The fact that you’re alive today to read this may be due to the actions of one man.

Twenty-four years ago today, Stanislav Petrov averted nuclear disaster and prevented the start of WWIII. It was just past midnight on September 26, 1983 when Petrov, seated in the commander’s chair at a Soviet installation that monitored satellite activity, heard an alarm which signaled the U.S. had just launched a nuclear missile.

Petrov’s job as a lieutenant colonel demanded that he make a split-second decision: was this for real?

The situation was already tense on both sides of the Cold War. Just weeks before, Soviet pilots had shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, killing 269 passengers and crew. Meanwhile, the U.S. was gearing up for Able Archer, a NATO military exercise spanning the European continent in a simulation of coordinated nuclear release.

As the alarms went off, Petrov considered his options. Soviet policy required an immediate counter-attack, but such a response would only trigger further disaster. Within minutes, millions of people would be dead.

Petrov had a hunch it was a false alarm, and yet within moments lights flashed across the screen to indicate a second missile launch. They were followed by a third, a fourth, and finally a fifth.

At this point, Petrov’s orders were to send notice to Yuri Andropov, the General Secretary of the Communist Party. He knew Andropov would order an immediate nuclear response.

Petrov considered the lack of corroboration from ground radar and held tight to his hunch that no missiles had actually been launched. Disobeying protocol, he contacted his superior officer and reported that the matter was a false alarm. If he was wrong, his decision had just ensured his country would disappear under a nuclear mushroom cloud.

Four hours later — with no missiles having materialized — interrogators arrived from Moscow. Petrov and his colleagues were grilled for three long days. The interrogators wanted to know why he hadn’t written everything down that night as it happened. They were not impressed with his explanation that he’d had a phone in one hand and an intercom in another, with no way to stop to take notes between the flurry of conversation going on.

The eventual findings: the Soviet satellite had picked up the reflection of sunlight off the tops of clouds which somehow made it appear as if the United States had launched a nuclear attack.

That’s right: the weather nearly precipitated the start of World War III, and the only reason it never came to that was because Stanislav Petrov decided to follow his hunch.

Petrov’s actions were kept secret until 1988. Even then, his heroism went largely ignored until Col. Gen. Yury Votintsev, the former commander of the Soviet Air Defense’s Missile Defense Units, published his memoirs and acknowledged Petrov’s role in preventing WWIII.

Stanislav Petrov took “early retirement” from the military and later suffered a nervous breakdown. He is currently living as a pensioner in the town of Fryazino, a science-oriented town in Moscow Oblast, Russia. He has said he does not regard himself as a hero for what he did that day.

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