This Man is the Reason the World Didn't End | Tales From the Bottle 

D'oh - the picture used at 1:18 is Vasily Arkhipov - another Soviet credited with avoiding nuclear devastation during the Cuban missile crisis (but that's a story for another time). 7:59 - this is the picture of Stanislav I should have used throughout :) Second Channel: ru-vid.com/show-UCt93hxFmjppL5nLRAX94UrA Merch: teespring.com/stores/qxir Patreon: www.patreon.com/qxir Twitter: twitter.com/QxirYT Discord: discord.gg/jZzvvwJ Twitch: www.twitch.tv/qxiryt/ Subreddit: www.reddit.com/r/Qxir/

"The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five." Carl Sagan

This man literally saved the world. That’s probably the rarest title one can earn- having singlehandedly prevented billions of deaths from nukes and their fallout.

"Consider the power of unseen forces in your life and enjoy your existential dread". Need this on a T-shirt!

The fact that on multiple occasions a persons gut feeling saved almost all life on this planet is genuinely scary and amazing

1:27 That's not Stanislav Petrov, that's Vasily Arkhipov, another Soviet officer who saved the world. During the Cuban missle crisis, the United States Navy located a Soviet submarine in international waters near Cuba, and started droping signaling depth charges to force the submarine to come to the surface. Captain Valentin Savitsky thought that the war has started and wanted to launch a nuclear torpedo to destroy the american fleet, but Officer Vasily Arkhipov disagreed.

I was born in '74. This is something awful about the 80's that it's hard for people to relate to now. Every day, getting dropped off at school was somewhat terrifying. The feeling that nuclear war would break out before school was over, and you'd never see your parents again was a very real fear.

You should make another video like this about Vasily Arkhipov; During the cuban missile crisis, a submarine in the mexican gulf believed ww3 had already began and were ready to fire a nuclear missile unto America. Except for Vasily, who refused his orders because he “had a funny feeling about it”

stanislav petrov is the most underappreciated man in history more people need to know about him

This is why you got to double check if it's actually a nuke or just a cloud that looks like one...

Imagine how many other hidden situations like this have occurred that the general public will never know about.

The second i saw the title i knew it was either my boi arkipov or my side boi petrov

I think he reasoning for not calling in the attack was that he said he believed the US would never use nukes as a first strike option and that it was suspicious that they only sent 5. However he believed if it was real he’d rather no report it as to not wake his wife or the population so they’d die peacefully in their sleep. A true human being

As a Marylander myself, I find the mispronunciation of my state humorous. Many you tubers from Ireland and Great Britain mispronounce Maryland, so I’m used to it.

„The thread of nuclear war is not as great now as it was back then“ That did not age well…

Holy sh*t this is one of those multi-verse divergent points one man one decision two completely different outcomes.

Petrov deserves the Nobel prize. Thank God for him. He proves that disobeying orders is the right choice in some instances.

I grew up in a "strategically important area" in northern Europe in the 70's and 80's. I still know by heart the shortest way to a bomb shelter from any point in my home town that I left 35 years ago. Scary times indeed...

Stanislav Petrov for many years has been my role model- he followed his gut on the most intense pressures of all. I remember i was making my 2nd or 3rd project about him in 5th grade when I returned to look for more info and found the 10m old news articles saying he had died. it was devastating, but im glad people finally get to hear about this man.

A missile was heading towards Russia, and then an utter and then an utter and then an utter... I love your accent .. your videos are great Thank you for making them

Honestly this man should be celebrated with his own day of the year, he literally saved the world

As a native from Maryland, I adored the way you pronounced my state. Say Mary-land all you want, friend ^_^

