One night in 1983, a screen in a Soviet bunker began flashing red: nuclear attack or false alarm? One man had to decide. Colin Freeman tells his story

NB. This piece on Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov originally ran in 2015, and has been republished following his death at the age of 77

Kevin Costner has done it, as has Robert De Niro and a delegation at the UN. But should you too feel like thanking the Man Who Saved the World in person, beware: it can be a difficult task. First, travel to Moscow, and drive to a grimy village in the southern suburbs, where skinheads and drunks patrol the streets. Then, leaving nothing valuable in your car, head up the urine-stained stairwells of a crumbling, Soviet-era apartment block and look for a grouchy, stubbly pensioner, who may not look much different from the tramps outside.

This is not Superman or Flash Gordon gone to seed. Instead, it is Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, who, at the height of the Cold War in the 1980s, was in charge of Russia’s nuclear missile early-warning system. As reporters who have tracked him down will testify, he will often shout at visitors to go away, or – at best – may grudgingly admit: “I was just in the right place at the right time”.