had been turned, I wonder whether your US counterpart would have been as thoughtful.

and questions the orders given you.

You can save a world.

Think before you act = still a good idea

A fuller picture of Stanislav Petrov and the NATO exercise 'Able Archer 83' that almost caused WWIII are described in the 1hr documentary 'The Brink of Apocalypse'.
You can see the whole thing in 10 min parts here:

I was on the IRT (Incident Response Team). Our job was to be the First Responders. I watched it happen in Real Time. It was a matter of Seconds.

The Man Who Saved the World: Full Episode

http://video.pbs.org/video/2295274962/



Vasili Arkhipov and wife Olga Arkhipova Collection of photos of Vasili Arkhipov, ‘The Man Who Saved the World’ from the personal archive of his widow Olga Arkhipova. Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov was a Soviet naval officer, who, during the Cuban Missile Crisis prevented the launch of a nuclear torpedo and therefore a possible nuclear war.

I thought that there was a similar story from the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Of course JFK had his hands full holding off the crazies at our end.

General Curtis LeMay: You're in a pretty bad fix, Mr. President...

For those old enough to remember, he was the lovely chap who wanted to "bomb North Vietnam back to the Stone Age."

He was also the author of the WWII fire-bombing campaign that killed more Japanese civilians than the 2 nuclear bombs.

The high altitude bombing attacks using general purpose bombs were observed to be ineffective by USAAF leaders. Changing tactics to expand the coverage and increase the damage, Curtis LeMay ordered the bombers to fly lower (4,500–8,000 ft, 1,400–2,400 m) and drop incendiary bombs to burn Japan's vulnerable wood-and-paper buildings. The first such raid on Tokyo was in February 1945 when 174 B-29s destroyed around one square mile (3 km²) of Tokyo. The next month, 334 B-29s took off to raid on the night of 9–10 March ("Operation Meetinghouse&quot , with 279 of them dropping around 1,700 tons of bombs. Fourteen B-29s were lost. Approximately 16 square miles (41 km2) of the city were destroyed and some 100,000 people are estimated to have died in the resulting firestorm, more immediate deaths than either of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The US Strategic Bombing Survey later estimated that nearly 88,000 people died in this one raid, 41,000 were injured, and over a million residents lost their homes. The Tokyo Fire Department estimated a higher toll: 97,000 killed and 125,000 wounded. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department established a figure of 124,711 casualties including both killed and wounded and 286,358 buildings and homes destroyed. Richard Rhodes, historian, put deaths at over 100,000, injuries at a million and homeless residents at a million.

My local PBS station carried that tonight...

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