One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War (Vintage, 1) cover
One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War (Vintage, 1)
by Michael Dobbs (historian), Michael Dobbs
Description: One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War recounts the tense events of the Cuban Missile Crisis, detailing the decisions and actions by leaders that brought the world close to nuclear conflict in 1962
ISBN: 9781400078912
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arethuza · 2014-11-08 · Original thread
Also "One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War" - which is pretty alarming even when we know how it all worked out:

http://www.amazon.com/One-Minute-Midnight-Kennedy-Khrushchev...

arethuza · 2013-09-26 · Original thread
The book "One Minute to Midnight" about the Cuban Missile Crisis has a rather long list of places during that confrontation that almost led to nuclear war.

http://www.amazon.com/One-Minute-Midnight-Kennedy-Khrushchev...

One fascinating one was a U2 getting lost on the way to the North Pole due to the Northern Lights and flying back into the Soviet Union just at the wrong time - alarming the Soviets and resulting in fighters being sent up by the US to protect the ailing U2. Unfortunately, due to the US being at Defcon 2 the fighters were only armed with nuclear air-to-air missiles.... The relief (for a number of reasons) the U2 pilot felt when he eventually landed was, understandably, rather intense!

Amazing book about a ghastly time.

arethuza · 2013-07-19 · Original thread
The Soviets had missiles based on MiG-15 fighter - a nuclear armed version of one of these missiles was aimed at the Guantanamo Bay base during the Cuban Missile Crisis. See:

http://www.amazon.com/One-Minute-Midnight-Kennedy-Khrushchev...

Probably a SSC-2B "Samlet":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KS-1_Komet