| cuban missile crisis alternate history: When Angels Wept Eric G. Swedin, 2010 In 1961 at the Bay of Pigs, CIA-trained and -organized Cuban exiles aiming to overthrow Fidel Castro were soundly defeated. Most were taken prisoner by Cuban armed forces. Fearing another U.S. invasion of its new ally, the Soviet Union sneaked into Cuba strategic missiles tipped with nuclear warheads and Soviet troops armed with tactical nuclear weapons. However, a U-2 spy plane flight would soon find the Soviet missile sites, thus sparking the famous missile crisis. For thirteen terrifying days, the world watched nervously as the two superpowers moved toward escalation, holding the world s fate in their hands. Finally, Nikita Khrushchev blinked. He agreed to withdraw the weapons from Cuba in return for John F. Kennedy s pledge not to invade the island.But what if it had not turned out this way? What if the U-2 flight had been delayed? If the confrontation had set off a nuclear war, what would have happened to the United States and Soviet Union in 1962? What kind of account would a historian have written in a world scarred by nuclear war?Eric G. Swedin draws on research made available after the Soviet Union s collapse to examine what could have happened. Top U.S. military officers all urged stronger action against Cuba than the naval blockade, including a bombing campaign and even a full-scale invasion. Unknown to the Americans, meanwhile, the Soviet Union had tactical nuclear weapons in Cuba and were prepared to use them.The 1962 crisis had many possible outcomes. Positing an alternate history helps us better appreciate the dangers of that tense time. Such counterfactual speculation shows what the Cuban missile crisis could have wrought and how it was truly one of the most important moments of the twentieth century. |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: Resurrection Day Brendan DuBois, 2011-08 In the early 1970s, ten years after the Cuban missile crisis and the US and Russia targeted each other's cities with nuclear warheads, America is still struggling to recover. New York, Washington, Florida, California are completely contaminated and the rest of the country - under martial rule in all but name - are reliant on aid from Europe. In Boston, journalist Carl Landry is forcibly warned off covering a news item on a murdered ex-general and shortly afterwards he only just manages to escape a personal attack. Enraged, he is determined to find out what the authorities are covering up: a search which takes him to the wasteland of Manhattan and a cache of secrets which show that the man who created the devastation is still running the country. |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: If Kennedy Lived Jeff Greenfield, 2013-10-22 What if Kennedy were not killed that fateful day? What would the 1964 campaign have looked like? Would changes have been made to the ticket? How would Kennedy, in his second term, have approached Vietnam, civil rights, the Cold War? With Hoover as an enemy, would his indiscreet private life finally have become public? Would his health issues have become so severe as to literally cripple his presidency? And what small turns of fate in the days and years before Dallas might have kept him from ever reaching the White House in the first place? The answers Greenfield provides and the scenarios he develops are startlingly realistic, rich in detail, shocking in their projections, but always deeply, remarkably plausible. If Kennedy Lived is a tour de force of American history from one of the country’s most brilliant and illuminating political commentators. |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: When Angels Wept Eric G. Swedin, 2010-08-31 In 1961 at the Bay of Pigs, CIA-trained and -organized Cuban exiles aiming to overthrow Fidel Castro were soundly defeated. Most were taken prisoner by Cuban armed forces. Fearing another U.S. invasion of its new ally, the Soviet Union sneaked into Cuba strategic missiles tipped with nuclear warheads and Soviet troops armed with tactical nuclear weapons. However, a U-2 spy plane flight would soon find the Soviet missile sites, thus sparking the famous missile crisis. For thirteen terrifying days, the world watched nervously as the two superpowers moved toward escalation, holding the world's fate in their hands. Finally, Nikita Khrushchev blinked. He agreed to withdraw the weapons from Cuba in return for John F. Kennedy's pledge not to invade the island. But what if it had not turned out this way? What if the U-2 flight had been delayed? If the confrontation had set off a nuclear war, what would have happened to the United States and Soviet Union in 1962? What kind of account would a historian have written in a world scarred by nuclear war? Eric G. Swedin draws on research made available after the Soviet Union's collapse to examine what could have happened. Top U.S. military officers all urged stronger action against Cuba than the naval blockade, including a bombing campaign and even a full-scale invasion. Unknown to the Americans, meanwhile, the Soviet Union had tactical nuclear weapons in Cuba and were prepared to use them. The 1962 crisis had many possible outcomes. Positing an alternate history helps us better appreciate the dangers of that tense time. Such counterfactual speculation shows what the Cuban missile crisis could have wrought and how it was truly one of the most important moments of the twentieth century. |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: The World Next Door Brad Ferguson, 1990 |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: Alternate Kennedys Mike Resnick, 1992-01-01 A collection of twenty-five speculations asks `what if' the fortunes of the Kennedy family had been different, including an all-Kennedy rock group, JFK in the real Camelot, and much more. Original. |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: The Madman Theory Harvey Simon, 2012-09 * It is 1962 and there are children at play in the White House for the first time since the presidency of William Howard Taft. Richard Nixon, the vigorous 49-year-old president, has been in office less than two years, having won election by a razor-thin margin over Senator John Kennedy. In Moscow, the wildly unpredictable Nikita Khrushchev is looking forward to visiting his cherished revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro. Just 90 miles from American shores, Khrushchev will announce an audacious and dangerous nuclear stunt to abruptly shift the balance of power a secretly-built network of missiles across Cuba that put American cities in the atomic crosshairs. But President Nixon has his own announcement planned. A U.S. spy plane has discovered the missiles being set up in Cuba and Nixon will soon address the nation to announce his response. Meanwhile, First Lady Pat Nixon is in California to look at a San Clemente house the first couple