Quote:
Originally Posted by longmissedblind
It is my understanding that this is the closest mankind has come to destroying itself.
Hard to say... I think
Petrov's close call might have been closer. The reason I say this is that everyone assumes that a US attack on Cuba would have definitely escalated to nuclear war. I'm not entirely sure that's true. I propose the following scenario:
(1) Soviets refuse to back down, US launches a massive air strike on Cuba to destroy Soviet missile sites, presumably setting the stage for an invasion of Cuba within the week.
(2) Soviets retaliate by attacking Allied sections of Berlin and seizing the remainder of East Germany for the Communist bloc, taking American POWs in the process.
At that stage, there are several possible outcomes:
(a) Under NATO agreements, US and Allies attack Warsaw Pact nations with air strikes to forestall Soviet ground attacks.
(b) Kennedy and Khrushchev, both irritated with the hawks in their cabinets, decide to attempt a detente that likely leaves Berlin in the Soviet sphere and Cuba in the American sphere, but forestalls further war (this scenario is complicated by the prospect of a military coup deposing either or both leaders).
(c) The US launches a preemptive nuclear strike on the USSR, hoping they can destroy enough missile sites to prevent MAD, and knowing a European WW3 scenario is highly undesirable.
(d) The USSR pairs its attack on Berlin with a preemptive nuclear strike on the United States or NATO.
I think those are the prospects in the order of likelihood. Only (c) and (d) necessarily result in nuclear war. In the event of (a), there may or may not be a nuclear exchange, since both sides are still aware of the MAD prospect. In that case, what follows is a massive tank battle across Central Europe and WW3 casualty figures in the hundreds of thousands to tens of millions range. (b) is probably not as unlikely as one might think, given how history actually turned out, where the US agreed to a (albeit "secret")
quid pro quo that was previously deemed unthinkable anyway.