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Why no Nobel Peace Prize for Stanislav Petrov ? We (all of us) owe him our very lives.
As a cab-driver in a learned, intellectual city, I'm perpetually dumb-struck at the collective ignorance of (quite literally} "The Man Who Saved the World."
I wrote to the Peace Prize Commitee who haven't deigned to respond.
Never heard of him? I could tell you but you wouldn't believe me, best you find out for yourself. Then see if you agree that Mr Petrov should lift the prize, anually, hands down!
P.S. Time is limited, our hero is now 73 years old.
write to: postmaster@nobel.no
Topics:
global peace
Lori Webb
And yes, I do believe Danish Director, Peter Anthony and his international team are not only making a wonderful film that does justice to Stanislav Petrov's actions but, Anthony is also responsible for getting Stanislav to NY so that he could receive the 2006 UN World Citizen Award and has done much to shed light on Stanislav and help to make his life better. If you go to the Kickstarter project, The Man Who Saved the World, you will be able to see a 6 minute trailer of the Narrative Film to be released in 2013. Looks as if 2013 will be Stanislav's year of acknowledgement....30 years after the fact.
Cheers, Lori
Lori Webb
Chick Morgan
I've become a little obsessed with this story, I confess. I think it's an important tale to tell in these cynical times, though. When all these institutions we've been asked to put our faith in turn out to be rotten to the core. I don't blame people for becoming disillusioned and kind of "....what the hell's the point?" Then a story like Stanislav's shows up and it goes a long way to restoring my faith in humanity. One man who kept his head, thought for himself and decided he had to do the right thing, no matter what his orders were. If you have any military acqaintances, they'll tell you, NEVER disobey an order, no matter what ! That's the only way the military can work, evrybody can rely on everybody else to do what they're ordered to do. I imagine the penalty for going "off-piste" in 1980's USSR wre somewhat harsher than they are in 21st century western world. Colonel Petrov would have been well aware of that, which makes his heroism all the more remarkable.
I remember feeling the same way after watching a BBC documentary about a German WW2 hero in the early 80s. I thought "My God ! Why isn't this guy's story common currency ? What an inspirational, unimaginably brave man !" ( I had caught this documentary in the middle of a week-day afternoon, having taken time off sick ). It took Thomas Kineally to write the book and Steven Spielberg to make the movie to bring about a general awareness of Oscar Schindler. For my money, one of the greatest films ever.
Hopefully, these Danes will have done a job worthy of the subject matter. Again, I thank you for the news, truly uplifting !
Kind Regards,
Chick.
Lejan . 30+
Lori Webb
george lockwood 20+
Lejan . 30+
george lockwood 20+
Chick Morgan
greg dahlen 20+
Chick Morgan
Lawren Jones 10+
Lejan . 30+
Before Fukushima I would have laughed about the idea to place electrical safety backup generators for a nuclear cooing system below waterline in a nuclear power plant at the shore of the North Pacific Ocean and within a well known seismic zone.
None of us would have guessed, that those obvious faulty design concepts could have passed any safety authorisation requirement and approval procedure.
Safety re-evaluations of nuclear power plants around the world after Fukushima proved evidence of incapacity all over the place, so we actually never know if precautious measures are in place where we mostly expected them to be.
In the heat of the cold war, reaction time was a KEY element for any counterstrike scenario and this contradicts the delaying nature of any 'verification from multiple sources'.
Also any 'verification process' is ONLY based on the information available, so what do you do if you don't know if your information is true or not unless it might be to late to correct your decision?
In conflict and stress situations the human mind does not always work propperly on its rational side and we may just don't know how many false decisions have caused catastrophic events.
If the presented story of Stanislav Petrov is true, I would consider his actions woth a Nobel Price.
Chick Morgan
Krisztián Pintér 200+
Chick Morgan
On that criterion, we should all be Nobel Laureates. I digress. I invite you to imagine, were someone else standing in Colonel Petrov's shoes....................
John Smith 30+
Lejan . 30+
This is not much time for a lot of double checking and this 'technician' was a crucial part of the decision making process.
The satellite did not indicate any mailfunction and detected several 'missile launches' in a row.
The only reason why this 'technician' overruled his computer was the fact, that in his view there were 'not enough' missiles detected to accept an initial offensive. It was his 'gut feeling' at a time, not knowing what 'strategies' the West may have to start a war.
Because the Soviet government was not stupid, they asked to confirm the functionality of this satellite, which by it parameters only was not indicating any malfunction. In fact it worked just fine and only it sensors were tricked by a rare meterological event at that time.
So what do you do? Do you confirm functionality or do you overrule your system?
In 1989 I was a radar operator in the German Airforce which was part of the Integrated NATO Air Defense System and located at the inner German border of the German Democratic Republic. Our unit was monitoring for low-flying aircraft in hilly terrains which could not be detected by wide range radar stations.
The difficulty in radar data interpretation is to distinguish signifcant information from random and dynamic background irradiation, especially then if there is not much time to react on it. A high speed low flying Russian jetfighter would have passed our scope within 10 to 15 blips and this not necessarily in a straight line, which are usually more noticeable. False alarms occurred and it took way more than 12 minutes to find out about it. And alcohol was checked for and prohibited!
Chick Morgan
Lejan . 30+
At that time, both sides did a very good job in propaganda and there was no WikiLeaks for an unbiased source of information.
The story of Stanislav Petrov just struck me when I first heard about the deed of this brave man and it confirmed my views on how a given and hierarchic establishment is dealing with 'delinquents' of his kind. A classic example of 'pawn sacrifice', whereas the 'pawn' was actually the 'noblest' of all characters involved.
When- and wherever such truth reveals itself on the long run, we can learn those lessons for our very own lives and to hope to be as strong when needed.
Thank you for starting this debate!
John Smith 30+
2) 12 minutes is more than enough to launch a retaliatory strike so I don't see why ground radar confirmation would be a problem.
3) If the technician had sounded the alarm any of his superiors, even Yuri Andropov himself could have decided there were too few missiles showing up for it to be a real attack.
Chick Morgan
2) Read Lejan.
3) You think? Supposing he didn't?
Remember, it's 1983 wer're talking about !
My question to you: Where's the harm? Trigger-happy clowns are ten-a-penny ! I understand the prize has a cash element. I'm not sure what a Soviet Colonel's pension is worth (if anything), but feel sure that our hero could use the dough. You know? A little creature comfort in his twilight years?
"Blessed are the peacemakers" etc.
Lejan . 30+
Soviet ground-based radar showed no evidence of this 'attack' because they cannot see beyond the horizon. The time they would have spot incoming missiles lay some minutes after the satellite early warning system.
Any satellite was assigned to certain launch facilities with no overlapping of other satellites for cross-checking, so a series of positive signals became very much relevant very soon.
Giiven the 'war scare' of that time, the chain of command, the limited time for radar confirmation, the possible errors in radar detection, the just 'view' missiles, the rushed decision processes chain up, down, up, down, confirmation with radar control, etc. and all this at midnight on a just a 'regular day'... to me this could have caused a major problem if Petrov would have confirmed all of the valid detections of that satellite.
How would Yuri Andropov himself known, that a view missiles are not just a tricky beginning of a a real massive attack? At that time Soviet pilots had just shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 weeks before that incident, so how do you know what NATO was up to? There was not much rational thinking at that time, or do you see that arms race was the fruit of it? I don't think so.
Any chain of command are nothing but people. Informations are never flawless, decisions flawed and not always rational. Especially not during cold war times, which tends to be forgotten nowadays.