old farts of letsrun - how does this compare with cuban missile crisis?

I can't give any source about fall out shelters but I definitely remember businesses that were trying to sell them. I was in a supermarket where one had been built as a demo. Not very many people actually went ahead and built one and I remember years later reading a newspaper article about people who had built one and had no idea what to so with it years later when we kind of stopped thinking the Big One was coming. I also remember that for years and years we had loads of some sort of canned food, maybe a stew, that the government had issued to anyone who wanted it to eat in case a nuclear war wiped out food supplies.

That was way worse, but nobody knew just how bad until way after. Khrushchev thought Kennedy was unstable, so he backed down.

Interesting story. I met a woman who had a husband in the British Secret Service working as a "delegate" at the English Embassy in Moscow during that time period. She said the Russian people loved Kennedy and were in mourning after his assassination.

Kennedy put nukes in Turkey. Kruschev responded by sending nukes to Cuba. Kennedy agreed to remove his nukes if Kruschev sent his back home.

After the Fall of USSR, Obama/Trump/Biden crossed the RED LINE into the former USSR and grabbed former USSR countries. Russia was too weak to respond.

500 to 800 years ago the USSR was Golden Horde, and later the Khanates (colonies) of the Mongol Empire. The people are half-Asian and half-White. They are 50% European and 50% Asian bloods. They are called Slavs, Tatars, Eastern Europeans.

Russia sees themselves as the caretakers of the Slavs, Tatars, E Eur. Russia feels they now have to stop this takeover and save the Slavs.

In the past only the US Dollar dominated. Now China Yuan/RMB and Crypto are working, viable alternatives.

Russia has chosen to forsake Western Europe and the US

Russia has nuclear weapons

I was 9yo in 1962. Lived in Flint MI at the time. So far this isn't anywhere near as dangerous as the Cuban Missile Crisis. Not that I distinctly remember but memory has been reinforced from reading about it years later. I do remember Dad, Mom and I going to look at a 'Bomb Shelter' in Flint at the time. Basically it was just an enclosed large Metal tub with some sort of hatch that you would bury in the background. I can remember the salesman said it was $500. My Dad didn't get one.

Really really insightful post.

Black and yellow sign with three yellow triangles inside black circle. Fallout shelter signs were on many sturdy concrete, brick and steel buildings. Signs were removed during W. Bush and Obama administrations.

Born in 1955. I had a nutty teacher who would, in the middle of class, say something like, "You know, at this very moment there are missiles in Cuba pointed at us and we could all be killed!" True maybe, but a lot to lay on a bunch of 7 year olds.

Part of a Twilight Zone episode where one family has a bomb shelter and the neighbors want in:

Lived on an Air Force base (Strategic Air Command) at the time of the Cuban missile crisis and we were very much aware. Our base, which had nuke bombers (B52s), with ICBM silos close by, would have been a primary target for a first strike.

We set up a "bomb shelter" in the basement of our house, bought survival food, etc., but the reality was that if the US/USSR started an active nuclear war, we were toast.

The situation in Ukraine in an order of magnitude less scary to me. And I live in a current prime target for nuclear attack, NYC.

Typo before : 1949 not 1959. You can actually search real estate ads and see new homes built with bomb shelters included.

We had one of those fallout shelters in my town, but I don't think it would have held more than a thousand people. So apparently only the important people would have survived.

Says the official Russian troll here.

At that age my parents rented, but I remember school friends in about 1962 who had fallout shelters either in basements or underground outside the home.

Born 1957. My dad and our neighbor both were executives in the defense aviation industry. They both built 12'x12x12 concrete fallout shelters under our front yards. I think this was around 1960. We didn't talk about using them, or at least I don't recall. I vaguely remember the tension around the Crisis, but that is overshadowed in my memory by JFKs assassination for various reasons. Let's just say that my school teacher did not appreciate my "show and tell" that day (I had gone home for lunch and was the only kid to have heard about it) .

I currently live at ground zero, so I think the equivalent is that I bug out and live out in the boonies until things "blow over" : / This would be if Putin either uses or seriously threatens the use of tactical nukes, or invades NATO. I think that that could easily be triggered by a "No Fly Zone". I am so sympathetic to the Ukrainians who are asking for this, but it is the shortest path to WWIII.

I think you guys led very sheltered, as in insulated, lives. I saw many areas designated as fallout shelters up until the early 1970s. Basements and such at large urban and university buildings. There were yellow and black signs that indicated fallout shelter. Look it up.

No specific recollection of the Cuban missile crisis (barely more than a toddler at the time) and learned about it some years later. But from mid-elementary school on (sometime during or after 3rd or 4th grade), we did have films of nuclear bombs going off, shown at school and on TV. So it was something you thought about.