may purchase. Seeing shoppers crowd around a store-window television, Pat gets her first inkling of trouble. Dick has always insisted she not listen to the news and she is happy, for now, to return to her correspondence.In the coming days, the confrontation between the U.S. and its nuclear foe will escalate. The president will weigh his determination to overthrow Castro against the risk of all-out war as Pat struggles to reconcile her proper role as a wife with her estrangement from the man who thrust her into a public life she despises. |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: Science Fiction and Computing David L. Ferro, Eric G. Swedin, 2011-09-29 The prevalence of science fiction readership among those who create and program computers is so well-known that it has become a cliche, but the phenomenon has remained largely unexplored by scholars. What role has science fiction played in the actual development of computers and computing? And likewise, how has computing (including the related fields of robotics and artificial intelligence) affected the course of science fiction? The 18 essays in this critical work explore the interrelationship of these domains over the span of more than half a century. |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: Fallout Todd Strasser, 2015-05-12 “Combines terrific suspense with thoughtful depth. . . . Riveting.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review) In the summer of 1962, the possibility of nuclear war is all anyone talks about. But Scott’s dad is the only one in the neighborhood who actually builds a bomb shelter. When the unthinkable happens, neighbors force their way into the shelter before Scott’s dad can shut the door. With not enough room, not enough food, and not enough air, life inside the shelter is filthy, physically draining, and emotionally fraught. But even worse is the question of what will — and won’t — remain when the door is opened again. |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: Branch Point Mona Clee, 1996 In time travel, there is a starting point, an end point, and a point of no reutrn. From a journal written in 1836, in a city which will not be called San Francisco, here are the memoirs of a girl chronicling her voyage back in time from the year 2062 to the year 1962, and how the world was saved from nuclear war. |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: What Ifs? of American History Robert Cowley, 2004-09-07 Did Eisenhower avoid a showdown with Stalin by not taking Berlin before the Soviets? What might have happened if JFK hadn't been assassinated? This new volume in the widely praised series presents fascinating what if... scenarios by such prominent historians as: Robert Dallek, Caleb Carr, Antony Beevor, John Lukacs, Jay Winick, Thomas Fleming, Tom Wicker, Theodore Rabb, Victor David Hansen, Cecelia Holland, Andrew Roberts, Ted Morgan, George Feifer, Robert L. O'Connell, Lawrence Malkin, and John F. Stacks. Included are two essential bonus essays reprinted from the original New York Times bestseller What If?-David McCullough imagines Washington's disastrous defeat at the Battle of Long Island, and James McPherson envisions Lee's successful invasion of the North in 1862. |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: The Port of Tampa, Florida United States. Board of Engineers for Rivers and Harbors, 1958 |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: Turning Points—Actual and Alternate Histories Rodney P. Carlisle, J. Geoffrey Golson, 2007-09-01 Offering a unique approach to studying one of the most eventful eras in American history, this volume looks at a dozen key events of the 1960s and 1970s and considers the possible paths history might have taken if the outcomes had been different. This volume in the Turning Points—Actual and Alternative Histories series looks at a tumultuous recent era in American history, a time when pivotal, often tragic, world-changing events seemed to be happening at an alarming rate. America in Revolt during the 1960s and 1970s looks at 12 significant events, from the assassination of John F. Kennedy to the passage of the Civil Rights Act, from the student killings at Kent State to Richard Nixon's resignation. Drawing on the concepts of alternative history, the book portrays each event as it happened, then considers some plausible alternative scenarios of how history would have been different if these events had not occurred. It is a uniquely thought provoking way of exploring an explosive era, whose aftershocks continue to shape the American experience today. |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: Above the Ether Eric Barnes, 2019-06-11 A mesmerizing novel of unfolding dystopia amid the effects of climate change in a world very like our own, for readers of Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven and Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood. In this prequel to Eric Barnes's acclaimed cli-fi novel The City Where We Once Lived, six sets of characters move through a landscape and a country just beginning to show the signs of cataclysmic change. A father and his young children fleeing a tsunami after a massive earthquake in the Gulf. A woman and her husband punishing themselves without relent for the loss of both their sons to addiction, while wildfires slowly burn closer to their family home. A brilliant investor, assessing opportunity in the risk to crops, homes, cities, industries, and infrastructure, working in the silent comfort of her office sixty floors up in the scorching air. A doctor and his wife stuck in a refugee camp for immigrants somewhere in a southern desert. Two young men working the rides for a roadside carnival, one escaping a brutal past, the other a racist present. The manager of a chain of nondescript fast-food restaurants in a city ravaged by the relentless wind.. While every night the news alternates images of tsunami destruction with the baseball scores, the characters converge on a city where the forces of change have already broken—a city half abandoned, with one part left to be scavenged as the levee system protecting it slowly fails—until, in their vehicles on the highway that runs through it, they witness the approach of what looks to be just one more violent storm. |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: Back Channel Stephen L. Carter, 2014-07-29 October 1962. The Soviet Union has smuggled missiles into Cuba. Kennedy and Khrushchev are in the midst of a military face-off that could lead to nuclear conflagration. Warships and submarines are on the move. Planes are in the air. Troops are at the ready. Both leaders are surrounded by advisers clamoring for war. The only way for the two leaders to negotiate safely is to open a “back channel”—a surreptitious path of communication hidden from their own people. They need a clandestine emissary nobody would ever