A heroic story from the cold war

Back in the cold war days - when Norway was the last outpost of the NATO towards the Soviet, and any politics left of conservative was considered communism, most of the stories from the Soviet where Western propaganda.

I grew up as a kid in the 70s and a teenager in the 80s. No, I still do not understand the pop-music. I learned to be afraid of nuclear war, communism and walked around believing that Soviet was colored in shades of gray. If there where colors there, they would be dark, disturbing. Like shadows.

I remember depicting the west as a golden, shiny, colorful place - where all things good happen. And the East was dark. Depressing. Scary - a modern day hell, so to speak. Gulag and Siberia.

And of course all the hero's came from the west. All the bad guys from the East. No matter if it was Bond or Spiderman - the plot where the same brainwashing scenario good vs. bad.

This is all repeated today with the terrorists. The big, bad Arabian looking bad-guy versus the great, nice, smiling and heroic American. Things have changed, though. The Gulag of today must be Guantanamo's Bay. The terrorist cannot scare us as the Nuclear scenario could back in the day. Perhaps that is why France and US is so keen on targetting Iran these days? Perhaps the everyday suicidal terrorist is not scary enough for the rest of us to create the necessary support for a sustained war on terrorists?

And I am older, hopefully wiser, and know first hand that Russia and Eastern Europe is just as colorful as the rest of the world. And war is never what it seems. US has ran out of Oil. The rest of the world is soon to follow. China is moving into Africa big time. Putin and Russia continues to follow their own path - no matter what the rest of the world does and mean.

In these times, I just love discovering that hero's are on both sides. Like back in 1983, when the Soviet military officer Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov avoided to launch a full size nuclear attack against the west. He decided that the missiles that showed up on his radars where due to a computer error, and not a real attack. Sitting in his bunker, counting seconds and minutes, watching his screens showing a growing number of missiles heading towards them. Keeping himself and his team cool, he saved the world as we know it.

I would love to hear about your everyday hero. About your view of the future. And it's impact on security as we know it.