A Soviet officer, Stanislav Petrov, which probably prevented a global nuclear disaster, quietly died in his modest apartment in the suburbs may 19 of this year, but we know about his death only now.
On 26 September 1983, a 44-year-old Colonel Petrov made one of the most important decisions in the history of mankind — not to launch a nuclear strike on the United States.
That night, September 26, Stanislav yevgrafovich was the operational duty at the command post of the warning system missile attack in the classified section of Serpukhov-15 near Moscow. A little after midnight computer Petrova submitted the alarm about the launch of missiles from American bases.
Since the rocket launch the enemy before deciding on a return run from the Soviet Union was 30 minutes. Personally, Petrova was 15 minutes for making the right decision.
«When I first saw the warning, I jumped up from his chair, he remembered in 2010 I knew that my actions will have long-lasting consequences».
In the end, Peter decided that the warning system is faulty. As it turned out, the Soviet satellites mistook sunlight reflecting off clouds for missiles. Later in cosmic system was amended to eliminate such situations.
In 1984, Petrov with the rank of Colonel, he retired and settled with his family in suburban Santa Cruz, where he lived until his death.
Until 1993, the nuclear incident was highly classified — about the incident and the decision Petrova did not even know his wife.
In 1998, a little article in the newspaper Bild about the history of the Petrova read German political activist Carl Schumacher. It so shook the case that he invited Stanislav Petrov to yourself, to Oberhausen to a Soviet officer told the locals the story personally. On his visit he wrote several local Newspapers, and then major publications — Spiegel, Washington Post, Daily Mail. So the story of Stanislav Petrov became known worldwide.
In 2006 in new York at the headquarters of the UN, he was awarded a special prize of the organization «Association of world citizens» — crystal statue, holding the globe with engraved inscription «the Man who prevented a nuclear war.»
In evaluations of the act itself Stanislav yevgrafovich Petrov was very modest.
«At first, when people started to tell me that the media will call me a hero, I was surprised — he said in his interview. «I never thought of myself in this way — in the end, I was just doing my job.»