suspect. If the secret gets out, her life will be at risk . . . but they’re careful not to tell her that. Stephen L. Carter’s gripping new novel, Back Channel, is a brilliant amalgam of fact and fiction—a suspenseful retelling of the Cuban Missile Crisis, in which the fate of the world rests unexpectedly on the shoulders of a young college student. On the island of Curaçao, a visiting Soviet chess champion whispers state secrets to an American acquaintance. In the Atlantic Ocean, a freighter struggles through a squall while trying to avoid surveillance. And in Ithaca, New York, Margo Jensen, one of the few black women at Cornell, is asked to go to Eastern Europe to babysit a madman. As the clock ticks toward World War III, Margo undertakes her harrowing journey. Pursued by the hawks on both sides, protected by nothing but her own ingenuity and courage, Margo is drawn ever more deeply into the crossfire—and into her own family’s hidden past. |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis Robert F. Kennedy, 2011-04-25 A minor classic in its laconic, spare, compelling evocation by a participant of the shifting moods and maneuvers of the most dangerous moment in human history. —Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. During the thirteen days in October 1962 when the United States confronted the Soviet Union over its installation of missiles in Cuba, few people shared the behind-the-scenes story as it is told here by the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy. In this unique account, he describes each of the participants during the sometimes hour-to-hour negotiations, with particular attention to the actions and views of his brother, President John F. Kennedy. In a new foreword, the distinguished historian and Kennedy adviser Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., discusses the book's enduring importance and the significance of new information about the crisis that has come to light, especially from the Soviet Union. |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: The Gladiator Harry Turtledove, 2008-09-03 In Harry Turtledove's The Gladiator, the Soviet Union won the Cold War. The Russians were a little smarter than they were in our own world, and the United States was a little dumber and a lot less resolute. Now, more than a century later, the world's gone Communist, and capitalism is a bad word. For Gianfranco and his friend Annarita, a couple of teenagers growing up in Milan, life in a heavily regimented, surveillance-rich command economy is just plain dreary. The eventual withering-away of the state doesn't look like it's going to happen anytime soon. Annarita's a hard-working student and a member of the Young Socialists' League. Gianfranco is a lot less motivated--but on the other hand, his father's a Party apparatchik. The biggest excitement in their lives is a wargame shop called The Gladiator, which runs tournaments, and stocks marvelous complex games you can't find anywhere else. Then, abruptly, the shop is shut down. Someone's figured out that The Gladiator's games are teaching counterrevolutionary capitalist principles. The Security Police are searching high and low for the shop's proprietors, who've not only vanished into thin air, but have left behind sets of fingerprints that aren't in the records of any government on earth. Only one staffer is left: Gianfranco and Annarita's friend Eduardo. He's on the run, and he comes to them in secret with an astonishing story: he's a time trader from our own timeline, accidentally left behind when the store was evacuated. The only way Eduardo can get home to his own timeline is if Gianfranco and Annarita can help him reach one of the other time trader sites in this world--and the Security Police will be on their tails all the way there. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied. |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: For the Soul of Mankind Melvyn P. Leffler, 2008-09-02 “A masterful account of the Cold War by a distinguished historian in full stride.” —G. John Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs To the amazement of the public, pundits, and even the policymakers themselves, the ideological and political battles that endangered the world for half a century came to an end in 1990. How did that happen? What caused the cold war in the first place, and why did it last as long as it did? To answer these questions, Melvyn P. Leffler homes in on four crucial episodes when American and Soviet leaders considered modulating, avoiding, or ending their global struggle “for the soul of mankind,” and asks why they failed: Stalin and Truman devising new policies after 1945; Malenkov and Eisenhower exploring the chance for peace after Stalin’s death in 1953; Kennedy, Khrushchev, and LBJ trying to reduce tensions after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962; and Brezhnev and Carter aiming to sustain détente after the Helsinki Conference of 1975. Leffler then illuminates how Reagan, Bush, and, above all, Gorbachev managed to extricate themselves form the policies and mind-sets that had imprisoned their predecessors, making it possible to reconfigure Soviet-American relations after decades of confrontation. Praise for For the Soul of Mankind “[A] sweeping work . . . Leffler is one of America’s most distinguished cold war historians, and this enlightening, readable study is the product of years of research and reflection.” —Jonathan Rosenberg, The Christian Science Monitor “Leffler has produced possibly the most readable and insightful study of the Cold War yet.” —Publishers Weekly, (starred review) “Professor Leffler has the benefit of almost two decades of hindsight as well as access to recently declassified American and Soviet documents. The result is a series of fresh and often provocative perspectives on the struggle.” —Booklist |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: A Concise History of the U.S. Air Force Stephen Lee McFarland, 1997 Except in a few instances, since World War II no American soldier or sailor has been attacked by enemy air power. Conversely, no enemy soldier orsailor has acted in combat without being attacked or at least threatened by American air power. Aviators have brought the air weapon to bear against enemies while denying them the same prerogative. This is the legacy of the U.S. AirForce, purchased at great cost in both human and material resources.More often than not, aerial pioneers had to fight technological ignorance, bureaucratic opposition, public apathy, and disagreement over purpose.Every step in the evolution of air power led into new and untrodden territory, driven by humanitarian impulses; by the search for higher, faster, and farther flight; or by the conviction that the air way was the best way. Warriors have always coveted the high ground. If technology permitted them to reach it, men, women andan air force held