On the night of Sept. 26, 1983, in a period of Cold War tension, Stanislav Petrov, a lieutenant colonel on duty at a missile attack early-warning center south of Moscow, was jolted by an alarm of a U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile attack on the Soviet Union. The alarm on that September night was the result of data passed from Soviet early-warning satellites monitoring for possible missile launches by spotting the heat from a rocket engine against the dark background of space. The newest satellite, Oko No. 5, was the most sensitive, and sending more than double the usual signals to computers at Mr. Petrov’s center, Serpukhov-15. Mr. Petrov knew the satellite’s data had to be checked; there could be errors at dusk, when the missile fields being watched passed from day to night, a murky and blurry zone.
On this night, the data from Oko No. 5 triggered the attack alarms, a warning of “high reliability,” and it fell to Mr. Petrov to respond. He was frightened, but he reasoned that the United States would not start a nuclear war with just one missile. He called his superior and declared it was a false alarm. Next, the sirens went off and he faced a report of five missiles launched; he again told his superiors — based entirely on a gut instinct — that it was a false alarm.
By doing so, he prevented a chain of reactions by higher-level officials that could have led to catastrophe.
From the Washington Post
http://wapo.st/2fw7XeY
Unsung Heros 
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