Cuban Missile Crises: Calm Bedtime History

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Good evening and welcome back to
Sleep Wise.

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Tonight we drift toward a story
that was almost never told

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because the people at its center
were not supposed to speak of

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it, and for many years they did
not.

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It is a story about the Cold
War, but not the version written

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in textbooks, Not the
presidents, not the Cabinet

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rooms, not the famous broadcasts
we have all half remembered.

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Tonight we move quietly to the
places where the world actually

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came closest to ending.
The bunkers beneath pine

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forests, the submarines rolling
through dark water, the ordinary

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desks where ordinary men sat
beneath flickering lights and

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held the future in their hands
without quite realizing it.

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At the heart of our journey is a
Soviet officer named Stanislav

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Petrov.
And a night in September of

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1983, when an early warning
system told him that nuclear

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missiles had been launched at
the Soviet Union from the United

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States.
He was alone with that

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information.
He had only a few minutes to

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decide what to do with it.
The world you are resting in

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tonight is the world that
followed his choice.

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But his story does not begin in
1983.

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To understand what Petrov did
and why it mattered so

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enormously, we must first travel
back 21 years, to October of

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1962, to 13 days in which much
of the world held its breath and

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most people had no idea how thin
the breath had become.

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We will visit the rooms where
decisions were made, and the

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oceans where they were nearly
unmade, and the silent

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submarines where officers deep
underwater argued in the dark

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about whether to end
civilization.

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One of them said no.
His name was Vassili Arkipov,

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and almost no one has ever heard
of him.

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These are the hidden hinges of
history.

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Not the loud declarations and
famous speeches, but the private

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pauses, the individual
hesitations, the quiet refusals.

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The long strange fact that the
20th century did not end in fire

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was not, in the end, the
achievement of systems or

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treaties.
It was the achievement of

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specific human beings in
specific rooms, on specific

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nights, choosing to wait.
If these quiet journeys help you

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rest, you can follow Sleep Wise
and share it with someone who

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might enjoy falling asleep while
learning something new.

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Tonight we will move slowly.
There is no need to keep track

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of every name or date.
The arc of the story will carry

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you.
You can let the names pass like

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lights through a train window.
So let the lamp dim a little.

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Let the blanket settle.
The year will soon be 1962, and

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the world will be younger than
it knows, and somewhere off the

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coast of Havana a warm wind will
be moving across the sea.

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Before we arrive there, let us
linger for just a moment longer

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in the wider story and in the
soft, surprising idea that lies

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beneath it, that sometimes the
most important thing a person

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ever does is quietly decline to
act.

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It helps to remember what the
world felt like then before we

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step into this specific crisis.
By the autumn of 1962, the Cold

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War had been gathering weight
for nearly two decades. 2 great

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powers stood on opposite sides
of a conflict they had never

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officially declared, and beneath
every evening newspaper ran a

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quieter tension that people had
learned to live with.

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The Soviet Union and the United
States were not at war, and yet

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the world was arranged around
the possibility that they soon

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might be.
School children in America

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practiced hiding beneath their
desks, and families in Moscow

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listened carefully for sirens.
Both nations had built weapons

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capable of destroying cities in
minutes, and both knew the other

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had them.
Life went on inside this strange

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arrangement.
People fell in love, raised

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children, wrote letters, tended
gardens.

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The possibility of annihilation
lived quietly in the margins,

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acknowledged and set aside so
that ordinary life could

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continue at all.
Cuba sat in the middle of this

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long silence, 90 miles from the
coast of Florida.

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The island had in 1959 come
under the leadership of Fidel

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Castro, whose revolution had
turned away from the United

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States and toward the Soviet
Union for support.

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By 1961, an American backed
attempt to overthrow Castro at

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the Bay of Pigs had failed
humiliatingly and relations had

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hardened further.
What happened next would depend

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on a decision made in Moscow
that few outside the Kremlin had

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any way of anticipating.
In the spring of 1962, Nikita

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Khrushchev made a quiet choice.
He would place intermediate

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ranged nuclear missiles on Cuban
soil.

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Khrushchev was a blunt man,
sometimes theatrical, a former

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coal miner who now ran the
world's largest nuclear arsenal.

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The reasoning behind his
decision was many, layered, and

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we will come to it.
For now, it is enough to notice

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the scale of the gamble.
Missiles launched from Cuba

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could reach Washington or New
York within minutes, too fast

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for any defence to intercept.
It was a move that, if completed

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quietly, would redraw the
balance of power overnight.

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If discovered too soon, it could
tip the world into the very war

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it was meant to prevent.
On the 14th of October 1962, an

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American U2 reconnaissance plane
flew high over western Cuba and

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photographed what its pilots
could barely believe.

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The next day in Washington,
analysts studying the grainy

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images recognized the
unmistakable shapes of missile

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launch sites under construction.
The photographs reached

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President Kennedy's desk on the
16th.

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What followed came to be known
as the 13 Days.

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A crisis so dangerous that those
who lived through it on both

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sides would spend the rest of
their lives trying to understand

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what they had survived.
And its most dangerous moments,

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as we will see, would happen in
places no one was watching at

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all.
The American version of this

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story is often told as a
righteous response.

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The Soviet Union had done
something provocative, and

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President Kennedy had to answer.
That framing is not wrong, but

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it is incomplete, and tonight we
will try to hold both sides of

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the table at once.
From Khrushchev's perspective,

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the world looked rather
different.

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American missiles had already
been quietly installed in Turkey

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and in Italy, positioned just
across the border from the

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Soviet Union and aimed at Soviet
cities.

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To Khrushchev, the Americans had
already done what he was only

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now attempting.
Khrushchev himself was a

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complicated figure, easy to
caricature and harder to

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understand.
He had survived Stalin, which

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required both luck and a
particular kind of cunning.

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He was emotional, sometimes
impulsive, and capable of both

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warmth and sudden anger.
And he carried within him the

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memory of a Soviet Union still
recovering from the devastation

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of the Second World War.
There was more beneath the

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calculation.
The Soviet Union, despite

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appearances, was militarily
weaker than most Americans

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believed.
Its long range missile force was

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smaller and less reliable than
the public imagined, and

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Khrushchev knew it.
Placing missiles in Cuba would

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narrow that gap quickly.
It would also, he hoped, protect

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Cuba itself, which he genuinely
believed the United States was

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preparing to invade for a second
time.

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It was a move of weakness
disguised as boldness, and of

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principle tangled with bluff.
He believed, perhaps too easily,

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that he could complete the
deployment before the Americans

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noticed.
He believed the missiles could

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be installed and then revealed,
and only then would serious

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negotiation begin.
He miscalculated in both

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regards.
The U2 photographs arrived

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earlier than he expected, and
when Kennedy did discover the

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missiles, his response was more
forceful than Khrushchev had

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anticipated. 2 proud men, each
misreading the other, had

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brought the world to a threshold
neither had truly intended to

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cross.
Kennedy, for his part, was a

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young president still shaped by
the failure of the Bay of Pigs.

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He had been embarrassed, then
humbled, and was now determined

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not to appear weak.
His advisers were divided, some

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urging an immediate strike on
the missile sites, others

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counselling patience.
This is one of the unsettling

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lessons of history.
Great catastrophes do not always

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require great villains.
Sometimes they require only

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ordinary leaders, each reasoning
inside their own frame,

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misjudging the signals of the
other.

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For 13 days, the world would
hang in that misreading.

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Presidents would meet in
Washington and in Moscow.

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Ships would draw closer to one
another across the Atlantic.

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And as we will see, the closest
the world came to nuclear war

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during those 13 days was not in
a board room or a situation

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room.
It was underwater in the dark

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beneath the surface of the
Sargasso Sea.

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While the world's attention
turned to Cuba itself, something

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else was happening in the waters
around it. 4 Soviet diesel

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electric submarines were making
their way slowly across the

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Atlantic toward the Caribbean.
They had left their base at SATA

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Bay on the Kola Peninsula in the
Soviet Arctic several weeks

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before.
These were Foxtrot class

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submarines, designated B4B36B59
and B130.

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They had been built for cold
northern waters and were

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unsuited to the warm tropical
seas they were now approaching.

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The crews did not yet know how
punishing that mismatch would

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become.
The journey S took them through

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some of the roughest waters in
the Atlantic.

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Autumn storms battered the
submarines as they moved,

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forcing them to dive often and
to surface only at night to

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recharge their batteries
undercover of darkness.

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For men already far from home,
the Atlantic in October was not

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a gentle companion.
Each submarine carried the usual

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armament of torpedoes and
defensive weapons, but aboard

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each of them, hidden within that
arsenal, was a single nuclear

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torpedo.
Its warhead was roughly

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equivalent in destructive power
to the bomb that had destroyed

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Hiroshima.
The Americans did not know this

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for weeks.
Almost no one outside the

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highest levels of the Soviet
Navy knew the full details of

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what was being sent into the
Caribbean.

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Even within the submarines, the
nuclear weapons were kept under

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strict and unusual controls.
And yet the rules for their use

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were dangerously ambiguous.
A nuclear torpedo could be fired

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only with the agreement of
specific officers aboard under

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specific conditions, but those
conditions themselves were open

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to interpretation.
In the confusion of a crisis,

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interpretation is a fragile
thing.

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Communication between Moscow and
the submarines was also far more

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limited than one might imagine.
Radio signals did not travel

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well underwater, so a submerged
vessel had to rise toward the

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surface to receive orders.
And rising toward the surface in

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hostile waters was the one thing
the submarines most wished to

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avoid.
The submarines were meant to

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escort a flotilla of Soviet
cargo ships, bringing equipment

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and personnel to Cuba.
Their presence was intended to

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be invisible, a silent insurance
policy beneath the waves. the

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United States was not to know
they were there until, if ever

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it mattered.
What no one in Moscow had fully

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accounted for was the experience
of being hunted.

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American destroyers, once
alerted to unknown submarines,

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would begin to search the
Atlantic systematically, and

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when they found the Soviets,
they would use methods that, at

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depth, could be mistaken for
something far more dangerous

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than a signal.
The quietest chapter of the

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Cuban Missile Crisis was
beginning.

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It would not be written on
television screens or in Oval

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Office recordings.
It would be written in the

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rolling dark of the Sargasso
Sea, where few on Earth had any

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way of knowing what was
happening at all.

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Of the four submarines, it is
B59 that will carry us furthest

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into this story.
Commanded by Captain Valentine

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Savitsky, it was a vessel like
the others, roughly 300 feet

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long, with a crew of around 78
men packed into its narrow

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corridors.
Built for the cold.

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Sent to the tropics, it had been
at sea for weeks by the time it

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approached Cuban waters.
Inside, conditions had become

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close to unbearable.
The air temperature in the

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engine rooms rose above 50°C,
hot enough that men worked in

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shifts of minutes rather than
hours.

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The cooling systems, overwhelmed
by the warm sea water, could not

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do what they had been designed
to do.

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Fresh water was rationed to a
few sips a day.

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Carbon dioxide levels rose
steadily, thickening the air

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until thought itself grew slow.
Crewmen fainted at their

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stations, and some began to
experience the blurred edges of

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hallucination.
Savitsky himself was an

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experienced captain, known among
his men as disciplined and fair.

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But he had been at sea for weeks
in conditions that would strain

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00:18:58,040 --> 00:19:01,120
any commander.
And the weight of command in a

232
00:19:01,120 --> 00:19:05,880
submarine is a particular and
lonely kind of weight.

