There are a couple of claimants to the title-- and probably more!
7 People Who (Literally) Saved The World . Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov Prevented A Nuclear War Between the US and the USSR
Imagine serving as a colonel of the Soviet Air Defense Forces when one day your command center's early nuclear warning system goes off, informing you that the US has launched a missile that is headed straight for you. Most of us would probably call our supervisors to warn them and run into the closest shelter we could find before curling up into a little ball while crying.
Fortunately, Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov had a cool head when that exact situation presented itself in 1983. After examining the
situation, he determined the report was a false alarm and reported it as such to his superiors, likely preventing nuclear
retaliation and a massive war that could have created a nuclear wasteland across the globe.
Petrov may not have received the credit he deserved from his Soviet superiors, but he may soon become a household name after a recent and widely praised indie flick based on his story, The Man Who Saved the World, was released in October.
2. Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov Stopped the Cuban Missile Crisis From Starting A War
There is generally a lot of confusion during war, and that was particularly true during the Cold War, when both sides were just
waiting for the other to strike. Just like Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov, Soviet naval officer Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov kept
a cool head and prevented a full-on war between the USA and the USSR. In 1962, during the already stressful Cuban Missile Crisis, Arkhipov's nuclear-armed submarine was discovered by US forces and surrounded by eleven Navy destroyers and an aircraft carrier. When American forces started dropping practice depth charges on the sub in hopes of forcing it to the surface so it could be identified, those in the sub weren't sure if they were under attack or not. Because the sub was too deep under water to monitor radio broadcasts, the soldiers inside had way of knowing whether a war had started or that the charges being dropped were only practice rounds.
The sub's captain, Valentin Grigorievitch Savitsky, believed they were under attack and wanted to launch a nuclear torpedo at
American forces. Fortunately, protocol required three officers on board to agree to the launch and while Captain Savitsky and
political officer Ivan Semonovich Maslennikov were in favor of the launch, Arkhipov was against it. Eventually, Arkhipov persuaded
the others to surface and await orders from Moscow, averting a nuclear war. In 2002, the director of the National Security Archive
thanked Arkhipov publicly by saying "a guy called Vasili Arkhipov saved the world."
The Red Button is a 52-minute documentary film that tells the dramatic story of Stanislav Petrov, the Russian officer who, in 1983, saved the world from atomic war.
The Red Button http://www.logtv.com/films/redbutton/ Stanislav Petrov was working at a secret bunker called Serpukhov-15 near Moscow at the height of the Cold War when he saw an incoming nuclear missile on his satellite screen
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/man-who-saved-world-doing-5736621 This PBS documentary explores the dramatic and little-known events that unfolded inside a nuclear-armed Russian submarine during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. While both U.S. and Russian politicians sought a solution to the stand-off, Vasili Arkhipov, an officer aboard the submarine, refused to fire a nuclear torpedo, thus averting disaster. The program combines tense drama with eyewitness accounts
The Missiles of October: What the World Didn't Know (1992)
