Precious Roy, I dont remember any fallout shelters. Could you provide a source to your claim?
I do remember "duck and cover" drills at school.
Canada built a large bunker just outside Ottawa for the government to operate from in the event of nuclear war. It is now a museum. It is referred to as the Diefenbunker after the Prime Minister at the time, John Diefenbaker. The web site has several virtual tours of the complex. Check out the Prime Minister's bedroom on the 300 level, there are probably prison cells with more luxury.
The Diefenbunker is a once-top secret, four-storey underground bunker, now a museum and national historic site. Tours, exhibitions, escape rooms, and more!
I was seven at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. I remember my parents being very scared. Part of it was the feeling that WW2 was unfinished business from WW1 and so Cuba was unfinished business from WW2. Also, that was direct USA / Soviet confrontation.
Whereas today the USA is not directly involved. If Ukraine turns into another Afghanistan (or Vietnam) then one nuclear power can just encourage the resistance and watch the other nuclear power grind itself down in the quagmire.
This.
Also, Americans were more united then. Now we have an ex president singing Putin's praises. That would NEVER have happened back then.
OTOH you have an incompetent current administration who are contacting our enemy (CCP) sharing our intelligence information and begging them to persuade Putin to back down. These are levels of credulity we haven't seen since Chamberlain in 1938 was negotiating "peace" with Hitler while the latter was drawing up a non-aggression pact with Stalin.
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.
Precious Roy, I dont remember any fallout shelters. Could you provide a source to your claim?
I do remember "duck and cover" drills at school.
Roy referred to fallout shelters from which American lawmakers could govern. Those were built then and exist now.
I was in elementary school in the mid to late 60s in New England. I remember drills where we lined up and went into the school basement, which had a fallout shelter symbol. I have no idea if it was true fallout shelter.
Wasn't alive. Born in '70. But back then, I think the US and Russia really did consider nuclear war as an option. Both sides built lots of fallout shelters and had plans to govern from bunkers until the fallout subsided. Nuke capabilities back then were fairly limited even though stock piles were significant. In the 80s, the US and USSR had the ability to wipe each other out with the push of a button due to the large arsenals of ICBM. In the 60s, you would have needed bombers, and land and sea based nukes to really blow up the world.
Today, I do not believe that either the US or Russia would launch nuclear weapons. Russia might use a nuke to strike a NATO base if NATO got directly involved in Ukraine. But NATO isn't going to do that and the US won't either. That is because NATO and the US got what they wanted in this conflict. Russia is officially the bad guy and defense budgets will have to double and triple in order to deal with Putin (but without ever actually doing anything because of the nuclear deterrent). And this is the folly of nuclear weapons and modern defense spending. In the end, it is just a wealth transfer to a few politically connected defense contractors. We could build the largest and most powerful armed forces in human history and we will never be able to use it because of the nuclear deterrent.
You don't think Hitler would have used them? Putin is a cornered madman just like Hitler and his defense minister has already publicly said "Russia has no interest in living in world without Russia."
I have zero doubt that Putin would push the button if he had nothing else to lose. The question is will his lackeys follow the order.
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.
It is insane that tinfoil hat people like this are loose in society.
This ranks way down the list as yet when it comes to possible nuclear/WW3 scares.
The 1961 Berlin crisis where US tanks faced down Soviet tanks in a standoff in Berlin at checkpoint charlie until both Kennedy and Kruschev both went oh sh!t! And both basically agreed to move back one meter if the other did and so forth.
The Cuban missile crisis as others have given insight into.
Operation Able Archer 83- where NATO was conducting war games over Europe that would escalate to a nuclear strike. The Soviets distrust lead to them arming and loading nuclear weapons onto planes all over Eastern Europe and East Germany. The Soviets thought the exercise was a ruse for an actual nuclear first strike due to the realism of the operation.
