From my own experience with hardware and real life in general, I imagine they probably had some equipment who they already knew was not working 100% and it was the only one to detect such missiles. I can’t imagine any other reason why they wouldn’t report it without risk of being labeled a traitor afterwards.
This is pretty close to Petrov’s account of his reasoning, plus that the early warning system only showed four or five missiles inbound and he expected a hypothetical American first strike to be way bigger
From my own experience with hardware and real life in general, I imagine they probably had some equipment who they already knew was not working 100% and it was the only one to detect such missiles. I can’t imagine any other reason why they wouldn’t report it without risk of being labeled a traitor afterwards.
This is pretty close to Petrov’s account of his reasoning, plus that the early warning system only showed four or five missiles inbound and he expected a hypothetical American first strike to be way bigger
If it was real, others would likely report it. If no one else is freaking out and phones aren’t ringing, it likely isn’t real.