The Misread Signal

It was just past midnight in a concrete bunker outside Moscow. The year was nineteen eighty-three. The Cold War was at one of its tensest moments — a Soviet passenger jet had been shot down by the Soviet Air Force just weeks before, after straying into restricted airspace. American rhetoric was at its sharpest in years. Both sides had their fingers close to whatever buttons meant what everyone feared buttons could mean. Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov was the duty officer at the Serpukhov early warning center. He was forty-four years old, experienced, and not someone given to panic. The room was quiet. The systems hummed. Then the alarm went off. The screen showed one incoming missile. American. Launched from US soil. Headed for the Soviet Union. Protocol in this situation was unambiguous: report to superior officers immediately. They would report up the chain. At the top of the chain, the decision about a retaliatory launch would be made within minutes — because minutes were all there were. Then a second missile appeared on the screen. Then a third.