Values: Courage Competes With Arrogance

On the back of a "Herald Sun" Shrek 2 promotional poster sent by my Grandpaprents in Melbourne to my 6 year old an article entitled 'Humanity's Near  Miss" (dated 27 Ausgust 2004) caught my eye.

"How close we came to the nightmare of a nuclear winter, or at least the destruction of major cities, is told in the article on Stanislav Petrov in the Extra section in today's Sunday Herald Sun.
It was very close – millions of lives hung in the balance when Moscow's early warning centre detected hostile missiles.
Yet courage competes with arrogance; the spirit of individualism with the closed mind of totalitarianism in the report of the 1983 near-disaster.
An unorthodox hero, Lt-Col Petrov, alone stood between reason and the madness of a nuclear war. Despite the electronic evidence flooding in to his command post from spy satellites, he refused to believe the US was attacking.
The Soviet missiles stayed in their silos. He bought time to expose the alarm as false. He averted a holocaust.
It is chilling to recall that faulty technology almost caused World War III, but inspirational that a person, just like one of us, saved the planet".

Thanks for your courage  Lt-Col Petrov...