Apocalypse Averted – The 1986 Global War Scare

[James G]

The global war scare that took place through October and November 1986 can without doubt be attributed to a wholescale realignment in geo-politics. It resulted in the changes of many governments, international alliances falling apart and nation states fracturing permanently. That is to say nothing of the panic unleashed among ordinary people in the face of what was regarded as a certain nuclear holocaust worldwide.

Recent revelations in the United States following the race for the presidency there last year – the role of the losing candidate’s father due the war scare – and in Britain after information released following the 30 year-rule have thrown new light on some events three decades later. There has additionally been a new wave of interest among peoples elsewhere in the world following the crisis’ that have erupted with international tensions as they are between power blocs; no one wants to go through what they themselves faced in 1986 nor what their parents did either.

Much has been written of the global war scare where an apocalypse was averted at the last minute, as World War Three was so narrowly stopped seemingly moments before it was due to start. This piece is only the shortest of summaries. Readers will hopefully forgive the author too for focusing upon the big picture rather than the countless human stories; it isn’t as if the author gets paid by the word, is it?

[James G]

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was on his way to the United States and Canada for a diplomatic visit on October 19th 1986 when his aircraft went down over the North Atlantic. The jetliner carrying the Soviet General Secretary, his staff, diplomats, security personnel and its crew were all aboard when it was witnessed on radar screens dropping fast and in what appeared to be an uncontrolled fashion towards the ocean far below. There were no radio communications that came from the aircraft and is disappeared when its altitude reached sea level. Other aircraft in the sky that morning were contacted though no one appeared to have seen anything to give an idea as to what exactly had happened.

Civilian air controllers on both sides of the North Atlantic sent out emergency alerts for a rescue effort to be mounted. They followed standard operational procedures even though it was at once realised that there wasn’t going to be much hope of finding anyone alive due to where the aircraft had gone down and in the manner that it had. Military headquarters were informed of what had happened due to their ability to send ships and aircraft. Naturally, it was very quickly realised who was the passenger aboard once the nationality of that aircraft was revealed.

Word was passed onto politicians and intelligence agencies. The media would take some time to find out yet it wouldn’t take that long for such news to be leaked to them. Everyone was going to start paying attention soon enough.



No evidence has come to light in the years since late 1986 that the crash of the aircraft was the work of any nation state, certainly not those in the West. There have been many conspiracy theories ranging from it being the work of one government or another, this intelligence agency and that one. Others have claimed that the Soviets did it themselves. Terrorist theories have been put out there too. No one knows what exactly happened though. Few and often inconsequential parts of wreckage have ever been found: the depths of the ocean hold the majority of the aircraft. No bodies have been recovered either… leading to many more conspiracy theories, some concerning aliens or cults or whomever anyone else is in fashion that day as ‘dark forces’.

Governments reacted to the death of Gorbachev and there were condolences sent to the Soviet Union. President Reagan, who was due to host the Soviet leader in an official capacity, gave a speech afterwards that was seen to eulogise Gorbachev in a positive light and thus upset many who did not share the same feeling that the dead man represented hope for the future, a world where conflict didn’t need to be always just minutes away. Through parts of the world there was in fact celebration of the demise of the Soviet leader. Elsewhere there certainly wasn’t.

There were elements of the state security services of the old Soviet Union who regarded the incident as an elaborate assassination of their national leader and part of the opening prelude to war. They created their own evidence to support what was only a theory. They found more so-called evidence too. The various agencies with the country in fact sought to outdo each other in finding even more damming evidence that there was a plot afoot. These claims were presented to those jostling for the leadership to replace Gorbachev and they used them for their own attempts at advancement.

One general theme among the lies was prevalent: the United States under the ‘cowboy’ Reagan was behind the plot. First, he had ordered Gorbachev’s murder. Then, afterwards, he would launch a war of aggression against the Soviet Union.



Replacing Gorbachev as Soviet General Secretary was one of his supporters on the initial Politburo though someone who was recently slowly starting to distance himself from the deceased former leader. Yegor Kuzmich Ligachev was unanimously elected by his comrades in a public show of fraternity that gave lie to what went on behind the scenes. There were many of those from the Politburo and elsewhere who lost their positions and status in that infighting which went on; some even lost their lives. For some time afterwards, this was covered up though the news leaked out slowly over the coming months and years, especially when the Soviet Union imploded like it did. The KGB head was among the dead, someone who had an untimely accident.

