Stanislav Petrov

Stanislav Petrov

Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov (Russian: Станисла́в Евгра́фович Петро́в; 7 September 1939 – 19 May 2017) was a lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces who played a key role in the 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident. On 26 September 1983, three weeks after the Soviet military had shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, Petrov was the duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early-warning system when the system reported that a missile had been launched from the United States, followed by up to five more. Petrov judged the reports to be a false alarm.His subsequent decision to disobey orders, against Soviet military protocol, is credited with having prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its NATO allies that could have resulted in a large-scale nuclear war. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Stanislav Petrov has received more than 5,028,991 page views. His biography is available in 51 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 49 in 2019). Stanislav Petrov is the 65th most popular military personnel (down from 43rd in 2019), the 71st most popular biography from Russia (down from 58th in 2019) and the 3rd most popular Russian Military Personnel.

Stanislav Petrov is most famous for being the man who prevented a nuclear war. In 1983, he was on duty at a Soviet nuclear early warning station when the system reported that the United States had launched five nuclear missiles. Petrov had the power to launch a retaliatory strike, but he decided to wait and see if the alarm was a false alarm. It turned out to be a false alarm, and he saved the world from a nuclear war.