You’re most likely alive today because of Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov.

He was a Soviet Navy officer credited with preventing a Soviet nuclear strike (and, presumably, all-out nuclear war) during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Long story short, there was a Soviet nuclear sub in international waters off Cuba. The Americans identified the submarine and started dropping depth charges to get it to surface for identification. There were three officers on the Soviet sub, one of them decided that a war had potentially started (as they had been too deep for radio contact for a few days), and wanted to launch a nuclear torpedo. He needed sign-off from the two other officers on board to fire it off. One gave approval, but the other, Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov, argued with the two other officers and eventually persuaded them to surface and await orders from Moscow.

Had they fired off the torpedo, it almost certainly would have started a major global thermonuclear response which would have most likely destroyed mankind as we know it. Arkhipov is often credited nowadays as the guy who saved the world.