
Vasili Arkhipov – Soviet Navy Officer Who Prevented Nuclear Strike in 1962 - jayeshsalvi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov
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Cyph0n
Stanislav Petrov is another Soviet officer who saved the world in 1983:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov)

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cyberferret
The first time someone has won major recognition for literally doing nothing?
A remarkable story.

"it was my job. I was simply doing my job, and I was the right person at the
right time, that's all. My late wife for 10 years knew nothing about it. 'So
what did you do?' she asked me. 'Nothing. I did nothing.'"

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Cyph0n
I agree, so much saved with such little effort.

What's even more remarkable is how he was able to come to the conclusion that
it was a false alarm in such a short amount of time. It takes me longer to
pick a cereal for breakfast!

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JoeDaDude
It's interesting that he was on board the infamous K-19 submarine when it had
a failure in the nuclear reactor leading to the deaths of several crew
members. One wonders whether that experience influenced his decision not to
launch the nuclear torpedoes during the Cuban missile crisis.

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asdfologist
Maybe I'm missing something here, but given the monumental impact of his
actions, why didn't win something like the Nobel Peace Prize? Instead he's
largely forgotten and unknown.

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sandworm101
It is very hard to give the Nobel Peace Prize to serving military officers. It
isn't the sort of award you give to people who carry guns to work. You can
give it to them on day one for stopping a war, only then on day two see them
ordered by their superiors to participate in one.

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WildUtah
That same reasoning would have prevented Arafat and Obama's Peace Prizes. I
don't think it's an insuperable argument.

Mostly the problem was that nobody know about the secret Russian military
records until decades later.

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maxxxxx
Neither Obama nor Arafat should have received a Noble Prize. You should
receive the prize only if you have a long track record of working for peace
which neither had done when they received the prize.

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rhizome
Yet here we are.

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jankotek
I always wondered what american sub would do in such situation. Imagine China
would start dropping explosives on sub near Taiwan.

~~~
cyberferret
Same here. I couldn't believe that the US ships were dropping explosives to
force the Russian sub to surface. If another force did that to a US vessel, I
can only imagine the newly elected president's response. (Immediately after
his barrage of angry tweets).

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m_eiman
Why do we know of several Soviet citizens who saved us by not following orders
to launch nukes, but no Americans?

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pvg
The Soviet officers we know about did not refuse to follow orders to launch
nukes. Arkhipov was following a protocol that was in place precisely to
prevent a single person from authorizing the use of nuclear weapons. We do
know about several incidents in the US in which responders had to deal with a
false alarm:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Aerospace_Defen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Aerospace_Defense_Command#False_alarms)

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jayeshsalvi
I wish we knew the Hacker News equivalent for the army people of US and Russia
who are in charge of the launch codes. I would post this link there.

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credit_guy
Disclaimer: I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm a civilian, all I know is
gathered from various books/articles/blog posts.

First off, the guy is a hero, and one can say he saved the world. But I think
he only did his job, the way he was trained to do it. He didn't do anything
that was against his training, or duty, or doctrine, and very likely he didn't
take personal/career risks either.

Obviously nobody knows exactly what happened in the confines of that submarine
at the time the vote of cast for fire or hold. But one can make some informed
guesses.

1962 was early days in the MAD (mutually assured destruction) strategy, and
the strategy itself was probably quickly evolving. However, I guess at all
times during the cold war there were 3 principles either explicitly or
implicitly stated, that the officers with the finger on the trigger (of the
nukes) had to follow:

1\. Launch the nukes if ordered by the president following the correct
protocol (failure to do so is probably the gravest case of disobeying a direct
order, hence court martial and then very likely death penalty) 2\. _Do not_
launch the nukes first, if not under direct orders, even if you come under
(non-nuclear) fire 3\. If nuclear war has started: 3a. If your mission is
counter-strike (e.g. you man an SLBM-armed sub) then do so, without waiting
for orders (assume the central command is dead, this is the "A" from "MAD")
3b. If your mission is different, then use your judgment

This case was clearly not 1 above: they did not have orders to launch nuclear
attack. In fact that was the root of the whole problem: they were deep under
water, and couldn't communicate with central command.

The only ambiguity was whether nuclear war already started or not. In both
situation, the correct way to respond was to surface, which is as far as we
know what Arkhipov voted for.

First, what did they know: that they had been located by the US submarine
defense which dropped depth charges on them. Now that in itself was a signal
the war didn't start: if the US Navy meant business, they would've sent
torpedoes (potentially nuclear ones). Depth charges were a little naughty game
sailors of one navy would play on the submariners of the opposite navy, to
make them surface, and embarrass them a bit.

Even so, depth charges, if detonated to closely, could be deadly, so it was
not all fun and games, especially not when you were on the receiving end.

So that's where you are, what you know. How would you proceed? What was the
likely protocol?

B-49 was an SLBM-armed submarine, not sure if it was armed at the time, but
very likely, given that it was in the middle of the Cuban crisis. So it's
likely that part of their mission was retaliation, in case US had launched its
nukes.

In order to launch, they needed to surface (it was before the times they could
launched submerged). That was not what the vote was about, it was only about
sending a nuclear torpedo towards the destroyer that was hunting them.

So I think, Arkhipov told them something like this: "what do we have to lose
if we surface (aside from face): if war started, we'll know for sure, and we
can launch our torpedo at the time, and then launch our missiles, as per the
mission. if the war didn't start, we avert nuclear war. if at any point we see
a torpedo coming our way (on the sonar) we launch our torpedo (but even that
is iffy, since we can't know if that torpedo is nuclear or not, the only thing
we know is that is an act of war, but it could be conventional war)."

So my guess is that the vote was not about launch now or never, but launch now
or wait a bit longer, and Arkhipov persuaded them to wait. Once they were on
the surface, they learned the war didn't start, and they went home.

