Recognise this man?

No? Well you should, he saved your life. He’s Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov, Stan to his mates. He was a lieutenant colonel in the Russian military who in 1983 avoided a nuclear war by refusing to certify as real, what according to the Russian satellites, was a nuclear strike originating from the USA.

Thank fuck he did, because if he had certified it as genuine, Russia would have launched a retaliatory strike on the USA, which as you may recall hadn’t launched a thing, which would then have lead to the USA retaliating against what they perceived as an unprovoked Russian attack.

Bloody bollocks, the whole world would have been nuked to fuck and back!

Thankfully he didn’t press The Button and the Russian military recognised his prescience by immediately chucking him out, well not quite but his career was fucked and he retired soon after.

Of course, we the public didn’t find out about this until 1998 because of Russia’s military secrecy and international policy. The good news is that in 2004 good ol’ Stan was honoured by the Association of World Citizens who gave him its World Citizen Award along with a trophy and $1000! Then strangely in 2006 he traveled to the United Nations in New York where, for some reason, the Association of World Citizens presented him with a second World Citizen Award.

Seems scant reward for being the man who saved the world.

Filed under: People