- Memo on September 26 Serpukhov-15 Incident
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- "I think this is the closest we've come to accidental
nuclear war."
- -- Cold War nuclear strategy expert Bruce Blair, Dateline
NBC, Nov. 12, 2000
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- The world was nearly destroyed by nuclear holocaust on
26 September 1983. Only the cool of Russian Colonel Stanislav Petrov under
extreme pressure that night prevented the launch of 15,000 Russian warheads
at the United States. This in turn would have prompted a devastating response
from surviving US forces, though the US would have been destroyed several
times over, together with Western Europe and Japan. Australia too would
have been targeted.
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- The smoke from the destruction of modern urban civilisation
would have turned day to night for a number of years, causing sub-zero
temperatures in normally tropical areas and killing most land-based living
things. (Nuclear winter)
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- The possibility of such a massive nuclear holocaust,
though smaller than it was in 1983, with sixty times the megattonage needed
to create a nuclear winter now reduced to a mere six times the megattonnage
for nuclear winter, and with the cold war over, still remains and is inherent
in a nuclear posture that insists on keeping thousands of warheads on 'Launch
on Warning'(LoW) status.
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- In 1999, this author was responsible for two motions
in the Australian Senate and one in the European Parliament that urged
the 'standing down' of land-based ICBMs from LoW status. Though these motions
were passed without opposition, US and Russian strategic missiles remain
on LoW status.
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- The Association of World Citizens, a San-Francisco-based
NGO, is to make an award to Colonel Stanislav Petrov in Moscow.
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- It also plans to introduce very soon into the UN General
Assembly First Committee, a motion urging the removal of world nuclear
arsenals from Launch on Warning status (it will have to do this very soon
to make it into the current session - I am really not sure re the timing
here).
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- A motion in the Australian Senate (or any other legislature)
urging support for the AWC-UN initiative, or less specifically noting Stanislav
Petrov's role in the survival of humanity and the need for removal of global
nuclear arsenals from LoW status would be helpful.
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- What Colonel Stanislav Petrov Did
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- On 26 September 1983, Colonel Stanislav Petrov was the
duty officer at the Russian satellite surveillance facility of Serpukhov-15,
outside Moscow.
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- Serpukhov 15 both performs critical nuclear command and
control functions, and also operates the series of surveillance satellites
known as 'Oko' (eye) whose function, like the DSP satellites that download
data through Pine Gap in Australia, is to provide early warning of a nuclear
attack.
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- The 'Oko' satellite series was at that time new. The
orbits of this satellite series have now degraded to a point such that
many of them are no longer able to be used, and a severe fire at Serpukhov-15
in 2001 further degraded the once massive Soviet early warning system.
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- At that time however, the 'Oko' satellite system was
designed with highly elliptical orbits, designed to look more or less 'sideways'
at US missiles as they rose in 'boost phase' from the missile bases in
North Dakota.
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- There was however, one glitch, not known at that time:
certain rare formations of very high cloud combined with strong sunlight,
looked just like a US launch.
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- There was no way for the Soviet satellite system to tell
the two apart. After the September 26 incident, the system was reconfigured
so that a warning of launch would only be given if in fact two 'Oko' satellites
at right angles (or at least at different angles) both recorded infrared
emissions. On the night of Sept 26 1983, an infrared signature from one
satellite was enough. (There are almost certainly insufficient satellites
now, to use two at different angles. )
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- On the night of September 26th, 1983, what seems to have
happened is that high cloud over North Dakota, combined with solar flare
activity, gave the 'Oko' satellites the impression that a series of missiles
had been launched from US missile bases.
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- In Colonel Stanislav Petrov's command bunker, lights
flashed, klaxons blared, and a flashing red button with 'start' lit up.
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- It would have commenced a sequence that would have fired
15,000 roughly megaton-sized warheads at the US.
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- According to Stanislav Petrov, 'I felt like I had been
punched in the nervous system'.
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- Alarm after alarm went off, and for quite some time the
system was 'roaring'.
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- A total of five US 'launches' were reported by the satellites.
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- Petrov had, however, an IT background, and 'a feeling
in my gut' that this was a false alarm.
