Who is the greatest person that history has forgotten?
Every single person on this planet, all 7.8 billion people owe their lives to this man.
Meet Vasili Archipov. The Russian naval officer who single-handedly averted a nuclear war between NATO and the USSR during the height of the Cold War— the Cuban Missile Crisis.
I should give you some background.
In 1953, Fidel Castro led his Marxist-Communist regime in an effort to overthrow the Cuban government. In 1959, they succeeded. Cuba then shocked the world by being the first nation in the Western Hemisphere to openly ally with the Soviet Union.
Fast forward two years. The United States start planting missiles in Turkey, positioned to aim directly into the heart of the USSR.
The Soviet leader realized that they did not have enough missiles that could strike the U.S. They started moving nuclear weapons to Cuba, under the influence of Castro. Missiles that could strike the eastern United States on a moment’s notice.
On October 14, 1962, American spy planes noticed this and President John F. Kennedy was notified just 2 days later. His advisors all wished to launch a full-scale invasion of Cuba, but he didn’t submit to the peer pressure and instead ordered a blockade of any ships suspected to be carrying weapons to Cuba.
Meanwhile, Castro was riling up Khrushchev, the Russian leader at that time. Castro was a bit insane and was sure that the Americans wanted to invade Cuba. The Americans already had attempted several half-hearted missions to assassinate Castro and overthrow his regime. He started egging on the Russians to launch a pre-emptive strike against America.
Khrushchev did not submit. Imagine the tension at that time. Both Russia and America had missiles positioned to strike each other at a moment’s notice. Russia was defying America’s blockade. Both leaders were under severe peer pressure. Both sides were showing signs of aggression.
But Khrushchev and Kennedy both stood by. Meanwhile, JFK raised the DEFCON, a meter of the threat of nuclear war, to DEFCON 2.
U.S bombers circled the Soviet Union itself, ready to drop nukes on a 15 minute notice.
This was serious. And then it happened. The day that decided the entire fate of humanity, and everything we know and love today.
October 27, 1962. A Soviet submarine carrying a 5 kiloton nuclear warhead on a T-5 torpedo was discovered by an American fleet of 10 destroyers and one carrier.
The Americans wanted the sub to resurface and confirm it was friendly. One destroyer sent harmless dummy charges towards the sub, as a signal to surface.
But the Soviets on board thought it was real. They had lost contact with Moscow and thought war had started above.
And they thought it was okay to fire their torpedo at the fleet.
The system required all three commanders to approve of firing the missile. Two of them, Valentin Savitsky and Ivan Maslennikov did.
We’re gonna blast them now! We will die, but we will sink them all— we will not become the shame of the fleet.
—Valentin Savitsky
But the third, our dear friend Vasili Archipov, didn’t. He understood that the Americans weren’t being aggressive. He convinced his comrades to call off the attack.
The submarine resurfaced to the relief of the crew, and traveled home to the USSR.
Keep in mind, if the sub fired that missile, which had the power of the Hiroshima bomb, the entire fleet would be decimated. Thousands of soldiers would lose their lives. The U.S would almost certainly respond with a nuclear strike straight into the heart of the Soviet Union.
NATO would wage war on Russia but both parties would be decimated by nuclear bombs. The radiation and fallout from the nuclear war would kill millions more, and so many more would die of starvation.
The world as we know it would end with billions dead and economic destruction.
If not for Vasili Archipov.
Say thank you to him today, and honor him, because he deserves it. He is the true savior of humanity.