Yet, that was exactly what he did.
On that fateful day, one decision led Officer Petrov to make a snap decision that averted nuclear war between The Allied Forces and The Soviet Union.
The Story of How One Man Saved The World
On 27 October 1962, Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov was on board the Soviet submarine B-59 near Cuba when the US forces began dropping non-lethal depth charges. While the action was designed to encourage the Soviet submarines to surface, the crew of B-59 had been incommunicado and so were unaware of the intention. They thought they were witnessing the beginning of a third world war.
Trapped in the sweltering submarine – the air-conditioning was no longer working – the crew feared death. But, unknown to the US forces, they had a special weapon in their arsenal: a ten kilotonne nuclear torpedo. What’s more, the officers had permission to launch it without waiting for approval from Moscow.
Two of the vessel’s senior officers – including the captain, Valentin Savitsky – wanted to launch the missile. According to a report from the US National Security Archive, Savitsky exclaimed: “We’re gonna blast them now! We will die, but we will sink them all – we will not become the shame of the fleet.”
But there was an important caveat: all three senior officers on board had to agree to deploy the weapon. As a result, the situation in the control room played out very differently. Arkhipov refused to sanction the launch of the weapon and calmed the captain down. The torpedo was never fired.
Had it been launched, the fate of the world would have been very different: the attack would probably have started a nuclear war which would have caused global devastation, with unimaginable numbers of civilian deaths.
Petrov, however, had a hunch -- "a funny feeling in my gut," It was an intuition that was based on common sense: The alarm indicated that only five missiles were headed toward the USSR. Had the U.S. actually been launching a nuclear attack, however, Petrov figured, it would be extensive -- much more, certainly, than five.
Had he not decide against it, nuclear war would have ensued that day, and your very reality at this moment would be drastically different. Officer Petrov, in a moment, saved the lives of millions, if not billions of people and full scale nuclear war between NATO and the Soviet Union.
There is no better candidate for the Future of Life Award.
It has been 55 years since this event, and 19 after Officer Petrov has passed. In his place, his family received the Future of Life award with $50,000 that was presented to Petrov's grandson at the Institue of Engineering and Technology last Friday.
Speaking to his daughter, who was very proud and grateful to received the award :
“He always thought that he did what he had to do and never considered his actions as heroism. He acted like a man who knew what kind of disasters can come from radiation,” she said. “He did his part for the future so that everyone can live on our planet.”
The prize, dubbed the “Future of Life award” is the brainchild of the Future of Life Insitute – a US-based organisation whose goal is to tackle threats to humanity and whose advisory board includes such luminaries as Elon Musk, the astronomer royal Prof Martin Rees, and actor Morgan Freeman.
“The Future of Life award is a prize awarded for a heroic act that has greatly benefited humankind, done despite personal risk and without being rewarded at the time,” said Max Tegmark, professor of physics at MIT and leader of the Future of Life Institute.
In our own lives, we often times may feel like our actions and whatever we may be doing at the moment, may not be 'Impactful'. I would imagine Officer Petrov would have had similar emotions.
We never know, when life may throw us a massive curve ball. You never know when it may come, or if it ever will, nonetheless, it was through preparation and discipline bred into Officer Petrov long before he knew his destiny that led him to making a world-altering call which turned out to be the right one.
As such, maybe a takeaway from The Man Who Saved The World, would be not to question yourself, in moments that you feel small and unimpactful, for life is often times, a preparation for one moment in time, where all that you have done in your life will cause you to make one extremely impactful decision.
In Officer Petrov's story, it was to either save the world, or end it.
Your's may not be as dramatic, but who knows until it happens? He sure didn't.
God Speed Brethren.
