Stanislav Evgrafovich Petrov is arguably the most influential person who ever lived, although I had never heard of him until seeing this post on Cynical-C and this tribute.
Our story unfolds on September 26, 1983. Lieutenant Colonel Petrov was the officer on duty at the Serpukhov-15 bunker near Moscow with the responsibility of alerting Soviet command if there was any indication that the U.S. had launched a nuclear missile strike against the U.S.S.R. The response, of course, would be massive retaliation, and the deaths of many millions of people.
Just after midnight, the computers indicated that an American missile had been launched. Petrov was skeptical, since it wouldn’t make much sense to just launch a single missile. However, soon thereafter, the computer indicated that another four missiles had been launched.
To make a long story short (see Wikipedia for more), Petrov decided that the multiple launches were still a computer error rather than a real attack, and declined to alert his superiors, putting the Soviet Union at risk if he were mistaken. As it turned out, Petrov was right, and he had certainly averted an accidental worldwide catastrophe. But he had disobeyed procedure in the process; his superiors gave him a reprimand and reassigned him to a lower-profile post. The entire incident was kept secret until 1998.
Forget Easter, here’s a guy who deserves our thanks.
The question is: what would you have done? Presume that you were in an equivalent situtation, responsible for the defense of your country, a mission in which you believed with all your heart. But you have no desire to have millions of people die unnecessarily. How certain would you have to be that an attack was actually occuring before you would set massive retaliation in motion? Fifty-fifty? 100-1? A million to one? Or would you never retaliate, knowing that your decision would lead to hundreds of nuclear warheads raining down on your homeland, and your mortal enemy presumably taking over the world?
I believe his story was recounted in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists about ten years ago with the additional detail that, at the end of all this, he went home, drank an entire bottle of vodka, and slept for 24 hours.
I thought there were hot-lines and ‘red phones’ installed to prevent such a war by mistake.
I don’t know how much use the red phone would be in that particular situation. If the Americans were actually launching an attack, would they admit it? No, they’d just deny it and hope the Soviets believed them until it was too late. Conversely, even if the Americans weren’t launching an attack, and said so, why would the Soviets believe them? It’s just what they would say if they were launching an attack … etc. The red phone would be more useful in understanding each other’s desires and intentions as a crisis developed, not for a sudden attack like this would have been.
Some more instances where we came this close to nuclear war are listed here and here. Supposedly, during the 1970s the secret launch code for US Minuteman ICBMs was 00000000! It’s a wonder we are still here.
If I remember correctly, the hotlines were installed after this little incident to make sure stuff like this never happens again.
This is incredible. I was completely unaware of this incident in history. In 1983 I was 9 years old and scared to death of dying in a nuclear war thanks to the propaganda of my school and the media and the paranoia of my fellow Americans induced by our government and media. Finding out that my fears weren’t entirely irrational almost made me wet my pants.
I don’t know what’s the point in installing hotlines. Even if one side had fired missiles and the others had called and asked “Hey, our computers are indicating that you fired nuclear warheads at us. Is that true?” What would the answer have been? “Yes, sure. Give us your best shot if you think you got a chance.” Or would it have more likely been “Who? Us? No way!” It’s the people who do evil, not the machines.
From one of Brett’s links:
This is interesting because it’s a bit like experimental physics: all sorts of noise and unexpected effects may cause you to think that you have found your elusive phenomenon, or found a new effect. The temptation to believe this is large because it would mean eternal glory. And indeed, there are many instances where this has happenend (cold fusion and gravity waves, to name a few).
The difference is that looking for a missile attack does not give you eternal glory (eternal peace, more likely). Perhaps this is why none of these incidents have actually developed into a full-blown nuclear war. And perhaps it would be people’s first incling to keep looking for alternatives.
Sean, this was a great post, but there was absolutely no need to make a gratuitous cheap shot at a religion you don’t like in it.
What if somebody else had written the same post in mid-January, and added the sentence, “Forget Martin Luther King, here’s a guy who deserves our thanks.”?
Might that cheap shot be seen as prejudiced? Even if the person felt his position justified because of the extreme actions of the Black Panthers or something else that let him claim that he thought the group he was prejudiced against was a threat to society? And, might that cheap shot undermine and weaken the rest of what was otherwise a very interesting and thoughtful post?
