00:00September 26th, 1983. The world was a powder keg.
00:04Tensions between the U.S. and the USSR were at an all-time high
00:08following the downing of a Korean airliner weeks prior.
00:11Inside a secret bunker near Moscow,
00:13Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Kutrov was in charge of the Soviet Union's early warning satellite system.
00:19Shortly after midnight, the alarm screamed.
00:22On Kutrov's screen, a bright red flashing light appeared.
00:25Launched. Then another. Then another.
00:27The system reported that the U.S. had just launched 5-minute band intercontinental ballistic missiles in the Soviet Union.
00:34Kutrov had exactly 15 minutes to make a decision that would determine the fate of billions.
00:40According to Soviet protocols, he was required to report the launch mediated to his security.
00:45This would have triggered a massive use-them-or-lose-them, retaliatory nuclear strike against America.
00:51If he followed his training, the world would have been engulfed in a nuclear firestorm before sunrise.
00:57Kutrov looked at the screen and felt something was awful.
00:59He had been trained to expect the first strike to be a massive, all-out-lose.
01:04He expected hundreds of missiles to wipe out Soviet defenses, not just by.
01:08He gambled on his gut instincts.
01:10He reported the incident to headquarters not as an attack, but as a system malfunction.
01:14He was right.
01:16It was later discovered that the Soviet satellites had mistaken the reflection of sunlight off the top of clouds for
01:22the glare of missile engines.
01:24Kutrov's insubordination saved the human race.
01:26Despite saving the world, Kutrov wasn't hailed as a hero at the time.
01:31He had disobeyed orders and embarrassed the Soviet military by exposing their flawed technology.
01:37He was reprimanded and eventually retired in obscurity.
01:40The world didn't even know his name until the late 1990s.
01:43If Kutrov had been a different kind of soldier, one who followed the screen instead of his soul, there would
01:49be no internet, no TikTok.
01:51You wouldn't be allowed to read this.
01:53One man's hesitation is the only reason we are all still here.
Comments