Cuban Missile Crisis October 15 – 28 1962

I awoke this morning a bit more bored than usual to read whatever was America’s crise du jour.

56 years ago the world almost blew itself up. Well, it was actually just the US and the USSR facing off over the secret emplacement of decapitating-strike capable, two megaton nuke-tipped SS-4 medium range ballistic missiles in Cuba.

U2 photo of USSR missile site in Cuba

In preparation, the school administrations of my midwestern Catholic elementary school picked from the oldest kids “volunteers” who would go to the little kid classrooms to lead them to the cafeteria where they would place their charges under the tables while keeping them calm.

We did this twice daily for a week. We did so without screwing around. Somehow we figured out that we had to grow up real fast. We had no idea that the adults were seeing this as a countdown to an existential Day Zero

Only many years later did I realize when I perused the dry, classified analyses of likely Soviet missile attack plans that my home town would have been obliterated in a single flash, had things turned sour. There would have been no Day Zero for us, no ready, set, survive as we crawled out from beneath the rubble.

Despite the nightly news broadcast warning time proffered, there was no exodus or panicked flight from the combatants’ cities. By the 7th day of the crisis — October 22nd — the US Navy began to “quarantine” Cuba, since a blockade was an act of war. It was the last card that could be played before a real shooting war erupted. Three days later, the Defense Department placed US strategic nuclear forces at DEFCON 2 for the first and only time in its history with 80% of America’s 1400+ bombers and all of its missiles on 15 minute alert with US B52s orbiting 24/7 at their go points.

Those baker’s dozen days of the Cuban Missile Crisis challenged US citizens’ minds and souls but not our hearts to any real degree. There may have been pressure and a mild protest or two, but there was also a grim resignation I saw at our nightly dinner table and on our black and white TV screen’s local and national news programs. Almost a stiff upper lip kind of thing.

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Cuban Missile Crisis protest pleas

We didn’t even gather supplies for living in a post-exchange world

What a different world it was when compared to today’s daily crises.

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