and exploited it-from Thomas Selfridge, first among so many who gave that last full measure of devotion; to Women's Airforce Service Pilot Ann Baumgartner, who broke social barriers to become the first Americanwoman to pilot a jet; to Benjamin Davis, who broke racial barriers to become the first African American to command a flying group; to Chuck Yeager, a one-time non-commissioned flight officer who was the first to exceed the speed of sound; to John Levitow, who earned the Medal of Honor by throwing himself over a live flare to save his gunship crew; to John Warden, who began a revolution in air power thought and strategy that was put to spectacular use in the Gulf War.Industrialization has brought total war and air power has brought the means to overfly an enemy's defenses and attack its sources of power directly. Americans have perceived air power from the start as a more efficient means of waging war and as a symbol of the nation's commitment to technology to master challenges, minimize casualties, and defeat adversaries. |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: My Real Children Jo Walton, 2014-05-20 It's 2015, and Patricia Cowan is very old. Confused today, read the notes clipped to the end of her bed. She forgets things she should know-what year it is, major events in the lives of her children. But she remembers things that don't seem possible. She remembers marrying Mark and having four children. And she remembers not marrying Mark and raising three children with Bee instead. She remembers the bomb that killed President Kennedy in 1963, and she remembers Kennedy in 1964, declining to run again after the nuclear exchange that took out Miami and Kiev. Her childhood, her years at Oxford during the Second World War-those were solid things. But after that, did she marry Mark or not? Did her friends all call her Trish, or Pat? Had she been a housewife who escaped a terrible marriage after her children were grown, or a successful travel writer with homes in Britain and Italy? And the moon outside her window: does it host a benign research station, or a command post bristling with nuclear missiles? Two lives, two worlds, two versions of modern history; each with their loves and losses, their sorrows and triumphs. Jo Walton's My Real Children is the tale of both of Patricia Cowan's lives...and of how every life means the entire world. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied. |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: What If . . . Book of Alternative History Jeff Greenfield, 2023-08-15 The course of history has taken many turns. What would the world be like if events had happened differently? What if JFK had never visited Dallas on November 22, 1963? What if Germany had won the First World War? How would life be different in America if the Southern states had beaten the North? What would a world without The Beatles sound like? Find out the potential answers to all these questions and many more in What If...:Book of Alternative History.With great full-color photos and compelling narratives, historical experts take a look at these and many more intriguing questions in this fascinating look at what might have been. Perfect for browsing, this title will have readers speculating on the events and people that shaped history and make our lives what they are today. |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: In from the Cold Gilbert M. Joseph, Daniela Spenser, 2008-01-11 Over the last decade, studies of the Cold War have mushroomed globally. Unfortunately, work on Latin America has not been well represented in either theoretical or empirical discussions of the broader conflict. With some notable exceptions, studies have proceeded in rather conventional channels, focusing on U.S. policy objectives and high-profile leaders (Fidel Castro) and events (the Cuban Missile Crisis) and drawing largely on U.S. government sources. Moreover, only rarely have U.S. foreign relations scholars engaged productively with Latin American historians who analyze how the international conflict transformed the region's political, social, and cultural life. Representing a collaboration among eleven North American, Latin American, and European historians, anthropologists, and political scientists, this volume attempts to facilitate such a cross-fertilization. In the process, In From the Cold shifts the focus of attention away from the bipolar conflict, the preoccupation of much of the so-called new Cold War history, in order to showcase research, discussion, and an array of new archival and oral sources centering on the grassroots, where conflicts actually brewed. The collection's contributors examine international and everyday contests over political power and cultural representation, focusing on communities and groups above and underground, on state houses and diplomatic board rooms manned by Latin American and international governing elites, on the relations among states regionally, and, less frequently, on the dynamics between the two great superpowers themselves. In addition to charting new directions for research on the Latin American Cold War, In From the Cold seeks to contribute more generally to an understanding of the conflict in the global south. Contributors. Ariel C. Armony, Steven J. Bachelor, Thomas S. Blanton, Seth Fein, Piero Gleijeses, Gilbert M. Joseph, Victoria Langland, Carlota McAllister, Stephen Pitti, Daniela Spenser, Eric Zolov |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: Eyeball to Eyeball Dino A. Brugioni, 1995-06-01 |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory Sheldon M Stern, 2012-09-05 “Marshals irrefutable evidence to succinctly demolish the mythic version of the crisis . . . sober analysis.” —The Atlantic This book exposes the misconceptions, half-truths, and outright lies that have shaped the still dominant but largely mythical version of what happened in the White House during those harrowing two weeks of secret Cuban missile crisis deliberations. More than a half-century after the event, it is surely time to demonstrate, once and for all, that Robert F. Kennedy’s Thirteen Days and the personal memoirs of other ExComm members cannot be taken seriously as historically accurate accounts of the ExComm meetings. This book, from the first historian to listen to and evaluate the White House tapes made during the crisis, does exactly that. “Stern is not alone in questioning the precision of the transcripts offered, but he has made the most painstaking attempt to clarify what was really said and done.” —Journal of American History |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: Operation Anadyr James Philip, 2014-10-05 The Cuban Missiles Crisis didn't end peacefully and the 'swinging sixties' didn't happen. On Saturday 27th October 1962 American and Soviet geopolitical brinkmanship resulted in the most terrible war in human history. The forever changed world that remained when the thermonuclear fires had burned themselves out is the world of 'Timeline 10/27/62'.'Operation Anadyr' is Book 1 of the alternative history series Timeline 10/27/62.'Operation Anadyr' is about the first hours of that alternative history of the world. It is about living through the cataclysm, and wondering how it happened. How did the unthinkable happen? How could our leaders let it happen? How does one quantify the magnitude of the disaster? And what of the survivors living with the aftermath of a world gone mad? 