Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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Savior Of The World Award

Award given to those who, through personal actions have averted nuclear armageddon.
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A special award, given posthumously in cases, to those who were tasked with having their finger on the button, were given the go ahead and so said no.

I know of two people for starters who would get this, both happen to be Russians, which would make this American conceptualized award useful as an olive branch to some extent.

One is Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov, a Soviet Navy officer during the Cuban Missile Crisis who prevented the launch of a nuclear torpedo and thereby prevented a nuclear war.

The other is the apocryphal account of Boris Yeltsin being told to launch when a Norwegian rocket was thought to be a sub launched ballistic missile heading towards Russia. Not sure if that one is true but evidently the Arkhipov incident is verified.

I'm sure there are others and we all owe a great debt of gratitude to these people since they, you know, single- handedly saved hundreds of millions of people.

Seems like it would be a nice sentiment.

Actually, come to think of it, isn't there a Nobel Prize for world piece? If so these guys should be given one. Seems like this should already be baked but if not, it would be nice.

doctorremulac3, Jul 29 2015

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       //isn't there a Nobel Prize for world piece? // Yes, but but it has to be a large piece.
MaxwellBuchanan, Jul 29 2015
  

       Actually I don't think giving it to a Russian would act as an olive branch. By giving it, we would essentially be exposing the recklessness of the military command organization whose orders had been ignored by the winner.   

       Not that this is necessarily a bad idea, but it seems there could be a lot of implications both good and bad.
scad mientist, Jul 29 2015
  

       I think there should be some credit given to disobeying bad orders. In the case of the Soviet Navy guy, the U.S. was conducting depth charge drills at least at a distance far away enough from the sub that it had the choice of whether to fire or not. Clearly the choice to not fire was a good one.   

       But I see what you're saying. A Russian commander getting one of these medals from the U.S. might not want to wear it during a victory day parade. This would be more like a hippie-dippy "citizen of the world" award.   

       An alternative might be a monument someplace. Seems like we should be able to somehow say "Hey, thanks for not blowing up the world!"
doctorremulac3, Jul 29 2015
  

       How about giving everyone in the world a voucher for £100, redeemable in a year. Anyone who blows the world up forfeits their voucher.
MaxwellBuchanan, Jul 29 2015
  

       Do we get back pay? I haven't blown up the world for as far back as I can remember.
doctorremulac3, Jul 29 2015
  

       //“Saviour Of The Universe”//   

       I think the jury is still out on that one. It seems unlikely that we'll hit a big crunch, but the whole dark energy thing means that we'll be in line for a heat-death. The saviour of the universe is going to have to do a pretty delicate balancing act.
MaxwellBuchanan, Jul 29 2015
  

       "This award is to Lieutenant Bartleby, who preferred not to."
lurch, Jul 29 2015
  

       Savoir of the Universe Award, awarded to the brainboxes who knew about Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov before he became the sort of jazzy fact that slides across your facebook with the regularity of the passing seasons. The Savoir of the Universe Award is shaped like a croissant, a glass of wine a smug man.
calum, Jul 29 2015
  

       That's uncanny, I was just about to post the exact same thing, almost word for word.
doctorremulac3, Jul 29 2015
  

       "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"
8th of 7, Jul 29 2015
  

       //who knew about Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov before he became the sort of jazzy fact//   

       So now we're being hipster about historical facts as well? I knew about Vasili Arkhipov before it was cool?
Custardguts, Jul 29 2015
  

       I'm perfectly at peace with the concept of knowing about Vasili Arkhipov and NOT being cool.
doctorremulac3, Jul 29 2015
  

       Maybe we should award the Soviet Death's Hand system an ongoing award for continuing to not annihilate western civilisation, even though it is designed, and perfectly capable of doing so at a moments notice. Just nominate it on a continuous ongoing basis right up until it does, in fact, annihilate western civilisation.   

       We could foist award upon accolade onto the lab technician, who actually did his or her job and didn't release Superflu from their government run underground lab last week.   

       I think we're on the wrong end of the scale here.
Custardguts, Jul 29 2015
  

       // So now we're being hipster about historical facts as well? I knew about Vasili Arkhipov before it was cool? //
pretty much, yeah, for certain values of "we". The internet makes knowledge of facts worthless - all facts are there for the taking, all the time, facts like the VAA one are piped into your face whether you want them or not and so on and so on - so the only cachet left to extract from fact-knowledge is to claim / evidence that you held the fact currency before the fact currency was devalued due to the web's quantitative easing. This cachet is pretty weak; a prize will buff it up.
calum, Jul 30 2015
  

       I knew that it was cool to know about Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov before everyone else before everyone else.
hippo, Jul 30 2015
  

       u old lol
calum, Jul 30 2015
  

       I for one did not know anything about Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov, and on reading this, thought he might be that cosmonaut who could be heard cursing his spacecraft as he burned up on reentry, but that was Vladimir Mikhaylovich Komarov.
zen_tom, Jul 30 2015
  

       I think we should award a ton of fishbones to the Soviets for having such a piss-poor system of launch code authorization.
RayfordSteele, Jul 30 2015
  

       Before I red zen_tom's anno, I knew nothing of Vladimir Mikhaylovich Komarov and thought on reading his name that he might have been the Russian who wrote that mucky book that Peter Sellers was in. But that was someone else.
calum, Jul 30 2015
  

       //Vasiline Makfin Gerslipov//   

       Lol. Anno of the month.
doctorremulac3, Jul 30 2015
  

       I have never heard of Vaseline Arse Whotsit, I still know nothing at all about him or her (assuming it's the name of a person), and I am as cool as feck.
pocmloc, Jul 30 2015
  

       If you knew everything, would you know that you knew everything? How could you tell?   

       Can the set of knowing everything contain itself?
RayfordSteele, Jul 30 2015
  

       Give me the award. I was going to summon a demon who'd eat the world for breakfast, fart it out in the afternoon & light it on fire while laughing.   

       But... I didn't.   

       So give me the award for saving the world please.   

       Oh, it had to be nuclear destruction? OK, another demon was going to eat the world & fission it in his belly, OK?
sophocles, Aug 01 2015
  

       The last programming mistake in C   

       .
.
.
if ( state = WAR ) launch();
pashute, Aug 02 2015
  

       you are all very cool in my book, but I didn't know I had a book until I read this.
dentworth, Aug 03 2015
  
      
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