Wow. Think of how that would have changed things. Everything. Lives lost, Chernobyl-style no-man's zone, total change in politics and nuclear policy.
The other scary thing, and more what I was expecting from this article, is that it was only after the fall of the Soviet Union that we realized that during the Cuban Missile Crisis we were much closer to all-out nuclear war than anyone in the US, including Kennedy, guessed at the time.
We forget how close to nuclear war we were at the time. During the Cuban Missile Crisis my mom was at home following instructions to draw shades and close windows, about two months pregnant with me, while my dad and other pilots sat (and I believe slept) on the runway in his F-89 with with nuclear weapons on board (the F-89 was the first aircraft armed with air-to-air nuclear weapons... whatever those were for) and engines running at Strategic Air Command base in Plattsburgh ready to take flight at the first sign of war.
Meanwhile, off the coast of Cuba, the US Navy dropped depth charges on a Soviet submarine armed with nuclear weapons.
And people liken the conflict with Assad to the Cuban Missile Crisis.... seriously people.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2012/1015/50-years-after-Cuban-missile-crisis-closer-than-you-thought-to-World-War-IIIhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_missile_crisis#Post-crisis_revelations