'Operation Anadyr' confronts these questions. In 'Operation Anadyr' the anatomy of the disaster is writ plain and the men and women who survive it begin to find their voices.* * *Why Timeline 10/27/62? Because that date is a very significant date in my life and in the lives of everybody else in the world alive today because on Saturday 27th October 1962 World War III almost started. World War III probably wouldn't have lasted very long because one side would have been swiftly obliterated in the first 24 hours of a cataclysm that would have left vast tracts of the Northern Hemisphere uninhabited and uninhabitable for decades to come. Perhaps, a quarter of the world's population would have died in the firestorm or in the starvation and the plagues that would have ensued in the following weeks and months.In the October War of 1962 the hammer of the gods would have fallen upon the territories of the Soviet Union, central and Western Europe, and to a lesser extent, upon the extremities of continental North America. In the Soviet Union and in Europe from Paris to Warsaw, from Prague to Berlin, from the Alps to the Baltic, across the Low Countries and parts of the United Kingdom the thermonuclear fire would have burned with a merciless flame. Scandinavia might have escaped relatively untouched, likewise southern France, Italy, Spain and Portugal, Ireland and possibly parts of England, Wales and Scotland.The 'Cuban Missiles' War would have been a Man made global catastrophe like no other in human history. In the aftermath, the USA, mourning the dead in half-a-dozen wrecked cities would have been the last major industrial and military power left standing. That world could never, ever be the world we know today.How close did we actually come to the edge of the abyss? Much closer than most people like to contemplate. On Saturday 27th October 1962, north east of Cuba, the commander of Soviet submarine B-59 had to be talked out of firing a nuclear-tipped torpedo at the American destroyer USS Beale. That's how close we came to World War III!The Captain of the B-59 was a man called Valentin Grigorievitch Savitsky. He gave the order for a nuclear warhead to be fitted to a torpedo.In that era Soviet naval doctrine governing the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons onboard a warship at sea required the authorisation of three officers: the captain, the executive officer, and the vessel's political officer. B-59's political officer, Ivan Semonovich Maslennikov signed off on starting World War III but fortunately for us all, the submarine's second-in-command, Captain 2nd Rank Vasili Arkhipov, dissented and Armageddon was narrowly averted.Timeline 10/27/62 is an alternative history of the modern world in which nobody ever got to know the name of Vasili Arkhipov because he died in the first act of the most terrible war in history.Operation Anadyr is the first verse in the story of what happened after Vasili Arkhipov failed to prevail upon Valentin Grigorievitch Savitsky to see reason.Welcome to the Timeline 10/27/62. |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: The Imagineers of War Sharon Weinberger, 2018-02-20 The definitive history of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon agency that has quietly shaped war and technology for nearly sixty years. Founded in 1958 in response to the launch of Sputnik, the agency’s original mission was to create “the unimagined weapons of the future.” Over the decades, DARPA has been responsible for countless inventions and technologies that extend well beyond military technology. Sharon Weinberger gives us a riveting account of DARPA’s successes and failures, its remarkable innovations, and its wild-eyed schemes. We see how the threat of nuclear Armageddon sparked investment in computer networking, leading to the Internet, as well as to a proposal to power a missile-destroying particle beam by draining the Great Lakes. We learn how DARPA was responsible during the Vietnam War for both Agent Orange and the development of the world’s first armed drones, and how after 9/11 the agency sparked a national controversy over surveillance with its data-mining research. And we see how DARPA’s success with self-driving cars was followed by disappointing contributions to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Weinberger has interviewed more than one hundred former Pentagon officials and scientists involved in DARPA’s projects—many of whom have never spoken publicly about their work with the agency—and pored over countless declassified records from archives around the country, documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, and exclusive materials provided by sources. The Imagineers of War is a compelling and groundbreaking history in which science, technology, and politics collide. |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: Nuclear Folly Serhii Plokhy, 2021-04-13 *Shortlisted for the Duke of Wellington Medal for Military History* 'An enthralling account of a pivotal moment in modern history. . . replete with startling revelations about the deception and mutual suspicion that brought the US and Soviet Union to the brink of Armageddon in October 1962' Martin Chilton, Independent The definitive new history of the Cuban Missile Crisis from the author of Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy, winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize For more than four weeks in the autumn of 1962 the world teetered. The consequences of a misplaced step during the Cuban Missile Crisis could not have been more grave. Ash and cinder, famine and fallout; nuclear war between the two most-powerful nations on Earth. In Nuclear Folly, award-winning historian Serhii Plokhy tells the riveting story of those weeks, tracing the tortuous decision-making and calculated brinkmanship of John F. Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro, and of their advisors and commanders on the ground. More often than not, Plokhy argues, the Americans and Soviets simply misread each other, operating under mutual distrust, second-guesses and false information. Despite all of this, nuclear disaster was avoided thanks to one very human reason: fear. Drawing on an impressive array of primary sources, including recently declassified KGB files, Plokhy masterfully illustrates the drama of those tense days. Authoritative, fast-paced and unforgettable, this is the definitive new account of the Cold War's most perilous moment. |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: The Alternate Route Thomas Graham, 2017 Eventual achievement of nuclear disarmament has been an objective and a dream of the world community since the dawn of the Nuclear Age. Considerable progress has been made over the decades, but this has always required close US-Russian cooperation. At present, further progress is likely blocked by the return of Vladimir Putin to the Russian presidency and the toxic US-Russia relationship. The classic road toward nuclear disarmament appears to be closed for the foreseeable future, but there may be another route. In the last fifty years, well-conceived regional treaties have been developed in Latin America, the South Pacific, Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central Asia. These arrangements have developed for many and varied political and security reasons, but now virtually all of the Southern Hemisphere and important parts of the Northern Hemisphere are legally nuclear-weapon-free. These regional nuclear weapon disarmament treaties are formally respected by the five states recognized under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as nuclear weapon states: the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, France, and China--often referred to collectively as the P-5 states. Variations of these regional treaties might eventually be negotiated in the Middle East, Northeast Asia, and South Asia, setting aside the P-5 states until the very end of the process. With regional agreements in place around the globe, negotiation among the P-5 states would be all that stands between the world community and the banishment of nuclear weapons, verifiably and effectively worldwide. By the time this point is reached, Russia and the United States might be able to cooperate. Essential reading for policy advisors, foreign service professionals, and scholars in political science, The Alternate Route examines the possibilities of nuclear-weapon-free zones as a pathway to worldwide nuclear disarmament. |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: The Memoirs of John F. Kennedy: A Novel Donald James Lawn, The Memoirs of John F. Kennedy: A Novel brings to life the tantalizing possibilities of what might have been had JFK remained president after November 22, 1963. This book imagines an America where progressive leadership takes hold during the 1960s, where President Kennedy, after a grueling fight for his life in a Dallas hospital, survives his chest wounds and returns to the presidency. He is elected for a second term. He does not mount a ground war in Vietnam. Foreign relations with Cuba, the Soviet Union, South America, and our allies and adversaries around the world follow a very different path. This novel interweaves a two-track story. One takes place in 1963 at Parkland Medical Center and follows Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover as they cope with the explosive events of the assassination attempt while the wounded president hovers near death. The other more lighthearted fictional story-line unfolds through the eyes of Patrick Hennessey, the memoirist appointed by JFK during the approaching end of his second term in 1968. Through in-depth talks at the White House, Camp David, Hyannisport, on Air Force One, and golfing on Kennedy's private course at Glen Ora, Patrick gets to know the president as he reviews his decisions regarding the difficult path toward a peaceful resolution of world crises. This well researched alternate history will strike a chord with readers worldwide-those fascinated with the Kennedy mystique and those interested in the potential for politics to be done right during challenging times. Considering the current period-and the 50th anniversary of JFK's election-re-imagining a more positive past may enable us to collectively envision a more enlightened future. |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: Surrounded by Enemies Bryce Zabel, 2015-11-03 For fans of Harry Turtledove, page-turning history meets political thriller in an alternative history novel that asks, What if JFK survived Dallas? President John F. Kennedy has lived through the ambush in Dealey Plaza. America holds its collective breath, seeing its president nearly executed in broad daylight. But as the country marches on, the office of the President finds itself under a much more insidious type of fire. Political scandal, an endless war, and a country coming apart at the seams take the 1960s in a terrifying new direction, and both John and his attorney-general brother, Bobby, struggle to stay ahead of their enemies, political and otherwise, and steer America toward a greater future…. Bryce Zabel is a master of the cover-up and the conspiracy, creating the sci-fi/alternative history series Dark Skies. Surrounded by Enemies is the first novel in the new Breakpoint series—each book exploring seminal moments in popular history and taking readers on a journey into a mirror world where events are both unexpected yet startlingly believable. WINNER OF THE 2013 SIDEWISE AWARD FOR ALTERNATE HISTORY “I have some experience with shattered timelines and altered realities but this one kept me guessing every page.”—Damon Lindelof, screenwriter & creator of Watchmen TV series “Plausible development, building from what we know about what really did go on, and a whacking good story…Surrounded by Enemies delivers on both, big-time. So hold on to your hats, folks. You’re in for quite a ride.”—Harry Turtledove, alternative history author, Alpha and Omega |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: Gambling with Armageddon Martin J. Sherwin, 2020-10-13 From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of American Prometheus comes the first effort to set the Cuban Missile Crisis, with its potential for nuclear holocaust, in a wider historical narrative of the Cold War—how such a crisis arose, and why at the very last possible moment it didn't happen. In this groundbreaking look at the Cuban Missile Crisis, Martin Sherwin not only gives us a riveting sometimes hour-by-hour explanation of the crisis itself, but also explores the origins, scope, and consequences of the evolving place of nuclear weapons in the post-World War II world. Mining new sources and materials, and going far beyond the scope of earlier works on this critical face-off between the United States and the Soviet Union—triggered when Khrushchev began installing missiles in Cuba at Castro's behest—Sherwin shows how this volatile event was an integral part of the wider Cold War and was a consequence of nuclear arms. Gambling with Armageddon looks in particular at the original debate in the Truman Administration about using the Atomic Bomb; the way in which President Eisenhower relied on the threat of massive