233
00:19:06,720 --> 00:19:11,320
Everything depends on the
captain, and the captain in turn

234
00:19:11,320 --> 00:19:16,720
depends on information he may
not have, and there was silence

235
00:19:17,080 --> 00:19:22,120
for days.
B 59 had been unable to receive

236
00:19:22,120 --> 00:19:27,800
clear transmissions from Moscow.
The submarine carried radios

237
00:19:27,800 --> 00:19:32,200
meant for Soviet naval
frequencies, and long range

238
00:19:32,200 --> 00:19:37,520
communication in the Atlantic
had grown unreliable at depth.

239
00:19:37,960 --> 00:19:43,040
Cut off from command, Savitsky
and his officers relied on what

240
00:19:43,040 --> 00:19:45,200
they could pick up from the
surface.

241
00:19:45,920 --> 00:19:51,040
They tried, when safely
possible, to tune to American

242
00:19:51,040 --> 00:19:57,240
commercial radio broadcasts.
This was their only window on a

243
00:19:57,240 --> 00:20:00,760
world that might already have
moved past them.

244
00:20:01,120 --> 00:20:07,600
On October 27th, 1962, the
Americans located B 59.

245
00:20:08,560 --> 00:20:13,000
A group of United States Navy
destroyers, part of the

246
00:20:13,000 --> 00:20:17,880
quarantine line around Cuba,
detected the submarine beneath

247
00:20:17,880 --> 00:20:20,840
them.
They began the process of

248
00:20:20,840 --> 00:20:24,760
forcing it to surface.
The American fleet had grown

249
00:20:24,760 --> 00:20:27,680
patient and persistent in recent
days.

250
00:20:28,280 --> 00:20:33,640
The destroyers coordinated their
movements above B 59, turning

251
00:20:33,640 --> 00:20:40,200
the water overhead into a kind
of hunting net for a submarine,

252
00:20:40,200 --> 00:20:45,880
trying to remain invisible.
The effect was disorienting and

253
00:20:45,960 --> 00:20:49,640
inescapable.
They did this by dropping what

254
00:20:49,640 --> 00:20:52,520
were called practice depth
charges.

255
00:20:53,320 --> 00:20:57,680
These were small explosive
devices, not intended to destroy

256
00:20:57,680 --> 00:21:02,720
a submarine, but to signal to it
that it had been found and

257
00:21:02,720 --> 00:21:06,120
should come up.
The Americans believed the

258
00:21:06,120 --> 00:21:12,320
message was perfectly clear.
Inside B 59, the message was not

259
00:21:12,320 --> 00:21:16,200
clear at all.
The charges struck the hull with

260
00:21:16,200 --> 00:21:21,280
concussive force, shaking the
interior and throwing men

261
00:21:21,280 --> 00:21:26,040
against bulkheads.
To the exhausted, overheated

262
00:21:26,040 --> 00:21:29,280
crew, it did not feel like a
signal.

263
00:21:29,920 --> 00:21:32,880
It felt like the beginning of a
war.

264
00:21:33,200 --> 00:21:38,960
Inside the pressure hull of B59,
time had begun to feel strange.

265
00:21:39,520 --> 00:21:44,760
The detonations overhead came in
irregular waves, each one

266
00:21:44,760 --> 00:21:49,280
shaking dust from seams and
making the lights flicker.

267
00:21:50,120 --> 00:21:54,560
For men whose blood was already
thick with carbon dioxide and

268
00:21:54,560 --> 00:22:00,880
heat, each blast seemed to
arrive not as a message, but as

269
00:22:00,880 --> 00:22:05,240
an answer to a question they had
not known to ask.

270
00:22:05,560 --> 00:22:10,880
The interior of the submarine
was a narrow steel world lit by

271
00:22:10,880 --> 00:22:16,720
dim red bulbs, the usual color
used to preserve a cruised night

272
00:22:16,720 --> 00:22:21,040
vision.
In that red shadow, light faces

273
00:22:21,040 --> 00:22:26,160
looked tired and uncertain.
Every sound carried and every

274
00:22:26,160 --> 00:22:30,440
tremor in the hall felt like
something larger than it was.

275
00:22:30,800 --> 00:22:34,360
Captain Savitsky did what any
captain would do in such a

276
00:22:34,360 --> 00:22:37,840
moment, he reasoned from the
evidence he had.

277
00:22:38,840 --> 00:22:43,240
He had been out of radio contact
with Moscow for days.

278
00:22:43,720 --> 00:22:47,800
He had no way to confirm whether
war had broken out on the

279
00:22:47,800 --> 00:22:52,960
surface, and now explosions were
striking his hull.

280
00:22:53,320 --> 00:22:58,320
From his perspective, the
simplest explanation was also

281
00:22:58,560 --> 00:23:03,040
the most alarming.
If war had begun while they were

282
00:23:03,040 --> 00:23:07,760
submerged, the Americans would
already be hunting Soviet

283
00:23:07,760 --> 00:23:11,840
vessels.
Depth charges from destroyers

284
00:23:12,080 --> 00:23:15,360
would be exactly what one would
expect.

285
00:23:15,760 --> 00:23:19,680
He could not know that the
charges were small, practice

286
00:23:19,680 --> 00:23:23,120
sized devices.
He could not know that the

287
00:23:23,120 --> 00:23:28,360
Americans were signaling, not
attacking from inside a

288
00:23:28,360 --> 00:23:32,720
submarine.
An explosion is an explosion.

289
00:23:33,120 --> 00:23:38,440
Savitsky made a decision.
According to the accounts later

290
00:23:38,440 --> 00:23:43,200
given by surviving crew members,
he ordered his officers to

291
00:23:43,200 --> 00:23:46,320
prepare the special weapon for
use.

292
00:23:46,600 --> 00:23:51,960
That weapon was the nuclear
torpedo, the one the Americans

293
00:23:51,960 --> 00:23:56,240
did not know existed.
By the testimony of those who

294
00:23:56,240 --> 00:23:59,440
were there.
He spoke the kind of words a man

295
00:23:59,440 --> 00:24:03,120
speaks when he has accepted
something terrible.

296
00:24:03,720 --> 00:24:09,320
He had nearly decided that B 59
would fire its nuclear torpedo

297
00:24:09,320 --> 00:24:11,400
at the American fleet above
them.

298
00:24:12,200 --> 00:24:17,760
He believed sincerely and almost
certainly incorrectly, that the

299
00:24:17,760 --> 00:24:23,040
war had already begun.
It is worth pausing here to feel

300
00:24:23,040 --> 00:24:28,000
the shape of that moment.
A Soviet submarine cut off from

301
00:24:28,000 --> 00:24:33,680
its command in hostile waters
under what felt like direct

302
00:24:33,680 --> 00:24:39,520
attack, a captain reaching A
conclusion any other captain in

303
00:24:39,520 --> 00:24:42,520
his place might also have
reached.

304
00:24:42,880 --> 00:24:47,600
The torpedo itself was capable
of vaporizing an American

305
00:24:47,600 --> 00:24:53,680
destroyer, and everyone aborted.
The detonation would almost

306
00:24:53,680 --> 00:24:58,440
certainly have been interpreted
in Washington as a Soviet first

307
00:24:58,440 --> 00:25:02,440
strike.
The American retaliation would

308
00:25:02,440 --> 00:25:08,560
have been immediate, and general
historians who later studied the

309
00:25:08,560 --> 00:25:12,040
moment have struggled to
describe it without drifting

310
00:25:12,040 --> 00:25:16,360
toward melodrama.
The closest approximation is

311
00:25:16,360 --> 00:25:20,280
something like this.
The chain reaction that would

312
00:25:20,280 --> 00:25:25,600
have followed a single nuclear
torpedo launched by a single

313
00:25:25,600 --> 00:25:29,800
submarine crew acting on
incomplete information, would

314
00:25:29,800 --> 00:25:32,800
likely have entered the world we
now inhabit.

315
00:25:33,120 --> 00:25:37,520
And yet the torpedo had not yet
been fired.

316
00:25:37,880 --> 00:25:44,440
The order had been given, but
one last step remained in the

317
00:25:44,440 --> 00:25:48,200
quiet protocol of Soviet naval
command.

318
00:25:48,640 --> 00:25:52,720
It required more than a single
man to end the world.

319
00:25:53,120 --> 00:25:57,840
Soviet nuclear weapons aboard
submarines were not governed by

320
00:25:57,840 --> 00:26:02,080
a single man's authority.
They were governed by a small

321
00:26:02,080 --> 00:26:07,240
circle of officers, and all the
officers of that circle had to

322
00:26:07,240 --> 00:26:13,160
agree on B59.
That circle consisted of three

323
00:26:13,160 --> 00:26:16,800
men.
The protocol had been carefully

324
00:26:16,800 --> 00:26:20,520
designed.
It reflected at the highest

325
00:26:20,520 --> 00:26:25,360
levels of Soviet command and
understanding that nuclear

326
00:26:25,360 --> 00:26:29,280
weapons were different in kind
from every other weapon.

327
00:26:30,120 --> 00:26:35,120
No one man, however senior,
should be able to use them

328
00:26:35,120 --> 00:26:39,040
alone.
The first was Captain Valentin

329
00:26:39,040 --> 00:26:42,320
Savitsky, who had already
decided.

330
00:26:42,520 --> 00:26:48,440
The second was Ivan Maslenkov,
the submarine's political

331
00:26:48,440 --> 00:26:52,320
officer, whose role was to
represent the Communist Party

332
00:26:52,320 --> 00:26:57,280
within the vessel and to share
in decisions of this magnitude.

333
00:26:58,080 --> 00:27:03,000
He too was ready.
Under ordinary circumstances,

334
00:27:03,280 --> 00:27:06,960
the agreement of those two would
have been enough.

335
00:27:07,800 --> 00:27:12,600
A submarine at sea, sealed
within its own command, would

336
00:27:12,600 --> 00:27:17,160
have proceeded on the authority
of its captain and its political

337
00:27:17,160 --> 00:27:22,680
officer.
But B 59 was not sailing under

338
00:27:22,680 --> 00:27:26,880
ordinary circumstances.
The third man in the circle was

339
00:27:26,880 --> 00:27:33,920
not a member of B59's own crew.
He was Vassili Arkipov, the

340
00:27:33,920 --> 00:27:38,240
chief of staff of the entire
submarine flotilla, who happened

341
00:27:38,240 --> 00:27:42,520
to be aboard this particular
vessel as part of his duties

342
00:27:42,720 --> 00:27:48,440
supervising all four submarines.
His presence was almost

343
00:27:48,440 --> 00:27:53,160
accidental, and its consequences
would be enormous.

344
00:27:53,520 --> 00:27:59,320
Because Arkapov held flotilla
rank, his authority within the

345
00:27:59,320 --> 00:28:03,640
nuclear decision equaled
Savitsky's own.

346
00:28:04,560 --> 00:28:10,200
To fire the torpedo, all three
officers would have to agree.

347
00:28:10,840 --> 00:28:16,080
Two had one had not.
Arkhipov said no.

348
00:28:16,320 --> 00:28:21,320
What happened next was not a
shouted confrontation.

349
00:28:22,200 --> 00:28:27,800
By the accounts that survive, it
was a sustained argument carried

350
00:28:27,800 --> 00:28:32,640
out in the narrow, red lit
interior of the submarine among

351
00:28:32,640 --> 00:28:37,120
men who had known one another
for weeks of shared suffering.

