有谁真正拯救过世界?
本文转自Quora,版权归答主所有。原文链接:http://www.quora.com/Who-are-some-persons-who-have-really-saved-the-world
译者:Will Young
【John Lively】
This man, Stanislav Petrov, literally saved the World.
毫不夸张地说,这个叫Stanislav Petrov的男人,曾经拯救过这个世界 。
He was in command of a soviet missile silo back in 1983. His job was to watch for a potential nuclear attack from the United States, and if necessary - to respond with the power of God.
1983年时,他正控制着一个苏联导弹发射井。他的工作职责是密切警惕着来自美国的潜在核打击,并在必要的时候还之以足以毁灭世界的力量(来自苏联的核反击)。
On September 26th 1983, he received a missile warning - alerting him that a potential nuclear ICBM (Inter Continental Ballistic Missile) strike had been launched against his country.
1983年9月26日,他接收到了导弹预警——警告携带有核弹头的洲际弹道导弹将有可能袭击他的国家。
Now, as a good Soviet officer - when this alarm was raised, it was Petrov''s job to relay this to his high command immediately, which most likely would result in a full-scale counter strike on the part of the Soviets, the obvious result of that would have been something like...
作为一名称职的苏联军官,当预警发出时,Petrov的职责就是马上将这一情况传递给他的上级指挥官,这将很可能会导致苏联一方全面战争反击,而这一切的结果将会像这样…
Now, luckily for us - Mr. Petrov decided that it was more likely his new warning system was faulty, rather than the U.S launching a pre-emptive nuclear strike. In addition, the fact that his warning indicated five missiles in the air seemed strange, because all intelligence suggested any U.S strike would be ''all-out'', that is, raining nukes, so ''only'' five seemed strange.
如今,我们应该感到万幸,Petrov判断这次预警并不是来自美国先发制人的核攻击,而可能只是新系统的一次故障。另外,预警的显示也有些蹊跷——有五枚导弹正在袭来,因为根据所有的情报来看,一旦美国发动核攻击,那将会是毫无保留的全面攻击,而不会“仅有”五枚导弹。
It turns out our friend''s intuition was right - the malfunction, that had nearly caused WW3, and the deaths of countless millions, was actually caused by the warning system detecting clouds:
事实证明我们这位朋友的直觉是正确的,这次险些引起第三次世界大战并让世界生灵涂炭的系统故障事实上由于预警系统在探测云层的时候所引发的:
It was subsequently determined that the false alarms were caused by a rare alignment of sunlight on high-altitude clouds and the satellites'' Molniya orbits, an error later corrected by cross-referencing a geostationary satellite
经随后确认,罕见的等距阳光同时照射在高空云层和Molniya卫星的轨道上,造成了这个错误的警报,而这个错误随即就被交叉检测的另一颗地球同步卫星所纠正了。
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