The Man Who single-handedly Saved The World!!!

The Man Who single-handedly Saved The World

Vasili Arkhipov



Vasili Arkhipov was a Soviet Naval officer who prevented Nuclear War during the Cuban Missile Crisis:

On October 27, 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, a group of eleven United States Navy destroyers and the aircraft carrier USS Randolph located the diesel-powered nuclear-armed Soviet Foxtrot-class submarine B-59 near Cuba. Despite being in international waters the Americans started dropping practice depth charges, explosives intended to force the submarine to come to the surface for identification. There had been no contact from Moscow for a number of days and, although the submarine's crew had earlier been picking up U.S. civilian radio broadcasts, once B-59 began attempting to hide from its U.S. Navy pursuers, it was too deep to monitor any radio traffic, so those on board did not know whether war had broken out. The captain of the submarine, Valentin Grigorievitch Savitsky, believing that a war might already have started, wanted to launch a nuclear-tipped torpedo.

Three officers on board the submarine – Savitsky, the political officer Ivan Semonovich Maslennikov, and the second-in-command Arkhipov – were authorized to launch the torpedo if agreeing unanimously in favor of doing so. An argument broke out among the three, in which only Arkhipov was against the launch. Although Arkhipov was only second-in-command of submarine B-59, he was actually Commander of the flotilla of submarines including B-4, B-36, and B-130, and of equal rank to Captain Savitsky.

en.wikipedia.org...

If the B-59's torpedo had vaporised the Randolf, the nuclear clouds would quickly have spread from sea to land. The first targets would have been Moscow, London, the airbases of East Anglia and troop concentrations in Germany. The next wave of bombs would have wiped out "economic targets", a euphemism for civilian populations – more than half the UK population would have died. Meanwhile, the Pentagon's SIOP, Single Integrated Operational Plan – a doomsday scenario that echoed Dr Strangelove's orgiastic Götterdämmerung – would have hurled 5,500 nuclear weapons against a thousand targets, including ones in non-belligerent states such as Albania and China.

www.guardian.co.uk...

If it wasn't for Mr Arkhipov the world may have succumbed to Nuclear destruction. He single-handedly saved the world from annihilation.

He should have just let it kick off.

Think of how much more fun we could be having now.
Sure a whole lot of people would have died, but it wouldn't have gotten everybody.

And it would have been really pretty for a second there.

reply to post by daaskapital

Yeah I was going to post this last week. Before I did, I utilized the ATS SEARCH where I found MULTIPLE threads.
Thank you.

Originally posted by SageBeno
reply to post by daaskapital

 

Yeah I was going to post this last week. Before I did, I utilized the ATS SEARCH where I found MULTIPLE threads.
Thank you.

Hi mate,

Thanks for the reply. While i must admit that i didn't use the search function this time around, i just checked and most threads regarding this topic are over a year old...

reply to post by daaskapital


Interesting.
I can just imagine the argument between them. Intense.
Nice piece of information, thank you.

reply to post by daaskapital


Thats true friend, and while I admire your attempt to indulge us with a great thread, the fact remains, they still exist on the site, no need for copies.

Sage

Originally posted by SageBeno
reply to post by daaskapital

 

Thats true friend, and while I admire your attempt to indulge us with a great thread, the fact remains, they still exist on the site, no need for copies.

Sage

bah, who cares, I wouldn´t have read about this if it wasn´t for this post. It´s not like i was going to search for the dude here not even knowing anything about him, thus, not knowing his name, and therefore incapable of even doing a search for this subject here. I´m for one is glad that the OP took his time tom make a, as you wrote, a copy.

Originally posted by Nettlas

Originally posted by SageBeno
reply to post by daaskapital

 

Thats true friend, and while I admire your attempt to indulge us with a great thread, the fact remains, they still exist on the site, no need for copies.

Sage

bah, who cares, I wouldn´t have read about this if it wasn´t for this post. It´s not like i was going to search for the dude here not even knowing anything about him, thus, not knowing his name, and therefore incapable of even doing a search for this subject here. I´m for one is glad that the OP took his time tom make a, as you wrote, a copy.

Wow, I thought more people would have known about this.. obviously not..

Originally posted by SageBeno

Originally posted by Nettlas

Originally posted by SageBeno
reply to post by daaskapital

 

Thats true friend, and while I admire your attempt to indulge us with a great thread, the fact remains, they still exist on the site, no need for copies.

Sage

bah, who cares, I wouldn´t have read about this if it wasn´t for this post. It´s not like i was going to search for the dude here not even knowing anything about him, thus, not knowing his name, and therefore incapable of even doing a search for this subject here. I´m for one is glad that the OP took his time tom make a, as you wrote, a copy.

Wow, I thought more people would have known about this.. obviously not..

this one was new to me. Glad I still can learn something new everyday! But I have heard of this other sovjet dude who also stopped a nuclear war during the cold war. It was som computer/radar malfunction that supposedly showed that the USA had lunched a nuclear attack against them but the sovjet dude in question hesitated to strike back and saved the day.

Thanks for teaching me something new. I've never heard about this before, but it is similar to the plot of Crimson Tide with Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington. Somehow 3 vodka smelling commies arguing over this would have been a hell of a lot more interesting.

This vid was is from 2012
The Man who saved the World

video.pbs.org...

Description of above vid link

Mike Blackstock
51 years ago today, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, second-in-command Vasili Arkhipov of the Soviet submarine B-59 refused to agree with his Captain's order to launch nuclear torpedos against US warships and setting off what might well have been a terminal superpower nuclear war.

The US had been dropping depth charges near the submarine in an attempt to force it to surface, unaware it was carrying nuclear arms. The Soviet officers, who had lost radio contact with Moscow, concluded that World War 3 had begun, and 2 of the officers agreed to 'blast the warships out of the water'. Arkhipov refused to agree - unanimous consent of 3 officers was required - and thanks to him, we are here to talk about it.

His story is finally being told - the BBC is airing a documentary on it.

Raise a glass to Vasili Arkhipov - the Man Who Saved the World.