352
00:28:38,160 --> 00:28:43,520
Arkapov did not deny that they
were under attack, but he did

353
00:28:43,520 --> 00:28:46,200
not believe it was wise to
assume so.

354
00:28:46,920 --> 00:28:52,840
He pressed for restraint, for
surfacing first, for finding out

355
00:28:52,920 --> 00:28:56,600
what was happening before
turning a possible

356
00:28:56,600 --> 00:29:00,800
miscommunication into a certain
catastrophe.

357
00:29:01,880 --> 00:29:06,520
In the close air of that
submarine, he held his ground.

358
00:29:06,880 --> 00:29:11,000
The argument is said to have
lasted some time.

359
00:29:11,720 --> 00:29:15,960
In the years that followed, when
fragments of the story began to

360
00:29:15,960 --> 00:29:20,640
emerge, different crew members
remembered the exact words

361
00:29:20,640 --> 00:29:24,040
differently.
What they agreed on was the

362
00:29:24,040 --> 00:29:28,240
shape of it.
One man holding out against two

363
00:29:28,720 --> 00:29:33,560
in a setting where fear and
exhaustion pushed toward the

364
00:29:33,680 --> 00:29:38,560
opposite conclusion, Savitsky
was, by several accounts,

365
00:29:39,160 --> 00:29:43,120
furious.
He was the captain, the man

366
00:29:43,120 --> 00:29:47,960
responsible for his ship and his
crew, and he had reached his

367
00:29:47,960 --> 00:29:51,360
conclusion.
But the protocol was the

368
00:29:51,360 --> 00:29:54,840
protocol, and the protocol
required consent.

369
00:29:55,040 --> 00:30:00,200
He could not obtain.
In the end, Arkapov's refusal

370
00:30:00,760 --> 00:30:06,200
was decisive.
The nuclear torpedo was not

371
00:30:06,200 --> 00:30:11,320
fired.
B59 surfaced instead into the

372
00:30:11,320 --> 00:30:16,440
evening air of the Atlantic,
where American destroyers waited

373
00:30:16,720 --> 00:30:20,840
not with missiles but with
signaling lamps.

374
00:30:21,200 --> 00:30:25,440
It is tempting, in retrospect,
to imagine that the man who

375
00:30:25,440 --> 00:30:30,080
prevented a nuclear exchange
must have been marked by fate,

376
00:30:30,680 --> 00:30:35,320
singled out by some clear
quality that had long prepared

377
00:30:35,320 --> 00:30:38,200
him.
For the moment, the truth is

378
00:30:38,200 --> 00:30:42,880
quieter.
Vassili Alexandrovichakopov was,

379
00:30:43,160 --> 00:30:49,320
before October of 1962, an
ordinary Soviet naval officer

380
00:30:49,760 --> 00:30:55,120
with an ordinary career.
He had been born in 1926 in a

381
00:30:55,120 --> 00:31:00,120
small village outside Moscow
into a peasant family.

382
00:31:01,160 --> 00:31:05,840
He entered Naval Service during
the Second World War, a young

383
00:31:05,840 --> 00:31:10,920
man shaped by a country that had
lost more than 20 million of its

384
00:31:10,920 --> 00:31:16,600
own in a single conflict.
He understood from the beginning

385
00:31:16,600 --> 00:31:21,200
of his adult life what the
consequences of war actually

386
00:31:21,200 --> 00:31:26,120
looked like.
In 1961, a year before the Cuban

387
00:31:26,120 --> 00:31:30,880
Missile Crisis, Arkapov had
already survived one of the

388
00:31:30,880 --> 00:31:33,840
worst moments in Soviet naval
history.

389
00:31:34,840 --> 00:31:40,200
He had been serving aboard the
submarine K19A new nuclear

390
00:31:40,200 --> 00:31:44,760
vessel, when it suffered A
catastrophic reactor failure at

391
00:31:44,760 --> 00:31:48,080
sea.
The cooling system broke down

392
00:31:48,520 --> 00:31:50,920
and the reactor threatened to
melt.

393
00:31:51,360 --> 00:31:56,280
To save the submarine and the
hundreds of crew aboard, a small

394
00:31:56,280 --> 00:32:01,480
team of engineers had to enter
the reactor compartment and rig

395
00:32:01,480 --> 00:32:04,160
an emergency cooling system by
hand.

396
00:32:05,040 --> 00:32:09,240
They did this knowing that the
radiation would kill them.

397
00:32:09,680 --> 00:32:13,160
And it did.
All 22 members of the

398
00:32:13,160 --> 00:32:18,000
engineering team died, most
within weeks.

399
00:32:18,400 --> 00:32:23,480
Arkapov himself was dosed with
significant radiation that day,

400
00:32:23,920 --> 00:32:28,640
though he survived.
He saw at close range what it

401
00:32:28,640 --> 00:32:31,880
looked like when men died for a
reactor.

402
00:32:32,480 --> 00:32:36,680
He saw it in the faces of the
engineers who volunteered to

403
00:32:36,720 --> 00:32:40,520
enter a chamber from which no
one returned healthy.

404
00:32:40,840 --> 00:32:45,680
In the months after K-19,
Arkipov's reputation among

405
00:32:45,680 --> 00:32:48,720
fellow officers deepened
quietly.

406
00:32:49,600 --> 00:32:54,040
He was known as a man who had
not panicked, who had helped

407
00:32:54,040 --> 00:32:58,840
maintain order aboard A vessel
that might easily have dissolved

408
00:32:58,840 --> 00:33:02,840
into fear.
The crew had lived, in part

409
00:33:03,240 --> 00:33:07,880
because their officers had
refused to give way to terror.

410
00:33:08,160 --> 00:33:11,760
One can only guess how such an
experience shaped him.

411
00:33:12,800 --> 00:33:17,360
Perhaps it taught him caution.
Perhaps it taught him what the

412
00:33:17,360 --> 00:33:22,840
machinery of nuclear fire
actually does to a human body up

413
00:33:22,840 --> 00:33:26,040
close, rather than as an
abstraction.

414
00:33:26,360 --> 00:33:31,080
Whatever the reasoning, by the
time he stood in the close air

415
00:33:31,080 --> 00:33:36,000
of B59 a year later arguing
against the launch of a nuclear

416
00:33:36,000 --> 00:33:39,840
torpedo, he was not reasoning
from theory.

417
00:33:40,560 --> 00:33:45,800
He was reasoning from memory.
He knew, in a way few others in

418
00:33:45,800 --> 00:33:50,680
that submarine could know, what
was actually at stake.

419
00:33:51,160 --> 00:33:57,720
He was, by all accounts, a quiet
man, not charismatic, not

420
00:33:57,720 --> 00:34:02,600
theatrical, not the kind of
officer who draws attention in a

421
00:34:02,600 --> 00:34:07,160
crowded room.
And yet, on the evening of

422
00:34:07,160 --> 00:34:13,840
October 27th, 1962, his
quietness became one of the most

423
00:34:13,840 --> 00:34:16,800
important acts of restraint in
human history.

424
00:34:17,159 --> 00:34:21,800
He would go on to live a long
and unremarkable career in the

425
00:34:21,800 --> 00:34:28,199
Soviet Navy, rising to the rank
of Vice Admiral before retiring

426
00:34:28,520 --> 00:34:32,760
in the 1980s.
He rarely spoke about what

427
00:34:32,760 --> 00:34:37,239
happened aboard B59.
For most of his life.

428
00:34:37,560 --> 00:34:42,280
Almost no one outside his
immediate circle knew what he

429
00:34:42,280 --> 00:34:45,320
had done.
While these events unfolded

430
00:34:45,320 --> 00:34:50,400
beneath the Atlantic, another
quiet catastrophe was nearly

431
00:34:50,400 --> 00:34:56,840
arriving above it.
October 27th, 1962 came to be

432
00:34:56,840 --> 00:35:01,960
called Black Saturday.
It was the day the Cuban Missile

433
00:35:01,960 --> 00:35:06,640
Crisis reached its sharpest edge
on both sides.

434
00:35:07,000 --> 00:35:12,000
Early that morning, an American
U2 reconnaissance plane flew

435
00:35:12,000 --> 00:35:15,640
over Cuba on a standard
photographic mission.

436
00:35:16,640 --> 00:35:21,360
The pilot was Rudolph Anderson,
a careful and experienced

437
00:35:21,360 --> 00:35:25,200
officer.
He was a father and a husband,

438
00:35:25,760 --> 00:35:30,200
and he was about to become the
only American killed in combat

439
00:35:30,600 --> 00:35:34,440
during the crisis.
Anderson had flown such missions

440
00:35:34,440 --> 00:35:38,840
before, including several of
those that had produced the

441
00:35:38,840 --> 00:35:42,240
original images of the missile
sites.

442
00:35:43,200 --> 00:35:47,200
He was known for his skill and
for his calm.

443
00:35:48,240 --> 00:35:53,360
His colleagues would later
remember how quietly he carried

444
00:35:53,360 --> 00:35:56,040
the weight of what he had helped
discover.

445
00:35:56,360 --> 00:36:01,320
Soviet forces on the island,
acting on local initiative and

446
00:36:01,320 --> 00:36:06,600
not on Khrushchev's explicit
orders, fired a surface to air

447
00:36:06,600 --> 00:36:11,160
missile at the U2.
Anderson's plane broke apart in

448
00:36:11,160 --> 00:36:15,280
the upper atmosphere.
His death reached Washington

449
00:36:15,640 --> 00:36:19,760
within hours.
Inside the Kennedy White House,

450
00:36:20,160 --> 00:36:23,880
the reaction was immediate and
grave.

451
00:36:24,840 --> 00:36:28,840
The ex com, the committee of
senior advisers handling the

452
00:36:28,840 --> 00:36:34,200
crisis, had been warning for
days that any American aircraft

453
00:36:34,200 --> 00:36:40,120
lost would mean retaliation.
The standing plan had been to

454
00:36:40,120 --> 00:36:43,240
strike the Cuban missile sites
in return.

455
00:36:43,600 --> 00:36:48,080
Kennedy hesitated.
He knew that if he followed the

456
00:36:48,080 --> 00:36:52,840
plan, he would almost certainly
begin the escalation that led to

457
00:36:52,840 --> 00:36:57,200
war.
He also knew that if he did not,

458
00:36:57,680 --> 00:37:03,480
he risked being seen as weak and
of losing control of the crisis.

459
00:37:03,800 --> 00:37:09,160
While he hesitated, his brother
Robert Kennedy was working

460
00:37:09,160 --> 00:37:14,320
through quieter channels.
A series of back door

461
00:37:14,320 --> 00:37:18,520
conversations had been under way
between American and Soviet

462
00:37:18,520 --> 00:37:23,400
intermediaries in Washington,
trying to find a formula both

463
00:37:23,400 --> 00:37:28,960
sides could accept.
That evening, Robert Kennedy met

464
00:37:28,960 --> 00:37:32,200
with the Soviet ambassador and
offered one.

465
00:37:32,600 --> 00:37:37,680
The offer was twofold.
The Soviet missiles would be

466
00:37:37,680 --> 00:37:43,480
removed from Cuba and in return
the United States would pledge

467
00:37:43,480 --> 00:37:48,840
not to invade the island.
A second part of the deal, not

468
00:37:48,840 --> 00:37:53,760
made public at the time, was
that American missiles in Turkey

469
00:37:54,200 --> 00:37:56,880
would also eventually be
withdrawn.

