The real story of Stanislav Petrov, the Soviet officer who 'saved' the world from nuclear war

On September 26, 1983, Soviet military officer Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov allegedly averted a worldwide nuclear war by judging a supposed missile attack from the United States as an error. An excerpt from the article:

"Legend has it that on September 26, 1983, in a nuclear command and control center outside of Moscow, Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov detected five US nuclear warheads headed right for him but stood down from calling for a massive Soviet retaliation, thereby saving the world from nuclear annihilation at the height of the Cold War.

The blips on Petrov's radar turned out to be a false alarm, something he supposedly instinctively knew so well he disobeyed protocol and backed off.

But like all legends, even semi-recent nuclear ones, the story may have outgrown the truth, thanks in part to shadowy and opaque Soviet and Russian nuclear launch procedures."