The man who saved the world

"Few people know of Stanislav Petrov… yet hundreds of millions of people are alive because of him."
The documentary film The Man Who Saved the World (starring: Walter Cronkite, Robert De Niro, Matt Damon and Kevin Costner) tells the gripping true story of Stanislav Petrov - a man who single-handedly averted a full-scale nuclear world war, but now struggles to get his life back on track.
For a few crucial moments on September 26, 1983, Stanislav Petrov held the fate of the world in his hands. When an alarm suddenly went off at Soviet nuclear early warning center Serpukhov-15, Stanislav was responsible for reacting to a report that five American nuclear missiles were heading toward the Soviet Union. Rather than retaliate, Stanislav followed his gut feeling and went against protocol, convincing the armed forces that it was a false alarm. His decision saved the world from a potential devastating nuclear holocaust. Three decades later, this forgotten hero went on a spectacular journey to the United States, where he was finally acknowledged for his historic deed. 
The documentary (2014, director Peter Anthony) is an epic Cold War thriller that shows us just how close we came to Apocalypse… and it’s not over yet! With a new cold war rising and thousands of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert, we still live under the same catastrophic danger that Stanislav faced back then.

With an introduction by Rimma Velikanova, student at Hanze University of Applied Sciences, who works for the PNND and UNFOLD ZERO, a new platform for United Nations focused initiatives and actions for the achievement of a nuclear weapons free world. And after the screening Christoph Humrich, assistant professor of international relations at the Groningen university, will give a critical comment.

The program is organised in cooperation with SIB Groningen and  supported by UNFOLD ZERO and Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (PNND).