Ah, the wicked madness of Mutually Assured Destruction and the zeitgeist of the 1980s. Fun times. First off, MAD isn't just the "thinking" behind our Cold War insanity--it's pretty much how all of our politics and our economic policies operate ever since we turned our backs on the egalitarian and democratic principles of the Atlantic Charter the minute WWII was won. (And wouldn't that make a fine Qxir episode, lad?) Second, for a bit firsthand perspective, two years after the Petrov Incident, I was conducting a bit of me own research into the Cold War insanity I had grown up in, born as I was just two months before the infamous Bay of Pigs operation. My thoroughly mad plan for delving into this societal madness was to conduct all of my "research" solely through hitchhiking and the experiences this occasioned. I even had a well-worn copy of Douglas Adams' epic Hitchhiker's Guide in me well-worn, slovenly rucksack. Whilst my travels took me, extremely erratically, across the length and breadth of Europe in that surreal summer of 1985, when I had to constantly pretend I wasn't a fookin' American as Springsteen's stupid "Born in the USA" was screaming out of every loudspeaker like the Western muezzin's fookin' call to prayer, the two most contrary and illuminating experiences were in East Germany and Ireland. In East Germany, which wasn't exactly famous for welcoming dirty hippies who were fresh off some rest & relaxation in Amsterdam and who also spoke quite passable German, I saw some deeply weird sh*t. First impression was the border guards at Lobenstein, in the south, near Hof, who hadn't apparently encountered many of my ilk thumbing up the Autobahn into Stasi-land and decided their best option was to make me sit directly under the machine gun tower at roadside, where no one wanted to stop, while they checked in with their superiors. Not sure what motivated me to do this, exactly, but the higher up the food chain the case of my perverse invasion of the "German Democratic Republik" went, the more I started to hide my ability to speak their frumious language. This only seemed to further frustrate the increasingly higher ranked martinets who interviewed me in windowless concrete rooms, but it soon proved a brilliant strategy, as these Soviet-Prussian types spoke openly, in my hearing, confident that I wouldn't be able to understand them. The security forces decided that instead of detaining me, which would possibly have brought the bloody US State Department into their lives, they would just march me back to the gun tower, still confident that no one would be so brave and stupid as to actually pick me up there. And this did work, for almost 4 hours, until dusk, when, just at the guards' shift change, a very drunk Bavarian hippie pulled over and asked me if I were camping there or if I might fancy a ride. One of the guards going off-shift walked over to harass the drunken sod, but he was so off-put by the sheer stench of the fellow that he just said, "F*ck it, mate. Your funeral," and waved up to the tower to let us through before he walked off to the cabbage and potatoes of his waiting Frau. No sooner had we cleared the Lobenstein border station and detention facilities than the reason for my new savior's rash rescue became apparent. In addition to smuggling copious amounts of alcohol in his bloodstream across the border between the two Germanys, my new friend had a great, huge ball of very good Lebanese hash that he hadn't been able to enjoy for at least half an hour because he had smoked his last rolling paper and only had a cleverly disguised 4-foot bong (plumbing apparatus), which he couldn't operate without assistance while driving. That was my job as the newest swab on the deck. Some vague hours later we eventually arrived in West Berlin, where I stayed for a week with some friends of the reckless Bavarian. And this is where the bulk of my "research" took place. I would take the tram into East Berlin every morning to the district where very cheap copies of books printed on dissolving paper were sold to broke students from the west side of town. I'd loiter in one of these shops for an hour, buy a few crumbling books for a few Pfennigs, and then I'd go off in search of some lunch at the emptiest and most forlorn cafe I could find. Sometimes I was almost certain that I wasn't even being followed. These eateries were amazing. Usually in buildings rebuilt from bombed out facades miraculously left standing, and which facades usually didn't even have the many bullet holes filled in, 40 fookin' years after the war, these "restaurants" only featured one crappy dish for lunch and a desultory gathering of bombed out East Germans who were easily the most uniformly depressed humans I had ever met. Contrast this with the Irish I was hanging out with in the pubs of County Cork just two weeks later. Mind you, this was in the midst of the Great Hysteria of the Grottoes. Similar, sort of, to infiltrating Stasi-land with my innocuous day-passes, I would rent/hire a bicycle in Cork or Kinsale (or wherever I woke up that morning) and I'd ride inland in search of the herds of lunatic women in housecoats clambering up the muddy hillsides to touch a 3-foot, painted plaster statue of the Virgin Mary that some local Mary O' Flaherty had surely seen weeping just the week before. The highlight of this curious ritual came when one of these mad old cows would invariably come tumbling down those muddy hillsides on her backside, much to merriment or religious ecstacy of the crowd below, depending on where you stood in it. It was back safely in the pub at night for the post game recap of the day's follies that I felt the starkest differences and similarities with my East German adventures. The crushing fatalism of the grey East Berliners was a very strange cousin to the equally cynical but far more riotous fatalism of the determinedly drunken and sporadically effusive Irishmen in those pubs who would laugh themselves red at the foolishness of the tumbling cows while simultaneously allowing for the wee possibility of miracles and strange goings-on, for hadn't Declan's man seen something queer in the fields on his way home from this very pub not a fortnight past? The only reliable conclusion I could draw from this intense summer of research was that it all came down to choosing the variety of insanity that suited you best, wherever the random lottery of birth had situated you. I still haven't published these results because, well, it's obvious enough, ain't it?

