Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avrogan.

This day, September 26, 1983, a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Air Defense Forces,

basically saved the world. There's a good chance that you know this story of the basic

contours of it. It's the height of the Cold War.

Stanislav Petrov is manning a bunker near Moscow which monitored the

Soviet early warning satellite systems for nuclear attacks and on this day

those systems started to warn about an incoming nuclear missile attack

originating from the United States. But Petrov kept his cool. He ignored

the first warning and then another even more dire warning just a little bit later. He had every right

and maybe even duty,

we'll get into that to escalate this matter

and kick Soviet nuclear retaliation protocols into effect.

But he did not.

And the story goes that Petrov was right,

there was no actual nuclear strike underway, it was a glitch,

and the nightmare scenario of the Soviets retaliating, and then the United States inevitably retaliating,

while that nightmare scenario was avoided.

So let's talk about Stensov Petrov's decision and the larger context of U.S. and Russian nuclear

showdowns.

Shout out to listener Nick, by the way, for suggesting this one really interesting.

We've been, he suggested it way back in February, really interesting we've been he suggested

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