Greatest threat of WWIII?
In your opinion, which was the greater threat to start WWIII - The Cuban Missile Crisis, or Able Archer? (If you don't know about Able Archer, please don't bother - I was there, in uniform and sh*****g bricks)
In your opinion, which was the greater threat to start WWIII - The Cuban Missile Crisis, or Able Archer? (If you don't know about Able Archer, please don't bother - I was there, in uniform and sh*****g bricks)
Anonymous
Favorite Answer
I"m going with Able Archer. In 1983 you had heads of government in the US, UK, and USSR who genuinely would have used nuclear weapons if they felt the other side had launched a first strike or if they felt it gave them the best chance to win a war.
In 1963 neither Kennedy or Kruschev really wanted to go to war, let alone a nuclear war. I'm not saying that Reagan or Thatcher did, but I think they were much less willing to compromise. We didn't have nuclear weapons in 1963 as we do today. We can launch an ICBM from Wyoming and hit across the world in less than an hour. That technology was in its infancy in 1963.
So all in all, even though the Cuban Missile Crisis is more popular and better known, and although there was a great chance of war over Cuba, I think the greater chance for war and for nuclear war in particular, was during Able Archer.
KyLoveChick
The Cuban missile crisis is more widely known than the Able Archer war games.
Both were enough to scare me to death!
My Father was in the military during the Cuban missile crisis. To this day, I can remember the terrified look on his face while we were listening to the news reports.
Young people today don't know what it was like to have "bomb" drills in school and fall out shelters in your back yard.
With Pakistan in such turmoil and Iran doing their best to develop nuclear bombs, hope they never find out.
nunya b
able archer, the weapons were a little more modern and more dangerous than Castro's boasting, the break down in analysis of information coming from their agents on the soviet's part what caused the whole problem, and also all that happened just before the AA exercises added to the soviets distrust of NATO
The Girl In Black [panic!]
World War 3 does not(in my opinion) exist quite yet. If it were a world war, then Australia and Africa would be involved in this and far worse things would be happening then having bombs explode in the Middle East and gas prices rising. This is the War on Terror, not WWIII.
Anonymous
These were both minor occurances. The closest we have come to ww3 was when our PM in Oz, Mr Johnny Coward, swallowed the superglue and got his arz stuck to the U.S president Jorj Bushed. Now we are another state of the great old U.S of Warmongering arz wipes. Still, we have an election next week, and it looks like we might be able to remove his mouth from your presies butt