I see a lot of commentary here about Petrov which flatly disagrees with the Wikipedia article about him. Some central notes, bolding mine:
On the opinion of his superiors about his actions:
General Yury Votintsev, then commander of the Soviet Air Defense’s Missile Defense Units, who was the first to hear Petrov’s report of the incident (and the first to reveal it to the public in the 1990s), states that Petrov’s “correct actions” were “duly noted”.[2] Petrov himself states he was initially praised by Votintsev
On being forced out of the army:
He was reassigned to a less sensitive post,[18] took early retirement (although he emphasized that he was not “forced out” of the army
He left the army to work for the R&D institute that designed the alarm system:
In 1984, Petrov left the military and got a job at the research institute that had developed the Soviet Union’s early warning system. He later retired so he could care for his wife after she was diagnosed with cancer.[7]
Whether he abandoned his duty, or was a conscientious objector, or similar:
In an interview for the film The Man Who Saved the World, Petrov says, “All that happened didn’t matter to me—it was my job. I was simply doing my job, and I was the right person at the right time, that’s all. My late wife for 10 years knew nothing about it. ‘So what did you do?’ she asked me. ‘Nothing. I did nothing.’”
The most important conclusion here is that Stanislav Petrov was assigned to monitor an alarm system. He reported a false alarm because he believed the alarm was false. If he had believed the alarm was real, he would have reported an attack, because that was his job.
I see a lot of commentary here about Petrov which flatly disagrees with the Wikipedia article about him. Some central notes, bolding mine:
On the opinion of his superiors about his actions:
On being forced out of the army:
He left the army to work for the R&D institute that designed the alarm system:
Whether he abandoned his duty, or was a conscientious objector, or similar:
The most important conclusion here is that Stanislav Petrov was assigned to monitor an alarm system. He reported a false alarm because he believed the alarm was false. If he had believed the alarm was real, he would have reported an attack, because that was his job.