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Comment by wolfrom | Hacker News Reader

What I find most interesting about this event is that there is really no consensus on what would have happened had he believed the alert to be genuine. When he received an award at the UN in 2006, Russia felt the need to declare that they would not have launched a counterattack without confirmation from other sources. I think it's a good example of how history is far more subjective that we like to think. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov

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History and journalism. The story, from a journalist's perspective, becomes too complex if a more complete analysis was included. To write, for example, that the Soviets had a detailed system of approvals which were designed to act as redundancies in the event of errors in launch detection technology or decision-making would muddy the very clear, familiar (and frightening) story that a single man saved us from disaster.

There's also an element of western propaganda and bias here too of course. It was in the interests of western nations at the time to paint a picture of an incompetent and reckless Soviet government and to showcase stories of western-style individual heroics.

All this said, if Petrov genuinely saved the day, it is absolutely worth celebrating. But we will never know for sure if he did.

What we really don't know is whether the Soviets actually would have followed that policy or whether they just said that to save face.

Even the soviets probably don't know that for sure.

The implication of your post being, of course, is that they likely wouldn't have. Because they are, duh, Soviets?

In Soviet Russia, policy follows you.

Did I do that right?

It depends on if there were other sources they could rely on in time? Any idea what the travel time of these nukes would have been if they were real? Presumably in the event of a real attack they would want there missiles in the air before they probably got hit as some of the first targets.

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