retaliation to project U.S. power in the early Cold War era; and how President Kennedy, though unprepared to deal with the Bay of Pigs debacle, came of age during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Here too is a clarifying picture of what was going on in Khrushchev's Soviet Union. Martin Sherwin has spent his career in the study of nuclear weapons and how they have shaped our world. Gambling with Armegeddon is an outstanding capstone to his work thus far. |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: Shadows of Annihilation S. M. Stirling, 2020-03-10 The third novel in a World War I alternate history series where America's greatest weapon against Germany is Black Chamber secret agent Luz O'Malley and technical genius Ciara Whelan. Only they can protect America's best hope of winning the war. The Great War is at a stalemate, and the only thing stopping Germany from striking America is the threat of the United States using their own Annihilation Gas against them. But America's supply is quickly decaying and the Central Powers know it. A plant is under construction in the remote highlands of Mexico so that America can make their own supply. President Teddy Roosevelt assigns crack agent Luz O'Malley and her technical genius Ciara Whelan to watch over the plant operating under cover identities. But German agent Horst von Duckler has escaped from the POW camp in El Paso, and he's heading in the same direction--bent on revenge against Luz, and sabotage that will deprive America of its deterrent and kill tens of thousands. |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: Between the Rivers Harry Turtledove, 2007-04-01 At the sun-drenched dawn of human history, in the great plain between the two great rivers, are the cities of men. And each city is ruled by its god. But the god of the city of Gibil is lazy and has let the men of his city develop the habit of thinking for themselves. Now the men of Gibil have begun to devise arithmetic, and commerce, and are sending expeditions to trade with other lands. They're starting to think that perhaps men needn't always be subject to the whims of gods. This has the other god worried. And well they might be...because human cleverness, once awakened, isn't likely to be easily squelched. |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: Global Trends 2040 National Intelligence Council, 2021-03 The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come. -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading. |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: The Man in the High Castle Philip K. Dick, 2011 Slavery is back. America, 1962. Having lost a war, America finds itself under Nazi Germany and Japan occupation. A few Jews still live under assumed names. The 'I Ching' is prevalent in San Francisco. Science fiction meets serious ideas in this take on a possible alternate history. |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: Cuban Missile Crisis: An Alternate History of the Missiles of October (A Moscow Correspondent's Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis) Pricilla Gonzales, 2022-08-12 The coverage contained in these files are of events, deliberations, and actions, usually outside of the scope of the jurisdiction and responsibilities of the attorney general. However, robert kennedy's special relationship as both the brother of and special advisor to president kennedy made him the closest man to jfk during the cuban missile crisis. The materials include papers, memorandums, correspondence, reports, notes, doodles, hand written material, accounts of executive committee meetings, and notes on private meetings with president kennedy. Some of the questions that are answered: Why did soviet leader khrushchev take the risk of deploying nuclear missiles on cuba, knowing the americans would almost certainly find out and could not possibly let it stand? What was discussed by president kennedy's so-called executive committee, a.k.a. Excomm, his core team throughout the crisis? Why was kennedy especially worried about the 'submarine surfacing and identification procedures' as formulated by the department of defense? And who decided not to push the button? The very brief history series is intended to give the reader a short, concise account of the most important events in world history. Each book provides the reader with the essential facts concerning a particular event or person; no distractions, just the essential facts, allowing the reader to master the subject in the shortest time possible. |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: The Alteration Kingsley Amis, 2013-05-07 BOOKER PRIZE–WINNING AUTHOR Set in a world in which the Reformation failed, this award-winning science fiction tale is “one of the best . . . alternate-worlds novels in existence” (Philip K. Dick) In Kingsley Amis’s virtuoso foray into virtual history it is 1976, but the modern world is a medieval relic, frozen in intellectual and spiritual time ever since Martin Luther was promoted to pope back in the sixteenth century. Stephen the Third, the king of England, has just died, and Mass (Mozart’s second requiem) is about to be sung to lay him to rest. In the choir is our hero, Hubert Anvil, an extremely ordinary ten-year-old boy with a faultless voice. In the audience is a select group of experts whose job is to determine whether that faultless voice should be preserved by performing a certain operation. Art, after all, is worth any sacrifice. How Hubert realizes what lies in store for him and how he deals with the whirlpool of piety, menace, terror, and passion that he soon finds himself in are the subject of a classic piece of counterfactual fiction equal to Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle. The Alteration won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best science-fiction novel in 1976. |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: Don't Mess With Earth: An Alternate History Novel Cliff Ball, 2022-12-15 Thousands of years in the past, an advanced group of humans leave Earth when a coming disaster threatens to end all life on the planet while those who remain fall back into primitiveness. Eventually, everyone involves Earth in an interstellar war, which makes the humans of Earth decide to do something about this. Interstellar politics will never be the same again once Earth is done with their revenge. |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: A Rebel in Time Harry Harrison, 1983 A classic time-travel adventure about altering the outcome of the War Between the States. On the fields where Civil War battles have yet to be fought, a black sergeant takes on a mad colonel with a machine gun and $25 million in gold--with the winner to determine the course of history. |