Ligachev believed what he was told when it came to Gorbachev’s apparent assassination. He saw the evidence presented to him and concluded that it all pointed to what the doomsayers said about it being the prelude to war. Barbarossa #2 was coming if he didn’t stop that from occurring.

Many options were discussed in the days following Ligachev taking over. There were options presented to him on what response should be taken in reply to that deliberate act undertaken to injury the Soviet Union ahead of a war of aggression about to be launched. Those options ranged from diplomatic means to full-scale nuclear warfare taking place. Ligachev was up all hours and met with many people. He had no time for, not wish to speak with, Western diplomats nor read what messages of working together they sent him. It was all seen as a trick to have his country distracted before the war came.

Between diplomacy and thermonuclear war, a middle ground to make sure that a war didn’t take place was chosen by Ligachev. The Soviet Union started to mobilise its armed forces – with no secrecy undertaken – on October 24th. Ligachev didn’t want a war but was prepared to fight one if needed. There would be no repeat of June 1941.

[James G]

In the West, this was called Road To War. It was what military officers and intelligence figures put a lot of thought into in their war game scenarios. An event would happen and there would come a response to that leading to another action. If a war was ever going to happen between the Soviet Bloc and the West, this was the type of scenario that would set it off. A violent change in Soviet leadership followed by a mobilisation there was one of them. Those ‘games’ didn’t involve an air crash with hints that maybe it might have been the work of the West nor that the Soviets would mobilise openly without hiding it, yet that was the general theme.

Therefore, it was planned for and there was a response.

Generals and spooks briefed their political superiors. The Soviets were mobilising! They were going to send tanks over the Iron Curtain! This was the final act of the drama from the past forty years! This evidence was as clear as day. Soviet radio and television broadcasts explained to the Soviet people the threat to their Motherland and told reservists to report to mobilisation stations. Signals intelligence, communications intercepts and reports from spies showed that what was being done in public really was happening. Throughout the Soviet client states – admittedly with less passion – the leaders of the majority of those countries (not all though) were following Ligachev’s lead.

The Soviet Bloc was getting ready for war. Politicians in the West were told that the only thing to do was for the West to do the same. Preparation for defence against the war the Soviets were about to launch had to begin. That meant everything from being prepared to fight border clashes to a full-scale conventional war to a worldwide nuclear exchange.

Those politicians might not have wanted to believe what they were being told, but everything pointed to that. They met with their co-leaders in other countries and talked among themselves. There was seen to be no other choice but to start to prepare for war. Diplomacy was going to be tried, real efforts were going to be made on that front, but so too were soldiers, ships, aircraft and missiles all be readied to fight as well.



A lot of this played out in the open.

People in the West were aware that Gorbachev had died. There were news reports that Ligachev had taken over; more when there came statements from the Soviet government that ‘the CIA’ had killed Gorbachev. Soviet mobilisation was covered less as governments tried to censor information and put pressure on media organisations, yet that news came out too. Trying to dampen the news had the result in many cases of only bringing wild rumours instead of facts.

Then there were the leaks. These became more pronounced as NATO nations and other countries started the process of getting ready for the war which they did not want but would fight nonetheless because they had no other choice. The reaction that the Third World War was coming was not was expected by the authorities yet, naturally, with hindsight from many years later, it should have been expected.

Open protests broke out. There were already anti-war and anti-nuclear groups: the infrastructure for protest was there. From North America through Western Europe and elsewhere too in what was considered to be the West (parts of the Far East and down into Australia and New Zealand), people were opposed to the idea of war and acted to try to stop that. The intention was that their voice would be heard and there would be no war. Crackdowns started to happen when violence occurred with the protests due to actions that took place outside of the control from organisers though sometimes the authorities cracked down regardless.

The movements grew exponentially after that.



The KGB was out of control with its chairman deposed. Chebrikov was replaced by Kryuchkov and it was the latter who fed to Ligachev the lies that the CIA had killed Gorbachev. He did so for personal gain though it is far from apparent that he was aiming to see a war start or nearly start by what he did. Whether the new KGB chairman had the wit to see what he created is open for debate: he could hardly be asked afterwards by anyone looking into the root causes of the war at any time afterwards.

As politicians made statements, military preparations started and the anti-war movements erupted, the KGB begun doing what was necessary to fight the war that the General Secretary and the chairman said was coming. There were many instances of those at the top not knowing what those in the middle and especially those at the bottom were doing: Kryuchkov struggled to get control of the KGB effectively and at the same time was seen as trying to justify his place beside Ligachev by reporting to him how ready he was making sure that the KGB was to defend the Soviet Union. The left hand often didn’t know what the right hand was doing and even when it did the implications weren’t seen as being as significant.

