Would the Cold War have ended in nuclear annihilation?

Answer 1

"Would" means that it already happened, which we know didn't happen. It 'could've' happened at least 20 times during the Cold war and once during the Post-cold war. The most read about occurrence, of course, was the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Soviets nearly launched nuclear tipped weapons during the blockade standoff.

Another incident was the NORAD scare caused by a computer training tape that ran accidentally in the late 70's. It showed a full-scale nuclear attack and the result was near panic at NORAD, in the words of a visiting Senator at the time.

Another incident was caused in the 80's when Soviet early warning systems showed an attack was being made against them, it turned out to be atmospheric conditions giving them some false readings.

The post-Cold War incident happened in 1995 when the Russians thought a Norwegian scientific satellite launch was an attack by NATO against them. They went into combat mode and activated their nuclear suitcase containing the launch codes, for the first time in history.

There are other incidents, but they all show that the nuclear sword of Damacles still hangs over our heads....Cold War or not.

Answer 2

I'm not sure it ever would have really really gone that far. I'm thinking of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was the closest they ever got to using nukes, but if you really look at the situation, neither Kennedy or Khrushchev wanted it to happen.

Its the concept of MAD - Mutually Assured Destruction. They could've blown each other to smitherines about 30 times over. Therefore no-one would ever win. To start a nuclear war would be suicide, and I think all the Presidents during the Cold War realised this....

... with the exception of the Sectretary of State John Foster Dulles and his 'massive retaliation' foreign policy. I think the guy was bonkers personally. Thank god Ike was there to rationalise the policy!

Answer 3

Could it have? Yes. Did it almost? Yes. The Cuban Missile Crisis was the closest it came to happening officially... and now that the Russian archives have been opened, it has been revealed that there were several accidents at missile silos that almost resulted in anti-American launches. The U.S had a couple, too, but created a fail safe system to make certain that nukes would only fly in a real crisis. The Russians, apparently, didn't think that a similar system was worth the bother, so there were *several* times when faulty equipment led missile crews to think that an attack was occurring. Sheesh. People: gotta love 'em.

Answer 4

The annihilation would happen mostly because of the radiation poisoning. People wouldn't have anything to eat or to drink - everything edible and drinkable would cause cancer and other diseases. A nuclear war is a horrible thing. Only an idiot like our current president Bush would even think of starting it.

Answer 5

Do you mean, COULD the Cold War have ended in nuclear annihilation? Of course it could have. I think there were times when we were pretty darn close to that happening.

Answer 6

The U.S. didnt want to combat the Soviet Unions and vice versa because of the fact the two international locations understood the destruction of the atomic bomb after 2 have been dropped on japan in WWII. They the two knew that if violence did ensue, each and every thing could get way out of hand and truly be a WWIII and definately contain nuclear weopons. Alot of persons concept the chilly conflict couldnt end devoid of an truly conflict however the soviet union's economic gadget grew to become into undesirable in the Seventies each and each of ways as much as 1991 whilst it collapsed. Gorbachev(chief of u.s. in the 80s) have been given alongside with Reagan so as that helped ease tensions. truly nonetheless, they went bankrupt till now we did because of the fact the communist economic gadget couldnt take care of each and all of the money they placed into protection and their economic gadget additionally suffered whilst they invaded afghanistan.After the soviet union collapsed, that grew to become into the tip of the chilly conflict.