7. The Alarming Alarm
Early in the morning of September 26th, 1983, Soviet early-warning systems detected an incoming missile strike from the US. Computer readouts confirmed the warning, and advised that several American missiles had been launched. Soviet protocol for such a scenario called for an immediate response by launching their own nukes in retaliation.
Stanislav Petrov was the duty officer in charge, and his job was to immediately alert the Soviet leadership to launch their own missiles. As he put it in an interview decades later: “I had all the data [to suggest there was an ongoing missile attack]. If I had sent my report up the chain of command, nobody would have said a word against it“. You and I can read this today because, as seen below, Petrov had the moral courage to pursue a different course of action.