Page 80 - All About History - Issue 08-14

History's narrowest escapes

n a secret bunker near Moscow, duty false alarms of lone missiles being launched. Yet his homeland. More vital time ticked by and no
commander Stanislav Petrov settled in for a this was different, as there seemed to be multiple missiles had arrived.
night shift, hoping for an uneventful few hours weapons on their way. It was concluded that the Sun’s rays reflecting
in front of the banks of computers inside. It As precious minutes ticked by, ground radar off a high altitude cloud had caused the confusion.
I was 25 September 1983, and the Cold War stations reported nothing untoward, but they If it hadn’t been for Petrov’s presence of mind
was approaching its zenith. Earlier that year, US couldn’t see what was going on beyond the Armageddon could have followed. What’s even
president Ronald Reagan had branded the Soviet horizon. An attack could still be on. Still, Petrov scarier is that he was only on duty because
Union an ‘evil empire’ and on 1 September the called the Kremlin and reported that the attack someone had called in sick – it could have been
USSR had shot down a civilian South Korean was a false alarm. It was a big call. If he was wrong someone less willing to question the information
airliner, claiming it had been on a spy mission, he would be responsible for the destruction of in front of them at the controls.
causing the loss of 269 lives.
Petrov’s job was to monitor the early-warning “ As Petrov held an intercom in one hand a
systems that would alert him if a nuclear attack
from the West had been launched on his country. phone in the other he hesitated. He knew
Just past midnight, an ear-piercing alarm shattered
the quiet murmur of the room. According to the the fate of the world was in his hands”
information on Petrov’s screen, a Minuteman
nuclear missile was inbound to Soviet territory,
having been launched from Malmstrom Air Force
Base in Montana. Five minutes later the system
reported the launch of another missile, then
another. In total, five intercontinental ballistic
missiles, each 100 times more powerful than the
Hiroshima bomb, appeared to be hurtling towards
Soviet territory. It looked like WWIII and the
devastation of the planet was taking place before
his eyes.
The duty commander knew he had to act
quickly; there were only twelve minutes before
the missiles hit their targets. Protocol decreed
that it was his duty to report up the chain of
command to the general staff, who would pass the
information of the attack to the hard-line Soviet
leader, Yuri Andropov. Andropov would have only
minutes to decide what to do and would almost
certainly order a full-scale retaliation, launching
the USSR’s missiles against the USA before they
were destroyed.
As Petrov held an intercom in one hand and
a phone in the other he hesitated. He knew the
fate of not only his own country, but the world,
was in his hands. The system giving him the
information used satellites to monitor ballistic
missile launches. It was relatively new; it had During the Cold War both USA and the USSR had strategic air
only been launched the year before. Petrov knew command personnel to help protect their countries
this. He also knew that the system had generated

l 1812 l 1840 l 1859 l April 1861
War breaks out Prince Albert of Saxe- Tensions between The American Civil War
between Britain and the Coburg and Gotha Britain and the United breaks out between
United States. By the marries Queen Victoria States are raised after the Confederate States
time it ends in 1815, the three years after her the simple shooting in the south and the
White House has been succession to the of a pig leads to a Union in the north.
burnt down. An uneasy throne. He gradually confrontation over the By 1865, the war will
relationship between becomes more involved boundary between the have claimed around
the two nations remains in helping her with US and British North 600,000 lives. Britain
for decades. matters of state. America, now Canada. remains neutral.
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