Specifically for the 80s, this incident that was declassified much later illustrates how one could be expecting doom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_

Specifically for the 80s, this incident that was declassified much later illustrates how one could be expecting doom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alar... This one happened in 1995: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_rocket_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_rocket_incident The difference now is that we feel potentially doomed by inaction as opposed to reckless action, even though one could think of our environmental damage as the result of many compounded actions without awareness of their result.