The man who prevented WWIII

Brian G Turner

Brian G Turner

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Interesting article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov

Stanislav Evgrafovich Petrov (born c. 1939) is a retired Russian Army colonel who, on September 26, 1983, averted a potential nuclear war by refusing to accept that the United States had launched missiles against the USSR, despite the indications given by his computerized early warning systems. The Soviet computer reports were later shown to have been in error, and Petrov is credited with preventing World War III and the devastation of much of the Earth by nuclear weapons. Because of military secrecy and international policy, Petrov's actions were kept secret until 1998.
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You know it scares me, just one man to decide whether or not we have war on our hands...

Too scary for words but Hallelujah! for Stanislav Evgrafovich Petrov!

Just goes to show how much they really tell us...

xx
 
He sounds like a good man, I must admit I am very relieved he made the decision he did.
It is very disturbing that such enourmous, world changing judgements are made by a single individual.
It shows just how important it is that the right person for the right job is.
 
But think if we let a computer decide without any human intervention, then the computer would have most probably launched the missiles, as it wouldn't be able to determine what it was seeing was a false alarm.
 
When I was a young Soviet pioneer (Soviet scout organisation) I often read terrible postfactum news in the Soviet newspapers about mafunctions of computers of American strategic targeting system putting the world on the edge of Nuclear Holocaust and anaylses of the analysts saying that those fooish Americans reied too mush on computers and that migh one day end up with missies starting to bring death to the whole world...
That is an opposite example...
 
Just goes to show us that we do have good and intelligent people in the right place at the right time (sometimes).
 
How do they know this man prevented WWIII? It is kind of scary though to think how close we could have been to WWIII.
 
Einstein also said....

'Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding'

Stanislav Evgrafovich Petrov sounds like someone with sense and frankly a conscience.

Great topic Brian

:)
 
Lacedaemonian said:
Nothing a game of naughts and crosses wouldn't resolve. :)
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You scare me, lace. :eek:

You know it scares me, just one man to decide whether or not we have war on our hands...

Too scary for words but Hallelujah! for Stanislav Evgrafovich Petrov!

Just goes to show how much they really tell us...
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I agree with you Adasunshine. :)
 
This scenario happened several times in the U.S. as well. I don't have the dates and other info at hand, but computer errors caused NORAD to believe that the USSR had launched nuclear attacks within U.S. borders. At least one of these events nearly caused a retalitory strike. The others were recognized as erroneous fairly quickly.
 
Stanislav Evgrafovich Petrov ... the man did great, but he's not the only one, far from it. it's hard to tell how many times we were on the verge of wwIII, since there are also many false stories . It is good to show that at least one man looked a bit ahead. I hope that similar decisions will be made in future events.
 
WWIII......with nucluers......stopped by.....Stanislav Evgrafovich Petrov......
Tell me does he have a relative living in Iran with that same position...we may need him again in the near future
 
Its common working class heroes like the one mentioned that are overlooked by society and subsequently by history.
When we think, and learn, about the Cuban missile crisis we are lead astray by the notion that it was down to the US and Kennedy that war was averted......we often neglect men such as Kruschev.....
 
Nostradamus gave us many clues as to what would or would not happen in the future - wonder if SEP knew of them, thus keeping his finger off the button! Wonder if there are other prophesies or predictions by others as to how WWIII will start/continue/end!
 
SpaceShip said:
Wonder if there are other prophesies or predictions by others as to how WWIII will start/continue/end!
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Probably millions and one of them will be correct and all the others wrong. But, as will all predicitions the correct one will be quoted and all the others covieniently forgotten.
 
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