There were five nuclear missiles incoming. The sirens roared and wailed overhead, shattering the silence of the tomblike bunker. The computer monitor read “Launch” in red letters. Some seconds later, the message changed to “Missile Strike.” This was it. This was the end.
There, in the breathless half-light of the bunker, under the ghostly glow of buttons and monitors, 44-year-old duty officer Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov battled with the shock. For five minutes he waited, delaying the phone call to his superiors that would initiate the Soviet Union’s retaliatory nuclear strike on the United States. All he had to do was lift the receiver and utter a few words to the commanders, and an apocalyptic future would ensue, a nightmare scenario brought to life, the globe wreathed in flame. The satellite warning system was offering Petrov its highest degree of certainty that the attack was genuine.