Damn if Petrov trusted the machines more everyone would be dead, or we'd be living in a post nuclear wasteland instead of playing one on a PlayStation/Xbox/PC.

The moniker of "hero" is thrown around a lot. But this man, he was truly a hero.

Imagine if he had reported it, any remnant of either side would have believed the other was at fault. Without ever knowing that it was actually a false flag.

Qxir, the 99 red baloons song is blowing up on everyone's reccomended now. I thi k you sparked the algorithm...

For those of us who lived through the Cold War, you just can't believe how scary it got from time to time, especially as a teenager (I was 18 when this incident happened. Actually, I was 18 that month! Obviously I didn't know about it until much later but there were other stories, mostly "tales" based on gossip probably because of the broken arrow incidents, I guess 🤷🏻‍♀️), when we knew enough to know we were in deep shit but not enough to truly understand what was going on. I can't remember if you've done something on the British government's "Protect and Survive" leaflet on what to do if there was a nuclear strike. It was ridiculous and frankly, was just laughed at. Seriously, it was brutally mocked, on TV, radio, by the public... It's behind Raymond Briggs' (of The Snowman fame) animated film based on his graphic novel When the Wind Blows. That, however, is fecking heartbreaking. Don't watch before bedtime. It's not graphic, it's weirdly sweet, but you'll probably have nightmares. I watched it once. That was enough. I did know this story, but it's something that needs retelling, so that if there is another guy in a bunker with a gut feeling, he'll have the strength of Petrov's convictions - or at least his _sang froid._ As he said, if he was wrong, nobody was going to be around to punish him... Petrov was one of the most important human beings in the history of mankind. He should have got a Nobel Peace Prize for going against standing orders. I'm so glad he was very well recognised during his lifetime, though. I hope he was able to go to his grave in peace.

This man can actually, legitimately say he saved the world. Never been a single person to be able to say that 😂

Now I'm not a religous man, nor am I a superstitious man.... but the fact the whole world was saved on the bases that one man "had a feeling" something wasn't right, that really does make me wonder if there are greater forces at play

Stanislav Petrovich and Vassily Arkhipov are two Russian men whose names should never be forgotten. I am ashamed that I didn’t know of either until a couple of years ago.

“And all it takes is the will of a single man”

Assurances that the threat of nuclear war is not quite as present as it was back then has sadly aged very badly, very quickly.

1:19, that picture is actually of Vasili Arkhipov, a different man who saved the world during the Cuban missile crisis. By convincing the submarine commander to calm down.

My favorite people used to be Scottish, because their accent was easier to pick up for me as a foreigner. I liked their accent, their culture, their history, there was something attractive in their character as a nation. Once I even knew an old man from Scotland, a man of outstanding mind and brilliance despite his elderly age. I believe he was in his late 70s when I met him. He's long gone by now, may he rest in peace, my old friend. Then, couple of days ago I stumbled upon this channel. Now my favorite people are Irish. Hello my new favorite Irish youtube friend! May you live a long and happy life and produce many more of those brilliant videos you make!

Sometimes the Soviet soldiers talk about this incident in MGS5

ROFL - the Cold War...such fond memories. As a youth in the 80s, when you have a siren at the end of your street and you then find out about the four-minute warning system...it does take time to get your head around.

"The right man at the right place makes all the difference in the world"

Can we appreciate that the U.S. Nuclear arsenal launch codes were 8 zeros for 20 years.

Sounds like Qxir recounted Half Life with that quote at the end there: “A tale of the planetary annihilation that almost came to pass and the man who made sure it didn’t.” Really doesn’t help that Stanislav looks like he’s gonna tell me that “The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world.”

