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Russian Colonel Who Averted Nuclear War Receives World Citizen Award
MosNews
Retired Russian colonel Stanislav Petrov received
a special World Citizen Award at a UN meeting in
New York on Thursday. Petrov was honored as the
"Man Who Averted Nuclear War".
In a meeting held at the UN's Dag Hammarskjold
Auditorium on Jan. 19, the Association of World
Citizens (AWC) presented the retired officer with
his award.
The inscription on the award, which has a granite
base with a solid glass hand holding the earth,
read: "The single hand that holds the earth
symbolizes your heroic deed on September 26, 1983
that earned you the title: The Man Who Averted
Nuclear War." The back of the award read: "May
the hand now symbolize humanity united to save
our world by eliminating nuclear weapons from the
face of the earth."
Back in 1983 Petrov made a decision that
prevented a war that could have destroyed the
planet. He was the duty officer at Russia's main
nuclear command center in September 1983 when the
system indicated a nuclear missile attack was
launched by the U.S. on Russia.
It was just after midnight, Sept. 26, and 120
staff were working the graveyard shift in
Serpukhov-15, the secret USSR command bunker
hidden in a forest 30 miles northeast of Moscow,
WorldNetDaily reported.
In the commander's chair was Lt. Col. Stanislav
Petrov, 44, looking down from his mezzanine desk
to the gymnasium-sized main floor filled with
military officers and technicians charged with
monitoring any U.S. missiles and retaliating
instantly.
Petrov was highly aware that Cold War tensions
were acute, as USSR fighters had shot down a
Korean airliner on Sept. 1. But he was completely
shocked when the warning siren began to wail and
two lights on his desk console began flashing
MISSILE ATTACK and START. "Start" was the
instruction to launch, irreversibly, all 5,000 or
so Soviet missiles and obliterate America.
A new, unproven Soviet satellite system had
picked up a flash in Montana near a Minuteman II
silo. Then another - five, all told.
Petrov recalls his legs were "like cotton," as
they say in Russian. He stared at the huge
electronic wall map of the United States in
terror and disbelief. As his staff gawked upward
at him from the floor, he had the thought, "Who
would order an attack with only five missiles?
That big an idiot has not been born yet, not even
in the U.S."
The Soviet procedure manual was inflexible, and
it demanded he notify his superiors of the attack
immediately. But relying on his intuition, Petrov
disobeyed. For almost five minutes, he stalled,
holding his hotline phone in one hand and his
intercom in the other, barking orders to his
personnel to get back to their desks.
Then he made the decision that saved the world.
Summoning up his firmest voice, he called his
Kremlin liaison and said it was a false alarm.
But today he admits, "I wasn't 100 percent sure.
Not even close to 100 percent."
Months later, it was determined that sunlight
reflecting off clouds in Montana had caused a
faulty satellite computer assembly to report a
missile launch flash. But by that time, Petrov's
excellent military career had been sidetracked.
He wasn't fired, but he was transferred - and
never got any medals or recognition. When his
wife was found to have a brain tumor in 1993, he
retired to take care of her. When she died, he
borrowed money to give her a funeral.
Today, Petrov, 67, lives in Moscow on a monthly pension of less than $200.
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