What lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces correctly identified a false alarm on 26 September 1983
Stanislav Petrov Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov (Russian: Станисла́в Евгра́фович Петро́в ; 7 September 1939 – 19 May 2017) was a lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces who became known as "the man who single-handedly saved the world from nuclear war" for his role in the 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident.
Christopher Cooke Christopher M. Cooke is a former United States Air Force 2nd Lieutenant who provided classified Titan II missile information to the Soviet embassy in 1981. An Air Force memo described his disclosures of launch codes and other information as "a major security breach ... the worst perhaps in the history of the Air Force."