As a general rule, our society has a greater propensity to focus upon citizens who instigate hostility instead of citizens who mitigate hostility. Furthermore, our society has the pathological leanings to reward gestures of warfare over gestures of pacifism. Sean- by posting this rather obscure piece of historical information, you are acting as a counterbalance to offset our societal tendencies to value war over peace. Thanks for sharing this most appropriate post on Easter Day.
In that situation I’d do what Jesus would, say a prayer.
BTW, were the Russian computers using Windows?
Rob, I’m sorry if you were bothered by the comment. But, although I have plenty of respect for many religious people, I have no respect for the ideas of religion themselves. So comments like that are going to keep coming, I’m afraid.
Also, the history of the United States is not one in which a large number of Christians were kidnapped from their homelands, forced to serve as slaves, only recently were able to use the same water fountains and bus seats and schools as non-Christians, and continue to live under conditions of widespread poverty and discrimination. So I don’t think the Martin Luther King analogy is a very accurate one.
Off-topic already…
It’s a great idea to replace both Easter Bunny and Jesus Christ with heroic Soviet communists.
The details may have been secret but the basic events were not. I remember pretty well that on Tuesday, September 27th, 1983, already during Andropov’s era, I was in the fourth grade. We were at school – in fact, in the gym. Suddenly, the school radio announced that the “international situation has deteriorated” and we were “closer to a conflict”. No one was ever told anything beyond these general words.
If I were a Russian general, I would first of all realize that the Russian technology is crappy and the detectors can’t be trusted. You could have never achieved a much-above-50 percent certainty that the Americans are attacking. 😉
If I were a military official in a country where the security system is more reliable, the threshold would be around 99%, whatever is exactly the way how this subjective number is calculated, and I would start attacks against the military targets of the enemy, in an attempt to reduce the ability of the enemy to continue with unlimited destruction. If this retaliation turned out to be a result of flawed system of detectors, then I would be sorry. 😉
Best
Lubos
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Sean, you’ve falling into the classic trap of taking an analogy and dismissing it because something outside of the point of the analgy doesn’t match. One can reject almost any analogy using that line of argument. If you don’t like that analogy, put in another about homosexuals, or people with a southern accent, or athiests, all of whom are sometimes dismissed as unworthy out of an ill-founded prejudice.
My point is that your throwawy comment was not only thoughtless and based on ill-founded prejudices, but also completely gratuitous to what you were talking about. Given your prejudice against religion, you’re not likely to see how gratuitously rude your comment is– I’m trying to help make you see that by indicating what a similar comment in another context might look like, an context where (I suspect) you wouldn’t think highly of the person making the comment.
If you don’t like religion, but *do* respect some religious people, then there’s no need to insult them in a post that has absolutely nothing to do with what you don’t like about religion. Unapologetic behavior like that belies a claim of respect.
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Rob, there is simply no good analogy between Easter and Martin Luther King Day. Christians are in no need of anyone to fight for their civil rights, and they should be able to tolerate a few derogatory remarks in blog posts.
And, you can disagree with me all you like, but my feelings about religion are not ill-founded prejudices. They are informed and well-considered opinions, reached after growing up in a religious family, attending a religious university, living in a religious country, and writing, speaking, and teaching extensively on issues involving religion. Not every disagreement is a prejudice.
We now return you to the actual topic of the post.
Having grown up in one of the families involved in making the world much less safe, i still have my handy-dandy, DOD, nuclear-warhead, damage calculator. Things like this should have come in cereal boxes; if for no other reason, than to help the US population of the 50’s and early 60’s become more informed about what to expect.
Petrov’s actions were admirable and noble, seeing that life is better served by living than by dying. It did nothing of course to stop Chernobyl’s from happening, nor from spreading massive tons of DU dust all over the Middle East. There have been studies done on US missle silo officers to see how they would respond to similar crises. Interestingly, and in keeping with Petrov’s line of reasoning, the numbers were staggering to the DoD (as i recall upwards of 40% refusing to enter the launch codes). More research revealed that a great number of those were well aware that their own silos, or those under their command, were incapable of proper functioning and that launching the “mythical” counterstrike would cause more local damage(silos filled with water, onboard solid fuels compromised, failed hydraulic doors, etc.) than in-bound missles (a number our own CIA/NSA inflated by roughly 300% it turns out). One of the guiding mechanisms of the current NSS policy of first strike precedence is predicated on the research done on the silo officers. WE will shoot first, and the question Sean asks is unfortunately no longer relevant.