It’s sad, we are right back in 1983 as of today.

I've heard this story couple of times, but it's always fun to hear how different people make different takes of exact same topic. If you wanna hear more thorough video on the matter, I will recommend EmpLemon's masterpiece of a video "there may Never Ever be another man as powerful as Stanislav Petrov".

“..the threat of nuclear war is not quite as present as is was back then..” 5 months later… 😬😬

This man is one of the greatest men to ever live.

I once asked my dad (born in 1971) what he thought about the North Korea situation we're in. he said he wasn't worried in the slightest. when I asked why, he told me that it just brought him back to the 80s

I remember living thru the nuclear `80's as a young adult. The paranoia was real. I had all sorts of plans in my teenage head about where to go and what to take. You had so many things that happened in the early 80's. Iran Hostage Crisis, Able Archer `83, KAL 007 shootdown (which was about 3 weeks earlier) and the hits just kept rolling on. It is a miracle we are still all here. I also remember 99 Red Balloons. @Qxir you really need to do a video on Able Archer `83.

Half the reason I'm here is your adorable (mis)pronunciations! Super excited to hear YOU tell me an already familiar tale, in the way only YOU can ❤️

I knew this story already, but it's such a wonderful one knowing one random person saved the entire world.

this is why education is important, it even saved lives.

That man is a Hero, saved the World before I was born. Thanks to him I can live my life

One of my favourite stories about the cold war, together with the person who stopped the launching of a nuclear torpedo during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Lovely video! Keep up the good work!

This guy deserved noble price for peace. He died in apartment whitout praise that he deserved in poverty.

It's amazing yet still unsurprising how simple intuition and common sense can mean the difference between life and death. That was the true razor's edge, too close.

Your cartoon skills are vastly underrated. I’m also glad it was the Russians who had the false alarm and not the Yanks for some strange reason.

Literally the most important human that ever lived. Brings a tear to my eye.

I was 12 years old at the time and almost certain I'd see a mushroom cloud any day. Thanks Stan.

Ive always been entranced by this guys story. It just blows my mind that he died with little coverage. Rest in peace and thanks.

Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please... The author of this video mispronounced nuclear. He then acknowledged it and started using it correctly. In my 56 years I have never seen anything like it.

i remember learning about this in history class in highschool. everyone in my class agreed had it been literally anyone else with that decision to make, none of us would exist right now.

This channel fuels me weekly with crippling anxiety and existential dread. Subscribed :))

Such an amazing story, crazy how one man is the sole reason we are all alive today

Things that didnt age well: "The threat of nuclear war is not quite as present as it was back then" - Qxir 8:11

Perfect RU-vidr to tell this story. The story is so good, and Qxir's style matches it so well.

One thing that always scare me is if you take a look at technology like computers and video games and how much more powerful those things are today from just a decade or two ago imagine the difference that nuclear weapons must have from them in the 1950s till now.

This has actually happened multiple times, first in 1980 when an American early warning system malfunctioned and reported 200 incoming nuclear missiles. However, it was only found out when the National Security Advisor delayed the call to President Carter.

Thank you, Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov.

this isn't the first video on Mr. Petrov I've seen, but it may be the most sarcastic of the bunch which of course is why I watch this channel

Thank you very much Stanislav Petrov.

1:27 Actually this picture is a picture of Vassily Arkhipov, not Stanilav Petrov. Arkhipov was an officer in the 60s during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In this story, the systems also malfunctioned, and he was also the sole person who believed that the US hadn't launched nukes, Both men deserve credit for saving the world.

Ha! That's absolutely true! Coming from an IT background myself, I can tell you without a doubt, when a server boots up too fast, you KNOW something is broken. "Windows ain't supposed to work that fast. Uh oh."

I know the 99 luftballons song thanks to Goldfinger cover of it. That song sounds really aggressive when it's sang in German at the rithm of SkaPunk

You failed to mention that he rebooted the computers many times that day, as the system kept telling him of the impeding fantom missile lunches. Man like him, with a common sense of humanity, that understood the consequences of a nuclear war, kept the world safe. And bear in mind that these are the stories we know, but many are still classified. RIP Stanislav Petrov, a true hero of humanity. PS To add to the actions of Stanislav, this was the same year as NATO's exercise Able Archer 83 and Korean Air shot down.

