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Soviet Air Force officer Stanislav Petrov identifies a report of an incoming nuclear missile as a computer error and not an American first strike, thus preventing nuclear war.
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Stanislav Petrov
Soviet Air Defence Forces officer (1939–2017)
Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov was a lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces who played a key role in the 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident. On 26 September 1983, three weeks after the Soviet military had shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, Petrov was the…Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident
Incident which nearly precipitated nuclear warfare
On 26 September 1983, during the Cold War, the Soviet nuclear early warning system Oko reported the launch of one intercontinental ballistic missile with four more missiles behind it, from the United States. These missile attack warnings were suspected to be false alarms by…Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)