In 1962, a positive/negative system in the US was in place to start WWIII with nuclear weapons - with either a response from one of the bases that missiles from the USSR were incoming, or with a non-response, meaning that the base(s) was destroyed. At one point, no messages were received from the Thule base in Greenland, the primary responder to incoming across the Arctic. When another base also did not respond, B-52's were scrambled and Polaris subs were notified. This could be it. Soon, however, B-52's returning to Thule saw that the base was intact. The countdown was stopped.
It came to light that a back-up system that was supposed to be put in by AT&T had not been put in, and that the primary had malfunctioned. This appalled the high command, and Paul Baran, of the Rand Corp, came to the rescue with a plan "proposing a distributed network with hundreds of thousands of separate nodes connected through multiple paths. Messages would be broken into smaller "blocks," sent along the first available path, and reassembled at their final destination. If nodes were out of service or destroyed, the network would automatically adapt and send the data along a route that was still intact." (from Eric Schloser's Command and Control).
And so the internet was conceived, then brought to light, not with Al Gore but with the threat of nuclear annihilation over 50 years ago. So, too, were the Titan II missiles made, for long-range nuclear deployment, the same missiles that would propel the astronauts of the Gemini series to the moon. The nuclear threat would give us these and many other inventions that we consider indispensable today, but that is not its greatest legacy. Instead, it was fear - fear on a level not seen in America, for our nation, for the first time, faced total annihilation. And wonder, that we survived. How close destruction came is well chronicled by Eric Schloser, from information not available to anyone without top-secret clearance at the time.
We all know of the Cuban Missile Crises, although it was not until recently that I learned that by the time of the US blockade, the Soviets had already delivered several hundred nuclear warheads to Cuba and a large armed force. It was not only Kennedy who was playing brinksmanship. Just as bad, or worse, was the Berlin Crises. The USSR would strangle free Berlin by closing the autobahn from West Germany. The US would not leave 2 million Germans to this fate. Tanks were amassed along the newly-made Berlin Wall from both sides. The military commanders strongly recommended a first-strike of the Soviet Union, feeling that war was inevitable. Kennedy paused, sent soldiers through the autobahn, and the Soviets restrained fire. Both had been on the edge of initial strike. Nuclear war was avoided by a hair.
Schloser's book also details many near-accidents at our missile sites, detailing the obfuscation of such near-disasters - not just to hide from the American Public, but to hide our fallibility from the Soviets. The PR game was difficult, and often made things worse - and ultimately made many of us distrust the military and the government at large, all legacies of the Cold War. But the chilling fact was, we came this close, so close, to war so many times, either by political posturing or through mechanical malfunctions. The probability of unintended nuclear explosion was calculated at 100 % over a two or three decade period, and the probability for nuclear war was estimated by many who knew to be just as high. And yet nothing happened, nothing yet, anyway.
Given Khrushchev's bluster and Kennedy's failings, it still seems that we should have gone up in a puff of hot smoke. We know less of Khrushchev, but of Kennedy we know - in the final minutes, he had gone on impulse, on feeling, rather than the practical advice from his advisers. Something had stilled his hand, had made him play this deadly game just right. There was no time or place for error, and shockingly, in the final seconds, in all cases, there was none.
Given the facts, it is not crazy or ignorant to detect a hand of providence in all this, so many 'but for the grace of God' moments. But many other catastrophes have happened in human history. Perhaps the nuclear was simply too big to be allowed - could that be? We will never know for sure, not in a rational sense. Many of us, including this writer, have been saved from death by apparent miraculous means, often for reasons we cannot know. Has human civilization been saved, too, for reasons beyond simply living? The Cold war begs these questions. I cannot give a definitive answer. But if one looks for the hand of God in a big way, there is no greater suggestion of its existence than in our current existence. Perhaps this is a call for us to think about why we were saved, and to search for the meaning in our lives that would make us worthy of such a miracle. And to pray that, for whatever reason, we remain worthy. The game has paused, but it is not yet over. FK
It came to light that a back-up system that was supposed to be put in by AT&T had not been put in, and that the primary had malfunctioned. This appalled the high command, and Paul Baran, of the Rand Corp, came to the rescue with a plan "proposing a distributed network with hundreds of thousands of separate nodes connected through multiple paths. Messages would be broken into smaller "blocks," sent along the first available path, and reassembled at their final destination. If nodes were out of service or destroyed, the network would automatically adapt and send the data along a route that was still intact." (from Eric Schloser's Command and Control).
And so the internet was conceived, then brought to light, not with Al Gore but with the threat of nuclear annihilation over 50 years ago. So, too, were the Titan II missiles made, for long-range nuclear deployment, the same missiles that would propel the astronauts of the Gemini series to the moon. The nuclear threat would give us these and many other inventions that we consider indispensable today, but that is not its greatest legacy. Instead, it was fear - fear on a level not seen in America, for our nation, for the first time, faced total annihilation. And wonder, that we survived. How close destruction came is well chronicled by Eric Schloser, from information not available to anyone without top-secret clearance at the time.
We all know of the Cuban Missile Crises, although it was not until recently that I learned that by the time of the US blockade, the Soviets had already delivered several hundred nuclear warheads to Cuba and a large armed force. It was not only Kennedy who was playing brinksmanship. Just as bad, or worse, was the Berlin Crises. The USSR would strangle free Berlin by closing the autobahn from West Germany. The US would not leave 2 million Germans to this fate. Tanks were amassed along the newly-made Berlin Wall from both sides. The military commanders strongly recommended a first-strike of the Soviet Union, feeling that war was inevitable. Kennedy paused, sent soldiers through the autobahn, and the Soviets restrained fire. Both had been on the edge of initial strike. Nuclear war was avoided by a hair.
Schloser's book also details many near-accidents at our missile sites, detailing the obfuscation of such near-disasters - not just to hide from the American Public, but to hide our fallibility from the Soviets. The PR game was difficult, and often made things worse - and ultimately made many of us distrust the military and the government at large, all legacies of the Cold War. But the chilling fact was, we came this close, so close, to war so many times, either by political posturing or through mechanical malfunctions. The probability of unintended nuclear explosion was calculated at 100 % over a two or three decade period, and the probability for nuclear war was estimated by many who knew to be just as high. And yet nothing happened, nothing yet, anyway.
Given Khrushchev's bluster and Kennedy's failings, it still seems that we should have gone up in a puff of hot smoke. We know less of Khrushchev, but of Kennedy we know - in the final minutes, he had gone on impulse, on feeling, rather than the practical advice from his advisers. Something had stilled his hand, had made him play this deadly game just right. There was no time or place for error, and shockingly, in the final seconds, in all cases, there was none.
Given the facts, it is not crazy or ignorant to detect a hand of providence in all this, so many 'but for the grace of God' moments. But many other catastrophes have happened in human history. Perhaps the nuclear was simply too big to be allowed - could that be? We will never know for sure, not in a rational sense. Many of us, including this writer, have been saved from death by apparent miraculous means, often for reasons we cannot know. Has human civilization been saved, too, for reasons beyond simply living? The Cold war begs these questions. I cannot give a definitive answer. But if one looks for the hand of God in a big way, there is no greater suggestion of its existence than in our current existence. Perhaps this is a call for us to think about why we were saved, and to search for the meaning in our lives that would make us worthy of such a miracle. And to pray that, for whatever reason, we remain worthy. The game has paused, but it is not yet over. FK
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