in july 1961, arkhipov was appointed deputy commander and therefore executive officer of the new ballistic missile submarine "k-19". after a few days of conducting exercises off the south-east coast of greenland, the submarine developed an extreme leak in its reactor coolant system. this leak led to failure of the cooling system. radio communications were also affected, and the crew was unable to make contact with moscow. with no backup systems, commander zateyev ordered the seven members of the engineer crew to come up with a solution to avoid nuclear meltdown. this required the men to work in high radiation levels for extended periods. they eventually came up with a secondary coolant system and were able to keep the reactor from a meltdown. although they were able to save themselves from a nuclear meltdown, the entire crew, including arkhipov, were irradiated. all members of the engineer crew and their divisional officer died within a month due to the high levels of radiation they were exposed to. over the course of two years, fifteen more sailors died from the after-effects.