You always see movies or read books about people who save the world. But has anyone actually saved it? Here are some men who were able to save the world from different situations. Where are the movies on these men?!

 

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  • Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov

    Stanislav Petrov is a retired lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces. He was the duty officer on September 26, 1983 at the Oko nuclear early-warning system command center when there was an alert saying that the United States had launched a nuclear missile. Petrov believed that if the US had launched a missile it would have been an all out attack so he didn't think it the alarm was right. Also, it was a brand new system so it didn't trust it entirely. He ended up being correct, the system had indeed malfunctioned. If he had reported the alarm, his superiors could have decided to send out their own missile in retaliation. His quick thinking is credited to have stopped a large-scale nuclear war between Russia and the United States. Initially he was praised for his quick thinking but later was reprimanded for not following procedures and documenting the incident correctly in a war diary.

     

  • Alexei Ananenko, Valeri Bezpalov, and Boris Baranov

    Alexei Ananenko, Valeri Bezpalov, and Boris Baranov are all credited with saving Russia from a huge nuclear explosion during the Chernobyl crisis. This may not count as the world, but they did save much of Russia from turning into a deserted wasteland like Chernobyl. Under the Chernobyl reactor, there was a water reservoir that was used for the emergency cooling pumps for the reactor. Unfortunately due to the severity of the explosion, if the molten reactor core melted through the floor it would have reached this reservoir. The water would have then caused a radioactive steam explosion that would have reached out farther than Chernobyl. The only way to drain the reservoir was to manually close the sluice gate, which the three men did. After they successfully closed the gate, they began showing signs of radiation poisoning and later died outside the power plant.

  • Norman Borlaug

    Norman Borlaug is often called "the man who saved a billion lives." Borlaug developed high-yield, disease resistant varieties of wheat and helped with modern agriculture production techniques. He brought these things to Mexico, India and Pakistan. Wheat production almost doubled in India and Pakistan and he is credited for helping these country's food supplies and stopped their citizens form starvation.

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