Dimitry...one of our base commanders, he had a sort of... well,
he went a little funny in the head... you know... just a little... funny. And, ah... he went and did a silly thing...
Posted on 11/17/2012 3:24:00 PM PST by bigbob
A retired Soviet lieutenant colonel whose self-control prevented a nuclear war from being triggered by a long-classified accident in 1983 was named on Friday a recipient of a German anti-war prize.
Stanislav Petrov, 73, won the fourth Dresden-Preis (Dresden Prize), which comes complete with a check for 25,000 euro ($32,000), prize organizers said on their website, Friendsofdresden-deutschland.com.
The prize is to be bestowed at a ceremony in Dresden on Feb. 17, the anniversary of the Dresden bombing in 1945, the organizers said.
Ironically for a military officer, Petrov shot to fame for ignoring his direct responsibilities. The officer served at a command center of the Soviet nuclear early-warning system outside Moscow, which reported the launch of five nuclear missiles from US territory on Sept. 26, 1983.
Cold War tensions were riding high at the time, boosted by the Soviet Union’s fears about the US Strategic Defense Initiative – “the Star Wars program” – and the international incident caused by the Soviet air defense shooting down a Korean passenger plane earlier in September that year.
Petrov’s duty was to report the incoming missiles to his superiors, who were likely to order a snap retaliatory strike. However, he chose to ignore the report, ruling it an equipment malfunction and reckoning five missiles insufficient for a proper war.
His guess was right: an investigation proved the warning to be a false report by a monitoring satellite confused by sunlight reflecting off high-altitude clouds.
Petrov was neither promoted nor disciplined and continued his service, while the story remained classified until 1998. He later said he was denied an award because the incident was investigated by the officers responsible for the malfunction.
After the story was made public, Petrov received several international prizes. He has stubbornly denied all attempts to label him a hero, saying in an interview to The Moscow News in 2004 that “he was just doing his job, at the right place at the right time.”
The annual Dresden-Preis was incepted in 2010 and is awarded for anti-war effort. Recipients include the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, pianist Daniel Barenboim, active in promoting Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation, and US war photographer James Nachtwey.
The United States had 13,100 strategic nuclear warheads as of 1983, and the Soviet Union 9,700.
Here's the site he did it from: http://goo.gl/maps/bpWiB
...
Little shiver down my spine on this one.
What would have happened if he were a Jihadi?
Ruskies will probably kill him now
That was a bone-cruncher of a decision. I’m glad he got it right.
If that’s your focus, I guess you’re very much in tune with these types of matters, and perhaps it wasn’t all that hard of a decision.
I do think he’s deserving of this award. Kudos to him.
Lately, I’ve been wishing I was back in the days of the Cold War.
Scary time, but we were on the side of the good guys and we won.
?? Was this the same time period as the KAL shootdown?
One thing that can definitely not be said of the Russians is that they are stupid. Barbaric, yes, but not stupid.
There was more than one incident which almost caused a war during that period. The soviets were an adversary, but they were rational. With our current muslim adversaries, we are not dealing with a rational actor.
Dimitry...one of our base commanders, he had a sort of... well,
he went a little funny in the head... you know... just a little... funny. And, ah... he went and did a silly thing...
“Scary time, but we were on the side of the good guys and we won.”
And the bad guys were higher quality too. Spiffy uniforms and good choral music, as opposed to hair stubble and the smell of armpit and goat.
Agreed.
?? Was this the same time period as the KAL shootdown?
***************************
Yes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007
Conservapedia has a much improved account of this event. IMO.
SO this was a very tense time! This guy might really have saved the world.
Good for him.
But frankly it is pretty obvious that if anybody is going to launch a first strike, they’re going to do so with everything they have available.
Unless they are really, really stupid.
If so, they hide it well. Got a link?
At least during the Cold War, the bad guys had no more interest in dying than we did.
> Soviet Officer Wins Award for Preventing Nuclear War
Boyrock Hyssain Ohaha wants that award now.
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