The Day After was Hollywood hype. Red Dawn was a propaganda film, although somewhat engaging. (80s films).

We are in the biggest crisis since 1962, just leave it at that. On second thought think of the stakes here. Putin is about to commit some unspeakable harm to Ukraine in the next weeks and months and tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people might die. If the West/NATO responds with force in any way to protect the people of Ukraine (e.g., a no fly zone, or say taking out a convoy or artillery battery), he very well could retaliate with nuclear or chemical/biological warfare on Europe and maybe U.S.. He feels he has nothing to lose.

1989-91 were a little dicey, and things could have gone really bad, but the fall of the Soviet Union was for the most part a peaceful miracle.

My elementary school was a designated fallout shelter (the basement). We did duck and cover drills. First going under our desks, and then that was modified to orderly exiting the classroom into the hallway and lining up along the walls on our knees with head tuck and hands on the back of our heads. We were lined up head to butt. I suppose that way we could kiss each other's ass goodbye. Across the street from the school was the air raid siren which was tested every day at noon. This was during the Vietnam War.

Not the same.

Khrushchev was a communist politician, but human. Putin is a corrupted bot.

If I remember the specific Kennedy Library materials accurately, President Kennedy purposely let the Soviets know that he knew about the missiles by first having them mentioned at a minor press conference given somewhere in the midwest by a military officer. That was subtle diplomacy. Poker/chess. Nowadays, politicians blurt our confrontational language, thinking it makes them tough guys, and to play to their base (regarding Ukraine, both Biden and Trump have done this).

Finally, the Soviets never had a puppet in the White House, a political party, a US TV network, nor a well-funded PAC (NRA) helping them accomplish their goals. Nor did they have social media data to exploit and deploy.

You aren't quite on the mark about 1962. Both the US and Russia already then possessed enough nuclear weapons - that included the hydrogen bomb - to destroy the planet. The prevailing philosophy at the time was of M.A.D - Mutually Assured Destruction. In addition to that capacity the world was separated into two irreconcilable camps divided by ideology, political systems and geography in which each saw the other as mortal enemies. There was no "peaceful co-existence" and there had been several potentially catastrophic flashpoints between them in the years before the Cuban missile crisis - the Berlin airlift in 1949, the Korean War in 1950-53 and the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, among others. In 1960, the "Doomsday Clock", that represented how close the world was to nuclear conflict, was at 5 minutes to midnight. We lived with the ever-present shadow of nuclear Armageddon.

I was born in 1953 - just after the death of Stalin and the end of the Korean War. I was aged 9 at the time of the Cuban missile crisis. I have experienced nothing like it in my lifetime. I lived in a country far away from the political epicentre of the confrontation but I easily recall the the fear - the dread - I experienced even as a child that the world was on the very edge of destruction. It wasn't a war. It was a standoff over competing ultimatums. Krushchev finally blinked. We came back from the edge of the precipice. Kennedy became the saviour of "the Free World" - in '64 Kruschev was deposed (but not executed - a first) by the Politburo - and when Kennedy was assassinated in '63 we wept. He was ours, not just America's.

Kennedy put nukes in Turkey. Kruschev sailed nukes to Cuba. Kennedy sent US Navy boats to intercept.

Kennedy and Kruschev agreed to stand down and remove their nukes. The crisis was over.

After the Fall of the USSR, the US grabbed some of the old USSR. Russia was too weak to respond. Now Russia has responded by recovering Ukraine.

Ukraine and Belarus are part of the old Russia from 800 years ago. The Mongol Golden Horde came from the North of China, 3500 miles ways, and conquered Russia all the way to East Germany, Palestine, Northern India, including Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Turkey, etc. The Mongols established suzerainty over Western Europe, Mediterranean, Vatican, etc.

For 300 years, the Mongols raised and harvested millions of half-breed Asian-White slaves for sale at Crimea slave markets. There are various names used today for the slaves are Slavs, Tatars, Eastern Europeans.

The greatest, largest land empire in history splintered from Golden Hordes and White Horde into dozens of Khanates (colonies) spread from China, Korea, to East Germany, N India,, etc. Ny the 1500's the empire began to collapse. Returning slaves settled in Ukraine and Belarus none could speak Russian and they eventually spoke a very close Russian dialect.

That's why Putin won't allow Ukraine nor Belarus to be taken by NATO, EU, USA. Russia can't let them go. It's too emotional for Russians to be reminded of the Hordes, Khanates, Crimea Slave markets, etc.

The US and West Europe sluff it off. Russia is serious and is recovering Ukraine now.