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Who in history (either present or in the past) do you think has had the biggest positive impact on humanity? (self.asklemmy)

submitted 8 months ago by Aurelius to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Politicians and kings rarely do something they weren't forced to, and inventors are rarely without competition, so I take issue with most of the responses here.

Instead, I'll go with naval officer Vasily Arkhipov, who, if he had decided to agree with the normal officers of the submarine he happened to be on, would have started a hot Cold War on 27 October, 1962.

Then again, there was a separate, slightly less severe close call the same day, so if you butterfly that who knows what else happens. It was a crazy time where few understood nuclear diplomacy and cold warfare, but nukes were ubiquitous, and were being treated like normal weapons. We got lucky.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

There was another noteworthy case with Stanislav Petrov.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

Yup. That one had a bit more wiggle room, though, because his superiors might have just come to the same conclusion he did. The other incident marked likely on the Wikipedia list is actually from France, which is almost funny to me. Can you imagine France doing a first strike out of nowhere?