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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Krensky" data-source="post: 4708081" data-attributes="member: 30936">The Cold War wasn't cold for millions of people, but most people forget that because it happened in the third world. It also wasn't a cultural war, it was a fear of the other side. The US leaders were terrified that the godless communists would be willing to go to war to spread the revolution, potentially even using weapons of mass destruction to do so. A little silly, I admit, but not entirely implusible in the context of the time, espesically considering that Stalin wasn't the most tightly wrapped man in history and the central ideologies of the USSR called for violent global revolution. The USSR, ideologically, was convinced that the powers that be in the west would do anything, upto and including the use of WMDs to stop their revolution and restore class opression. There was also a whole crap load of colonialist and nationalist baggage at play on both sides too. Both sides were silly, and I've come darn close to criminally simplifing the issues and ideology at play, but it wasn't inherently different then a man walking into his home and finding a deer that's crashed through his patio window. The man's terrified, the deer's terrified, the chances of something misreading the other's actions or intentions are striking out solely because of that fear are pretty darn high.Oh, and memes. Really? Memetics is a pseudoscience that Richard Dawkins invented to explain to himself how people he felt were otherwise sane and rational could believe things he found stupid and repugnant (primarily that they were religous or tolerant of religous people). It also lets him dismiss those who don't agree with him as being sick.It is also worth noting that there were two incdents that were very likely to have lead to a nuclear exchange. The first was during the Cuban Missle Crisis when a Soviet submarine was cornered and depth charges were being dropped and the Captain and Politcal Officer were prepared to use a nuclear torpedo on the US carrier group involved and were stopped by the Second Captain. The other was in 1983 where a combination of events (including Korean Airlines Flight 007 being shot down by the USSR) and policies (launch on warning) actually meant that nuclear war was avereted by a Russian Lt Colnel deciding to ignore five launch warnings as computer errors rather then report them. Look up Able Archer 83 and Stanislav Petrov. The fact that the USSR had a fail-deadly strategy for most of the Cold War wasn't a good sign either. There were three other incidents where we were on the verghe of nuclear exchange. in 1979 someone in the US ran a training tape for the early warning system and didn't tell anyone. Lauunch warnings were sent to SAC and ICBM sites and Ballistic missle subs. War was averted because the book called for the officers to check the raw data. In 1980 a computer glitch caused a launch alert, this one was not as close because the nature of the glitch made the number of detected launches change frequently and at random, but warning were sent out and  threat assessment was still run. Again, the policy of looking at the raw data stopped things from going further. Lastly, in 1995, a sounding rocket launched from Norway unwittingly followed thge expected flight path of a radar-blinding airburst Trident missle would. Boris Yeltsin actually opened and turned his football on. This means the world was one button away from a nuclear exchange.</blockquote>

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