Quick-witted Russian soldier who averted Cold War nuclear conflict dies

New Delhi: A quick-thinking Russian soldier who prevented an all-out nuclear conflict with the US during the Cold War has died at the age of 77 in Moscow.

The incident dates back to September 26, 1983, when Stanislav Petrov was manning a secret command centre of the Red Army.

The Russian held his nerve when the radar screen showed five US ballistic missiles cruising toward the Soviet Union.

As per protocol, he should have immediately ordered a counter strike but he ignored it and decided to rely on “gut instinct”, which said it was a false alarm.

“The siren howled, but I just sat there for a few seconds, staring at the big, back-lit, red screen with the word ‘launch’ on it,” the Guardian quoted him as saying in an interview.

“All I had to do was to reach for the phone; to raise the direct line to our top commanders,” he reportedly told the BBC’s Russian Service in 2013.

Instead, he reported a malfunction in the early warning system, although he wasn’t sure if he was doing the right thing.

“Twenty-three minutes later I realised that nothing had happened. If there had been a real strike, then I would already know about it. It was a relief,” he said.

It was later found out that the false alarm was due to a false reading by a satellite which took the sun’s rays as a missile launch.

The incident had taken place at the height of the Cold War.

Petrov, survived by a son and a daughter, was relieved to know that his gut instinct came out to be true. “We are wiser than the computers,” he declared.

He died on May 19 in the Moscow suburb of Fryazino.