30 January 1926 – 19 August 1998) was a senior Soviet Naval officer who prevented a Russian submarine from launching nuclear torpedoes against ships of the United States Navy at a crucial moment in the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. The course of events that would have followed such an action cannot be known, but speculations have been advanced, up to and including global thermonuclear war.
Off the coast of Cuba, US ships had dropped depth charges. The captain of the diesel powered submarine B-59 and the political officer believed that war had started and that they were under attack. Arkhipov, as flotilla chief of staff and executive officer on board the submarine, refused to consent to the use of nuclear weapons in retaliation, a decision which would have required the agreement of all three officers. In 2002, Thomas S. Blanton, then director of the US National Security Archive, credited Arkhipov as “the man who saved the world”.