470
00:37:57,200 --> 00:38:02,560
What is striking in hindsight is
how much of this hinged on

471
00:38:02,560 --> 00:38:06,960
individual restraint.
Kennedy could have ordered the

472
00:38:06,960 --> 00:38:10,760
air strikes his advisors were
urging him to.

473
00:38:11,360 --> 00:38:16,160
The commanders in the field were
in many cases fully ready.

474
00:38:16,520 --> 00:38:22,440
None of this reached Savitsky or
Arkapov in B59.

475
00:38:23,080 --> 00:38:25,680
None of it reached Rudolf
Anderson's family.

476
00:38:25,680 --> 00:38:31,280
Yet for a stretch of hours that
evening, neither the American

477
00:38:31,280 --> 00:38:36,720
president nor the Soviet
premier, nor any officer in any

478
00:38:36,720 --> 00:38:40,760
submarine knew for certain
whether the world had already

479
00:38:40,760 --> 00:38:45,600
passed the point of return.
The deal, when it came, came

480
00:38:45,600 --> 00:38:49,440
quietly.
It would be accepted in Moscow

481
00:38:49,440 --> 00:38:53,120
the following morning.
It would be announced to the

482
00:38:53,120 --> 00:38:57,280
world in phrases that carefully
understated how close the

483
00:38:57,280 --> 00:39:02,240
alternative had been.
This is perhaps the strangest

484
00:39:02,240 --> 00:39:09,320
part of the whole story.
On the evening of October 27th,

485
00:39:09,800 --> 00:39:13,800
the most powerful people on
earth were operating almost

486
00:39:13,800 --> 00:39:17,520
blind.
Each side held pieces of

487
00:39:17,520 --> 00:39:22,720
information the other lacked,
and neither side knew how little

488
00:39:22,720 --> 00:39:25,960
the other knew.
Kennedy did not know that there

489
00:39:25,960 --> 00:39:31,200
were Soviet submarines beneath
his quarantine line carrying

490
00:39:31,200 --> 00:39:36,080
nuclear torpedoes.
American intelligence had

491
00:39:36,080 --> 00:39:40,120
identified the surface fleet and
tracked some of the submarines,

492
00:39:40,720 --> 00:39:44,520
but the presence of nuclear
weapons aboard was not

493
00:39:44,520 --> 00:39:48,720
understood.
If it had been, the American

494
00:39:48,720 --> 00:39:54,440
response to B59's depth charging
might have been very different.

495
00:39:54,840 --> 00:39:59,840
Khrushchev did not know that one
of his own submarine captains

496
00:40:00,120 --> 00:40:05,000
had nearly launched a nuclear
torpedo at an American

497
00:40:05,000 --> 00:40:09,760
destroyer.
The radio silence that cut B 59

498
00:40:09,760 --> 00:40:14,360
off from Moscow cut Moscow off
from B59 as well.

499
00:40:15,280 --> 00:40:19,280
Decisions were being made in the
depths that no one in the

500
00:40:19,280 --> 00:40:23,160
Kremlin could influence.
Savitsky did not know that

501
00:40:23,320 --> 00:40:29,400
Kennedy and Khrushchev were, at
that very hour, edging toward a

502
00:40:29,400 --> 00:40:33,120
settlement.
He did not know that the war he

503
00:40:33,120 --> 00:40:38,360
believed had started had not, in
fact, started at all.

504
00:40:39,200 --> 00:40:42,920
He was acting on the best
information available to him,

505
00:40:43,400 --> 00:40:47,120
and that information was
dangerously incomplete.

506
00:40:47,480 --> 00:40:52,240
Arkapov did not know that his
refusal would one day be

507
00:40:52,240 --> 00:40:55,560
remembered.
He was doing what he believed

508
00:40:55,560 --> 00:41:00,040
was right, not what he believed
was historic.

509
00:41:00,920 --> 00:41:05,680
Most pivotal moments in history
are experienced this way,

510
00:41:06,000 --> 00:41:09,520
without trumpets, without
certainty of their own

511
00:41:09,520 --> 00:41:12,880
importance.
Even the depth charge crews on

512
00:41:12,880 --> 00:41:16,960
the American destroyers did not
know what they were doing.

513
00:41:17,680 --> 00:41:21,320
They believed they were
performing a routine signaling

514
00:41:21,320 --> 00:41:25,200
operation.
They had no idea that the sound

515
00:41:25,200 --> 00:41:30,480
of their small explosions was
being interpreted 10 fathoms

516
00:41:30,480 --> 00:41:34,640
below, as the opening of the
Third World War.

517
00:41:34,960 --> 00:41:38,400
This is the humbling
architecture of the Cuban

518
00:41:38,400 --> 00:41:41,640
Missile Crisis and of many
crises.

519
00:41:41,640 --> 00:41:47,640
Since the people at the edge of
catastrophe are not usually

520
00:41:47,640 --> 00:41:51,120
working with complete
information, they are working

521
00:41:51,120 --> 00:41:56,080
with fragments under pressure,
with exhaustion pressing down on

522
00:41:56,080 --> 00:42:00,880
them and fear quietly shaping
every judgment they make.

523
00:42:01,320 --> 00:42:06,240
There is a strange lesson buried
here about how civilizations

524
00:42:06,240 --> 00:42:10,520
actually survive.
The grand systems matter, of

525
00:42:10,520 --> 00:42:13,720
course.
Treaties matter, and diplomacy

526
00:42:13,720 --> 00:42:18,840
matters, and leaders matter.
But in the deepest moments, the

527
00:42:18,840 --> 00:42:22,600
moments that only a handful of
people will ever know were

528
00:42:22,600 --> 00:42:26,480
moments at all.
The world sometimes rests on a

529
00:42:26,480 --> 00:42:32,760
single person choosing not to
act on the steadiness of a quiet

530
00:42:32,760 --> 00:42:38,640
officer, or a tired pilot, or an
operator at a monitoring station

531
00:42:38,840 --> 00:42:43,000
who looks at an alarm and
decides against procedure, to

532
00:42:43,000 --> 00:42:50,160
wait to ask again, and to refuse
for a little longer, to be sure.

533
00:42:50,520 --> 00:42:55,720
And yet, somehow, against all of
this, the world did not end.

534
00:42:56,560 --> 00:43:01,840
Not because the system was well
designed, and not because the

535
00:43:01,840 --> 00:43:06,640
leaders were wise.
It did not end because specific

536
00:43:06,640 --> 00:43:12,520
human beings, in specific
moments, chose the quieter path.

537
00:43:12,960 --> 00:43:18,960
On the morning of October 28th,
1962, Nikita Khrushchev

538
00:43:19,280 --> 00:43:22,680
addressed the Soviet Union by
radio.

539
00:43:23,400 --> 00:43:27,680
He announced that Soviet
missiles would be dismantled and

540
00:43:27,680 --> 00:43:32,280
withdrawn from Cuba.
For millions of people

541
00:43:32,280 --> 00:43:38,480
listening, it was the first
indication that the crisis was

542
00:43:38,480 --> 00:43:42,000
ending.
In Washington, the message was

543
00:43:42,000 --> 00:43:46,240
received with quiet relief
rather than triumph.

544
00:43:47,320 --> 00:43:51,880
The Kennedy administration had
spent the previous night

545
00:43:52,200 --> 00:43:56,600
preparing for both
possibilities, and the air of

546
00:43:56,600 --> 00:44:00,040
the White House was still thick
with exhaustion.

547
00:44:01,080 --> 00:44:05,200
Kennedy, according to those who
were present, asked to be left

548
00:44:05,200 --> 00:44:08,640
alone for a little while after
the news arrived.

549
00:44:09,040 --> 00:44:12,680
The public version of the deal
was straightforward.

550
00:44:13,160 --> 00:44:18,000
Khrushchev would remove the
missiles from Cuba. the United

551
00:44:18,000 --> 00:44:21,600
States would pledge not to
invade the island.

552
00:44:22,000 --> 00:44:25,160
The private version was more
complicated.

553
00:44:26,080 --> 00:44:30,680
In his back channel conversation
the previous evening, Robert

554
00:44:30,680 --> 00:44:36,080
Kennedy had also conveyed a
second American commitment.

555
00:44:37,080 --> 00:44:42,040
The 15 Jupiter missiles
stationed in Turkey, aimed at

556
00:44:42,040 --> 00:44:46,400
Soviet cities, would be
withdrawn within a few months.

557
00:44:46,760 --> 00:44:50,240
That second part of the deal was
not announced publicly.

558
00:44:50,920 --> 00:44:55,320
Both sides agreed to keep it
confidential, at least for a

559
00:44:55,320 --> 00:44:59,160
time.
To the American public, it was

560
00:44:59,160 --> 00:45:03,440
important that Khrushchev
appeared to have backed down

561
00:45:03,440 --> 00:45:06,640
first.
This shaped the way the crisis

562
00:45:06,640 --> 00:45:11,840
would be remembered for decades.
In the United States, it was

563
00:45:11,880 --> 00:45:16,920
often described as a clear
victory, a moment when the young

564
00:45:16,920 --> 00:45:21,960
president had stared down the
Soviet premier and prevailed.

565
00:45:22,960 --> 00:45:29,000
The truth, as usual, was more
tangled than the story inside

566
00:45:29,000 --> 00:45:33,040
the Soviet Union.
Khrushchev's position was

567
00:45:33,040 --> 00:45:37,480
damaged by the outcome.
Many in the Politburo believed

568
00:45:37,800 --> 00:45:42,760
he had embarrassed the country,
and within two years he would be

569
00:45:42,760 --> 00:45:48,280
quietly removed from power.
He would spend his last decade

570
00:45:48,280 --> 00:45:53,520
living in a modest Dodger,
dictating his memoirs into a

571
00:45:53,560 --> 00:45:57,840
hidden tape recorder.
The submarines, too, came home.

572
00:45:58,400 --> 00:46:03,440
When B59 surfaced into the
evening air of the Atlantic, the

573
00:46:03,440 --> 00:46:08,640
first thing the exhausted crew
noticed was the coolness of the

574
00:46:08,640 --> 00:46:13,520
breeze on their faces.
Some had not breathed fresh air

575
00:46:13,520 --> 00:46:16,960
in weeks.
The American destroyers above

576
00:46:17,280 --> 00:46:22,320
made no hostile move.
They signalled, they watched and

577
00:46:22,320 --> 00:46:26,840
eventually they withdrew,
allowing B59 to proceed on the

578
00:46:26,840 --> 00:46:29,200
surface.
Neither side.

579
00:46:29,200 --> 00:46:34,000
Sailors in that moment had any
idea how narrowly the water

580
00:46:34,000 --> 00:46:38,160
beneath them had avoided
becoming the site of the first

581
00:46:38,160 --> 00:46:42,240
nuclear weapon used in anger
since 1945.

582
00:46:42,720 --> 00:46:46,600
The submarine travelled slowly
north and eventually made the

583
00:46:46,600 --> 00:46:49,040
long journey back to the Soviet
Arctic.

584
00:46:49,880 --> 00:46:54,640
The crew, exhausted and sick,
returned to a country that had

585
00:46:54,640 --> 00:46:58,680
no idea what they had been
through and that would not know

586
00:46:58,680 --> 00:47:02,520
for decades.
The world, in the weeks that

587
00:47:02,520 --> 00:47:07,040
followed, continued as though
nothing extraordinary had

588
00:47:07,040 --> 00:47:10,480
happened.
Newspapers moved on to other

589
00:47:10,480 --> 00:47:14,080
stories and families planned for
winter.