The KGB would fight to defend the country by striking abroad.

KGB spies were active trying to gain as many secrets as possible to report back on the war that the West was about to launch; they took chances that they wouldn’t normally do and exposed their activities. Other spies were active within the anti-war movement within the West and (foolishly) trying to control that. There were more sent to feed disinformation into the media in the West to try and assuage public opinion to forestall the war as well.

At the same time, further KGB operatives – along with those from fraternal organisations within the Soviet Bloc – were instructed to begin ‘active measures’. The sword & the shield of the Soviet state wouldn’t sit idly by and watch the West do what the Nazis had failed to do.



In the United States, Reagan was in no way eager for a war. The allegations that the CIA had killed Gorbachev and that his country was getting ready for a war against the Soviet Union were false and he made a point of denying them in public and also in private. He urged his intelligence services to tell him why the Soviets were doing what they were with the responses being contradictory. There were those that told him that it was a deliberate move by the Soviets to increase tensions for gain while others said it was all a series of events spiralling out of control. Either way, Reagan wasn’t happy with what he heard. He did not want a war and was determined to stop one happening. A two-fold approach was taken. The United States would react accordingly to military tensions being increased like they were – everything short of an outright mobilisation – and at the same time attempt to engage in meaningful dialogue with the Soviets too.

Prime Minister Thatcher, President Mitterrand and Chancellor Kohl led Western European efforts to do the same as Reagan was doing. The leaders of the leading European NATO nations were likeminded in not wanting a war. Intelligence came to them showing Soviet preparations and they tried to match those while, as the United States, was doing, stopping just short of outright mobilisation. There was talk of August 1914 and no one wanted to see a repeat of that. They faced more domestic pressures than Reagan did though with the anti-war movements in their countries and elsewhere in Western Europe getting bigger and bringing more violence daily. There was the geographic factor too: they were closer to the Soviets than the Americans were.

Nations elsewhere in the world friendly to the West or Western-aligned supported the positions of Washington, London, Paris and Bonn. Through South America, the Middle East, the Far East, Australasia and other places, leaders stood firm in opposition to Soviet war preparations. Israel was among this group of nations, South Africa too. Their presence in what was starting to be unofficially called the Allies caused problems for other governments. As both countries made public statements of support for the position of others that they would all stand together against any Soviet aggression, that inflamed other nations as well as elements of the protesting peace movements.

This could have become a bigger deal than it was yet by this point, as October turned to November, there were more pressing matters to be attended to. The KGB started kidnapping people, setting off bombs and also beginning to assassinate key figures.

[James G]

It was meant to be sold as the work of terrorists, not the Soviet Union. A whole range of terrorists ranging from those on the far-left to even the far-right, to those concerned with Middle East issues to those whose aims were for nationalist causes (Northern Ireland, the Basque region and so on) and from established groups to new creations, what happened was attributed to them. Maybe some of it could be believable, but only if the terrorist actions took place in a vacuum and not alongside everything else. In addition, it was easily identifiable as serving Soviet aims to those who had any ounce of intelligence. The active measures that were the Grey Terror failed the test of plausible deniability.

Public figures as well as private individuals disappeared. Explosions rocked airports and other national infrastructure. Assassinations occurred in a great number. The West was stung hard for several days from November 1st onwards. Fear was spread and panic caused. The KGB wanted to sap the will of the West to fight on a political level as well as to have the peoples in those countries frightened too. Hitting early and hitting hard was the aim.

In backfired on the KGB with the intention to cause paralysis in nation state’s reaction. However, when it came to scaring ordinary civilians, the aim of the Grey Terror worked: peace movements were infused with calls for now war to occur, especially as wilful disinformation was spread that the terrorist attacks were false flags or even didn’t happen in the manner as was said they did. There were those who didn’t want to believe that the peace-loving Soviet Union would do such a thing. It must be their own governments or those of other countries allied to theirs.

More marches against the imperialist aggression from their own nations were organised. With them came repeated instances of violence that wouldn’t cease.



The Soviet Union had the biggest, strongest military force in the world. They were an undefeatable force who had the support of the Soviet people. They would defend the workers of the Soviet Union and, if needed, liberate other people worldwide from aggression. Like so many things within that unfortunate country, such propaganda was one big & fat stinking lie.

