Stanislav Petrov: The man who may have saved the world

[BlackLabel]

Has died (according to various sources on twitter) - a man who may have saved the world by doing nothing.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24280831

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov

And if he hasn't died well it's probably worth reading about him anyway, especially in light of the current situation with NK - their early warning systems are pretty old.

Edited by BlackLabel on Thursday 14th September 11:23

[jsc15]

He was great at Celtic

[cuprabob]

jsc15 said:

He was great at Celtic

[BlackLabel]

Died in May but only just made public now. Strange.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/...

[21TonyK]

Catch 22. It's an attack, you're going to die anyway so do you force a launch against the attacker? Or do you save millions or even billions of lives buy just shrugging your shoulders and not doing anything?

Either way, quite a brave decision on his part and not a story I had read before.

[louiechevy]

It seems sad he never got the recognition he deserved yet today in Moscow they've unveiled a statue to Mikhail Kalashnikov the man who designed the AK47!

[jshell]

BlackLabel said:

Died in May but only just made public now. Strange.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/...

Old news, to be honest, it wasn't a secret.

[steviegunn]

I watched the docu-drama about his story - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Saved_th... , well worth a watch.

[McVities]

There's also an interesting documentary about the Able Archer 83 NATO exercise that almost convinced the USSR they were about to be attacked.
Seems they got quite hot under the collar and everyone in the west was blissfully ignorant at the time.

[Yipper]

Suspect that, if you dig deep enough, you'd probably find 50 to 100 of these "near misses" since WW2. Cr*ppy old Russian and Chinese tech was notoriously unreliable in the 20th century.