The 1983 false alarm incident- when Russian early warning systems picked up 5 ICBM launches from the US. Only for the operator in the USSR not reporting it up the chain of command as he didn't believe it could be possible that the US would and waited for more evidence.
So as of right now, the Russia-ukraine conflict is down the list but as we know, theres potential for escalation.
Born 1951. I was living in South America at the time. Even there, the fear was palpable. On the American continent this is about a 4, compared to the Cuban Missle crisis which was as close to a 10 as you can get.
The Ukrainian Nuclear Power plant almost getting hit was pretty scary though...if that happens that will be a 10.
The big worry here is that the future of humankind relies on one lost and scared man. We had some faith that the USSR had some kind of command and control system that would stop a Brezhnev from starting a nuclear exchange. And when Stalin died we knew exactly how the USSR government would choose a new leader.
Now...it's basically an absolute monarchy so we don't know that the Russian system would stop a launch message. And we really don't know how the next leader of Russia would be chosen, if Putin is out of the picture.
In some ways, we are in a very bad place right now because so much relies on one man. Who is going through some things.
Not even close. We blockaded Cuba to prevent Soviet ships from bringing more missile hardware to Cuba. The Soviets blinked and turned the ships around. Whatever hardware made it to the island was removed. We removed Atlas ICBMs from Turkey.
Wasn't alive. Born in '70. But back then, I think the US and Russia really did consider nuclear war as an option. Both sides built lots of fallout shelters and had plans to govern from bunkers until the fallout subsided. Nuke capabilities back then were fairly limited even though stock piles were significant. In the 80s, the US and USSR had the ability to wipe each other out with the push of a button due to the large arsenals of ICBM. In the 60s, you would have needed bombers, and land and sea based nukes to really blow up the world.
Today, I do not believe that either the US or Russia would launch nuclear weapons. Russia might use a nuke to strike a NATO base if NATO got directly involved in Ukraine. But NATO isn't going to do that and the US won't either. That is because NATO and the US got what they wanted in this conflict. Russia is officially the bad guy and defense budgets will have to double and triple in order to deal with Putin (but without ever actually doing anything because of the nuclear deterrent). And this is the folly of nuclear weapons and modern defense spending. In the end, it is just a wealth transfer to a few politically connected defense contractors. We could build the largest and most powerful armed forces in human history and we will never be able to use it because of the nuclear deterrent.
Thank you, Precious Roy. I was born in 1952 and remember the adults' worry at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Learned more about it as I got older. The only thing I have to add is, just how deranged is Putin at this point? That is very worrisome.
This ranks way down the list as yet when it comes to possible nuclear/WW3 scares.
The 1961 Berlin crisis where US tanks faced down Soviet tanks in a standoff in Berlin at checkpoint charlie until both Kennedy and Kruschev both went oh sh!t! And both basically agreed to move back one meter if the other did and so forth.
The Cuban missile crisis as others have given insight into.
Operation Able Archer 83- where NATO was conducting war games over Europe that would escalate to a nuclear strike. The Soviets distrust lead to them arming and loading nuclear weapons onto planes all over Eastern Europe and East Germany. The Soviets thought the exercise was a ruse for an actual nuclear first strike due to the realism of the operation.
The 1983 false alarm incident- when Russian early warning systems picked up 5 ICBM launches from the US. Only for the operator in the USSR not reporting it up the chain of command as he didn't believe it could be possible that the US would and waited for more evidence.
So as of right now, the Russia-ukraine conflict is down the list but as we know, theres potential for escalation.
I'd put it at #1 because it's happening right now with an unclear conclusion while the rest of your list ended without a nuclear war...
Malmo, I remember several fallout shelters in my little valley in SE Idaho. I'm young enough that we didn't do drills in them, but they were there. One of the schools I taught in in the Salt Lake area had the basement as a shelter. Two other schools had a long tunnel connecting them that served as a fallout shelter. None of the structures still exist except for a cave.
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