Associated Incidents
Meet the man who single-handedly stopped a nuclear war
…And saved 4,590,774,355 lives
Joan Westenberg 🌈 Blocked Unblock Follow Following Mar 23, 2018
One of the most important people to have ever lived passed away last year.
There wasn’t a mass outpouring of grief, the way there was for Stephen Hawking. Folks didn’t write a lot of poetry or draw a lot of heart felt editorial cartoons.
Stanislav Petrov wasn’t really that kind of a hero. But he should have been.
Because he saved an entire fucking planet.
In 1983, while the acting commander of a nuclear early-warning system, Petrov saw that his devices were showing the United States had launched a nuclear missile attack on Russia.
And in the moment where it was his job to pass on that warning so that Russia could launch a retaliatory strike, Petrov decided that the system had produced an error. And he believed that. And he believed the United States was not attacking.
Petrov prevented Russia from launching an erroneous missile strike that would have set off world war 3. He saved the planet from nuclear fucking destruction. He’s a goddamn hero. He put his faith in humanity before his sense of revenge, or his job or anything else, and trusted that he was doing the right thing.
And that’s the key, isn’t it?
In a world where morals are so often required to be flexible, where people give us orders and we have a brief opportunity to refuse them, where want to do something shitty to another human in order to win, when we could stand up and say that we will not be counted with the complicit, how often do we back down?
How often do we take the right path?
I’m not talking about any of us being in Petrov’s position. I’m not talking about any of us having to make a call that would or wouldn’t start a cataclysmic event. But what about when we’re working in a company like Facebook? And the employees there knew that what the company was doing was wrong? Why didn’t they speak out?
What about if someone were sexually harassed at your company. Would you speak out? What would you put on the line?
What would I put on the line? When it came down to it, would I be like Petrov, or would I back the fuck down and do what’s expected, and take the easy route? I like to think I’d rise to the challenge. But I don’t know, because I haven’t really been tested. Not yet.
I want you to remember that name. I want you to remember the name of Stanislav Petrov. I want you to fear that name, for what it says about your own, if you ever find yourself in a situation where you were challenged to stand up, and you didn’t. I want you think about him, and think about his choice, every day of your life.
Because in 1983, there were 4,590,774,355 people on this planet. And Stanislav Petrov saved their lives.