This guy really deserves Nobel peace prize

I’m convinced this in an alternate universe where end of the world gets narrowly avoided time after time

Ever since hearing this story so many times I've always thought we are in the better timeline cus without him saving us this moment wouldn't exist

I've seen a documentary about this before. We all owe this man a great debt.

You put out content that has no reason being as good as it is. I love you

Gotta love this channel. Adorable, self-deprecating Irish host with unmistakable yet fully decipherable accent, check. Sometimes serious subject matter made sarcastic & humorous, check. Quotes good enough for me to actually pause the video to write them down, check. “ Consider the power of unseen forces and enjoy your existential dread.” Well played, my friend.

Haven’t seen the vid yet, predicting it’s about the guy who didn’t fire the nuclear submarine missile during the Cuban missile crisis. Edit: nope

Just wanted to say that the illustration in the video is really good. Not the other videos don't have good illustration, but that this one has some really good attention to detail. Chef's kiss 👌

4:27 a nutter, a nutter, a nutter, and a nutter.

You are wise beyond your years. Please keep up the great work. You make my day brighter with your videos on others stupidity.

I hadn't heard this story before, but it's uplifting to hear about nonetheless

As far as I know, Stanislav Petrov was actually reprimanded for his (in)action, and rightfully so - It wasn't his job to judge if the alert was real or false, just to report the alert up the chain of command. If he did what he was supposed to, it would not have triggered an immediate full retaliatory strike, it's not how a nation's strategic nuclear force works. His report would likely contain exact timing and location of each launch, initial trajectory, speed, elevation, etc. Then the report would be cross-checked with other early warning stations (both US and USSR had several of them for redundancy). If they matched the initial report (which they would not), then the satellites and the ground-based radars would be pointed in the reported direction in order to detect the actual warheads and estimate the approximate target and the time of impact. Only then, if multiple independent redundant systems confirmed it's actual launch of intercontinental ballistic missiles (and not, say, a commercial satellite launch) from a known or possible enemy location (at that time both sides knew exact location of each-other's land-based assets, and the approximate location of the submarines), heading towards a set of high-value targets (and not, say, to a test site in the middle of the Pacific), only then the conclusive report would be handed to the top of the military and the President to make a decision to initiate a counterstrike. And in a given scenario with only 5 missiles (so we are talking about maximum 25 warheads (if all of them were MIRV-ed) compared to more than a hundred known targets around Moscow alone), if it was real, the top command would likely decide to absorb the strike and gain some time to evaluate all escalatory, de-escalatory, strategic, and political options and implications (rather than to blow up the world on a first hint of trouble).

That russian dude basically said if I fucked up who's going to be around to punch me , that's awesome thanks Irishman I didn't know about this time .

Thank you Stanislov for using discretion and your education. Wow!

He's the guy from the Submarine where that Submarine would've fired nuclear Missiles if it wasn't for him not authorizing the Launches.

I’ve been trying to figure out the name of that balloon song forever! Thank you lord Qxir

8:12 that hasn’t aged very nicely

This is just why human instinct can never be replaced by any machine.

Hey Qxir! Small thing, but the portrait you use at 7:51 is actually of Vasili Arkhipov not Petrov. Arkhipov has a great nuclear war avoidance story himself, but is definitely a different person than the subject of the video

I got out of rehab and I'm catching up on these videos good work man.

You can't hug your children with nuclear arms.

you should look into the incident on January 25, 1995, when another mistake (flight of a Norwegian sounding rocket) brought President Yeltsin to within a few minutes of a nuke launch decision before his advisors realized the warning was in error.

"The threat of nuclear war is not quite as present as it was back then". Aged like milk

The expression of emotions on faces of your drawings really improved over time

Petrov deserves a statue in every city, striking a pose with his thumbs up and a shit eating grin, the caption simply "Stan was the man".

What a legend im not sure why so many people don't talk about his deed

Oh, a suggestion for a story: When a town executed a circus elephant. Look up Mary the Elephant execution in Tennessee. I don't want to ruin the story.

I remember my dad telling me this story about 8 years ago. And even back then it put a whole new perspective on everything. I was 9 at the time