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- "I had a funny feeling in my gut," Petrov said.
"I didn't want to make a mistake. I made a decision, and that was
it."
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- For some time he seems from various accounts, to have
juggled an intercom and a phone to his superiors (which would have included
party secretary Andropov), and to have been convincing them that this was
indeed a false alarm, knowing that if he was wrong he (and the USSR) would
be incinerated. It seems that they were contacting him, demanding to know
what was going on, and that the alert was automatically relayed to them.
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- He says that when the incident was over, he drank half
a litre of vodka as if it were a glass and slept for 28 hours. He was
later rigorously interrogated.
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- In the immediate aftermath of the incident he was told
he'd be given a medal. As investigations into the incident revealed various
shortcomings, he was instead blamed for it, fired, and put on a worthless
military pension in a tiny flat in the dreary town of Fryanzino near Moscow.
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- In an interview in 1998 Stanislav Petrov said,
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- "The first reaction of my commander-general was,
'We will honour you.' But then a commission was launched into what had
gone wrong. My commanders were blamed. And if the commanders were to blame,
then the subordinates like me could not be innocent. It's an old thing
we have in Russia. The subordinate cannot be cleverer than the boss, so
there was no honour or credit for me."
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- "Once I would have liked to have been given some
credit for what I did. But it is so long ago and today everything is emotionally
burned out inside me." (Daily Mail, Oct. 7, 1998)
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- Stanislav Petrov was much later interviewed by reporter
Dennis Murphy on Dateline NBC (Nov. 12, 2000):
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- DENNIS MURPHY: "I know you don't regard yourself
as a hero, Colonel, but, belatedly, on behalf of the people in Washington,
New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, thank you for being on duty that night."
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- STANISLAV PETROV: "Well, I accept the thanks with
the condition that I am not the only person to thank."
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- Col Petrov may well not have been on duty that night
- he had swapped his shift for that of someone else. If the someone else
had been less sceptical of the launch warnings and had acted according
to the book, pressing the 'Start' key, we wouldn't be here to talk about
it.
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- We owe him.
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- More importantly however, the September 26, 1983 incident
at Serpukhov-15 illustrates the vital importance of taking strategic nuclear
weapons off LoW status.
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- It isn't by any means an isolated incident - similar
events have taken place in the US in 1979 when a practice tape for full-scale
nuclear war was inserted into the US main combat computer at Cheyenne Mountain,
causing missiles to be readied for launch, nuclear-armed bombers to be
taxied to runways, and the 'National Emergency Airborne Command Post'
(the Presidential Doomsday plane) to be launched, without the president
who could not be quickly enough located. A congressional committee that
happened to be present at the time described what ensued as 'blind panic'.
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- A similar event sequence took place three times in 1980,
with massive Russian attack being reported until the problem was traced
to a faulty 20 cent chip in a Colorado switching station.
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- In 1995, the apocalypse was only narrowly averted by
Boris Yeltsin when he elected to ignore procedural deadlines for the transmission
of the 'go codes' and wait 'one more minute' while a Norwegian Black Brant
weather research rocket plunged harmlessly into the arctic after having
been taken for an incoming submarine-launched strike on the Kremlin.
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- Col Stanislav Petrov's story shows the wisdom of the
Canberra Commissions recommendation made in 1996, that strategic nuclear
weapons be removed from LoW status. Initiatives to that effect, such as
that which may possibly be coming up in the UN first committee very soon
deserve support.
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- The author coordinated a global campaign to take strategic
nuclear weapons off LoW status before the Y2K rollover, including a unanimous
resolution in the European Parliament urging the standing down of strategic
nuclear weapons from LoW status, and two resolutions in the Australian
senate.
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- Numerous resolutions in UNGA, notably those of the New
Agenda Coalition, have incorporated the lowering of alert status for
strategic nuclear weapons.
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- The issue may well come up in the coming session of the
UNGA First Committee.
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- Parliamentary resolutions urging support for any moves
in first committee to press for lowering of alert status would be very
useful.
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- John Hallam nonukes@foesyd.org.au
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