According to Richard Rhodes's book "Dark Sun" the U.S. Strategic Air Command put seven thousand megatons in the air the showdown day of the Cuban Missile Crisis; one pilot is quoted claiming his B-52 was a half-hour out of Leningrad on a nuclear "bomb-as-you-go" mission before they received orders to turn back. According to Robert McNamara's book "In Retrospect," on the CIA's advice that the Cubans had no nuclear warheads in-country yet, the U.S. Army had 160,000 ground troops set to charge cross the Straits of Florida; however, in fact, the Cubans had at least a dozen, maybe as many as a hundred nuclear bombs to greet our landing craft.
Those days "seem preferable" only because the world lucked out somehow. I don't deny that our current administration are utterly bad, stupid men hell-bent on an unconscionable war, but it's wrong to minimize how close we came to total global disaster during the hottest moments of the Cold War.
Yours WDK - WKiernan at concentric.net