By the way, a nuclear war would be a really bad thing.

[donquixote99]

Seems we came real close in 1983 and didn't even know it at the time. Why? Basically, because the dying Communist Party was paranoid, and Reagan's policy of rattling nuclear sabers was getting to them. So we were set to do an exercise involving a simulated nuclear attack on Pact forces, the Russians thought it might be real, and set up a pre-emptive strike....

This is one of the most chilling lines I have ever read from an official document, from a later 'postmortem' analysis: “In 1983, we may have inadvertently placed our relations with the Soviet Union on a hair trigger.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...8a2_story.html