THE MAN WHO SAVED THE WORLD

StanislavPetrov(1939 ~ )

Stanislav Petrov

Former military of-ficer of Soviet Union

Saved the world by doing … noth-ing!

Background

Cold War Era (1947 ~ 1991)

Political Conflict

Military Tension

Space Race

Nuclear Race

Sept. 1st 1983Korean Air LinesFlight 007

Shot down by So-viet interceptors

269 people dead

Including U.S. congressman

Soviet Union vs. United States

Nuclear war was at hand

The Incident

September 23rd 1983

Secret bunker outside Moscow

Early-warning Satellite Sys-tem

For ICBMs from USA

Stanislav Petrov was in charge of monitoring the alarm

Suddenly, the alarm went off

“USSR is under attack!”

Five missiles heading into Soviet.

The start of nuclear war?

Two choices for Petrov

1. push the red but-ton

2. ignore the alert

Pushing the red button -Retaliate by launching a full-scale nuclear war

Instead of pushing the but-ton,

He analyzed the data before making his decision.

‘Just five missiles to launch a war?’

He thought it was a false

alarm.

And decided not to push the button.

In fact, there was no missile.

A satellite was malfunction-ing by reflections of sun

light.

Nuclear war had been averted.

Millions of lives were

saved.

Aftermath

Soviet military covered up the incident.

There was no reward to Petrov.

He was forced into early re-tirement

His story became known to the world in 1998 by a book about

him.

He was presented with a ‘World Citizen Award’ in 2004

“For fifteen seconds we were in a state of shock… I had a funny feel-

ing in my gut. I didn’t want to make a mistake. I made a deci-

sion, and that was it.”

One man, one clear-thinking man, literally

saved the world and you and me.

With just one decision, you can change your entire future

Thank You