Happy Petrov day

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov

by omegant • 13 years ago

138 30 13 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

timmillwood2• 13 years ago

I read that as Harry Potter Day. sigh

simias• 13 years ago

The guy possibly prevented a global thermonuclear war and that's your comment?

timmillwood2• 13 years ago

It's my comment because it's the truth. I was tired. No need to downvote.

billharrison• 13 years ago

Happy Petrov day, everyone. I thought I was the only one that recognized this holiday. Thanks, Omegant.

omegant• 13 years ago

Happy Petrov day to you Bill!.

It´s in my calendar, and I´ve already wished all my friends happy Petrov day (via Facebook).

Faust1985• 13 years ago

Holding back a world on the brink of madness cant be easy. A good man.

arethuza2• 13 years ago

We are all fortunate that there were a lot of good people on both sides during the Cold War.

vassilevsky• 13 years ago

Software bugs are a threat to humanity.

AmVess• 13 years ago

The See Also section at the bottom of that wiki article is enough to induce serious pucker in even someone with tungsten-level constitution.

rainforest• 13 years ago

Command and Control[1] offers a comprehensive compendium of nuclear incidents if you're interested in more. It's quite remarkable that the US never faced an accidental nuclear detonation, despite the SAC, Air Force and Navy's bickering between themselves over control of them, and their refusal to fit safety devices until late in the war.

My favourite anecdote is the code on all warheads on the US' Minuteman fleet being set to 00000000 as an exercise in simultaneously conforming to and circumventing requirements for PALs (locks to forbid misuse).

[1] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/08/eric-schlosser-c...

midko2• 13 years ago

FYI, if you call it Petrov day, your eastern european orthodox friends (such as Bulgarians and Russians) will tell you you are 3 months late. "Petrovden" (den == day) is the shorthand name of the St Peter's and Paul's day on the 29th June, it is a nameday of everyone called Peter, Paul and their variations, and it is very well recognized and celebrated.

huhtenberg• 13 years ago

Never heard of it, leave alone seeing anyone celebrating it.

Though I did hear about the "Saint Mother Mary of Egypt" day which was about every second Friday if you were to believe a heavy-drinking madam two floors down from where we lived.

midko2• 13 years ago

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D0%B5%D1%82%D1%80%D0%BE...

vldx• 13 years ago

Probably you would, if you were orthodox or had close friends, which are.

Nux2• 13 years ago

The idea was to celebrate the day he prevented a nuclear holocaust.

Talking about st. Peter and Paul, it's not only celebrated by the orthodox churches, but also in the west:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feast_of_Saints_Peter_and_Paul

VMG2• 13 years ago

I find it fascinating and terrifying that on the one hand, these events were "close calls", on the other hand, considering that we can celebrate this event today, they were inevitable.

Logically speaking, we always must live in a world where past existential threats to humanity were avoided (including super-volcanoes, asteroids), but that says nothing about the possibility of future existential threats wiping out humanity.

mikeash• 13 years ago

A war would have thoroughly wrecked civilization, but plenty of people would have survived, especially in third-world countries.

There's no reason a much diminished humanity concentrated in the southern hemisphere couldn't be marking the thirtieth anniversary of War Day today, if things had gone a bit differently.

VMG2• 13 years ago

In some sense, we already do remember those days, the failed assassination attempt on Hitler for example.

MikeCapone• 13 years ago

Indeed. If you want to find out more, the best book that I've found on this subject is _Global Catastrophic Risks_, edited by Nick Bostrom and Milan M. Cirkovic:

http://www.amazon.com/Global-Catastrophic-Risks-Nick-Bostrom...

"In Global Catastrophic Risks 25 leading experts look at the gravest risks facing humanity in the 21st century, including asteroid impacts, gamma-ray bursts, Earth-based natural catastrophes, nuclear war, terrorism, global warming, biological weapons, totalitarianism, advanced nanotechnology, general artificial intelligence, and social collapse. The book also addresses over-arching issues - policy responses and methods for predicting and managing catastrophes. "

jerf2• 13 years ago

One of my favorite SCPs: http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-988

Spoiler (including why it's related to your post) since I think it's easy to miss what this is: Vg'f n obk gung, jura bcrarq, qrfgeblf gur havirefr. Fvapr nccneragyl guvf obk yvirf va n znal-jbeyqf havirefr, vg'f onfvpnyyl n havirefr-fpnyr Dhnaghz Fhvpvqr qrivpr.

http://www.rot13.com/index.php , for your convenience.

mahyarm• 13 years ago

How did you come to that conclusion? It could similarly be a joke out of a ringworld novel too.

mrleinad• 13 years ago

Thankfully, we're on one of the multiple universes that had this guy to stop nuclear armaggeddon from happening.

McUsr• 13 years ago

If there were ever one guy that deserved the Nobel's Peace Prize, it would have been him!

Nux2• 13 years ago

Thank you, mr. Petrov!

dajohnson89• 13 years ago

So according to the wiki article:

-$30,000 from the Dresden Prize

-$1,000 from SF's World Citizen Award (does that even cover airfare from Russia?!)

Preventing nuclear disaster, it seems, is an undervalued skill. Mr. Petrov needs to fire his publicist.

jonnathanson• 13 years ago

An interesting part of the article is that he was actually demoted after averting nuclear disaster. This is because admitting that there was a fault in the nuclear defense system would be tantamount to admitting that top Soviet military and scientific minds were capable of error. Rather than embarrass the regime, the military quietly moved Petrov out of the spotlight.

0xdeadbeefbabe• 13 years ago

This bug in human nature makes me half wish they were destroyed, but the other half of me wants to take eat, and be entertained.

Happy Petrov day

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