Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to Documentation.

Wow
Robert — (archived)

Wish I'd gotten back here earlier. I defer to your research skills digging up that document. Though I'll cover my butt with the caveat that the translator's footnote calls it a "draft directive, handwritten", and the rest of the note is ambiguous about whether it was actually transmitted. I'll also salvage a fig leaf of credibility by observing that the existence of an order to use nukes if the local command can't communicate with Moscow isn't inconsistent with my understanding of Soviet doctrine--a contingency order isn't the same as initiative.

But weasel-wording and ass-covering aside, yeah, that sure does support what you say about the likelihood of a tactical nuclear exchange if the US attacked. That's pretty disturbing in retrospect. We came that close. Close enough that substituting Nixon for Kennedy might just have been enough to make it happen.

Glad you and Steve ran with the thread. Now, just to keep the action moving, riddle me this, Batman: What would develop next in the alternate history had there been a tactical nuke exchange as you guys speculate? Would it perhaps have scared the bejeezus out of everybody so much that we all spontaneously got rid of our nukes? Or would it have increased tension overall, leaving behind grudges, making WWIII more likely within a few years? And, as a minor thread of interest, what would it have done to Nixon politically? Hero or retrospective madman?

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