov.
I’m writing this newsletter a few days before it posts, and Vladimir Putin is making not-very veiled nuclear threats against Ukraine and NATO.
I do not believe in that man’s self-restraint. He’s a brittle narcissist who has backed himself into a corner and will do anything not to feel powerless.
But should he command the unthinkable, may the spirit of Lt. Col. Petrov stay the hands of those with actual control of such weapons.