You're might be alive today because on day in 1983 lieutenant colonel Stanislav Petrov decided to do nothing. The Soviet officer who averted a nuclear crisis between the United States and Russia in 1983 died this year at the age of 77, RT reports. Since that fateful day 34 years ago, Petrov has been credited by nuclear activists as the man who "saved the world" by determining that the Soviet system had been spoofed by a reflection off the earth. Petrov was in charge of Soviet nuclear early warning systems on the night of September 26, 1983, when a false 'missile attack' signal appeared to show a U.S. nuclear launch and decided not to retaliate. Stanislav Petrov quite possibly (and literally) saved the world from a nuclear holocaust 34 years ago this month.

Source: Huffington Post September 18, 2017 05:15 UTC