A Lt. Col. had the authority to launch Soviet missles at the US by pressing a red button??

He was on duty alone even though the Russians were paranoid about an impending US attack??

Sounds like a real bulls**t story to me.

I don't personally know the veracity of it, but have heard the story for many years.

More info, more sources, more links are at the wikipedia page:

No, its true. I watched a news story about it on TV. That means it must have been true.

I disagree that he did nothing.

Doing nothing would've meant, that he just sat there behind the red button and decided not to push it. But he didn't do that, he checked the data, made his own observations and calculations and decided based on that evidence not to push the button. Big difference.

This man could very well have saved my life, and yours too.

Yes, I had heard the story before also but didn't believe it then either.

Of course it may be true, I just doubt that even the Russians fearing an attack, would put that kind of power in the hands of a single individual of relatively minor rank. We are speaking of mutual destruction here.

I tend to buy the story from the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations. They issued a press release contending that a single individual would be incapable of starting or preventing a nuclear war....

Just makes more sense to me.

...but it must come down to one person at some point, even though that person may have no idea what he is doing.

The old man who ruled the universe in the Hitch hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (the book, not the movie, of course) comes to mind...