re: Had the Cuban Missile Crisis Escalated…

Radioactive nuclear terror pig jambalaya would be the number one meal in Louisiana.

We would be about 87% finished.

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Illustrating its enormous numerical nuclear superiority, the U.S. nuclear stockpile in 1962 included more than 25,500 warheads (mostly for battlefield weapons). The Soviet Union had about 3,350.

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Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov was a Soviet Navy officer credited with preventing a Soviet nuclear strike during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Such an attack likely would have caused a major global thermonuclear response.

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As flotilla commander and second-in-command of the diesel powered submarine B-59, Arkhipov refused to authorize the captain's use of nuclear torpedoes against the United States Navy, a decision requiring the agreement of all three senior officers aboard.

In 2002, Thomas Blanton, who was then director of the US National Security Archive, said that Arkhipov "saved the world"

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I’ve always wondered if Arkhipov knew that if he gave the order to nuke the American flotilla, the response would be the end of the USSR, quite literally. He was one of three Russian naval officers who had to agree to launch the nuclear torpedoes. The other two had already agreed and were awaiting his decision. How breath-takingly close we were to total nuclear war. All humans owe a debt of gratitude to this wise man.

Read about Stanislav Petrov. He saved the world from nuclear annihilation in 1983 after the Soviet early warning systems picked up a faulty nuclear strike. They were going to retaliate but he was the one who realized it was a false alarm

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I don't think anyone would've been better off with two global powers lobbing nukes over the Atlantic, not to mention what would've happened between each of our ally countries

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Like that’s the only possible scenario based on all the possibilities that could exist in this hypothetical situation.

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For one thing, Baton Rouge wouldn't be here. The Exxon refinery made it a primary nuclear target during the Cold War and the proximity of the missiles in Cuba would have guaranteed it was one of the first cities wiped out if things had gotten hot.

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No need to laugh. It’s been well documented. Plus blocking access to the river.

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I don't think anyone would've been better off with two global powers lobbing nukes over the Atlantic

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Arctic.

Do you even globe, bro?

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No need to laugh. It’s been well documented. Plus blocking access to the river.

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The nuclear bomb is such a weird thing in terms of world history. Because of it's existence, there likely will never be a full-on war ever again because all the world powers know that would be the end of everything. But also because of it's existence, no country trusts any other major country because everyone is basically holding a gun to each other's head.

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When a cyber attack can bring your enemy to its knees, when a genetically engineered microorganism can take out half its population in a matter of weeks, when an autonomous drone can recognize and target individual members of its leadership--one can argue that nuclear weapons are or soon will be obsolete.

hypothetical: Country A takes down Country B's power grid for several months. No one is directly injured or killed, but tens or hundreds of thousands die from cold, hunger and lack of medical care. Country B does not have the ability to retaliate in kind, but it does have nuclear weapons. Is Country B justified in using them against Country A?