Overview
On September 26, 1983, Stanislav Petrov, a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Air Defense Forces, was the duty officer at the Oko nuclear early-warning system's command center. Suddenly, the computers reported that the United States had launched five Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) at the Soviet Union.
The Decision of a Lifetime
Soviet military protocol demanded an immediate retaliatory strike. However, Petrov viewed the "launch" with suspicion. He reasoned that if the U.S. were to start a nuclear war, they would launch hundreds of missiles to overwhelm defenses, not just five. He famously declared the alert a "false alarm" to his superiors, choosing to trust his intuition over the computer readout.
The Glitch and the Cover-Up
It was later discovered that the Soviet satellite system had mistaken sunlight reflecting off the tops of high-altitude clouds for missile launches. Because Petrov's actions exposed the technical flaws in the Soviet early-warning system, the incident was kept highly classified. It only came to light in the late 1990s after the fall of the USSR. The event is frequently cited by conspiracy theorists as proof that the world has survived numerous "unseen" near-apocalypses due to technical failure.