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Nikita Khrushchev, a veteran of the brutal Russian Civil War and the even more brutal “Great Patriotic War” against the Nazis, is at the brink of nuclear war and doesn’t blink. "They can attack us”, he says, “and we shall respond. This may end in a big war." (Fursenko and Naftali, pp. 240-43)
On October 28, Khrushchev orders the city of West Berlin blockaded by land and air. Barge traffic is halted on the water. He issues orders to shoot down any plane that violates East German air space. West Berlin has a thirty five day supply of food and fuel after which it will have to ask for Soviet occupation or face mass starvation.
Soviet troops begin to mass menacingly in the Soviet satellite states of East Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. Western military experts say they could reach the English Channel within a week.
The Americans have used force in Cuba. The Soviets are “grabbing” Berlin, as Kennedy feared. Now the Americans must shoot their way into Berlin or negotiate an end to the Russian blockade of Berlin by accepting the presence of Soviet offensive missiles in Cuba. The crisis has deepened.
In Washington, General Tommy Power, the commander of the U.S. Strategic Air Command tells the President, "The time of our greatest danger of a Soviet surprise attack is now" and advises that, “If a general atomic war is inevitable, the U.S. should strike first." (Kaplan, The Atlantic Monthly, October 2001)
On October 29, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John McCone persuades the President to issue an ultimatum to the Soviets: “if the missiles are not dismantled within seventy-two hours, the United States will destroy the missiles by air attack.” (Minutes of the 505th Meeting of the National Security Council).
The Joint Chiefs of Staff have drawn up an air campaign involving eight hundred sorties over the span of several days. If the air campaign cannot assure that the missiles have all been destroyed an invasion will follow. (Minutes of the 505th Meeting of the National Security Council).
For three days Secretary General of the United Nations U-Thant tries to defuse the crisis without success.
On Saturday, November 3, three days before Election Day, the American air campaign against Cuba begins. Khrushchev orders the bombing of American Jupiter Missile sites in Turkey which have been pointing offensive nuclear missiles at the Soviet heartland since April, 1962 (The George Washington University, National Security Archive). Kennedy does not retaliate even though Turkey is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Tuesday, November 6. Election Day in the United States. These are mid-term Congressional elections, historically bad for the incumbent party, but this year Americans flock to the polls to show their support for the President. The “Democrats”, the President’s party, enjoy massive electoral gains.
Wednesday, November 7. A U.S. Marine amphibious assault force leaves Florida at dawn bound for Cuba. The 41,000 Soviet troops in Cuba are expected to be quickly overrun as the U.S. Marines hit the beaches in Cuba at three separate beachheads. However, General Pliyev, the Soviet commander in Cuba has been authorized to use tactical nuclear weapons in the event of a U.S. landing.
General Pliyev has twelve Luna Missiles. Each Luna has a range of 3l miles and a two-kiloton nuclear payload. The Luna detonates in the air at a height of six hundred feet above the ground. At the epicenter of the blast there is a crater 130 feet in diameter. One hundred mile-an-hour winds roar. Any tank or armored personnel carrier within 500 yards is immediately destroyed. Un- protected soldiers 1,000 yards from the blast site die immediately, those un-fortunate enough to survive the explosion and the winds suffer a painful death by radiation poisoning within two weeks. Had Lunas been available to the Germans in World War II, the Nazis would have obliterated all five D-Day beachheads with no more than ten of these weapons. With twelve at his disposal the Soviet commander in Cuba easily destroys the beachhead established by U.S. Marines. (Fursenko and Naftali, pp. 240-43)
Soviet cruise missiles, the FKR, inflict heavy casualties on the U.S. Navy task force participating in the attack. One FKR cruise missile carries enough power to blow a U.S. aircraft carrier group apart.(Fursenko and Naftali, pp. 240-43)
Meanwhile, in Europe the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies launch an armored thrust against Western Europe, preceded by the launch off 7.5 megatons of nuclear weapons against Western targets. Vienna (although Austria is a neutral country) is completely destroyed by two 500 kiloton bombs, while Munich is destroyed by one 500 kiliton bomb. The Italian cities of Verona and Vicenza follow, together with a host of military targets including airfields and military formations. (The Telegraph, December 1, 2001) Soviet military doctrine calls for the use of nuclear weapons on the battlefield, "Atomic weapons will be widely employed as organic weapons in the armies." (Fursenko and Naftali, pp. 240-43)
Elated, Cuban President Fidel Castro calls for an all out nuclear strike against the United States.
