The Man Who Saved the World — Part 1: Stanislav Petrov and the most dangerous moment of the Cold War
In Extremis - Stories from the Edge of HistoryShow Notes
Shortly after midnight on the 27th of September 1983, a forty-four-year-old Soviet military officer named Stanislav Petrov was sitting in a reclining chair in a bunker eighty miles south of Moscow when his early warning system told him that the United States had launched a nuclear missile at the Soviet Union. He had minutes to decide whether to believe it. This is the first of a two-part episode on Stanislav Petrov and the most dangerous moment of the Cold War that almost nobody has heard of. In this episode we set the scene: who Stanislav Petrov was, what he was doing in that bunker, and why the autumn of 1983 was the most terrifying season of the entire Cold War. Along the way we cover: The OKO satellite network — the Soviet early warning system that Petrov had helped build, and that he was now being asked to trust with the fate of civilisation. The near-misses that preceded 1983 — Vasili Arkhipov and the Soviet submarine B-59 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the man who refused to authorise a nuclear torpedo launch when his captain was convinced the war had already started. And Zbigniew Brzezinski, who in 1979 got out of bed at 3am and decided not to wake his wife before calling the president to recommend a retaliatory nuclear strike — only to be told, thirty seconds later, that someone had accidentally loaded a training tape into a NORAD computer. The state of the world in 1983, Reagan's Evil Empire speech, the Strategic Defense Initiative, the deployment of Pershing II missiles to West Germany, and why the Soviet Union read all of these not as defensive posturing but as the systematic assembly of a first-strike capability. Yuri Andropov: the former KGB chief who succeeded Nikita Brezhnev as General Secretary in November 1982. A dying man, conducting the business of running a nuclear superpower from a hospital clinic, connected to a dialysis machine, watching Ronald Reagan describe his country as the focus of evil in the modern world. Korean Air Lines Flight 007: shot down by a Soviet interceptor on the 1st of September 1983, killing 269 people including a US Congressman. The event that poisoned an already toxic relationship just weeks before Petrov's night in the bunker. And Reagan himself: who despite his bellicose rhetoric was privately horrified by Pentagon officials who believed nuclear war was winnable. "I can't believe that this world can go on beyond our generation," he said in a radio address from Camp David, "without someday some fool or some maniac or some accident triggering the kind of war that is the end of the line for all of us." The episode ends where it began — in Serpukhov-15, with Stanislav Petrov staring at a screen that now reads not launch, but missile attack. What he does next is the subject of Part 2. Content note: this episode contains discussion of nuclear weapons, mass casualty scenarios, and Cold War geopolitical history. No graphic content. Primary and secondary sources for this episode: The principal secondary sources for this episode and its companion are: Taylor Downing, 1983: Reagan, Andropov and a World on the Brink (2018) — the most comprehensive single-volume account of the 1983 war scare. Nate Jones (ed.), Able Archer 83: The Secret History of the NATO Exercise that Almost Triggered Nuclear War (2016) — a collection of declassified primary documents, including CIA assessments, NSA intercepts, and internal NATO communications, assembled by the National Security Archive. Additional material drawn from: Petrov's own interviews, particularly his 2013 BBC interview on the thirtieth anniversary of the incident, and the 2014 documentary The Man Who Saved the World. The Reagan Presidential Library's archive of public papers and radio addresses. David Hoffman, The Dead Hand (2009) — Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the Soviet nuclear programme and the 1983 war scare.
More from In Extremis - Stories from the Edge of History
Nehvizdy, December 1941. Two parachutists land in an open field of snow, miles from their drop zone. One is injured. By first light, a stranger has found their buried parachutes and followed their footprints to the quarry where they’re hiding. Operation Anthropoid is only hours old, and already on the brink of disaster. In Part 2, we follow Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš through five months in occupied Prague. They break the most important rule of their mission to survive, rely on the families who risk everything to hide them, and patiently track the most dangerous man in the Protectorate. As the day of the attack approaches, the Czech resistance begs London to call it off. Then we spend a final morning with Reinhard Heydrich, a man at the height of his power, with no idea what is waiting for him on the road into Prague. SOURCES Callum MacDonald, The Killing of SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich (1989) Robert Gerwarth, Hitler’s Hangman: The Life of Heydrich (2011) Miroslav Ivanov, Target Heydrich (English translation, 1974) Jan Wiener, The Assassination of Heyrich: Hitler's Hangman and the Czech Resistance (1969)
Prague, 27 May 1942. Two men wait at a hairpin bend on a quiet suburban road. One carries a briefcase holding an anti-tank grenade. The other is assembling a Sten gun beneath a raincoat. Their target is Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Nazi security apparatus, ruler of occupied Bohemia and Moravia, and the man who chaired the Wannsee Conference. In Part 1, we go back to how Heydrich seized control of the Protectorate, the reign of terror that earned him the name “the Butcher of Prague,” and the political calculations in London that set Operation Anthropoid in motion. Then we board an overcrowded Halifax bomber over snow-covered Bohemia, as two Czechoslovak soldiers prepare to jump into the night. In this episode The Munich Agreement and the destruction of Czechoslovakia How Heydrich used Karl Hermann Frank’s ambition to push aside Konstantin von Neurath Martial law, mass arrests and the deportation of the Protectorate’s Jews Heydrich’s leading role at the Wannsee Conference Why Edvard Beneš wanted Heydrich dead, and why Britain’s Special Operations Executive agreed The meaning behind the codename “Anthropoid” The night drop of Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš on 29 December 1941 Sources and further reading Callum MacDonald, The Killing of SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich (1989) Robert Gerwarth, Hitler’s Hangman: The Life of Heydrich (2011) Miroslav Ivanov, Target Heydrich (English translation, 1974) Laurent Binet, HHhH (2010), a novel If you’re enjoying In Extremis, please follow the show, leave a rating, and share this episode with one person who loves a good story from history.
