Movie Review: The Man Who Saved the World .

 

Yes, another movie review. The second one in just a few days.              

This one is very different than the one which I reviewed yesterday, however. For one, it’s a true story, and it is, in fact, more amazing than the vast majority of stories. After all, there is a reason why the title suggests that this is the man who saved the world. That is exactly what Stanislav Petrov did, quite literally.              

Back in late September of 1983, he served as a lieutenant-colonel for the Soviet Air Defence Forces. We should all be very thankful that he happened to be on duty on the evening of September 26, 1983, and not someone else who might just have opted to follow protocol. During this time, tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union were very tense. Just weeks earlier, the Soviets had shot down a Korean airliner that had accidentally flown over Soviet airspace. This was also during the time when President Ronald Reagan was making a habit of referring to the Soviet Union as the “Evil Empire.”              

Still, there was no indication that things were about to grow very tense for a short while. Indeed, World War III almost started that evening. A computer glitch erroneously showed that missiles had been launched from the United States towards the Soviet Union, and that there were only minutes before the missiles reached their targets in the Soviet Union. Petrov was under pressure to make a decision. The window of opportunity to launch a counterstrike was closing, and there were people who were indeed waiting for him to give them the green light to authorize the strike. Had that happened, Petrov estimates that around half of the population of the United States would have been killed that very night. But it would not have ended there, of course, because the United States would have launched a counterattack of it’s own after what Americans would have understood as the initial Soviet attack. Indeed, the world would never have been the same.              

When you think about how close we came to a true disaster of apocalyptic proportions, it is chilling. One man stood in the way of all of that. Had he remained a little less calm, had he not been able to step back under that obviously enormous pressure, or had he been a little more hotheaded than he proved to be, we might not be here today. I would not be writing this, and you would not be reading this. Indeed, there might no longer be any human beings at all left.              

It was not supposed to happen that way. Official protocol under those circumstances had it that what was required was a counterattack once American missiles had been confirmed to have been launched. Everyone was waiting for Petrov to give that order - an order that would have started World War III - but he waited until the last possible moment. He even fought pressure to take decisive action, which some of his colleagues were recommending. So, it is not a stretch to say that Petrov literally saved the world that day. After all, half of the American population dying overnight would surely have been followed by half of the Soviet population dying, as well. And as for the survivors, assuming that there were no more attacks and counterattacks? Well, they would likely have been living in a nuclear winter. Sooner or later, they likely would have died from causes directly related to the nuclear holocaust. Maybe it would have been cancer, or starvation, or the surely lack of law and order which would have followed in such a world. Whatever would have been the specific reasons, all of this was averted because one man, when faced with this kind of enormous pressure, managed to take a deep breath and keep calm, staying his hand and waiting until the missiles could be detected by more local, Soviet radar. When they did not appear, it was understood that this had all been one big mistake.

Then again, the computers were not supposed to have glitches that could all too easily have triggered World War III, either. Back then, Soviet authorities confirmed that there as nothing wrong with their missile launch detection systems, even though they showed that five American missiles had been launched, obviously erroneously. 

That is an alarming thought, because we have officials still today who insist that such a mistake could not possibly happen today. Should we simply take their word for it? If something like that does happen again, will the person in charge ultimately be as level-headed as Petrov proved to be? What if the trigger is something real like, say, one of those missiles that North Korea keeps launching over the airspace of other countries? What if one of these tests goes seriously wrong, and it lands in either South Korean or Japanese territory, and kills citizens there? Will it not be seen as an official attack, even if it is accidental? And when we have a sitting American president who has "joked" about wiping whole countries off the map (North Korea and Iran, specifically) and has apparently seriously inquired about why we cannot use the nuclear weapons that we have produced, it is hard to imagine that the threat is not serious. 

Add to that the fact that more nations and more people have access to nuclear weapons, as well as other weapons of mass destruction, and it is hardly a reassuring thought. Remember back in the early nineties, after the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, when many Americans in particular seemed to feel that the threat of nuclear war had suddenly virtually vanished? In fact, it feels like we are closer than we ever we before to a nuclear catastrophe. 

When we think about these things - and I feel like we do not collectively think about them nearly often nor seriously enough - the very thought of an accidental nuclear war being triggered feels only too real. The fact that we have managed to avoid such a scenario thus far almost feels like dumb luck. After all, we came close to a nuclear war once, back in the sixties, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Back then, a Vice Admiral for the Soviet Union, Vasily Arkhipov, refused to authorize the use of nuclear torpedoes against the American Navy. And we came close again in the early eighties, probably even closer, during this incident, which we only learned about many years later. Luckily, we had Petrov to save us that time.

What about next time? It is difficult to imagine that there will not be a next time after all. All of those Soviet nuclear weapons did not just disappear, after all. And the Americans have a tremendous arsenal of nuclear weapons. The British and the French also have nuclear weapons. So does China, Israel, Pakistan, India, and North Korea. And with the escalation in tensions between the United States and China, many people feel like there will be a second Cold War. When someone like Trump actually asks if we can use nuclear weapons, and threatens to wipe North Korea off the map, does he actually think that the Chinese will simply stand casually by, when they border North Korea? 

Petrov holds one arrogant American to account during this film. At one point, he and his translator visit a site in rural North Dakota that used to be host to an American nuclear warhead, the only one that people can visit today. There is an American Park Ranger who hosts their visit, and who describes how the missile would only have been launched in response to a first Soviet strike. Petrov loses his cool, asking the man if he thinks the Soviets actually wanted to initiate a nuclear war like that. From the Soviet standpoint, of course, they felt the same way, that such weapons would only be used in the event of aggressive action by the other country. Yet twice, nuclear war was only narrowly averted. 

One of those times, Petrov saved us single-handedly. Was Petrov viewed as a hero afterward? Well, he was congratulated by some of his fellow soldiers. But when asked into the office of one of his superiors, he found himself reprimanded for not keeping up and making entries in the official journal book, When he pointed out that the world almost ended in a nuclear holocaust, the general said that was no excuse for not making any entries. Absolute absurdity. 

The movie also shows glimpses of Petrov's personal life, too. It was a sad life, and many of these scenes are damn depressing. His wife died of cancer years after the near miss nuclear, leading to a problem with alcoholism. And he had severe tensions with his mother. They finally did reunite, and like much of this movie, this film is also viewed. It is heartbreaking, much like the scenes of his wife dying, although those are done by actors. 

This movie is a mixture of things: it is partial documentary, and partially a movie with actors playing scenes. it is an interesting mixture, and you really feel like you glimpse the grimness of Petrov's everyday life in the former Soviet Union and present-day Russia. 

Ultimately, I recommend this movie. For far too many Americans, demonizing others seems to have become a national past time. That has been the case with racism, whether with the genocide of Native Americans, or racial slavery, or the racial segregation that followed it. And it was the case during the Cold War, when the "Russkies" were distrusted, and President Reagan outright referred to the Soviet Union as the "Evil Empire," something that Petrov recalls that the people of the Soviet Union were very much aware of at that time, and which contributed to the heightened tensions that very nearly led to the end of the world as we know it. Americans have continued that level of demonization right to the present day, often viewing Muslims as terrorists, or deeming some countries as worthy of ceasing to exist. I remember quite a number of Americans "joking" that Iraq should be turned into a parking lot back in the early nineties, just before Operation Desert Storm. Now, again, we have an elected American president who actually seriously asked why we could not use nuclear weapons, and who "joked" about wiping countries off the map, musing that his nuclear button works better than that of North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un. 

Terrifying. And it is for that reason that more people - especially Americans - might want to watch this film, to understand just what is at stake, and how much we have to lose.