Did you survive the Cold War

[xelasnave]

I am interested to hear from others who were subject to a daily dose of the impending horror of WW3.
The war that could start at moment and end within a day with humanity devastated.
I recall when the missiles were on their way to Cuba and the line drawn in the sand..water actually..cross it and its on.
At school we all shook hands with the very real expectation that tomorrow would not come.
Another occasion I arrived home from school and my mother satme down saying she had very bad news..my grandmother had passed away...I thought she was about to tell mewar had started..I felt relief that it was oonly mygrandmother passing away.
I wonder if anyone here had similar experiences or remember the constant threat.

[ZeroID]

Been there, done that.
Kennedy on TV issuing threats as the missiles sailed closer and we all breathed a sigh of relief when they all backed down off their high horses.
Young people don't realise how close we were to being plunged into a nuclear winter and in hindsight how narrow our understanding of what the ramifications of it would have been.

[xelasnave]

And the russian guy Nikita Kruschoff he seemed to me a man happy to go to war than take a bath.
I only of late realise how tramatised I was...I mean my response to my grandmother passing says so much

[astroron]

As a young British Soldier stationed within 100kms from the East German border and battalions of soviet and Warsaw pact Tanks camped on said border it was a very tense time.
Needless to say there was a sigh of relief when the conflict was de escalated..
Cheers:thumbsup:

[xelasnave]

Wow that would be Scarry Ron
You know what I am talking about.
We / I did not think Mr K would back down and expected at best Kennedy would not act but he seemed also ready for war.

[LewisM]

Still live the cold war every day - I married a Russian :) No, actually, make that a Hot War. MMMM, much better. :D

8 years and 2 kids later this August.

As to the Cold War - old enough to remember a bit of it... post-Viet Nam etc. I was in Berlin in 1989 when they started tearing down The Wall - got pieces of it still - and did still endure East German border crossings (FUN - NOT!)

[astroron]

Alex,a lot of Kruschev bluster was for home consumption,the Soviet Union was nearly bankrupt and the country was loosing face at a great rate of knots, Kruschev did not want war anymore than Kennedy.
It was a huge game of poker with bluff on both sides, and fortunately for all concerned Kruschev blinked and that was as they say, "game over"
Cheers:thumbsup:

[LewisM]

Knowing a lot of older Russian/Soviet people, and having spoken to them at great length, I can assure you not ONE of them liked Khrushchev. He laid the foundations for a lot of ill in the USSR that permeates even today (notably, gifting Crimea to Ukraine and other bad decisions).

[simmo]

As a "youngster" who has lived in better times I can remember some of the eighties when tensions were still there. I can still remember when it finally closed up with Gorbachev on the news and when the wall came down.

As for realising how close I was to never being born it came through the film 'Thirteen Hours' with Kevin Costner playing a part in it. I walked away from that film a little shattered. If it was a real representation of those few hours then we can can all thank Kennedy and a few men by his side for their patience and not wanting to jump on the bandwagon of the war makers. It made me realise how so few men can hold the fate of many.

Not a bad post xelasnave. I think that period of time from 1900 to 2000 is an important piece of history to study. If you start from World War One you can follow all the repercussions right through to how we've ended up now.

[xelasnave]

My X is from what they call..White Russian..
We all have sortta the same name in Russian..Sandra, Sascha and Alex.
The way Russia was presented was near opposite to the reality but at the time I only knewthe propaganda we were fed

[graham.hobart]

I remember the fear and paranoia very well.
Growing up in the UK in the times of Greenham Common protests for stopping Cruise Missiles being stationed there, the rise of CND and then the sense of disbelief when it all ended.
At the time we seemed to have a lot of fears- it was the same time the IRA were conducting mainland bombings as well and I particularly remember the Cold stream Guards bomb and the Leicester bomb (my home town)
It seems weird now that we accepted such a level of horror as the norm.
I blame Nina and 99 red balloons!!
Grazinki!

[graham.hobart]

Oh and that bloody Europe song "Final Countdown"
:mad2:

[tlgerdes]

I remember a school excursion to see the movie "The Day After" in 1983, it seemed to me about that time the mainstream press to garner around the futility of it (WW3 not the movie)

[doppler]

Not quite old enough for that but I remember that we used to have a minutes silence at high school everytime the French detonated an A bomb at our doorstep, in the pacific ocean. The british were worse though, they liked to detonate theirs in South Australia in the late 1950's.

[el_draco]

Great way to spend ones formative years. Saw "The Day after", still makes me depressed. I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis as if it were yesterday and yet i was only a wee bub at the time. I think my most enduring memory was listening to the radio and hearing my mum start crying. I asked why and she told me a great man had been killed. JFK, I was 2 at the time but the significance hit home. I also remember people talking about the "bloody Reds" and "Commies" and thinking, "Why are they so horrible, they look like us"; Didn't buy into it and was vindicated by STING, "Do the Russians love their children too?"

When the Iron Curtain came down, first thing I did was try to make contact via the net. I eventually connected with a young woman working for govt and asked her how the Russians felt about the Cold War. "Scared" was her reply. Funny about that :eyepop: We talked for many months before the tide changed again. Russians are like us but just with different experiences. Another reason to despise our leaders...

[astroron]

Lewis, unfortunately bad Decisions made in the past and today will always come back to haunt us in the future. :mad2:
The current Middle East conflict is a classic example. :sadeyes:
Cheers:thumbsup:

[Ric]

Yep, old enough to remember a fair whack of it.

Very tense and strange times indeed.

[doppler]

I remember watching the old b&w movie version of "on the beach" which creeped me out at the time. Set in Melbourne after WW3 with everyone waiting for the fallout to arrive.

[Miaplacidus]

I remember in the 1970s someone joking at school about how this new-fangled idea called the "greenhouse effect" just might provide the answer to the (inevitable) nuclear winter.

Hey, wait a minute...

[xelasnave]

Tis an ill wind that blows no good