Five years beforehand, selected Soviet military forces in the western parts of their country were partially-mobilised in response to troubles in Poland. An intervention along the lines of Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan (1956, 1968 and 1979) was averted due to internal political events within Poland. The Soviet military had been glad of that. The attempt to organise military forces to go into Poland had been beset by problems. Men hadn’t turned up, equipment had broken down and more equipment was shown to be missing from stores. Forming-up and concentrating what mobilised forces from the Soviet Union proper, to join standing forces based elsewhere in Eastern Europe that had nowhere near as many problems, had shown the Soviets the difficulties of doing that in future. There had been staff replacements and investigations launched into corruption. Organisational changes had been made and those at the top were assured that it wouldn’t happen again.

Marshal Sokolov, the Soviet Defence Minister, found history repeating itself in late 1986.

Soviet mobilisation was chaotic. Reservists didn’t report to mobilisation stations as they were meant to with countless numbers absent. The KGB was instructed to punish those who refused to do their duty… but there were so many. The problems of 1981 were repeated with broken and missing equipment. Stores had been pilfered left, right and centre. Readiness reports for standing military forces were found to be falsified throughout the armed forces. The Strategic Rocket Forces were shown to be in the best state but elsewhere from the Army to the Navy to the Air Forces and the Air Defence Forces, reports showed Sokolov that the Soviet military was incapable.

When NATO and the West launched their coming war, the Soviet military was going to be smashed apart. NATO was the one that was strong and capable, Soviet intelligence reports showed that, and when they launched their war only nuclear weapons could stop them.



Soviet mobilisation problems internally were somewhat understood by NATO – communications intercepts by listening satellite picked up a lot of activity – but there was more focus upon the most obvious signs of hostile military intent, those further forward. There were troops and aircraft in Eastern Europe who were all getting ready to fight. Intelligence summaries showed them moving into what were seen as offensive positions, not those for defence. There would in later years be debate over such judgements as that: was an offensive position really that or might it be a counterattack position?

The deployments of warships and submarines from Soviet naval bases was observed too. Again, it was a matter of later debate over whether again there placements showed an intent to send them on offensive missions forward in a wartime scenario or whether they were located to defend the Soviet Union from attack. At the time, these naval manoeuvres were regarded as threatening though: that was what was mattered.

Some of the submarines carried nuclear missiles and they were part of the wider Soviet strategic arsenal that included aircraft with bombs & missiles as well as land-based missiles too. The readiness of these was far from defensive though. They were all moved into positions that were clearly of warlike intent as far as NATO observations could tell.

Soviet forces, in addition to those of their Warsaw Pact allies in Eastern Europe, all looked offensive in the conventional and nuclear sense. Generals and spooks from NATO nations went back to the political masters and told them the truth. NATO had to mobilise too. The Soviets were getting ready for a war with these forces and their unconventional forces behind the lines were striking too. NATO had to meet that threat or risk the Soviet steamroller… or maybe a nuclear first-strike as well.

[James G]

NATO mobilisation started on November 4th.

Like the Soviet one which it followed, the mobilisation wasn’t a secret. It was done in the open with announcements made several hours before it started from political leaders that it would begin. Freedom and democracy would be protected. There was clear aggressive intent from the Soviets, people were told, and that would be countered by defensive measures undertaken.

Operation REFORGER began. The United States started flying troops to Western Europe to meet up with pre-positioned equipment stored there at POMCUS sites. Other regular troops at home started getting ready to ship out themselves with their weapons and equipment getting underway to ports of embarkation. The US Air Force and the US Navy was mobilised too. Moreover, the US National Guard was also called out with formations readied for deployments overseas and at home.

Through Western Europe, the same happened. NATO countries mobilised their troops with regulars deploying to wartime locations and reservists turning up at mobilisation stations. There were problems due to some absenteeism and also civil disturbances, but the process was underway. Britain, France, West Germany and the others were all sending men ready to get in-place to fight.

Other nations worldwide mobilised too. Some welcomed US military forces as the Americans set for a global presence though most countries in what were the Allies were relying upon themselves along with neighbours; nations that wanted to stay neutral mobilised as well after seeing they had no choice but to. Millions of men were going off to war all across the globe. It was going to take time, but it had started. What politicians hadn’t wanted as little as their people did, was happening.



NATO mobilisation came alongside Transition to War measures enacted across those countries. Subversives, real and potential, were interned. Restrictions on movements and communications were brought in. The media was censored. Banks wouldn’t allow for the withdrawal of cash and the money markets were closed. Schools weren’t open, public events were cancelled and hospitals were prepared to take large numbers of casualties. Power supplies and other public utility connections came under full state control. Main roads were shut along with the railways, airports and seaports: open only to military use and for support of the coming war effort. Police and other security forces were sent out to enforce partial martial law.