590
00:47:15,120 --> 00:47:19,560
Only a very small number of
people scattered across

591
00:47:19,560 --> 00:47:24,080
Washington, Moscow and the
Atlantic understood how thin the

592
00:47:24,080 --> 00:47:28,040
thread had been.
What Kennedy and Khrushchev

593
00:47:28,280 --> 00:47:33,160
privately understood about those
13 days was different from what

594
00:47:33,400 --> 00:47:36,520
either government admitted in
public.

595
00:47:37,360 --> 00:47:42,360
Both men had come closer than
they wanted to acknowledge, even

596
00:47:42,360 --> 00:47:46,760
to themselves, to beginning a
war they could not win.

597
00:47:47,720 --> 00:47:51,800
Both carried that knowledge
quietly for the rest of their

598
00:47:51,800 --> 00:47:54,840
lives.
In the weeks after the crisis,

599
00:47:55,040 --> 00:47:59,040
the two leaders began an unusual
correspondence.

600
00:47:59,640 --> 00:48:04,000
Long letters passed between
Washington and Moscow, often

601
00:48:04,000 --> 00:48:07,040
hand delivered by trusted
intermediaries.

602
00:48:07,920 --> 00:48:13,120
The tone of these letters was
different from the posturing of

603
00:48:13,120 --> 00:48:17,560
public statements.
They were at times strangely

604
00:48:17,720 --> 00:48:21,200
personal.
Khrushchev wrote of the weight

605
00:48:21,200 --> 00:48:25,120
that had pressed down on him
during the crisis, of the fear

606
00:48:25,120 --> 00:48:29,920
that one misstep by either side
could have cost everything.

607
00:48:30,880 --> 00:48:36,360
Kennedy, in reply, acknowledged
that he had felt something

608
00:48:36,360 --> 00:48:39,400
similar.
The letters were not public

609
00:48:39,400 --> 00:48:43,360
documents.
They were written by men who had

610
00:48:43,360 --> 00:48:48,080
briefly glimpsed what the end of
the world might look like, and

611
00:48:48,080 --> 00:48:53,360
who no longer quite trusted the
machinery they themselves had

612
00:48:53,360 --> 00:48:57,080
designed.
There was no political benefit

613
00:48:57,080 --> 00:49:02,320
in such candor, which may be why
it was possible at all.

614
00:49:02,600 --> 00:49:05,920
Both men now understood
something they had not quite

615
00:49:05,920 --> 00:49:09,960
grasped before.
The systems they commanded were

616
00:49:09,960 --> 00:49:14,440
larger and more dangerous than
the men who commanded them.

617
00:49:15,160 --> 00:49:21,000
Nuclear weapons, once they
existed, did not belong entirely

618
00:49:21,200 --> 00:49:23,280
to the governments that held
them.

619
00:49:23,640 --> 00:49:27,640
Out of this chastened
understanding came concrete

620
00:49:27,640 --> 00:49:31,680
change.
Within a year, the United States

621
00:49:31,680 --> 00:49:36,480
and the Soviet Union installed a
direct teletype line between the

622
00:49:36,480 --> 00:49:41,160
White House and the Kremlin,
what the public would later call

623
00:49:41,160 --> 00:49:45,840
the hotline.
It was designed so that the two

624
00:49:45,840 --> 00:49:50,840
leaders could reach each other
in minutes rather than in hours

625
00:49:51,320 --> 00:49:56,840
should another crisis arise.
They also negotiated the Limited

626
00:49:56,840 --> 00:50:03,640
Test Ban Treaty, signed in 1963,
which banned nuclear tests in

627
00:50:03,640 --> 00:50:07,880
the atmosphere, in outer space
and underwater.

628
00:50:08,800 --> 00:50:13,560
It was the first formal nuclear
arms control agreement of the

629
00:50:13,560 --> 00:50:18,240
Cold War.
It was modest in its scope but

630
00:50:18,240 --> 00:50:21,680
significant in what it
represented more broadly.

631
00:50:21,960 --> 00:50:27,200
The two leaders began to treat
each other as participants in a

632
00:50:27,200 --> 00:50:31,800
shared predicament.
The language of public rivalry

633
00:50:32,000 --> 00:50:36,600
continued, of course, because
both governments required it.

634
00:50:37,680 --> 00:50:42,400
But privately, A quieter
understanding had taken hold.

635
00:50:42,800 --> 00:50:47,920
Kennedy would not live long
enough to see most of what came

636
00:50:47,920 --> 00:50:52,440
next.
He was assassinated in Dallas in

637
00:50:52,440 --> 00:50:58,280
November of 1963, barely 13
months after the crisis.

638
00:50:59,240 --> 00:51:03,920
Khrushchev, writing his memoirs
years later in forced

639
00:51:03,920 --> 00:51:08,760
retirement, spoke of him with a
surprising warmth.

640
00:51:09,200 --> 00:51:13,000
The two men had stood on the
edge of something together.

641
00:51:13,560 --> 00:51:19,040
They had pulled back together,
and in pulling back, had begun

642
00:51:19,040 --> 00:51:24,560
to understand one another in a
way their public positions had

643
00:51:24,560 --> 00:51:29,520
not allowed.
It was a small thing in the long

644
00:51:29,520 --> 00:51:33,960
arc of the Cold War, and yet it
mattered.

645
00:51:34,320 --> 00:51:39,200
For 30 years, much of what had
happened during the Cuban

646
00:51:39,200 --> 00:51:42,880
missile crisis remained
partially hidden.

647
00:51:43,840 --> 00:51:48,640
Both governments had reasons to
keep certain details quiet.

648
00:51:49,560 --> 00:51:53,760
The public accounts, written by
officials and journalists of the

649
00:51:53,760 --> 00:51:59,040
time, were accurate as far as
they went, but they did not go

650
00:51:59,040 --> 00:52:04,360
as far as the truth.
It was only in the early 90s,

651
00:52:04,680 --> 00:52:08,560
after the Soviet Union had
dissolved, that the fuller

652
00:52:08,560 --> 00:52:14,120
picture began to emerge.
Soviet archives opened at least

653
00:52:14,160 --> 00:52:19,920
partially to outside historians.
Veterans who had been sworn to

654
00:52:19,920 --> 00:52:24,840
silence for their entire careers
began to speak.

655
00:52:25,120 --> 00:52:31,040
In October of 1992, on the 30th
anniversary of the crisis, a

656
00:52:31,040 --> 00:52:34,440
remarkable conference was held
in Havana.

657
00:52:35,320 --> 00:52:40,240
Participants included figures
from all three sides, American,

658
00:52:40,560 --> 00:52:46,400
Soviet, and Cuban.
Among those attending was Robert

659
00:52:46,400 --> 00:52:50,200
McNamara, who had been the
United States Secretary of

660
00:52:50,200 --> 00:52:55,440
Defense during the crisis.
McNamara was now in his 70s.

661
00:52:56,280 --> 00:53:00,560
He had long believed he
understood what had happened in

662
00:53:00,560 --> 00:53:05,800
those 13 days.
He was about to learn that he

663
00:53:05,800 --> 00:53:08,800
did not.
The man who stood up to speak

664
00:53:09,120 --> 00:53:14,520
was a former Soviet naval
officer named Vadim Orlov, who

665
00:53:14,520 --> 00:53:17,880
had served aboard B 59 during
the crisis.

666
00:53:18,120 --> 00:53:22,320
He had spent decades bound by
Soviet secrecy.

667
00:53:23,320 --> 00:53:29,160
Now, in a conference room in
Havana, he was free at last to

668
00:53:29,160 --> 00:53:32,840
describe what he had seen during
the conference.

669
00:53:33,200 --> 00:53:37,880
A former Soviet officer stood up
and described the presence of

670
00:53:37,880 --> 00:53:43,320
nuclear torpedoes aboard the
four Soviet submarines that had

671
00:53:43,320 --> 00:53:49,000
been operating near Cuba.
He spoke of the depth charging

672
00:53:49,000 --> 00:53:55,360
of B59HE spoke of the officers
who had nearly authorized the

673
00:53:55,360 --> 00:53:59,760
launch of a nuclear weapon
against the American fleet.

674
00:54:00,160 --> 00:54:03,920
McNamara sat in silence for a
long moment.

675
00:54:04,680 --> 00:54:09,520
Then, according to those
present, he said something that

676
00:54:09,520 --> 00:54:13,880
has since become one of the most
quoted reflections on the

677
00:54:13,880 --> 00:54:19,080
crisis.
The world, he said, had come far

678
00:54:19,080 --> 00:54:22,920
closer to nuclear war than
anyone on the American side had

679
00:54:22,920 --> 00:54:26,640
ever realized.
He would repeat that thought in

680
00:54:26,640 --> 00:54:31,000
the years that followed in
interviews and documentaries.

681
00:54:31,920 --> 00:54:35,840
He had served as Secretary of
Defense through the crisis and

682
00:54:35,840 --> 00:54:42,200
sat in every important meeting.
And he had not known that was

683
00:54:42,200 --> 00:54:45,520
the particular chill of the
Havana conference.

684
00:54:46,080 --> 00:54:50,960
The American leadership,
watching from Washington, had

685
00:54:50,960 --> 00:54:54,800
believed itself to be in full
command of events.

686
00:54:55,320 --> 00:54:58,520
It had not been.
What had held back the

687
00:54:58,520 --> 00:55:03,960
catastrophe, in the end, was not
the brilliance of policy or the

688
00:55:03,960 --> 00:55:09,640
steadiness of high command.
It was a quiet officer in a

689
00:55:09,640 --> 00:55:15,280
stifling submarine, arguing
against two of his colleagues in

690
00:55:15,280 --> 00:55:20,680
the red lit dark, a man almost
none of the decision makers in

691
00:55:20,680 --> 00:55:26,600
Washington had ever heard of.
The name Vassili Arkipov would

692
00:55:26,600 --> 00:55:30,520
slowly enter the public record
over the years that followed.

693
00:55:31,320 --> 00:55:36,680
It would appear in books and
documentaries always spoken of

694
00:55:37,280 --> 00:55:42,240
with a kind of stunned
gratitude, a man who had saved

695
00:55:42,240 --> 00:55:46,000
the world without quite
intending to, and who had done

696
00:55:46,000 --> 00:55:52,360
so by simply declining to agree.
But the story of restraint did

697
00:55:52,360 --> 00:55:58,920
not end with Arkapov. 2 Decades
later, another Soviet officer

698
00:55:59,120 --> 00:56:04,160
would find himself in a similar
position, facing a similar

699
00:56:04,160 --> 00:56:08,320
choice in a setting almost as
dangerous.

700
00:56:09,040 --> 00:56:14,000
His name, as we have mentioned,
was Stanislav Petrov.

701
00:56:14,600 --> 00:56:17,920
To understand what he faced on
the night of the 26th of

702
00:56:17,920 --> 00:56:23,840
September in 1983, we must
briefly return to the surface of

703
00:56:23,840 --> 00:56:28,920
the world as it had become in
those intervening years.

704
00:56:29,880 --> 00:56:34,360
The Cold War, contrary to the
hopes of those who had stepped

705
00:56:34,360 --> 00:56:38,360
back from the brink in 1962, had
not softened.

706
00:56:39,160 --> 00:56:44,800
In some ways, by the early
1980s, it had grown sharper.

707
00:56:45,160 --> 00:56:50,440
The leaders who had pulled back
in 1962 were gone.

