If you enjoyed our chat with author of Command and Control Eric Schlosser about near nuclear war (listen here, win a copy here) , you might like this story from listener Bart, who points out aht it wasn't just the Americans who have nearly missed atomic disaster. He writes:

Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov was the Russian lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces.

On September 26, 1983, he was the duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early-warning system when the system reported that a missile was being launched from the United States. Petrov judged the report to be a false alarm, and his decision is credited with having prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its NATO allies that could have resulted in large-scale nuclear war. Investigation later confirmed that the satellite warning system had indeed malfunctioned.

http://web.archive.org/web/20110721000030/http://www.worldcitizens.org/petrov2.html

"I imagined if I'd assume the responsibility for unleashing the third World War - and I said, no, I wouldn't."

although at first he was praised for his actions, he found himself slighted and picked on after the warning system was meticulously dissected and many bugs were found.

Several months later, Petrov retired from the army, exhausted by the stress. Twenty-one years later, Petrov, surviving on a tiny army pension in a small town outside of Moscow, is being honored for his decision by the San-Francisco based Association of World Citizens.

Bart Connolly Irish Science Awareness Workshops ISAW