On October 22, 1962, President Kennedy, in a nationally televised address, told the public that the United States had blockaded Cuba in response to the Soviet Union’s placement of nuclear weapons in Cuba, just sixty very short miles from the United States.  Pretty much what he was telling America was, “Well, boys, I reckon this is it – nuclear combat toe to toe with the Rooskies.”  It was the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Following WWII in 1946, the United States had one atomic bomb in its arsenal.  The Soviet Union detonated their first atomic bomb just three years later, on August 29, 1949.  13 years after that, at the start of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the United States had around 27,000 nuclear weapons, while the Soviet Union had maybe 3,600.   We had thousands of ballistic missiles.  They had maybe 50.  Probably around 4,000 of the United States’ missiles were in Europe.  Those that were in Turkey were only about 130 miles from the Soviet border.  As well, the US had around 9 ballistic missile submarines, each armed with 16 missiles capable of hitting targets over 3000 miles away.  Though the Soviets had more ballistic missile submarines at the time, maybe 40, they were not as advanced.  At best, they each could carry two missiles capable of 400 miles flight, and they had to surface to fire them.  They also had four diesel submarines that we knew of off the coast of the US, each armed with one nuclear torpedo.  And the US had 62 fully armed B-52 Bombers constantly in the air, with hundreds more on the ground.  The Soviets truly had nothing in the air.  The United States clearly had the strategic advantage if we were to go to war. 

Still, for the average American, that was of little comfort.  It truly doesn’t matter what damage we could do to the Soviet Union if just one of their missiles hits you.  And, yeah, their missiles won’t go very far, but if you’re living near the coast, as about half our population does, that’s far enough.  What happened next was a run on survival supplies, things like canned goods, bottled water, and flashlights and batteries.  People were piling dirt against their basement windows or frantically digging shelters in their backyards.  And on Sunday the churches were full.  Everybody thought the end of the world was imminent.  I was in the first grade during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  I remember practicing duck and cover drills.  Even as a little kid, I could feel the fear in the adults around me. 

And then on October 28, Nakita Khrushchev announced that the Soviet Union would remove its nuclear missiles from Cuba.  A deal had been made.  Publicly, we promised not to invade Cuba.  Privately, we agreed to remove our missiles from Turkey. 

The Cuban Missile Crisis brought about the Moscow-Washington Hotline, a direct link for each government to contact each other in case of future emergencies.  It caused the Soviets to massively build up its arsenal to match the US.  It also brought about a partial treaty on testing nuclear weapons in 1963.  And it brought such movies as Fail Safe and Dr. Strangelove.  Yeah, we were allowed to relax, but we didn’t feel safe.  The average citizen no longer believed fallout shelters would do much good at all.  Most of all, it brought about a push for disarmament.  The public had the bejeezus scared out of them, and they didn’t want that to happen again... at least not until the 1980s.