The U.S. response to the carnage on the Cuban beaches is no longer measured. U.S.military policy calls for "massive retaliation" in the event of general war. All nuclear weapons are launched against every target in the Soviet Union, China (even though it is not involved in the immediate crisis), and parts of Eastern Europe. The single integrated operational plan (SIOP) developed during the Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower calls for sending 2,258 missiles and bombers carrying a total of 3,423 nuclear weapons...against 1,077 "military and urban-industrial targets" throughout the "Sino-Soviet Bloc." (Kaplan, The Atlantic Monthly, October 2001). The attack kills some five hundred million people (54% of the Soviet population (105 million people) with the rest of the casualties primarily in the People’s Republic of China).
On November 8, stunned by the American “over reaction”, the Soviet Union launches a nuclear attack on the American homeland. Surviving Soviet weapons are aimed at cities rather than military targets to inflict maximum casualties. American policy makers anticipated such a response before the war, estimating that, depending on the assumptions, American fatalities would range from negligible in the best case to seventy five percent of the population in the worst case. Pentagon analyst Carl Kaysen sums it up, “in thermonuclear warfare, people are easy to kill.” (Kaplan, The Atlantic Monthly, October 2001)
The Boston metropolitan area with its 2.8 million people is representative of the general devastation that follows. At 12:19 P.M., air raid sirens begin to wail across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The lunch hour crowd on Boston Common scarcely has time to gather their things before a 20 megaton thermonuclear ground burst explosion destroys the “Cradle of Liberty.” Within 1/1000th of a second, a fireball envelops downtown Boston and reaches out for two miles in every direction from ground zero. Temperatures reach 20 million degrees Fahrenheit. People, buildings, cars, tress, everything within a two mile radius are vaporized. (The New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 266, Number22, May31, 1962, pages 1127-1155)
Winds in excess of 650 miles per hour roar outward to a distance of four miles, ripping apart and leveling everything. Ten miles from ground zero, the heat of the blast melts glass and sheet metal, and the 200 mile per hour winds flatten every house and business. The only things still standing are reinforced concrete buildings which are heavily damaged. (The New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 266, Number22, May31, 1962, pages 1127-1155)
Sixteen miles from the center, the heat from the blast ignites houses, paper, clothes, leaves, gasoline, and heating fuel, starting hundreds of thousands of fires. The winds, still 100 miles per hour at this distance merge these fires into a giant firestorm thirty miles across that engulfs eight hundred square miles. The death rate is nearly one hundred percent. Thirty miles from ground zero the heat of the blast causes third degree burns on exposed skin. Even forty miles from the blast, anyone looking up at the sudden flash of light in the sky is instantly blinded. (The New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 266, Number22, May31, 1962, pages 1127-1155)
Some one million people die in Boston within minutes of the attack. An additional one million are fatally injured. Severe burns are the most common medical problem. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people sustain major second and third degree burns and need urgent and intensive medical care. They never get it. In the entire United States, there are only two thousand special beds for burn patients. (The New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 266, Number22, May31, 1962, pages 1127-1155)
Some five hundred thousand people, who manage to escape the firestorms, suffer from other severe injuries. People struck by flying glass and debris have stab wounds of the head, chest and abdomen. People are crushed under buildings and hurled through the air by the hurricane force winds. Only ten percent of the population within a forty mile radius, some two hundred thousand people, escape without injuries. (The New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 266, Number22, May31, 1962, pages 1127-1155)
Now the silent killer, radiation sickness, begins its work. People exposed to very high doses of radiation develop convulsions and pass into coma and die, within the first day or two after the bomb explodes. People exposed to lesser doses of radiation, down to about 400 to 600 Rads, suffer a gastrointestinal form of radiation sickness, experiencing nausea, vomiting and diarrhea soon after exposure which lasts for several days and then improves. Unfortunately, the symptoms return and become worse as their stomachs and intestines, damaged by the radiation, begin to shed. The majority of these people also die. (The New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 266, Number22, May31, 1962, pages 1127-1155)
Only limited medical resources are available to care for the million and a half injured. Seventy percent of the medical professionals are killed outright or fatally wounded, with another fifteen percent disabled by lesser wounds. There are only one thousand doctors to care for 1.5 million desperately injured people. There are fewer than two hundred hospital beds left in the entire Boston metropolitan area. Doctors work without any of the tools essential to modern medicine. There are few X-ray machines remaining and no electricity to run those that survive. Stocks of medicine are quickly consumed. There are no antibiotics, no sterile surgical instruments, no blood, no plasma, and even water and food are in scant supply. Even among the hundreds of thousands of wounded who did not have injuries that would normally have been fatal, most die. (The New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 266, Number22, May31, 1962, pages 1127-1155)
From this one bomb alone, some 2.5 million Americans die within the first month after the Soviet attack (more than six times more than all Americans killed in World War II).
(The New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 266, Number22, May31, 1962, pages 1127-1155)
Over ninety million people, some fifty three per cent of the American population, die on November 8, 1962. The east, west and gulf coast cities are destroyed. Only the prairie and mountain states remain relatively untouched.