Over the past few weeks I’ve written posts where I’ve made trips down memories lane, sharing my passions about some of the things that shaped me, made me who I am. I’ve spoke of authors and their works, such as Thomas Wolfe, O’Henry and Harper Lee. I even included my love of Marvel Comics. Then I jumped feet first, wearing my rocking shoes, into the early years of rock & roll telling about all the great concerts and rising stars I got to see way back in the day.

But over the years, my greatest love has been the books, books of all kinds. History, however, has been the driving force behind my choice of reading ever since I got my first library card at the age of six. One post I wrote touched upon the great book by Stephen Ambrose, Band of Brothers, and the road trip we took to Toccoa, Georgia, to visit where the camp was located that those boys of the famed 101st Airborne Division did their training at the base of Mount Currahee. Another post I wrote was about something that’s always fascinated me, end-of-the-world books. With that in mind, I find myself on another journey to the past that ties in with a history book that tells the story of an event that I actually lived through: The Cuban Missile Crisis.

The title of the book is Michael Dobbs’ One Minute To Midnight, subtitled Kennedy, Khrushchev And Castro On The Brink Of Nuclear War. How’s that for an end-of-the-world scenario? Thing is, it truly did almost happen.

The phrase one minute to minute to midnight is in reference to the metaphorical Doomsday clock, a symbolic clock face that represented a countdown to the possible global disaster of nuclear war, later including any development that could lead to any irrevocable harm to humanity. The genesis of the clock came from a group of international researchers, the Chicago Atomic Scientists, who had participated in the Manhattan Project. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki were struck with atomic bombs, these scientists began publishing a newsletter which then became the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The clock first appeared on the cover of the June 1947 issue, appearing monthly until the publication became totally digital in 2009; it still appears as part of the logo on the Bulletin‘s webpage. The initial setting of the clock was at seven minutes till midnight. The closest to midnight the clock ever came to was two minutes till in 1953 after the US and Russia tested the first hydrogen bombs within nine months of each other. However, after extensive research, Dobbs discovered many heretofore unknown or ignored facts that shows that the clock could have very well been set at not only one minute till, but at 11:59:59, one second till, on 27-October 1962, a day that became known as “Black Saturday”. The only reason it wasn’t set there is that other than those in the administration dealing with the issue, no one knew just exactly what was going on. But on that “Black Saturday”, with tensions already high due to the missiles sitting 90 miles off our shores, there were several incidents that occurred that could have very well been a hair trigger to an apocalypse, the literal end of the human race. Those events are as follows.

1. Castro sent a personal message to Khrushchev basically suggesting that Russia consider a first strike on the US because he felt that an invasion would occur within 24-72 hours, endangering his regime.

2. Captain Charles W. Maultsby flew a U-2 to the North Pole doing air sampling, searching for radioactivity from Russian nuclear tests. But on his return to his base in Alaska, while trying to use the stars for navigation, he lost track of his course because of  the northern lights confusing him and wandered over Soviet territory. That led the Russians to launch MIG fighters to intercept him, fearing a US first strike. He finally met up with two US fighters who led him to a safe landing without any hostile encounter with the Russians.

3. Another U-2, however, was not as fortunate. While making a reconnaissance over Cuba, Major Rudolf Anderson was lost, shot down by a SAM missile from an antiaircraft battery under Russian control; they fired because Castro had been furious about the constant fly overs by US aircraft.

4. After constant harassment by a US destroyer, a Russian submarine in dire straits was about to fire a nuclear torpedo at the destroyer, halted only by the refusal of one of the three officers needed to approve the firing command.

5.  Russian and Cuban soldiers moved a set of tactical nuclear short range missile batteries to within 15 miles of the Guantanamo US Navy base, known then, as it is now, as GITMO, readying them for immediate use.

6. The Russians had set up several tactical nuclear short range missile batteries on the shoreline to use against any invasion force.

7. Several Russian ships possibly carrying more missiles were headed toward the blockade line set up by the US Navy, risking a deadly confrontation.

8. The Strategic Air Command was at the alert level of DEFCON-2, one step short of imminent nuclear war, with almost 1,500 B-52 bombers carrying a payload of 3,000 nuclear weapons either in the air or on 15-minute alert.

And so it stood until the early hours of Sunday morning when two cool heads come together and used diplomacy instead of force to resolve the issue. A deal was brokered and Khrushchev ordered his missiles removed from Cuba, much to the chagrin of Castro, and Kennedy promised to remove our missiles from Turkey, right on Russia’s border. Both leaders had served in the military and seen the death and destruction of war, and neither wanted their legacy to be that of the entire destruction of the civilized world.

Having lived through that time, and the entire cold war, I’ll have to admit that I was totally clueless. Like so many I grew up with, I was never in fear of a nuclear war. Unlike many children of that era, while in school, we never went through the duck and cover and get under your desk drills. Why that didn’t happen in my area, I have no idea. I do remember seeing a few Civil Defense bomb shelters in my hometown, but certainly not enough of them to save everyone. The only reason the  missile crisis was exciting to me was because of seeing all the convoys driving through town on their way to Florida, for a big portion of the east coast military forces were called up to go there and prepare for an invasion. As for any fear or terror, it never entered my young head.

I do wonder now, though, what went on in my parents heads during those thirteen days of the crisis. I never heard a word during those days. And in the years afterwards, the subject never came up. I don’t know why after I grew older it never entered my mind to ask them about it. I guess because it wasn’t such a big deal to me, I didn’t realize that it was most likely a terrifying time to them.

Just this past January 22, the clock’s hands were moved from five minute till midnight to 3 minutes till midnight due to new issues about nuclear weapons, nuclear waste and other troubling possibilities. A sobering thought. But we avoided the ultimate catastrophe facing us on 27-October 1962 and if we, like Kennedy and Khrushchev, keep cool heads, we can overcome any problems that threaten us and continue to thrive and survive. And that’s a good thought and a goal to strive for, though I can think of one particular extinction-level event that could affect us in the future: a large asteroid or comet hitting our Mother Earth head on! That’s been portrayed in the movies Armageddon and Deep Impact and written about in the fantastic sci-fi novel Lucifer’s Hammer. A one in a million chance? Who knows? But…just like the odds of winning the lottery, things can happen. Hopefully, we’ll dodge that bullet.

If any of y’all lived in that moment of history, I’d love to hear your comments about how it affected you and your loved ones and the feelings you experienced while it was happening. And for those of you who were born afterwards, I highly recommend this book.