On September 26, 1983, a Soviet officer named Stanislav Petrov was alone at a missile-warning station outside Moscow when his computer reported five American nuclear missiles inbound — and instead of alerting his superiors, who would have authorized a retaliatory strike, he hesitated, called it a system error, and may have prevented the end of civilization in a single judgment call.

The night of 25-26 September 1983 was an ordinary shift for Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, a 44-year-old officer of the Soviet Air Defence Forces. He arrived at the secret command centre Serpukhov-15, located in a bunker about 60 kilometres south of Moscow, to begin a 12-hour duty rotation monitoring the Soviet Union’s early-warning satellite network. [...] The post On September 26, 1983, a Soviet officer named Stanislav Petrov was alone at a missile-warning station outside Moscow when his