Then there’s the story of USSR submarine B-59, which was shadowing the US Navy task force centered on the aircraft carrier USS Randolph. When the commanding officer learned of its presence he ordered that the sub be forced to the surface with training depth charges, that is ones with just enough explosive to be detected but not nearly enough to seriously damage a sub. The submarine had one nuclear armed torpedo, and the captain’s standing orders were that if the ship was out of communication with higher headquarters the torpedo could be launched only with the unanimous agreement of the captain and the two most senior other officers on duty at the time. When a sonar man detects the “plop, plop, fizz, fizz’ of a depth charge entering the water he can’t tell whether it’s a training unit or the real thing. Captain Savitsky thought it was the latter and that war had been declared. He ordered the torpedo to be armed and prepared for launch. As the author of The Guardian piece notes, the US response would have been in accord with the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) which called for the delivery of 5,500 nuclear and thermonuclear weapons onto targets in the Communist countries. The USSR would have responded with all they had at the time, which was no more than an order of magnitude less, but even the few score that got through would have been devastating. Most of us living at the time who weren’t fortunate enough to have been killed outright or died soon thereafter from radiation and other immediate effects would likely have suffered lingering deaths from malnutrition and hypothermia during the decades of nuclear winter that would have followed. That those of us who lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis episode are here and that we have been joined by those who were born since is due to the fact that a young officer named Vasili Arkhipov refused to concur with his captain and the other officer on duty.