We have lived with the distinct possibility of wide-spread nuclear war as a species for 70-some-odd years. The Cold War split the world into two camps, Us and Them, and then the dissolution of the Soviet Union and then the end of that Cold War found nuclear weapons had made their way into the hands of many nations. Today, at least 9 nations boast nuclear capability. But, at the height of the period of tension between the US and the USSR, each side had hundreds if not thousands of nuclear bombs that pretty much guaranteed the planet’s destruction.

The United States developed a strategy of splitting their nuclear arsenal into three areas, known at the Nuclear Triad: Land-based missiles (in silos scattered across the US), bombs on large air bombers, and missiles placed on submarines. This made the US arsenal a bit more “secure” than the Soviet’s almost complete reliance on land-based missiles because, if the Soviets destroyed one of the US’s triad branch, the other two would still be able to carry out attacks. So, the US and the USSR faced each other with nuclear guns pointed at the other’s head for decades. And the men and women who were trained in these nuclear weapons were under tremendous pressure to protect their respective homelands and ways of living.

Take Stan. He was a nuclear technician in the military who monitored the missiles of the other side. The time was September, 1983, and tensions were especially high because the Soviet Union had recently shot down a Korean air liner that had flown over Soviet airspace. Both sides ordered their monitors to be on high alert. Stan was an officer, and his duty was to make sure that his superiors received adequate notification if and when any possible attack was taking place.

And that’s what happened. Stan was watching his team’s monitoring screens when he noticed that a missile had been fired from the central area of the enemy’s territory. Soon, four other missiles were seen to have been fired. Now, you might think that five nuclear bombs would be not so many, but please remember that these were missiles–not the bombs themselves. Each missile had something called MIRVs–Multiple Independently (targetable) Re-entry Vehicles–meaning that, when the missile reached the edge of space and began its descent over the opponent’s land, 10-15 different, individual, and large-scale hydrogen bombs would be released from the missile and hit a different target. Thus, five missiles meant at least 50 nuclear bombs, each of which used a Hiroshima-sized bomb as a detonator.

Protocol–in fact, direct orders–said that Stan was required to report the launching of the missiles to his superior. But something made Stan take a closer look. His training had taught him that the enemy, if he were to launch a nuclear attack, wouldn’t merely launch 5 missiles at first. No, conventional wisdom said that the first-strike by either side would be designed to take out the entirety of the other side. Five missiles? It must be an error at best or an accident at worst, Stan reasoned. And, so, he failed to trigger the early warning system that was in place.

Sure enough, not only was the missile launch a mistake, but it was also not a missile launch at all. Come to find out, sunlight, reflecting on high-altitude clouds over the missile silos, gave a “false positive” reading to Stan’s launch monitors. By disobeying his orders, Stan may have saved the world from a nuclear war. But he was in a bit of a pickle. While his superiors praised him for his restraint in not kicking the false missile launch up the chain of command, they were also worried that admitting that their system couldn’t tell the difference between sunlight reflection and missile launches would make them look as if their much ballyhooed missile defense system was garbage.

So, privately, Stan was applauded by the military, but it would be years later, after the Soviet Union fell, that Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov of the Soviet Red Army would receive credit for stopping a nuclear war.