Did any of you know about this scary story????

[LAS14]

The message appeared clear: The United States had just launched a nuclear missile attack against the Soviet Union. And Petrov had to immediately warn his commanders so that the Soviet government could plan a counterattack.

snip

Petrov and his staff were in shock, but they had only minutes, if not seconds, to act. The decision rested heavily on Petrov, the officer in charge of Serpukhov-15. And he had two choices: He could follow military protocol and tell his commanders that computer readouts were saying that five intercontinental ballistic missiles had been launched by the United States. Or he could go with his gut.

snip

Less than five minutes after the alarms began blaring, Petrov, working the intercom with one hand with lights flashing around him, picked up the phone with his other hand. He told his commanders that the computer warnings were false. If he was wrong, his mistake would be catastrophic and irreversible. The government’s military would have no time to respond, leaving his country vulnerable in the face of a nuclear attack.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/09/18/the-former-soviet-officer-who-trusted-his-gut-and-averted-a-global-nuclear-catastrophe/?utm_term=.134022815487

[cyclonefence]

1. Paywall

So what's the end of the story? Are we all blowed up real good, or what?

[Hassin Bin Sober]

2. History Channel covered it

The Man Who Saved The world

[cyclonefence]

3. *whew*

Thanks

[Thor_MN]

4. Read about it, probably on here, several years ago.

[Are_grits_groceries]

5. Read about it several years ago.

I shudder to think about what we don't know.

[First Speaker]

6. Rest in peace, Colonel Petrov...if anyone's earned it, you have...

...he just might be the single most important human being who ever lived...

[Hassin Bin Sober]

7. The Able Archer scare is also frightening when you lookback at it

Basically, the Soviets were certain Reagan was going to start a war. The "evil empire" talk, Pershing missiles in Europe, Star Wars and the shoot down of Korean Air 007 (which killed a republican us congressman) had The Soviets on a hair trigger.

This simulated response to a nuclear war had the Russians thinking it was the big one.

One of the aspects I like of the TV show The Americans is how they cover some of the fear and what the Russians did to monitor/spy on people in the US.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RYAN

Operation RYAN (or RYaN, Russian: РЯН; IPA: [rʲæn]) was a Cold War military intelligence program run by the Soviet Union during the early 1980s when they believed the United States was planning for an imminent first strike attack. The name is an acronym for Raketno-Yadernoe Napadenie (Russian: Ракетно-ядерное нападение, "Nuclear Missile Attack&quot . The purpose of the operation was to collect intelligence on potential contingency plans of the Reagan administration to launch a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union.[1][2][3] The program was initiated in May 1981 by Yuri Andropov, then chairman of the KGB.

According to the historian Christopher Andrew, Andropov suffered from a "Hungarian complex" from his personal experience of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. He had, as the Soviet ambassador to Hungary, "watched in horror from the windows of his embassy as officers of the hated Hungarian security service were strung up from lampposts". Andropov remained haunted for the rest of his life by the speed with which an apparently all-powerful Communist one-party state had begun to topple. Leonid Brezhnev and Yuri Andropov, then Chairman of the KGB, justified the creation of Operation RYaN because, they claimed, the United States was “actively preparing for nuclear war” against the Soviet Union and its allies. According to a newly released Stasi report, the primary “Chekist work” discussed in the May 1981 meeting was the “demand to allow for ‘no surprise.'"[4]

The Soviet defector Oleg Gordievsky divulged a top secret KGB telegram sent to the London KGB residency in February 1983. It stated: "The objective of the assignment is to see that the Residency works systematically to uncover any plans in preparation by the main adversary [USA] for RYAN and to organize a continual watch to be kept for indications of a decision being taken to use nuclear weapons against the USSR or immediate preparations being made for a nuclear missile attack." An attachment listed seven “immediate” and thirteen “prospective” tasks for the agents to complete and report. These included: the collection of data on potential places of evacuation and shelter, an appraisal of the level of blood held in blood banks, observation of places where nuclear decisions were made and where nuclear weapons were stored, observation of key nuclear decision makers, observation of lines of communication, reconnaissance of the heads of churches and banks, and surveillance of security services and military installations.[4]

RYAN took on a new significance after the announcement of plans to deploy Pershing II nuclear-capable missiles to West Germany.[1] These missiles were designed to be launched from road-mobile vehicles, making the launch sites very hard to find. The flight time from West Germany to European Russia was only four to six minutes (approximate flying time from six to eight minutes from West Germany to Moscow), giving the Soviets little or no warning.

[denbot]

8. Yup

Quite a while ago..

[seta1950]

9. Rachel

Rachel @ MSNBC covered it sometime ago , very scary people with common sense need to be at the helm.

[niyad]

11. yes. and he just died.