Did Colonel Petrov save our world?

It's an old story (2003), and I've heard variations on it before, but the story of Colonel Petrov is worth a read. The allegation is that a Soviet computer error triggered a false alert pm 9/26/83, but rather than notify superiors (who might have launched the Soviet arsenal -- or decided the alert was an error), Colonel Petrov decided on his own initiative that the alarm was false. It was.

If you want to look for supernatural intervention, forget about intelligent design. Look to our having survived the 1980s. It seems unlikely, even in retrospect ...