When was the world most safe?

[RMichener]

I'm sorry, but it seems to me that some of you just have no idea how close we came to nuclear war.

Two incidents stand out. During the Cuban missile crisis an american destroyer began depth charging a soviet sub. On the sub, the commander thought this meant WWIII had begun. He wanted to fire a torpedo with a nuclear warhead on it. But firing required the captain and two crew members to agree. One crew member refused.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Alexandrovich_Arkhipov
This, by itself, would seem to rule out "Kennedy" as the right answer!

But we had a closer call during the Reagan administration. Not saying it was Reagan's fault, but it was definitely a close call. In my mind, that rules out "Reagan" as the right answer.

For the benefit of kool-aid Republicans, I will post a link to FOX NEWS.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,132498,00.html

 

[piasabird]

Everytime we turn around Russia is doing something like building Iran another nuclear reactor. Russia is not a friend to the world.

 

[RMichener]

Yeah, building people nuclear reactors is a bad idea. And some of the mess the world is in with proliferation is because we espoused it. To why pick only on the Russians?
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1209-08.htm

 

[zinfamous]

Originally posted by: azazyel
when we were still in trees

:thumbsup:

 

[zinfamous]

Originally posted by: Lemon law
I would somewhat say that nothing post Hiroshima is safe---but nukes raise the stakes on human history that is largely painted by war---with the victors writing history.

I would argue that we are safer because of Hiroshima. In many ways, the sometimes-moniker given to the A-bomb, "A weapon of peace" is apt. For the first time, the world saw what human ingenuity was truly capable of. That we had obtained the ability to obliterate hundreds of thousands of people within nanoseconds caused a collective sh1t around the world. The intent of the A-bomb was not so much to end WWII, as it was to end the idea of war altogether.

I'm fairly confident that had nuclear fission been impossible, and the Cold War happened without such technology in anyone's arsenal, a real war would have escalated. The real power of the bomb is not in the carnage it can unleash, but in the type of war that its mere presence can, and will prevent.