| cuban missile crisis alternate history: Farthing Jo Walton, 2006-08-08 An influential family’s weekend party is the stage for murder in this alternative history trilogy opener set in a post-WWII England where the Nazis won. Eight years have passed since the upper-crust “Farthing Set” overthrew Winston Churchill and led Britain into a separate peace with Hitler. Now those families have gathered for a weekend retreat. Among them is estranged scion Lucy Kahn, who can’t understand why she and her husband, David, were so enthusiastically invited. But all becomes clear when the eminent Sir James Thirkie is found murdered—with a yellow Star of David pinned to his chest. Lucy realizes that her Jewish husband is about to be framed for the crime, an outcome that would be altogether too politically convenient, given the machinations underway in Parliament in the coming week. The Farthing Set are determined to pass laws further restricting the right to vote, and a new outcry against Jews and foreigners would suit them fine. But whoever’s behind the murder and the frame-up didn’t count on the principal investigator from Scotland Yard being so prone to look beyond the obvious—or his being a man with his own private reasons for sympathizing with outcasts and underdogs . . . Praise for Farthing “If le Carré scares you, try Jo Walton. Of course her brilliant story of a democracy selling itself out to fascism sixty years ago is just a mystery, just a thriller, just a fantasy—of course we know nothing like that could happen now. Don’t we?” —Ursula K. Le Guin “Walton . . . crosses genres without missing a beat with this stunningly powerful alternative history set in 1949. . . . While the whodunit plot is compelling, it’s the convincing portrait of a country’s incremental slide into fascism that makes this novel a standout. Mainstream readers should be enthralled as well.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) |
Cuban Missile War v1.8 - alternate history
October 20, 1962 — The first Soviet missile regiment in Cuba, the 79th Missile Regiment, has fully readied its 8 R-12 medium-range missiles. Only the warheads remain, and those are less than …
The Cuban Missile Crisis
exploration of an alternate Cuban Missile Crisis has a lot to offer: an understanding of the crisis itself, context for the rest of the Cold War, and hopefully a great deal of fun as well. I am …
NSA and the Cuban Missile Crisis - U.S. Department of Defense
Oct 11, 2022 · The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 was one of the turn-ing points of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. At that time the two superpowers came …
Cuban Missile Crisis Alternate History (Download Only)
Alternate History of the Missiles of October (A Moscow Correspondent's Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis) Pricilla Gonzales,2022-08-12 The coverage contained in these files are of …
The Cuban Missle Crisis - Texas Woman’s University
When American U2 planes flew over Cuba and captured images of a Soviet Union missile launch base being built a mere 90 miles from the shores of Florida, President Kennedy and his …
An International History of the
An International History of the Cuban Missile Crisis This edited volume addresses the main lessons and legacies of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis from a global perspective. Despite the …
Soviet Deception in the Cuban Missile Crisis - The World …
Moscow's surreptitious dispatch of nuclear-capable SS-4 and SS-5 surface-to-surface missiles to Cuba in 1962 upset the strategic balance in an alarming way. 1 The resulting …
HISTORIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY The Cuban Missile Crisis at 60
the Cuban Missile Crisis has evolved from the initial portrayal of the situation as an Ameri-can victory achieved by brilliant crisis management by John F. Kennedy and his advisors to a more …
Historians and the Cuban Missile Crisis
This paper explores the historiography of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis over the past 45 years. It examines the insights offered by traditionalists, revisionists and post
Alternate History Cuban Missile Crisis Copy - x-plane.com
that tense time Such counterfactual speculation shows what the Cuban missile crisis could have wrought and how it was truly one of the most important moments of the twentieth century …
THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS: Second Holocaust - Mr. Tomecko
The Cuban Missile Crisis sources—comments made by principals to subordinates and foreign diplomats, a limited amount of message traffic, and data gleaned from patterns of nuclear …
Electronic Journal of International History - Article 3
The Cuban missile crisis of 1962 occurred when the USSR deployed nuclear missiles in Cuba, within range of the USA. Yet by 1962 the US had deployed Thor missiles in the UK and Jupiter …
history - the cuban missile crisis - IB NOTES
the cuban missile crisis • In August 1962, Castro and Khrushchev signed a peace treaty that allowed the USSR to place military forces, including missiles, in Cuba.
THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS AND ITS EFFECT ON THE COURSE …
The Cuban Missile Crisis began on October 15when the United States, during its routine U-2 spy plane investigations of Communist nations, discovered the presence of launching pads for …
The Cuban Missile Crisis - api.pageplace.de
The Cuban Missile Crisis This volume brings together a collection of leading international experts to revisit and review our understanding of the Cuban missile crisis, via a critical reappraisal of …
Cuban Missile Crisis Alternate History [PDF]
Cuban Missile Crisis Alternate History Pricilla Gonzales When Angels Wept Eric G. Swedin,2010 In 1961 at the Bay of Pigs CIA trained and organized Cuban exiles aiming to
Joint Operational Problems in the Cuban Missile Crisis - DTIC
Historians and political scientists continue to study the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 as a pivotal example of crisis diplomacy and national decisionmaking.
For further information or additional copies, contact the …
The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 was one of the turning points of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. At that time the two superpowers came close to war, …
Using academic history in the classroom: Causes of the Cuban …
Cuban Missile Crisis – background and context Following the 1959 Cuban Revolution, Cuba eventually became a Communist state, led by Fidel Castro. Having an ideological opponent so …
The Cuban Missile Crisis Just Isn’t What It Used to Be
details on the global impact of the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example in East Asia, and on the development of what would become today’s North Korean nuclear program!
Cuban Missile War v1.8 - alternate history
October 20, 1962 — The first Soviet missile regiment in Cuba, the 79th Missile Regiment, has fully readied its 8 R-12 medium-range missiles. Only the warheads remain, and those are less than …
