Nuclear security

The real story of Stanislav Petrov, the Soviet officer who 'saved' the world from nuclear war

Legend has it that on September 26, 1983, in a nuclear command and control center outside of Moscow, Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov detected five US nuclear warheads headed right for him but stood down from calling for a massive Soviet retaliation, thereby saving the world from nuclear annihilation at the height of the Cold War.

The blips on Petrov's radar turned out to be a false alarm, something he supposedly instinctively knew so well he disobeyed protocol and backed off.

But like all legends, even semi-recent nuclear ones, the story may have outgrown the truth, thanks in part to shadowy and opaque Soviet and Russian nuclear launch procedures.

Pavel Podvig, director of the Russian Nuclear Forces Project and one of the world's top experts on Russia's nukes, told Business Insider that Petrov did a brave thing, but it's entirely unclear if he really prevented a nuclear war.