I would, knowing what i know now, refuse to launch in all cases. I can only hope that all the nuclear reactor operators (power, shipboard, research, etc.) can be as forthright and responsible to their duties at Petrov. And as for the quasi-religious controversy: i don’t think Gen. Boykin would have any problem launching a nuclear attack in the name of his easter trinity, and that is wrong.
“If I were a military official in a country where the security system is more reliable, the threshold would be around 99%, whatever is exactly the way how this subjective number is calculated, and I would start attacks against the military targets of the enemy, in an attempt to reduce the ability of the enemy to continue with unlimited destruction. If this retaliation turned out to be a result of flawed system of detectors, then I would be sorry.” – Assistant Professor Motl, comment # 13
You’ve convinced me that, yes, God made string theory (to keep logical geniuses busy, away from important jobs).
🙂
No, it’s not a very accurate analogy, because all of mankind was enslaved by sin and death–and the Christ’s Resurrection trampled down death and set free all those who had ever lived or would ever live. Cool as Martin Luther King, Jr. was, he’s got nothing on the Son of God.
Oh, we (or at least I) certainly tolerate such remarks; no-one’s calling for your head or imprisonment, after all. But we don’t accept them. Tolerance means not using coercion to stop; acceptance means praising. One tolerates a lot more than one would accept.
For example, you tolerate Christians (or at least I imagine so), but you don’t accept our way of thinking. That’s fair enough–and it’s fair enough for us to express our opinion thereof, and you to express your thoughts in return.
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Bob Uhl: That’s fair enough—and it’s fair enough for us to express our opinion thereof, and you to express your thoughts in return.
I don’t think Sean has a problem with this line of reasoning, but Rob Knop does. He wants Sean‘s opinion to go unexpressed in the first place.
If you believe that Christianity is a lie, or at least a gross error, you’re not going to have much respect for its tenets. Other people might think you’re a jerk, but so be it; they’re free to think so and to say so. (The same goes for Dr. King, too, but there are fewer people around that think that his work was somehow misguided.)
I’ve always found this quesiton somewhat interesting, but the thing is–in the case of massive nuclear assault, I don’t see how, even in that case, that it is moral to order the missiles launched. If you launch, the entire world is destroyed in a nuclear winter. You are dead, your opponents are dead. If you don’t, then there is a cance that the enemy’s homeland, at least won’t be destroyed. Your nation lost the (no longer quite so) cold war, but there is at least an increased chance that humanity survives the whole incident.
but the key point is the fact that, if the missiles are in the air, you are already dead, and your nation is already exterminated. Nothing you do can change that
Sean said “… the history of the United States is not one in which a large number of Christians were kidnapped from their homelands, forced to serve as slaves, only recently were able to use the same water fountains and bus seats and schools as non-Christians, and continue to live under conditions of widespread poverty and discrimination. …”.
In fact, with respect to being “kidnapped from their homelands, forced to serve as slaves”, large numbers of Christians were so sent to the USA. Here is a quote from The Cartoon History of the United States, by Larry Gonick, Harper Perennial 1991(read the book to see the cartoons):
“Why, you may ask, would any sane person leave England for Virginia?
Good question!!
Well, it seems that “Merrie England” was losing its sense of humor, as landlords evicted farmers by the thousand, forcing them to face some very tough choices …
There aren’t any jobs in the city …
If you go too far into debt, it’s jail for sure
So I stole a loaf of bread and was sentenced to death …
Then they offered me a choice between hanging and Virginia …”.
You might say that such indentured servants were technically not slaves, and you would be correct, but the indentured servants and slaves lived on the same social level. About a couple of hundred years ago, a great… grandfather of mine (slave from Africa living in Virginia) was married (effectively if not technically) to my great… grandmother (indentured servant from Scotland).
It is a shameful fact of USA history that discrimination against slaves lasted longer and was more severe than discrimination against indentured servants, but the fact remains that a lot of people in the USA are descended from Christians forcibly removed to North America by the English to serve as indentured servants.
Tony Smith
http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/