Title: 53 years ago, the Cuban Missile Crisis began Source:
http://microsites.jfklibrary.org/cmc/ URL Source:[None] Published:Oct 17, 2015 Author:Kennedy Library Post Date:2015-10-17 08:19:06 by Jethro Tull Keywords:None Views:1629 Comments:29
I was just a kid in the 8th grade but I remember it like it was yesterday. The link provided gives a good overview of the crisis from the Kennedy Library.
I was in elementary too at that partic'lar moment in history. Apparently, I was quite freaked out. My mom said that I chattered about nothing else for days.
Strangely, I remember nothing about those events at the time they occurred.
I read that Kruschev wept when he learned that JFK was killed.
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” ~ H. L. Mencken
Us kids saw that on TV. We tried to get our 5th grade teacher to let us practice that, but he wasn't on with the program.
He was a WWII Navy vet and a cool guy. He taught us all about the Constitution, the separation of powers and the Bill of Rights. He taught me how to throw a football. I'll never forget him.
Kennedy was in way over his head when sparring with Krushchev.
a very young Bobby Kennedy is pictured with JFK throughout the crisis. That should be all one needs to know about how lucky we were to have dodged a nuclear inferno.
At that point in history, this country would have suffered greatly, Russia however would have been made a nuclear wasteland, end to end.
I know you are right about this. But, such a great nuclear exchange would have likely brought about a "nuclear winter" scenario.
From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter
Nuclear winter (also known as atomic winter) is a hypothetical climatic effect, most often considered a potential threat following a countervalue, or city- targeted, nuclear war. Climate models suggest that the ignition of 100 firestorms that are comparable in intensity to that observed in Hiroshima in 1945 would produce a small nuclear winter.[1] The burning of these firestorms would result in the injection of soot into the Earth's stratosphere, producing an anti-greenhouse effect, that lowers the Earth's surface temperature. With the the the models concluding that the size of this effect, from the cumulative products of 100 of these firestorms, would unmistakably cool the global climate by approximately 1 °C for two to three years; with which the authors speculate, but do not model, would have global agricultural losses as a consequence.[2]
Whereas a much larger number of firestorms,[quantify] which are assumed to be the result of any city-targeted, US-Russia total war, is modeled to cause a much deeper nuclear winter, with catastrophic summer cooling by about 20 °C in core agricultural regions of the US, Europe and China, and by as much as 35 °C in Russia.
"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one." Edmund Burke
I was 20 years olde at the time of my first A-bomb delivery brie briefing by NSA/SAC.
One has no delusions after such. We all came out much older.
We all have points in our lives that can be identified as "turning points" in our development and the way we perceive the world.
I'm not sure what mine was, but I had some very great experiences growing up in Chicago. I worked concert security for years for extra money.
Three bus loads of us went to Saugerties, NY to work Security for Woodstock '94.
We had "All Access" wrist bands. We would go in the breakfast line and they would change the guard on the front gate. There were three food lines, so we would go thru and eat, then go thru again since those guys never seen us before. We would just go in a different line the 2nd time around.
We were doing all we could to get as much food as we could. We were burning maybe 3,500 calories/day and they were feeding us maybe 2,500. One day we ate the night crew's lunch and they had to replace it. We all came out of there a lot leaner, and meaner. The best meal they had for us was softshell crab. ;)
"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one." Edmund Burke
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” ~ H. L. Mencken
We all have points in our lives that can be identified as "turning points" in our development and the way we perceive the world.
I'm not sure what mine was, but I had some very great experiences growing up in Chicago. I worked concert security for years for extra money.
Three bus loads of us went to Saugerties, NY to work Security for Woodstock '94.
We had "All Access" wrist bands. We would go in the breakfast line and they would change the guard on the front gate. There were three food lines, so we would go thru and eat, then go thru again since those guys never seen us before. We would just go in a different line the 2nd time around.
We were doing all we could to get as much food as we could. We were burning maybe 3,500 calories/day and they were feeding us maybe 2,500. One day we ate the night crew's lunch and they had to replace it. We all came out of there a lot leaner, and meaner. The best meal they had for us was softshell crab. ;)
There's a lesson in your story about how ridiculous it is for America to be accused of "consuming more than it produces" and its "carbon footprint" not being comparable to third worlders when our Military is being misused as World Policers and our country expected to produce defensive arms and food supplies, too, for nations that aren't sufficiently producing their own.
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"They're on our left, they're on our right, they're in front of us, they're behind us...they can't get away this time." -- Col. Puller, USMC