Hey, I'm Johnny, and I recently started at Nectome on the operations side. You may have read some of Aurelia's posts. Nectome had a brief discount card sale a few months ago, and got a lot of responses to it, and one thing we keep hearing over and over is that people were sorry they missed the sale, because they read about us after it had ended.
Ultimately, we don't want to be in the discount card business. If all our preservations were people who had prudently bought them a decade before they needed them at a fraction of the full cost, that would be unsustainable. But we talked about it and agreed that we would do one more discount card sale at the end of this year, so if you're disappointed that you missed the sale, watch for a post from us soon with details.
We originally hoped to have the sale start on Petrov Day, but things didn't come together quickly enough. But in the spirit of Petrov Day, I thought I'd try my hand at the community tradition of telling the story of Petrov, and connect it to why I find human preservation meaningful.
The year was 1983. The Russian leader was Jurij Andropov, the most politically extreme Soviet leader since Stalin. Tensions between the US and the Soviet Union were at perhaps the highest point since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The US had begun a campaign of psychological warfare against the Soviets, trying to spook them into making a mistake:
"Sometimes we would send bombers over the North Pole and their radars would click on," recalls Gen. Jack Chain, [a] former Strategic Air Command commander. "Other times fighter-bombers would probe their Asian or European periphery." During peak times, the operation would include several maneuvers in a week. They would come at irregular intervals to make the effect all the more unsettling. Then, as quickly as the unannounced flights began, they would stop, only to begin again a few weeks later. - Peter Schweizer: *Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union*
After the Russians shot down a Korean jet liner over Soviet territory because they believed it was a spy mission, Reagan gave a speech asking American citizens not "to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil." The Kremlin concluded that the US and its allies were planning a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union, and directed KGB operatives in the west to prepare for possible nuclear war.
Three weeks later, on this day forty-three years ago, a 44-year-old Russian officer named Stanislav Petrov worked deep inside a secret bunker monitoring American missiles. This wasn't his regular duty; he was required to take a monitoring shift twice a month to keep from getting rusty. His superiors had told him repeatedly that the US was likely to launch a massive nuclear strike against Soviet forces. Shortly after midnight, a missile appeared on his screen. Petrov knew that the Soviet satellite system was relatively new, and he decided to wait to see if the reported missile was an error. Several minutes later, four new missiles appeared along with a flashing red warning asking him to confirm the incoming attack and press his red button to send the information up the chain of command.
"Everyone jumped from their seats looking at me," recalled Petrov in a later interview. "What could I do? There was a procedure that I had written myself." The protocol Petrov had written instructed him clearly to press the red button. In fifteen minutes, the missiles would arrive. But Petrov knew three things:
- It was still possible that the incoming missiles were an error in the system.
- If he pressed the red button, Andropov would have undoubtedly called for a counterattack, leading to nuclear war.
- If the Americans were going to start a nuclear war, most likely they wouldn't have sent only five missiles - they had the capacity to send hundreds.
In fact, that last point was wrong. The Americans had multiple plans for how they might initiate a nuclear strike, and one of their plans did call for sending just a few at first, with the idea that the Soviets might interpret a few as an instrument error. But in this case, it *was* an instrument error.
Petrov blamed the signals on faulty equipment, effectively saving the world from nuclear war. We'll never know what went through his mind during the fifteen minutes as he waited to find out whether he'd made the right call. We wouldn't be here today if Petrov had made the wrong decision.
Stanislav Petrov only met a tiny fraction of the lives he saved. But he didn't only save the lives of everyone on Earth. He saved the countless lives of those who didn't yet exist. He saved my life, though my parents had not yet met. He died in relative obscurity in 2017, and most of his recognition has been posthumous. The window has closed on the chance to let him experience our continuing gratitude.
Humanity won't soon forget the events of Petrov's life, but since his passing, we have lost the details of how he felt about it. We can read the things he said on interviews, but we can't go ask him new questions. We can't know what it was like for him in that fifteen minutes as he waited to see whether he had doomed his country or saved his world. We can't know what combination of emotions went through his head when strangers thanked him for their lives. We can't know Petrov's response to the fact that his son was unable to attend his posthumous honor ceremony because the US embassy delayed his visa. We can't ask him what he thinks of the celebration of Petrov Day.
History books record events, but preservations record people. I'd like to invite you to imagine a future where we could still talk to heroes like Petrov. A human future, in which we're the earliest living humans, the first generation to have been preserved and restored. A future where, when people wonder what it was like to have lived through and participated in historical events, they can just ask us. That's the future I'd like to join you in.
Hey, I'm Johnny, and I recently started at Nectome on the operations side. You may have read some of Aurelia's posts. Nectome had a brief discount card sale a few months ago, and got a lot of responses to it, and one thing we keep hearing over and over is that people were sorry they missed the sale, because they read about us after it had ended.
Ultimately, we don't want to be in the discount card business. If all our preservations were people who had prudently bought them a decade before they needed them at a fraction of the full cost, that would be unsustainable. But we talked about it and agreed that we would do one more discount card sale at the end of this year, so if you're disappointed that you missed the sale, watch for a post from us soon with details.
We originally hoped to have the sale start on Petrov Day, but things didn't come together quickly enough. But in the spirit of Petrov Day, I thought I'd try my hand at the community tradition of telling the story of Petrov, and connect it to why I find human preservation meaningful.
The year was 1983. The Russian leader was Jurij Andropov, the most politically extreme Soviet leader since Stalin. Tensions between the US and the Soviet Union were at perhaps the highest point since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The US had begun a campaign of psychological warfare against the Soviets, trying to spook them into making a mistake:
After the Russians shot down a Korean jet liner over Soviet territory because they believed it was a spy mission, Reagan gave a speech asking American citizens not "to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil." The Kremlin concluded that the US and its allies were planning a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union, and directed KGB operatives in the west to prepare for possible nuclear war.
Three weeks later, on this day forty-three years ago, a 44-year-old Russian officer named Stanislav Petrov worked deep inside a secret bunker monitoring American missiles. This wasn't his regular duty; he was required to take a monitoring shift twice a month to keep from getting rusty. His superiors had told him repeatedly that the US was likely to launch a massive nuclear strike against Soviet forces. Shortly after midnight, a missile appeared on his screen. Petrov knew that the Soviet satellite system was relatively new, and he decided to wait to see if the reported missile was an error. Several minutes later, four new missiles appeared along with a flashing red warning asking him to confirm the incoming attack and press his red button to send the information up the chain of command.
"Everyone jumped from their seats looking at me," recalled Petrov in a later interview. "What could I do? There was a procedure that I had written myself." The protocol Petrov had written instructed him clearly to press the red button. In fifteen minutes, the missiles would arrive. But Petrov knew three things:
- It was still possible that the incoming missiles were an error in the system.
- If he pressed the red button, Andropov would have undoubtedly called for a counterattack, leading to nuclear war.
- If the Americans were going to start a nuclear war, most likely they wouldn't have sent only five missiles - they had the capacity to send hundreds.
In fact, that last point was wrong. The Americans had multiple plans for how they might initiate a nuclear strike, and one of their plans did call for sending just a few at first, with the idea that the Soviets might interpret a few as an instrument error. But in this case, it *was* an instrument error.
Petrov blamed the signals on faulty equipment, effectively saving the world from nuclear war. We'll never know what went through his mind during the fifteen minutes as he waited to find out whether he'd made the right call. We wouldn't be here today if Petrov had made the wrong decision.
Stanislav Petrov only met a tiny fraction of the lives he saved. But he didn't only save the lives of everyone on Earth. He saved the countless lives of those who didn't yet exist. He saved my life, though my parents had not yet met. He died in relative obscurity in 2017, and most of his recognition has been posthumous. The window has closed on the chance to let him experience our continuing gratitude.
Humanity won't soon forget the events of Petrov's life, but since his passing, we have lost the details of how he felt about it. We can read the things he said on interviews, but we can't go ask him new questions. We can't know what it was like for him in that fifteen minutes as he waited to see whether he had doomed his country or saved his world. We can't know what combination of emotions went through his head when strangers thanked him for their lives. We can't know Petrov's response to the fact that his son was unable to attend his posthumous honor ceremony because the US embassy delayed his visa. We can't ask him what he thinks of the celebration of Petrov Day.
History books record events, but preservations record people. I'd like to invite you to imagine a future where we could still talk to heroes like Petrov. A human future, in which we're the earliest living humans, the first generation to have been preserved and restored. A future where, when people wonder what it was like to have lived through and participated in historical events, they can just ask us. That's the future I'd like to join you in.