708
00:56:51,360 --> 00:56:57,720
Kennedy had been assassinated in
Dallas, and Khrushchev had been

709
00:56:57,720 --> 00:57:01,400
removed from power not long
afterward.

710
00:57:02,480 --> 00:57:06,320
The private warmth that had
grown between them had no

711
00:57:06,320 --> 00:57:11,480
natural inheritors.
In Moscow, A new generation of

712
00:57:11,520 --> 00:57:17,400
aging and often unwell leaders
now ran the Soviet Union.

713
00:57:18,320 --> 00:57:23,080
In Washington, Ronald Reagan had
come to the presidency with a

714
00:57:23,080 --> 00:57:28,000
more confrontational view of
Soviet power than most of his

715
00:57:28,000 --> 00:57:32,560
recent predecessors.
The two sides had resumed, in

716
00:57:32,560 --> 00:57:37,680
both rhetoric and hardware, the
shape of their former hostility.

717
00:57:38,040 --> 00:57:42,280
The Soviet leadership of the
early 1980s was, by several

718
00:57:42,280 --> 00:57:46,000
historical accounts, genuinely
afraid.

719
00:57:46,920 --> 00:57:51,760
Yuri Andropov, who became
general secretary in 1982,

720
00:57:52,280 --> 00:57:57,000
believed seriously that the
United States might be preparing

721
00:57:57,000 --> 00:58:01,720
a nuclear first strike.
This was not pure paranoia,

722
00:58:02,000 --> 00:58:05,160
though it carried elements of
paranoia within it.

723
00:58:05,480 --> 00:58:11,400
Beginning in 1981, Soviet
intelligence services had been

724
00:58:11,400 --> 00:58:16,120
tasked with watching for signs
of an imminent American attack.

725
00:58:17,200 --> 00:58:23,920
The program was called Operation
Ryan, an acronym in Russian for

726
00:58:23,920 --> 00:58:28,400
nuclear Missile attack.
Agents around the world were

727
00:58:28,400 --> 00:58:33,400
instructed to report anything
that looked like preparation for

728
00:58:33,400 --> 00:58:36,400
war.
This kind of instruction shapes

729
00:58:36,400 --> 00:58:40,480
what people see.
If you're told to look for signs

730
00:58:40,480 --> 00:58:43,320
of an attack, you begin to find
them.

731
00:58:44,040 --> 00:58:49,640
Ordinary events become ominous.
Routine exercises become

732
00:58:49,640 --> 00:58:55,680
suspicious, and the information
flowing into the Kremlin tilts

733
00:58:55,680 --> 00:59:01,120
quietly toward alarm.
Into this atmosphere on the 1st

734
00:59:01,120 --> 00:59:07,400
of September 1983, fell a
specific and terrible event, a

735
00:59:07,400 --> 00:59:13,920
Korean Airlines passenger plane,
Flight 07, straight off course

736
00:59:13,920 --> 00:59:17,160
into Soviet airspace over the
Sea of Okotsk.

737
00:59:18,040 --> 00:59:22,040
A Soviet fighter, unable to
identify it clearly and fearing

738
00:59:22,040 --> 00:59:24,720
a military incursion, shot it
down.

739
00:59:25,000 --> 00:59:29,800
All 269 people aboard were
killed.

740
00:59:30,360 --> 00:59:34,680
The incident became an
international sensation, with

741
00:59:34,680 --> 00:59:39,200
both sides using it to accuse
the other of recklessness.

742
00:59:40,040 --> 00:59:45,000
By late September of 1983,
relations between the two

743
00:59:45,000 --> 00:59:49,960
superpowers had deteriorated to
their most dangerous point in

744
00:59:49,960 --> 00:59:53,240
two decades.
That was the world into which

745
00:59:53,360 --> 00:59:58,440
Stanislav Petrov reported for
work on the evening of the 25th.

746
00:59:59,360 --> 01:00:02,680
A tense world.
A frightened world.

747
01:00:03,320 --> 01:00:07,920
A world whose most powerful
governments were both already

748
01:00:07,920 --> 01:00:12,200
half convinced the other might
strike first.

749
01:00:12,560 --> 01:00:16,560
Sir Pukhov, 15, was the name of
the facility.

750
01:00:17,600 --> 01:00:21,760
It was a reinforced bunker
roughly 60 miles South of

751
01:00:21,760 --> 01:00:26,520
Moscow, hidden among pine
forests, where Soviet officers

752
01:00:26,520 --> 01:00:32,360
monitored an early warning
system called OCO, meaning I.

753
01:00:33,280 --> 01:00:37,360
Its purpose was to detect
American nuclear missiles the

754
01:00:37,360 --> 01:00:40,520
moment they were launched.
The detection came from

755
01:00:40,520 --> 01:00:44,520
satellites.
Oco's satellites watched

756
01:00:44,520 --> 01:00:48,320
American missile fields from
orbit, searching for the

757
01:00:48,320 --> 01:00:52,720
infrared signatures of rocket
engines at ignition.

758
01:00:53,600 --> 01:00:58,960
If the system saw a launch, it
would sound an alarm, and

759
01:00:58,960 --> 01:01:03,360
officers would alert the Soviet
General Staff within minutes.

760
01:01:03,720 --> 01:01:07,960
The General Staff would in turn
notify the political leadership.

761
01:01:08,400 --> 01:01:12,680
From there, a retaliatory launch
could be authorized.

762
01:01:13,200 --> 01:01:18,000
The window between detection and
decision was measured at most in

763
01:01:18,000 --> 01:01:22,560
20 minutes.
Petrov was not an ordinary duty

764
01:01:22,560 --> 01:01:25,600
officer.
He was an engineer who had

765
01:01:25,600 --> 01:01:29,400
helped develop parts of the OCO
system, which meant he

766
01:01:29,400 --> 01:01:33,880
understood its internal workings
more intimately than most of the

767
01:01:33,880 --> 01:01:38,800
men who sat at its consoles.
He was on duty that night

768
01:01:39,080 --> 01:01:43,960
largely by chance, having taken
the shift of a colleague.

769
01:01:44,520 --> 01:01:51,040
The evening began quietly.
It was approaching midnight on

770
01:01:51,040 --> 01:01:55,640
the 25th of September, turning
toward the early hours of the

771
01:01:55,640 --> 01:02:03,000
26th, Petrov drank tea, reviewed
his displays, and listened to

772
01:02:03,000 --> 01:02:07,760
the soft sounds of a bunker full
of men at their stations.

773
01:02:08,120 --> 01:02:12,520
And then the alarm began.
The screens showed a missile

774
01:02:12,520 --> 01:02:15,440
launched from an American base
in Montana.

775
01:02:16,280 --> 01:02:21,840
A red light flashed, a computer
voice announced the launch, and

776
01:02:21,840 --> 01:02:26,520
the system classified the threat
at its highest possible

777
01:02:26,520 --> 01:02:29,360
confidence.
Petrov stared.

778
01:02:30,000 --> 01:02:32,160
He had been trained for this
moment.

779
01:02:32,600 --> 01:02:38,040
But training is training, and
this was not a drill.

780
01:02:39,120 --> 01:02:43,200
The weight of what he was seeing
settled on him in a way he would

781
01:02:43,200 --> 01:02:48,240
later describe as almost
impossible to put into words.

782
01:02:48,600 --> 01:02:52,280
Around him, the bunker had come
alive.

783
01:02:52,960 --> 01:02:55,760
Officers were hurrying to their
stations.

784
01:02:56,000 --> 01:03:00,000
A siren sounded somewhere in the
corridors outside.

785
01:03:00,800 --> 01:03:06,360
The quiet shift of a moment ago
was no longer quiet.

786
01:03:06,720 --> 01:03:11,480
His first thought was that the
launch could not be real.

787
01:03:11,920 --> 01:03:16,520
A genuine American first strike,
he reasoned, would not be a

788
01:03:16,520 --> 01:03:20,720
single missile.
It would be hundreds of missiles

789
01:03:20,920 --> 01:03:26,520
launched all at once from many
silos, designed to overwhelm

790
01:03:26,520 --> 01:03:30,680
Soviet defenses before they
could respond.

791
01:03:31,000 --> 01:03:33,680
One missile made no military
sense.

792
01:03:33,960 --> 01:03:37,480
It would invite a massive
counter attack without achieving

793
01:03:37,480 --> 01:03:40,720
anything meaningful.
Either the Americans were making

794
01:03:40,720 --> 01:03:45,200
a catastrophic mistake, or the
system itself was.

795
01:03:45,480 --> 01:03:50,160
As Petrov hesitated, the alarm
shifted.

796
01:03:50,880 --> 01:03:55,000
A second launch appeared on the
display, and then a third.

797
01:03:55,400 --> 01:03:58,440
And then a fourth.
And then a fifth.

798
01:03:59,480 --> 01:04:03,280
Within minutes, Oka was
reporting that five American

799
01:04:03,280 --> 01:04:07,440
missiles had been launched from
the same base, all heading

800
01:04:07,440 --> 01:04:11,840
toward the Soviet Union, all
coming in a direction that could

801
01:04:11,840 --> 01:04:16,600
only mean one thing.
The protocol was clear.

802
01:04:17,360 --> 01:04:21,280
Petrov was required to report
the detection to the General

803
01:04:21,280 --> 01:04:24,560
Staff.
The General Staff would then

804
01:04:24,560 --> 01:04:29,400
notify the political leadership,
and the Soviet Union would have

805
01:04:29,400 --> 01:04:33,880
perhaps 20 minutes at most to
decide whether to launch a

806
01:04:33,880 --> 01:04:38,080
retaliatory strike.
The retaliatory strike, once

807
01:04:38,080 --> 01:04:40,720
ordered, could not easily be
called back.

808
01:04:41,480 --> 01:04:45,880
Soviet missiles would leave
their silos, American cities

809
01:04:45,880 --> 01:04:50,120
would be struck, and the United
States would respond in kind.

810
01:04:50,560 --> 01:04:53,480
Petrov did not report what he
was seeing.

811
01:04:53,880 --> 01:04:58,600
His later accounts describe the
reasoning in pieces, because the

812
01:04:58,600 --> 01:05:03,040
moment itself did not leave room
for orderly thought.

813
01:05:03,840 --> 01:05:08,560
He believed, on balance, that
the system was wrong.

814
01:05:09,160 --> 01:05:12,760
He was not sure, but he was sure
enough.

815
01:05:13,200 --> 01:05:17,640
Petrov would later say that if
the number of reported missiles

816
01:05:17,640 --> 01:05:22,200
had been higher, he might well
have reported it as a real

817
01:05:22,200 --> 01:05:29,960
attack. 5 missiles was for him,
too few to be believed, 500 or

818
01:05:29,960 --> 01:05:34,360
5000, and he might have reached
for the phone to say something

819
01:05:34,360 --> 01:05:38,400
very different.
There were, he also knew, checks

820
01:05:38,400 --> 01:05:42,920
on the OCO system.
Ground radars should, within

821
01:05:42,920 --> 01:05:47,400
minutes, be able to confirm or
deny the presence of real

822
01:05:47,400 --> 01:05:52,400
missiles in the sky.
The difficulty was that those

823
01:05:52,400 --> 01:05:57,320
radars could not see over the
horizon until the missiles were

824
01:05:57,320 --> 01:06:00,840
already close.
He picked up the phone.

825
01:06:01,400 --> 01:06:04,920
He called his superiors at the
main command center.