Now, this wasn’t uniform. In some countries, especially the United States, the restrictions were less so than they were in others. The legality was fuzzy too. Britain had existing legislation that was passed by a quick vote and the restrictions were enacted overnight. Yet, afterwards, once the war scare was over and through the following years, what happened would be challenged in the courts and be the subject of fierce public debate. This was mirrored in other countries were what were seen as draconian security measures were brought in to combat a threat that never happened. Had it happened, maybe the later controversy would have been averted, yet no war eventually came and the readiness for that was held up for extreme criticism and recriminations.

Across the United States, some of the security measures brought in across Western Europe were the envy of a few and the scorn of many. Americans had their rights and those wouldn’t be trampled upon. There were transition to war restrictions on civilians yet in comparison to what happened within other NATO nations they were few and didn’t affect many. However, the opposition to what there was within the United States was better organised and also more-effective later in court challenges than was the case in Western Europe.

On both sides of the North Atlantic, through North America and Western Europe, the anti-war and peace movements were cracked down upon by the authorities. That varied from country to country in how it was done along with the effectiveness. The responses to official measures to break up the protests that were seen as harming the preparations for war differed too. Rioting broke out everywhere and there was a lot of civil disobedience. Looting took place and so too did ethnic violence within communities.

A lot of people lost their lives as everyone got ready for war.



That war was something that NATO didn’t want yet hoped that if they had to fight it, it would be a conventional one. Hope was one thing. Reality was another. Nuclear war was a real possibility, maybe even inevitable. Preparations were made for nuclear warfare too.

There was a dispersion of key people and parts of government to underground sites. Nations buried gold & currency reserves, artworks and even key industrial parts. Evacuation centres were set up away from cities… with varying degrees of success in that as so many people flocked to them. Nuclear forces were moved away from peacetime stations and hidden where they could ride out a first strike and take part in retaliation. There were orders sent to nuclear forces to act in certain ways in the event of an exchange so that if their country was destroyed then return shots would be fired no matter what. If countries were going down, they were taking others with them.

The Soviets did the same. They got ready for nuclear war too.

There was a conviction instilled into Ligachev by those advisers of his that because their plans had been discovered and there was to be no ground war to invade Eastern Europe, they would fight a conventional one instead. When the news came to him that maybe the Soviet Armed Forces weren’t in the best shape to fight a non-nuclear war, but were ready to fight one with weapons of mass destruction, then he issued new orders that when the fighting started it would begin with nuclear weapons.



Everyone was ready to fight World War Three. Armies, air forces, navies and missile forces were all standing by. All they needed was orders to strike. Commanders held men on tight leashes, held back themselves by their political masters. There were those on both sides who urged for a pre-emptive strike, but the politicians were waiting for the other side to make the first move. The power blocs, which had dragged in so many others into the stand-off, feared the consequences though.

There were signs that each was waiting for too, signs that would show that war was about to truly begin. Those didn’t occur.

KGB activities with their Grey Terror had happened, but true Spetsnaz activities hadn’t begun across the West. Soviet commandos were not active hitting military targets in the rear opening the way for the rest of the Soviet military. There was no Soviet submarine deployment out into the North Atlantic and the North Pacific either. NATO surveillance activity along the Iron Curtain couldn’t detect signs of last-minute preparations for an invasion coming westwards.

The Soviets were waiting for the US Navy to push their carriers up towards their coastlines and also strategic missile submarines under the Arctic ice. They were watching from afar NATO troop movements and didn’t see them either ready to strike into East Germany. Neither were those same troops getting ready to suddenly disperse to avoid being caught in a nuclear strike that they planned to unleash on them: what NATO learnt post-crisis was that the Soviets regarded that as a sign of hostile intentions, because when that was done it would mean NATO was about to fight a nuclear war.

The start of the war was on hold. Both sides were waiting for the other to strike the first blow and wouldn’t do so themselves first.

[James G]

It was in Cuba that the global war scare was brought to an end: Cuba of all places.

Fidel Castro had refused to go along with Ligachev’s thinking that the West was about to launch a military strike and that nuclear war would have come with that. Nothing he had seen suggested such a thing as being the active desire of the West. The hated norteamericanos might have wished for the downfall of his nation and the rest of the Socialist world but they weren’t going to bring that about by a war. They didn’t have the stomach for it, they weren’t united and so wouldn’t do it.

