PDA

View Full Version : 1983: The Brink Of Apocalypse



The Lawspeaker
06-12-2009, 02:19 PM
-1630001170436508560



1983: The Brink Of Apocalypse (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1630001170436508560&ei=T1EyStH5B9aI-Aayy9G9CQ&q=documentary+soviet+union)



An extremely powerful programme, this documentary focuses on 8 November 1983, a date now recognised as one of the most dangerous moments in the entire history of the Cold War. On this near-fateful day, a series of accidents nearly unleashed the Third World War. Senior figures in the Soviet Union had convinced themselves that they were about to come under nuclear attack from the West, and the vast Soviet nuclear arsenal of missiles, bombers and submarines were put on maximum alert, ready to launch a full nuclear retaliatory attack on Western Europe and the US. Armageddon beckoned. This documentary tells the dramatic story behind this sequence of events when Soviet fingers hovered perilously over the nuclear button. The intelligence communities in the US, Europe and the former USSR have never before admitted to the scale of this crisis.

The Lawspeaker
06-12-2009, 02:25 PM
http://www.wheelessonline.com/image8/ainp1.jpg

This event is not well known but we came this close to nuclear Armageddon. Much closer then in 1962...

Ĉmeric
06-12-2009, 02:48 PM
I can't remember Nov. 08, 1983, though I do remember November 1983 in general. I was in the USN & the ship I was stationed on had return from a 7 1/2 month westpac cruise on Oct 29 1983. We were still in port on standdown on November 08, which was normal for ships returning from long cruises.


the vast Soviet nuclear arsenal of missiles, bombers and submarines were put on maximum alert, ready to launch a full nuclear retaliatory attack on Western Europe and the US.

The ship I was on was one of the more advance ships in the fleet at the time. If there was a chance that the Soviets were going to launch their missles, US spy satellites would have picked it up & US ships in port would have scrambled to get out to sea or at least the more advanced & nuclear armed ships such as the ship I was on. Didn't happen. Sometime around the middle of November we docked at Seal Beach NWC to unload the ammo & missles we had loaded for our westpac cruise in early 1983. If tensions had been that high on Nov. 08 we would not have returned those weapons (including the nuclear armed missles) to Seal Beach in November.

Tensions were extremely high in the first week of September 1983 after the shooting down of KAL 007 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KAL_007) by a Soviet fighter jet. There was a lot of cat & mouse games in the following days to test each side & see who would shoot first. We were at sea & had the impression WWIII was about to start. Tensions eased after a few days. By November the main concern was terrorism after the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut on Oct. 23.