826
01:06:05,480 --> 01:06:10,360
He reported a malfunction in the
early warning system rather than

827
01:06:10,360 --> 01:06:14,560
an incoming attack.
This was not what protocol

828
01:06:14,560 --> 01:06:17,720
required.
Protocol required that he report

829
01:06:17,720 --> 01:06:21,560
what the system was telling him
and let others decide.

830
01:06:22,320 --> 01:06:28,440
Petrov had chosen instead to
make the judgment himself and to

831
01:06:28,440 --> 01:06:31,840
carry the consequences of that
judgment alone.

832
01:06:32,200 --> 01:06:36,800
The minutes that followed were
among the longest of his life.

833
01:06:37,640 --> 01:06:40,480
He did not yet know whether he
was right.

834
01:06:41,160 --> 01:06:44,920
He could not know for certain
until the missiles either

835
01:06:44,920 --> 01:06:50,440
arrived or did not.
He sat at his consul, waiting.

836
01:06:51,160 --> 01:06:54,480
The bunker around him was busy
with activity.

837
01:06:55,040 --> 01:06:59,000
Men were tracing the phantom
launches, calling in data,

838
01:06:59,440 --> 01:07:03,160
trying to confirm or deny what
the screens were showing.

839
01:07:03,480 --> 01:07:07,560
If he was wrong, the first
American warheads would reach a

840
01:07:07,560 --> 01:07:10,800
Soviet soil in roughly 20
minutes.

841
01:07:11,440 --> 01:07:17,520
There would be, in those final
moments, no retraction possible,

842
01:07:18,160 --> 01:07:22,320
no decision to take back.
They did not arrive.

843
01:07:22,720 --> 01:07:27,120
The night passed and the sun
rose over the Soviet Union on

844
01:07:27,120 --> 01:07:34,200
the morning of September 26th,
1983, and no American warheads

845
01:07:34,200 --> 01:07:37,560
had struck.
Petrov had been correct.

846
01:07:38,120 --> 01:07:43,880
The system had malfunctioned.
The cause investigated later

847
01:07:44,360 --> 01:07:48,480
turned out to be a rare
alignment of sunlight reflecting

848
01:07:48,480 --> 01:07:51,640
off high altitude clouds over
North Dakota.

849
01:07:52,760 --> 01:07:57,360
The satellites had interpreted
the bright reflection as the

850
01:07:57,360 --> 01:08:00,320
infrared plume of rocket
engines.

851
01:08:01,160 --> 01:08:05,920
A system built to watch for the
impossible had briefly seen it

852
01:08:06,440 --> 01:08:10,280
where it was not.
What came next in Petrov's own

853
01:08:10,280 --> 01:08:15,720
life was, in its way, as telling
as the night itself.

854
01:08:16,560 --> 01:08:20,680
He had prevented what might have
become a nuclear exchange

855
01:08:20,680 --> 01:08:25,520
between two superpowers.
He had done so by ignoring

856
01:08:25,520 --> 01:08:29,000
protocol.
Neither of those facts was quite

857
01:08:29,000 --> 01:08:34,359
acceptable to his superiors.
In the days that followed, he

858
01:08:34,359 --> 01:08:39,080
was questioned repeatedly.
Officials wanted to understand

859
01:08:39,080 --> 01:08:43,000
what had happened, but they were
also looking for someone to

860
01:08:43,000 --> 01:08:45,760
blame.
The investigation was

861
01:08:45,760 --> 01:08:49,479
complicated.
On one hand, the system had

862
01:08:49,479 --> 01:08:52,960
failed, and Petrov had been
correct to doubt it.

863
01:08:53,240 --> 01:08:58,080
On the other hand, he had
violated the procedures he was

864
01:08:58,080 --> 01:09:01,760
sworn to follow.
Those interviewing him pressed

865
01:09:01,760 --> 01:09:06,600
repeatedly on one question.
Why had he chosen to trust his

866
01:09:06,600 --> 01:09:09,120
own judgment over the
instruments?

867
01:09:10,080 --> 01:09:14,160
His answer, as he later
described it, was simple.

868
01:09:14,760 --> 01:09:20,040
The computer had its reasons,
and he had his, and that night

869
01:09:20,279 --> 01:09:25,439
his had been the more accurate.
The Soviet military, not

870
01:09:25,439 --> 01:09:30,120
entirely sure what to do with
him, chose a quiet middle path.

871
01:09:30,640 --> 01:09:33,880
He was not punished in any
serious way.

872
01:09:34,479 --> 01:09:37,399
He was not, however, decorated
either.

873
01:09:37,720 --> 01:09:40,760
He was transferred to a less
sensitive post.

874
01:09:41,200 --> 01:09:45,000
The incident itself was
classified and erased from

875
01:09:45,000 --> 01:09:49,560
public record.
Officially, nothing had happened

876
01:09:49,560 --> 01:09:54,680
at Serpakov, 15 that night.
Petrov retired from the military

877
01:09:54,680 --> 01:09:59,680
a few years later.
In the late 1980s, he lived in a

878
01:09:59,680 --> 01:10:04,720
small apartment in a town
outside Moscow on a modest

879
01:10:04,720 --> 01:10:09,320
pension.
His wife was ill, and his life

880
01:10:09,320 --> 01:10:14,440
in retirement was, by most
accounts, quiet and

881
01:10:14,480 --> 01:10:18,560
unremarkable.
For more than a decade, he told

882
01:10:18,560 --> 01:10:23,640
almost no one what he had done.
He was bound by oaths of

883
01:10:23,640 --> 01:10:28,560
secrecy, and perhaps also by
something harder to name.

884
01:10:29,200 --> 01:10:35,160
Not shame, exactly, and not
pride, but a kind of reserve

885
01:10:35,160 --> 01:10:39,560
that seemed natural to him.
In the years that followed, he

886
01:10:39,560 --> 01:10:43,200
cared for his wife through a
long illness.

887
01:10:43,760 --> 01:10:49,520
When she died, he lived alone.
Neighbors knew him as a polite,

888
01:10:49,520 --> 01:10:52,960
soft spoken older man who kept
to himself.

889
01:10:53,320 --> 01:10:59,720
The story began to emerge only
in the late 1990s, when a former

890
01:10:59,720 --> 01:11:03,680
Soviet officer who had been
involved in the investigation

891
01:11:04,080 --> 01:11:08,720
wrote about the incident.
Journalists eventually found

892
01:11:08,720 --> 01:11:14,520
Petrov in his small apartment.
They were struck, as many would

893
01:11:14,520 --> 01:11:19,320
later be, by how utterly
ordinary he seemed.

894
01:11:19,720 --> 01:11:25,160
Honors followed slowly.
He received a special award from

895
01:11:25,160 --> 01:11:29,560
the United Nations, and he
became the subject of a

896
01:11:29,560 --> 01:11:35,240
documentary film.
He travelled in his 70s to

897
01:11:35,240 --> 01:11:38,880
places where he was quietly
applauded by strangers.

898
01:11:39,280 --> 01:11:44,960
He did not seek any of this.
He was uncomfortable with praise

899
01:11:45,360 --> 01:11:50,520
and always insisted, when asked
that he had simply been a man at

900
01:11:50,520 --> 01:11:55,240
a desk, doing his best with
incomplete information.

901
01:11:56,280 --> 01:12:01,440
He did not think of himself as a
hero and was faintly puzzled

902
01:12:01,440 --> 01:12:07,040
when others did.
He died in 2017 in the same

903
01:12:07,040 --> 01:12:10,880
small apartment where he had
lived for most of his

904
01:12:10,880 --> 01:12:15,960
retirement.
He was 87 years old, and his

905
01:12:15,960 --> 01:12:20,800
passing was reported quietly
around the world by people who

906
01:12:20,800 --> 01:12:26,720
had never met him but felt in
some unspecifiable way, that

907
01:12:26,720 --> 01:12:31,440
they owed him something.
When the two stories are set

908
01:12:31,440 --> 01:12:35,600
beside one another, they begin
to form a pattern.

909
01:12:36,520 --> 01:12:41,360
A Soviet naval officer in a
submarine off the Florida coast

910
01:12:41,560 --> 01:12:46,960
in 1962.
A Soviet intelligence officer in

911
01:12:46,960 --> 01:12:55,360
a bunker outside Moscow in 1983.
Two men, 2 moments, 2 decisions

912
01:12:55,360 --> 01:12:57,720
that the world barely noticed at
the time.

913
01:12:58,360 --> 01:13:02,760
In each case, the system seemed
to demand a response that the

914
01:13:02,760 --> 01:13:06,000
man in the middle of the system
resisted.

915
01:13:06,640 --> 01:13:13,280
In each case, that resistance
rested not on defiance, but on

916
01:13:13,280 --> 01:13:19,240
careful judgment.
Both Arkapov and Petrov were

917
01:13:19,240 --> 01:13:24,280
deeply loyal to their country,
their Navy, their service.

918
01:13:25,120 --> 01:13:28,400
Neither believed himself to be
acting heroically.

919
01:13:28,960 --> 01:13:33,760
They simply did not believe in
their respective moments that

920
01:13:33,760 --> 01:13:37,480
what they were being asked to do
was right.

921
01:13:37,880 --> 01:13:43,240
There are almost certainly other
such moments we will never know

922
01:13:43,240 --> 01:13:47,160
about.
The Cold War produced countless

923
01:13:47,160 --> 01:13:52,640
false alarms, near misses and
ambiguous signals.

924
01:13:53,600 --> 01:13:57,560
Some of them were quietly
managed by people whose names

925
01:13:57,560 --> 01:14:05,840
have not yet been spoken aloud.
In 1961, AB 52, carrying two

926
01:14:05,840 --> 01:14:09,600
hydrogen bombs, broke apart in
flight over North Carolina.

927
01:14:10,680 --> 01:14:14,960
One of the bombs fell into a
field, and one of its safety

928
01:14:14,960 --> 01:14:19,080
switches is said to have been
the last barrier between that

929
01:14:19,080 --> 01:14:24,240
bomb and detonation.
Engineers later described how

930
01:14:24,240 --> 01:14:28,160
narrowly the ground itself had
escaped being cratered.

931
01:14:28,600 --> 01:14:34,400
In 1995, Russian radar detected
what appeared to be a missile

932
01:14:34,480 --> 01:14:39,400
launched from Norway.
It was in fact a scientific

933
01:14:39,400 --> 01:14:44,160
rocket carrying instruments to
study the Northern Lights.

934
01:14:45,200 --> 01:14:49,560
For a few minutes in Moscow,
though, the nuclear briefcase

935
01:14:49,560 --> 01:14:54,680
was actually opened before
officers examining the data

936
01:14:55,280 --> 01:15:00,360
advised their president to wait.
The 20th century did not end in

937
01:15:00,360 --> 01:15:03,320
fire, and the reasons for that
are many.

938
01:15:04,240 --> 01:15:07,560
Treaties mattered.
Deterrence mattered.

939
01:15:07,880 --> 01:15:10,920
And luck, it must be said,
mattered too.

940
01:15:11,280 --> 01:15:18,160
But embedded in that larger
survival is something quieter, a

941
01:15:18,160 --> 01:15:23,240
small collection of men and
women who, in specific rooms on

942
01:15:23,240 --> 01:15:29,120
specific nights, held the whole
structure in place not by

943
01:15:29,120 --> 01:15:33,440
accomplishing something
dramatic, but by declining to

944
01:15:33,440 --> 01:15:37,000
set in motion something
catastrophic.

