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**Mike Ash** · May 9th 10, 01:36 PM posted to sci.astro.amateur,rec.arts.sf.written

In article ,
(William December Starr) wrote:

In article ,
Martin Brown said:

If Edward Teller had been President or even just slightly more
influential during the Cuban missile crisis the Earth would quite
likely be a smouldering radioactive ruin by now. We had a lucky
escape that President Kennedy ignored his paranoid hawkish
advisers advice to "nuke the Godless cormie *******s to Kingdome
Come".

I'm uncertain that there was enough firepower in the world's
arsenals in late 1962 to accomplish _that_. Are there any serious
studies on what the likely result would have been if the Cuban
missile crisis had gone Bad? (This _has_ to have been hashed out in
soc.history.what-if, though possibly at less than magnificent levels
of scientific vigor.)

We actually just discussed this in here (rasfw), although I can't
remember the thread name.

The USSR's arsenal at the time was extremely small, and their arsenal of
stuff that might actually make it to the target (missiles, not slow
bombers) was smaller still. Dozens or hundreds, in the end. The US would
have emerged from the war with the "bloody nose" that the hawks claimed.
(Not that I consider the death of millions of citizens in a day to be a
"bloody nose", but life, for the rest, would have gone on....)

Even at the height of the arms race, when each side had tens of
thousands of warheads, "smouldering radioactive ruin" would have been
the outcome. It would have nicely wrecked both countries and many of
their allies, but decent parts of the world would escape. Haldeman's
Confederacion, formed from Southern Hemisphere powers that escaped the
superpowers' MAD, seems likely.

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon