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Yet the Cuban missile crisis with the stake of the entire world didn't escalate.

• ceejayoz 3y ago
  1. More time to think. An incoming F-14 is a minutes/seconds scenario; the Cuban crisis lasted 10 days. 2. "X did not happen" does not mean "Y was not a factor in X". The "about to get blown up" factor was part of the reason the Cuban missile crisis happened; it's also probably part of the resolution.
• Cyph0n 3y ago
  There were some close calls during the Cold War. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alar...
  • graphe 3y ago
    For some reason I mixed this with the Cuban missile crisis, I thought it had something to do with it.
  • cozzyd 3y ago
    My favorite is https://blog.ucsusa.org/david-wright/the-moon-and-nuclear-war-904/ https://blog.ucsusa.org/david-wright/the-moon-and-nuclear-wa...
• Merad 3y ago
  We got _incredibly_ lucky. A Soviet submarine trying to get through the blockade believed that war had broken out and wanted to attack the US fleet with nuclear torpedoes [0]. Normally only two men aboard the sub had to approve the nuclear launch, and they both wanted to fire. This particular sub happened to have a third officer [1] on board who also needed to approve the launch, and he may have literally saved the world by disagreeing with the other two officers. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis#Averted_nuclear_launch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis#Averted_n... 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov
  • ghaff 3y ago
    And my understanding is the US military leadership was generally in favor of attacking Cuba not knowing there were already nuclear warheads there.