In light of recent world events, it looks like the climate of the Cold War is slowly returning, even though Russia is no longer Communist.  Along with it comes the spectre of nuclear war, which brings with it the threat of the end of human civilization.  In that spirit, I bring a message of hope: Today is the 25th anniversary of Stanislav Petrov's dilemma, and we are still alive.

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

http://www.brightstarsound.com/world_hero/article.html

http://stanislavpetrovtribute.ytmnd.com/ (Okay, the material was taken from the link above - I just love the Soviet national anthem :P)

The very short version: The US and the Soviets were already on very short fuses at the time because of the KAL 007 incident three weeks prior.  Around midnight September 26th 1983, Petrov was on watch at his silo when the early warning system picked up five missile launches from the States.  One or two could be blamed on computer error, but five was too many. 

Petrov had to make a decision as to whether to contact his superiors, who were on hair trigger alert already and would very likely have started a nuclear war, or to go with his gut instinct and ignore the alarms.  No matter if the States actually did launch those missiles, the penalty for getting the decision wrong either way would have been infinite.  In the end, he decided to declare it a false alarm (though there are conflicting reports as to whether he notified his superiors of this at all), and his suspicions were proven correct when additional data showed the launch reports to be the result of a rare alignment of events.

So what happened to Petrov?  The incident was embarrassing for the Soviet command structure, so he was demoted, reassigned, and ultimately took early retirement.  More importantly, few, if any people in the world today know what he did 25 years ago.  Today, he lives on his pension in the town of Fryazino outside of Moscow, largely forgotten by the world.  Do him a favor, and spread the word.

wow, im surprised this is the first iv heard of this.

The man is a hero he saved the whole of humanity from extinction. Nuclear war would of wiped out the whole world's population. Only the cockroach would survive a nuclear war. Cockroaches even survived the meteorite that hit the earth 65 million years ago which wiped out the Dinosaurs.

wow, the things you dont know about eh?

I think it's well known what Petrov did around the world.
The most propable thing that would have happened, would have been Moscow getting Washington on the line and ask what the fuck is happening. Anyway, it's still better that it happened that way.

Yeah, 25 years ago Famicom got released in Japan, so world was near to its end, if the "hardcore" is to believe.

Nice news. I like stuff like this.