There was a fear in Castro, one justified by revelations made in later years, that Cuba would be attacked by the United States with nuclear weapons once a war between East and West begun. That would happen even if Cuba stayed out. His country would be taken down regardless. In 1962, he had urged Khrushchev for nuclear war; in 1986, such a concept was alien to him. It wasn’t as if Reagan was eager to start such a war either and about to invade Cuba.

The diplomatic efforts that the West had been trying since the crisis started were seized upon by Castro and made use of. Contact was established unofficially through Cuban ambassadors in several Caribbean and Central American nations with the norteamericanos. They bit on the olive branch offered by Cuba to deal with the Soviets through them. There were diplomatic means to resolve the crisis and Cuba would provide them.

Cuba ended up getting cut out of the talks that resulted from opening they provided. The United States dealt directly with the Soviets in talks that commenced in The Bahamas first and then afterwards in Washington. Reagan had stayed there throughout the crisis while having the rest of the government leave such a target of a city: one of the first to be hit in a nuclear exchange. He dealt with the Soviet ambassador first and then Soviet foreign minister Shevardnadze afterwards. The dispute between the two nations was something that both were eager to resolve.

The United States and the Soviet Union agreed to back down their military forces. They would set the lead and make sure their allies followed. There were to be no concessions nor need to show good faith by making formal agreements confirmed by treaties. It would just be a matter of withdrawals of military forces, conventional and nuclear, that had been pushed forward. A time limit of two weeks was set for everything to go back to normal.

Each side regarded the other as having blinked first.



World War Three had been stopped at the very last moment. There was an adverting of the certain apocalypse that would come with that. News came to the world by November 12th that it was all over. The crisis had been resolved by diplomacy and everything could go back to normal.

The latter didn’t happen.

Through the West, there had been so much upheaval with the preparations to war. Whole countries had erupted into violence when civilian restrictions were brought into place. National governments had been formed with members of one political party joining another against the wishes of others. State economies had come under immense pressure leaving many at grave risk of future bankruptcy. People had made themselves refugees in their own country and those of neighbouring countries as they fled their homes in fear of invading soldiers or nuclear warheads. For years, there would be recriminations. Leaders would be voted out of office as a result of what occurred and systems of government eventually changed.

With the Soviet Union and its allies, especially those on its borders, there was a different kind of chaos. Poland had broken out in open rebellion; in East Germany and Romania there were signs that the same was coming. Worse, back within the Motherland, there was trouble as well. The authorities in these places had lost control of civil order. The KGB and others had tried to track down those who didn’t report for mobilisation as well as stopping illegal protests against wartime measures enacted to fight a war. These events were known to those at the top and helped convince Ligachev to at first back down in the stand-off with the West and then afterwards step down too. The Soviet Union would fall apart the following year and the Eastern Europe would collapse too: none of this would be without much bloodshed.

The war scare of 1986 was certainly more influential than that of 1962 and surely brought the world closer the deaths of hundreds of millions as well. Thankfully though, that war never came. It was close, just not close enough.

[stevep]

Good story and sounds like the collapse of the Soviet empire is going to be bloodier and messier than OTL, in the west to a degree as well. On the good side it might make it more efficient in avoiding the OTL mess in the 1990's and then the lurch back into dictatorship under someone like Putin. Also hopefully avoiding the triumphalism that marred elements of the west, especially on the right, which could be a factor in a better environment in both east and west by now.

[raunchel]

This is an interesting different end to the cold war, by it basically going Peak Cold War. It might not be as discrediting as what happened otl to the Soviets, here at least it wasn't just suddenly collapsing economically. But on the other hand, they did come incredibly close to ending the world although for certain kinds of people that's easier to overlook.

[Deleted]

Wow.

What a STORY! I was a teenager back then (15 years old) when this story took place. I can only imagine that my parents and I would have probably prepared for the worst and hope the missiles didn't start flying. In retrospect, we've come so close to nuclear war with the Soviets so many times and there were times we didn't even know it until many years later after the fact.

[lordroel]

Mar 23, 2018 4:02:51 GMT @theavalonproject said:

Wow.

What a STORY! I was a teenager back then (15 years old) when this story took place. I can only imagine that my parents and I would have probably prepared for the worst and hope the missiles didn't start flying. In retrospect, we've come so close to nuclear war with the Soviets so many times and there were times we didn't even know it until many years later after the fact.

I was only, five when this story took place, we would have been death if the missile had started flying as we lived right next door to U.S. Army Garrison (USAG) Benelux-Schinnen.