February 1912. Lieutenant Teddy Evans is dying of scurvy in a tent on the Ross Ice Shelf. Hut Point is 56 km away. There is food for two days at most. Tom Crean pockets a few biscuits and a little chocolate, and starts walking. Part 2 picks up where we left off, with three men on a runaway sledge on the Shackleton Icefalls. Crean, Evans and William Lashly then pick their way down the Beardmore Glacier through a maze of crevasses, crossing one chasm on a knife-edged snow bridge with the sledge balanced on its peak. Far to the south, Scott reaches the Pole and finds Amundsen's tent waiting for him. Then scurvy takes hold of Evans. Crean and Lashly haul him on the sledge for around 100 km. Evans orders them to leave him and save themselves. They refuse. With the rations almost gone, one man has to go for help alone. Crean had done it before. A year earlier, adrift on breaking sea ice with Henry Bowers and Apsley Cherry-Garrard and killer whales circling, he leapt from floe to floe and climbed the face of the Barrier to raise the alarm. This time he sets out exhausted, half-starved and without water. He walks for around 18 hours with a single five-minute rest, and reaches Discovery Hut half an hour ahead of a blizzard. Sources The Worst Journey in the World, Apsley Cherry-Garrard South with Scott, Edward Evans Under Scott's Command: Lashly's Antarctic Diaries, William Lashly Scott's Last Expedition, the journals of Robert Falcon Scott An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean, Antarctic Survivor, Michael Smith
Tom Crean's Long Walk, Part 1: The Last Supporting Party January 1912. Tom Crean stands 268 km from the South Pole, the dream of a decade within a fortnight's march. Then Captain Robert Falcon Scott sends him home. Tom Crean was the raw-boned Kerryman who served on Discovery, Terra Nova and Endurance, and was there for the defining moments of all three. In Part 1 we follow him up the Beardmore Glacier as Scott's party closes in on the Pole, unaware that Roald Amundsen has already beaten them to it. We look at Scott's controversial choice to keep his men guessing about who would make the final push, and his last-minute decision to take five men instead of four. That call upended a plan built around fours and left Crean, William Lashly and Lieutenant Edward Evans facing a 1,200 km journey home with a single navigator, thin air, failing bodies and a closing season. Along the way: a Christmas Day crevasse fall, Crean's wit at the lip of the abyss, the moment Crean wept, snow blindness on the plateau, and a desperate gamble at the Shackleton Ice Falls that sends three men hurtling towards a black void. In this episode The South Pole Inn at Anascaul, Crean's pub and shrine to the Heroic Age The race between Scott and Amundsen, and what the Pole meant Scott's selection of the polar party, and why it still divides historians The Last Supporting Party turns north Sliding blind down the Shackleton Ice Falls Sources The Worst Journey in the World, Apsley Cherry-Garrard South with Scott, Edward Evans Under Scott's Command: Lashly's Antarctic Diaries, William Lashly An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean, Antarctic Survivor, Michael Smith If you're enjoying In Extremis, please follow, rate and share it with one person who'd love this story.
Tom Trumble speaks at Reflections at Bukit Chandu, a WW2 and social history museum in Singapore, on the subject of his fourth book, Survival in Singapore: Elizabeth Choiy, Operation Jaywick, and the Battle for Truth in Changi (Penguin Random House, 2025). The presentation occurred on 12 September, marking the 81st anniversary of the liberation of Singapore and the end of the Japanese Occupation. Bukit Chandu—Malay for Opium Hill—overlooks the harbour where Operation Jaywick, a devastating commando mission, mined and destroyed Japanese ships. The museum sits at the edge of the Battle of Pasir Panjang, where the First Malay Regiment made their last stand under Second Lieutenant Adnan bin Saidi before the British surrender. Bin Saidi was captured and executed by the Japanese, and is regarded as a national hero. This presentation examines the unforeseen consequences of Operation Jaywick and the stories of survival and resistance during the Japanese occupation of Singapore. Speaking Inquiries: [email protected]