945
01:15:37,360 --> 01:15:40,640
Most of their names will never
be widely known.

946
01:15:41,400 --> 01:15:46,600
Many of the incidents are still
classified or disputed or simply

947
01:15:46,600 --> 01:15:51,760
lost to record.
What we can say is that the list

948
01:15:51,760 --> 01:15:55,880
of such moments is longer than
most people realize.

949
01:15:56,400 --> 01:16:01,080
This is not an argument that the
world is safe because good

950
01:16:01,080 --> 01:16:04,200
people are always present at the
right moment.

951
01:16:04,960 --> 01:16:09,120
It is not an argument that
systems can be trusted to

952
01:16:09,120 --> 01:16:15,160
produce such people reliably.
It is something humbler and

953
01:16:15,160 --> 01:16:18,000
perhaps more unsettling than
that.

954
01:16:18,320 --> 01:16:23,720
It is the observation that the
survival of civilization has at

955
01:16:23,720 --> 01:16:30,440
times depended on specific human
judgment exercised by specific

956
01:16:30,440 --> 01:16:35,120
human beings under conditions
that offered very little margin

957
01:16:35,360 --> 01:16:39,040
for error.
It is a thought worth holding

958
01:16:39,040 --> 01:16:43,960
lightly and carefully.
There is a particular kind of

959
01:16:43,960 --> 01:16:50,520
wonder in these stories, and it
takes a moment to notice it is

960
01:16:50,520 --> 01:16:57,120
not the wonder of heroism.
Archipoff and Petrov were not

961
01:16:57,120 --> 01:17:03,880
heroes in the way heroes usually
appear in stories, with a clear

962
01:17:03,920 --> 01:17:08,000
enemy and a decisive act of
courage.

963
01:17:08,480 --> 01:17:13,680
What they did in each case was a
little stranger.

964
01:17:14,280 --> 01:17:19,560
They refused to participate in
what might have been the ending

965
01:17:19,560 --> 01:17:23,600
of the world.
They held for a moment against

966
01:17:23,600 --> 01:17:28,440
the pull of events.
This is a kind of courage that

967
01:17:28,440 --> 01:17:31,560
does not look like courage from
the inside.

968
01:17:32,200 --> 01:17:38,320
It often feels to the person
doing it like ordinary prudence.

969
01:17:39,040 --> 01:17:46,000
It feels like waiting, like
checking, like holding off on a

970
01:17:46,000 --> 01:17:50,800
conclusion until the evidence is
a little clearer.

971
01:17:51,240 --> 01:17:56,760
From the outside, in retrospect,
it can look astonishing.

972
01:17:57,920 --> 01:18:04,160
The historian sees the paths not
taken and feels, in hindsight,

973
01:18:04,680 --> 01:18:07,400
how narrow the choice really
was.

974
01:18:08,240 --> 01:18:12,560
But the person at the console
rarely felt that way.

975
01:18:13,200 --> 01:18:17,200
They simply did the next
reasonable thing.

976
01:18:17,680 --> 01:18:23,440
There is comfort in that, and
also some discomfort.

977
01:18:24,680 --> 01:18:30,880
The comfort is that such small
acts of restraint can matter

978
01:18:31,280 --> 01:18:36,080
enormously.
The discomfort is that

979
01:18:36,080 --> 01:18:41,840
civilization has sometimes
rested on the steadiness of

980
01:18:41,840 --> 01:18:46,560
people we would otherwise pass
without noticing.

981
01:18:47,080 --> 01:18:51,480
Writers and philosophers have
sometimes noticed the quiet

982
01:18:51,480 --> 01:18:56,640
power of people who simply
decline to participate in

983
01:18:56,640 --> 01:19:02,200
something wrong.
It is, they observe, a form of

984
01:19:02,200 --> 01:19:05,880
courage that rarely looks like
courage.

985
01:19:06,840 --> 01:19:11,800
It is not the same as active
resistance, but it is not

986
01:19:11,800 --> 01:19:16,400
nothing either.
In these Cold War stories, that

987
01:19:16,400 --> 01:19:21,880
refusal took a technical form.
Arkapov refused the launch

988
01:19:21,880 --> 01:19:25,720
protocol and Petrov refused the
report.

989
01:19:26,640 --> 01:19:32,200
Neither man framed his choice in
moral language, and both simply

990
01:19:32,200 --> 01:19:37,240
declined to Co operate with
something their judgment could

991
01:19:37,240 --> 01:19:41,080
not accept.
It is worth noticing how much

992
01:19:41,080 --> 01:19:46,240
hinged on something so modest.
Neither man made a speech.

993
01:19:46,840 --> 01:19:53,440
Neither man stood on a stage.
What they did was invisible from

994
01:19:53,440 --> 01:19:59,640
the outside, almost
unrecognizable as action.

995
01:20:00,640 --> 01:20:05,800
And yet the consequences of what
they did were, in the fullest

996
01:20:05,800 --> 01:20:10,680
sense, immeasurable.
What this suggests about the

997
01:20:10,680 --> 01:20:18,800
world is quietly important.
We often speak of catastrophes

998
01:20:18,800 --> 01:20:24,800
as inevitable, or as products of
vast systems beyond any one

999
01:20:24,800 --> 01:20:30,520
person's control.
These stories, told together,

1000
01:20:31,160 --> 01:20:37,520
gently resist that telling.
They suggest that systems,

1001
01:20:37,720 --> 01:20:41,680
however large, still pass
through the hands of

1002
01:20:41,680 --> 01:20:48,000
individuals, and that those
individuals, even when tired,

1003
01:20:48,000 --> 01:20:53,480
frightened and poorly informed,
retain some small space in which

1004
01:20:53,480 --> 01:20:58,120
to pause, to question, and to
wait.

1005
01:20:58,560 --> 01:21:03,840
It is not a guarantee that such
pauses will always happen.

1006
01:21:04,720 --> 01:21:10,000
It is not a promise that the
world will always be saved in

1007
01:21:10,000 --> 01:21:14,040
the small hours by a quiet
person at a desk.

1008
01:21:14,880 --> 01:21:22,080
But it is a reminder that such
pauses are possible and that

1009
01:21:22,080 --> 01:21:26,920
they have, more than once in
history, made all the

1010
01:21:26,920 --> 01:21:30,960
difference.
Let us return for a moment to

1011
01:21:30,960 --> 01:21:38,960
the bunker at Serpakov 15 on the
morning of the 26th of September

1012
01:21:39,480 --> 01:21:46,040
1983.
Petrov is still at his console.

1013
01:21:46,680 --> 01:21:51,280
The alarm has been quieted, and
the reports of missiles have

1014
01:21:51,280 --> 01:21:56,520
faded into the silence of a
system caught in its own

1015
01:21:56,520 --> 01:21:59,320
mistake.
He is tired.

1016
01:21:59,800 --> 01:22:04,520
He has been at his station for
hours, and he will not sleep

1017
01:22:04,520 --> 01:22:10,640
well for many nights to come.
But the sun is beginning to rise

1018
01:22:10,640 --> 01:22:16,080
over the forests outside, and
the Soviet Union is still there,

1019
01:22:16,360 --> 01:22:21,880
and so is the United States, and
so are the cities, the roads,

1020
01:22:22,440 --> 01:22:27,440
the lamps and windows, the
sleeping children in unfamiliar

1021
01:22:27,440 --> 01:22:32,600
houses far away.
He does not yet know that he has

1022
01:22:32,600 --> 01:22:35,680
done something the world will
remember.

1023
01:22:36,400 --> 01:22:41,640
He does not yet know that
decades from now, strangers will

1024
01:22:41,640 --> 01:22:47,520
speak his name with gratitude.
He simply knows that a long

1025
01:22:47,520 --> 01:22:52,320
night has passed and that
morning has come.

1026
01:22:52,760 --> 01:22:58,760
Outside the bunker, the pine
forests of southern Russia are

1027
01:22:58,760 --> 01:23:03,680
quiet.
Birds have begun to call.

1028
01:23:04,840 --> 01:23:08,920
Somewhere in Moscow, the first
buses of the morning are

1029
01:23:08,920 --> 01:23:14,160
running, and the first windows
are lit against the last of the

1030
01:23:14,160 --> 01:23:18,200
dark.
And far beyond that, in other

1031
01:23:18,200 --> 01:23:25,640
places, other people are asleep.
They do not know how close the

1032
01:23:25,640 --> 01:23:31,400
night came to being different.
They never will, most of them.

1033
01:23:32,040 --> 01:23:36,520
And that is part of what it
means to be saved by a quiet

1034
01:23:36,520 --> 01:23:40,160
stranger.
It has always been so.

1035
01:23:41,080 --> 01:23:46,280
The long survival of the world
has depended in part on people

1036
01:23:46,280 --> 01:23:51,520
we have not heard of, who did
small things at the right

1037
01:23:51,520 --> 01:23:57,120
moment, not because they
believed themselves important,

1038
01:23:58,200 --> 01:24:02,760
but because they could not quite
bring themselves to believe the

1039
01:24:02,760 --> 01:24:06,920
alarm.
This is, in its way, the

1040
01:24:06,920 --> 01:24:12,760
gentlest kind of history.
It has no parades, no speeches,

1041
01:24:12,880 --> 01:24:20,040
no grand declarations, only a
man at a desk choosing against

1042
01:24:20,040 --> 01:24:23,760
the weight of a system to wait a
little longer.

1043
01:24:24,080 --> 01:24:29,360
If there is a lesson in such a
story, it is not a frightening

1044
01:24:29,360 --> 01:24:33,160
one.
It is a reminder that even

1045
01:24:33,160 --> 01:24:38,640
within the largest and most
dangerous structures, the human

1046
01:24:38,640 --> 01:24:46,280
pause remains possible, that
there is in every system a small

1047
01:24:46,280 --> 01:24:52,320
space still held by the judgment
of an ordinary person, and

1048
01:24:52,320 --> 01:24:57,040
perhaps that is a kind of
comfort to rest on.

1049
01:24:57,960 --> 01:25:03,120
The machinery of the world is
large and often difficult and

1050
01:25:03,120 --> 01:25:10,840
not always wise, but it is still
run in places by people who can

1051
01:25:10,840 --> 01:25:16,760
decide to wait, to check, to
refuse, to assume the worst.

1052
01:25:17,280 --> 01:25:23,200
The world has its dangers, as it
always has, but it also has

1053
01:25:23,680 --> 01:25:29,520
woven through its long history
the quiet pattern of restraint,

1054
01:25:30,200 --> 01:25:34,440
the steady hand, the
unremarkable pause.

1055
01:25:34,760 --> 01:25:41,280
Somewhere to night.
A clock is ticking in a quiet

1056
01:25:41,280 --> 01:25:47,400
room.
A lamp is casting soft light on

1057
01:25:47,400 --> 01:25:53,080
a familiar wall.
The world is turning through its

1058
01:25:53,080 --> 01:26:00,040
slow night as it has always
turned, carrying with it all the

1059
01:26:00,080 --> 01:26:03,760
unseen stories that have held it
in place.

1060
01:26:04,200 --> 01:26:07,240
You are one of the sleepers it
is carrying.

1061
01:26:07,880 --> 01:26:13,480
You are part of what has been
kept over many nights by many

1062
01:26:13,480 --> 01:26:18,720
quiet hands.
There is nothing more you need

1063
01:26:18,720 --> 01:26:23,720
to do to night.
The world slows and so do we.

1064
01:26:24,040 --> 01:26:24,800
Good night.