Soviet nuclear missile alert
Witness History
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Petrov's Mistakes in the War on Missiles
Petrov's job was to advise his bosses on what he was seeing. If real, it would take around eight minutes before missiles from the us reached soviet and would be picked up by ground radar that would give confirmation. Petrov had doubts about what he was saying and didn't wholly trust the soviet's new satellite and computer technology at the heart of the early warning system. Soon after the first missile warning, he made the crucial decision to tell his bosses he thought it was a false alarm.
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