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There's the case of a Soviet officer in charge of a nuclear early-warning system who, correctly suspecting that his equipment was malfunctioning, ignored a procedure that would have resulted in a nuclear strike on the U.S.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov

He received no significant recognition until long after the U.S.S.R. collapsed. We Americans in particular were grateful to him for not blowing us up.