At the Serpukhov-15 command centre near Moscow, a Soviet early-warning system reported that American intercontinental missiles had been launched. Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov judged the small number of detections inconsistent with a real first strike and reported a system malfunction. Reflected sunlight had produced the false alarm.

The incident embodied Cold War poetry's fear that machines and procedural language might decide humanity's fate. Its later retelling gave a human face to the nuclear anxieties explored by poets using alarms, broadcasts and official instructions as forms of apocalyptic speech.