Vasili arkhipov biography of barack
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Thank You Vasili Arkhipov, the Man Who Stopped Nuclear War
This article was originally published by The Guardian’s Comment Is Free.
If you were born before 27 October 1962, Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov saved your life. It was the most dangerous day in history. An American spy plane had been shot down over Cuba while another U2 had got lost and strayed into Soviet airspace. As these dramas ratcheted tensions beyond breaking point, an American destroyer, the USS Beale, began to drop depth charges on the B-59, a Soviet submarine armed with a nuclear weapon.
The captain of the B-59, Valentin Savitsky, had no way of knowing that the depth charges were non-lethal “practice” rounds intended as warning shots to force the B-59 to surface. The Beale was joined bygd other US destroyers who piled in to pummel the nedsänkt B-59 with more explosives. The exhausted Savitsky assumed that his submarine was doomed and that world war three had broken out. He ordered the B-59&#
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At the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis on 27 October 1962, the US Navy detected a Sovietsubmarine near the blockaded island of Cuba.
The US Navy ships began dropping depth charges around the submarine, called the B-59, rocking it violently from side to side. Onboard, unknown to the Americans, was a tactical nuclear torpedo.
As tempers rose inre the submarine and with no means of escape, the Soviet Captain Valentin Savitsky ordered the torpedo to be armed and readied.
But the weapon was not fired. Why? Because onboard the submarine was Vasili Aleksandrovich Arkhipov, a Soviet flotilla commander who diffused the situation and prevented the torpedo’s launch.
Here’s more about Vasili Aleksandrovich Arkhipov and how he stopped a nuclear war.
A 13-day political and military standoff took place in October 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Just 90 miles off the coast of Florida, the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba was in fruition. But ho
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Arkhipov Family awarded Future of Life Award
On October 27, 1962, a soft-spoken naval officer named Vasili Arkhipov single-handedly prevented nuclear war during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Arkhipov's submarine captain, thinking their submarine was under attack by American forces, wanted to launch a nuclear weapon at the ships above. Arkhipov, with the power of veto, said no, averting nuclear war.
On October 27, 2017, 55 years after his courageous actions, the Future of Life Institute (FLI) presented the Arkhipov family with the inaugural Future of Life Award to honour humanity's late hero at a ceremony in London.
Two days after that ceremony, Arkhipov's surviving family members, represented by his daughter Elena and grandson Sergei, were joined onstage in Cambridge by Max Tegmark, president of FLI, and Lord Martin Rees, Professor Huw Price and Jaan Tallinn – the co-founders of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk.
Elena said that her father "always though