How close to nuclear war was the world during the Cold War really? Is it just a meme that everyone was frightened daily and that bombers were ready to deploy nuclear weapons at any given time?
There were very, very tense moments, but for the most part it was just paranoia.
>>1336251
Biggest non-answer I've seen, that could fall anywhere from "yes" to "no"
There were multiple periods where a war could easily have broken out.
The two biggest being the Berlin Blockade and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
But yeah, the US was ready to drop bombs on a few minutes notice for most of the Cold War.
>>1336747
What about the sub shenanigans in the late 80s? I remember something about a US sub suddenly becoming one of the most decorated ships in the USN for unknown reason.
Asked my dad once he kinda just said that no one gave a shit
From what I've read, 1995 was actually closest we got, not any point during the Cold War.
Yeltsin had the briefcase with the blinking button on his desk, with the military HQ screaming they have to launch now or risk not being able to retaliate.
That old drink literally saved the world unilaterally that day.
>>1336776
Subs are always following each other and going on patrols.
If you've got a sub on the ocean, and nobody is tracking it, there is no way to stop it from launching nuclear missiles.
So the US tended to have submarines constantly following the Soviet submarines, while the Soviet submarines tried to lose them.
Of course, it could have been some kind of espionage.
Subs have a lot of uses for tapping underground cables, examining sunk enemy ships, or sending frogmen up the Moscow sewers.
>>1336747
>The two biggest being the Berlin Blockade and the Cuban Missile Crisis
Able Archer 83 is the closest we've ever come actually. The order to launch was given unlike the two you noted. Second closest we've come over all was the Norwegian satellite launch in the 90's.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
>>1338610
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
someone beat me to it.
Pretty close.
>>1336813
Tell me more. Never heard of it.
>>1336243
My drama queen grandmother claims she was scared as shit and so was everyone else.
>small town in Texas
>duck and cover!
>send kids home with instructions for nuclear war
>parents told to sign over kids to school in the event of nuclear war
Depending on how old you were at the time, this could be pretty devastating. You've been told that the very people who are supposed to keep you save have no ability to do so. This is all quickly followed up with the Kennedy assassination which added insult to injury, particularly if you were in Texas.
>>1339176
Look up Norwegian Rocket Test 90's
>>1339197
ty m8
>>1339203
It's kind of funny that the second closest the world ever came to nuclear devastation happened after the fall of the wall because the Norwegians wanted to fuck around in space like the big boys.
>>1339207
Well i think it is also pretty revealing that the russians were aware of the rocket start and failed to notice their military staff.
>nobody mentioning that time a naval commander defied JFK's orders and held his blockade of Cuba and the only reason we didn't go to war was because the Soviets turned their ships around
>>1339217
>the only reason we didn't go to war was because the Soviets turned their ships around
That and the fact that the missile shipment that the blockade was meant to stop had been smuggled out of Cuba almost a week prior. JFK defused a situation that wasn't even a situation anymore. Probably the third closest time we ever came to nuclear war and one of the few times the U.S. had their finger on the trigger rather than the Soviet Union.
>>1336243
1983 and 1984 were the two closest times. one incident in 1984 being the closest, worse than the cuban missile crisis I believe.
>>1339217
actually a soviet sub commander received order to engage and played dumb
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov
>>1336721
Hey pal history isn't ever that black and white. The answer is that it came close to nuclear war a couple times but it wasn't truly a constant threat.
1- 1960 U-2 incident
2- 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis
3- 1979 NORAD Computer Glitch
False warnings of Soviet missile attacks caused by a computer chip failure
4- 1983 Nuclear False Alarm at Serpukhov-15
False warnings of US missile attacks caused by a satellite misinterpretation
5- 1983 Able Archer 83 Exercise
NATO maneuvers of 1983 in Germany were so realistic with 20000 US soldiers that the Soviets panicked and alerted their nuclear arsenal
>>1341367
>1960 U-2 incident
This doesn't belong here.
The overfights had been going on for years at that point, and the Russians hadn't been able to do anything up to that point but shake their fists impotently at the sky.
It was expected that a U-2 would eventually be shot down, the big surprise is that the pilot wasn't either vaporized, or able to take the cyanide pill.
>>1341367
the submarine war
from 1959 to 1986, 10 soviets, 2 US, 1 French, 1 British have disappeared in "accidents"
