Stanislav

Petrov
MADE BY: VIKTORIA ATANASSOVA
On Sept. 26, 1983, real-life hero Stanislav Petrov singlehandedly prevented a worldwide nuclear war
when he followed his gut and chose to ignore a missile alarm.

Petrov was a few hours into his shift as the duty officer at Serpukhov-15, the secret command center
outside Moscow that monitored Soviet military satellites over the United States. Suddenly the alarms
went off, warning that five Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles had been launched from an
American base.
Petrov didn’t panic. He knew that the alarm systems were in their early stages and personally believed
the warning to be false – though he later recalled that there was actually a 50-50 chance that they
weren’t. Instead of reporting the missile attacks, Petrov turned the alarm off and told his supervisor that
there had been a system malfunction.

In an interview with the BBC, Stanislav Petrov remembers hearing the alarms go off.
Ultimately, Petrov was right: the alarm signaling a missile attack had been false. Had Petrov reported
the attack as real, a worldwide nuclear war could have been launched.

But by keeping a cool head and taking the time to evaluate the situation, Petrov saved the world.

“I had a funny feeling in my gut,” he told The Washington Post. “I didn’t want to make a mistake. I
made a decision, and that was it.”

A cool head and quick thinking also helped: when he considered the matter, he decided that if the
Americans were really starting a war, the attack would have to be much larger and more intense.
Thank you for your attention!