The Soviet colonel who famously saved the world from nuclear war has died.<br /><br />Stanislav Petrov had been on duty at a Moscow nuclear early warning system in 1983 when it issued an alert that the US had just launched nuclear missiles. <br /><br />Petrov told his bosses that the alarm must have been triggered by a system malfunction. <br /><br />A Russian soldier, who became known as the man who saved the world from nuclear war, has died. But who was Stanislav Petrov? pic.twitter.com/Lfge83IRQb— RTÉ News (@rtenews) September 19, 2017<br /><br />The incident only came to light in the ’90s after the collapse of the USSR. <br /><br />Petrov received hundreds of letters of recognition from all over Europe, but he never understood why. He said he had just been going his job. <br /><br />It emerged this week that Stanislav Petrov considered a hero by many in the West had died quietly in his apartment near Moscow in May. He was 77.<br />
