How Close Did We REALLY Come to Nuclear War?

On the 27th of October 1962, deep in the Sargasso Sea, a Soviet submarine with a nuclear torpedo on board was being hit by American depth charges. The captain ordered the torpedo prepared. Two officers said yes. One man said no. This is the story of the thirteen days when the world came closer to nuclear war than ever before, told from both sides: from the White House, where a young president was trying not to start a war, and from the Kremlin, where an old peasant's son was trying not to lose one. In this animated documentary we watch the Doomsday clock tick towards midnight, day by day. We meet John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, from the Bay of Pigs and the Vienna summit to the Berlin Wall and the Jupiter missiles in Turkey. We follow Operation Anadyr, the secret shipment of 42,000 Soviet soldiers and nuclear missiles to Cuba, with skis and sheepskin coats for a trip to the Caribbean. Then the U-2 photographs, the ExComm and the secret tapes, General Curtis LeMay, "a Pearl Harbor in reverse", Gromyko in the Oval Office, Kennedy's speech to the nation, the quarantine line, DEFCON 2, "eyeball to eyeball", Adlai Stevenson at the UN, the lunch at the Occidental restaurant, Khrushchev's "knot of war" letter, Castro's Armageddon letter, Black Saturday, Major Rudolf Anderson, the lost U-2 over Chukotka, Vasili Arkhipov on submarine B-59, Robert Kennedy's secret meeting with Ambassador Dobrynin, and the Radio Moscow broadcast that ended it. ⏱ CHAPTERS 0:00 27 October 1962 — the submarine B-59 2:21 Two Men, One Planet 5:36 Operation Anadyr 8:23 Day 1–2: The Photographs 11:05 Day 3–6: Bomb Them or Block Them? 14:08 Day 7: The Speech 16:09 Day 8–9: The Line in the Sea 18:12 Day 10–11: Letters 20:09 Day 12: Black Saturday 23:26 Day 13: The Deal 25:10 Who Blinked? 📌 KEY FACTS • 14 October 1962: a U-2 flown by Major Richard Heyser photographed the missile sites in western Cuba • About 42,000 Soviet soldiers were secretly shipped to Cuba under Operation Anadyr • Soviet forces on Cuba also had short-range tactical nuclear weapons, which Washington only learned about decades later • 24 October: Strategic Air Command went to DEFCON 2, the only time in history • Around 270,000 Cubans were mobilised • Major Rudolf Anderson, shot down over Cuba on 27 October, was the only man killed by enemy fire in the crisis • The American Jupiter missiles in Turkey were quietly removed in April 1963 as part of a secret deal • In 1963 the Washington–Moscow hotline was set up and the Limited Test Ban Treaty was signed 📍 THE SIX CLOSE CALLS 1. Four Soviet submarines with nuclear torpedoes at the quarantine line 2. Castro's "Armageddon letter" 3. The U-2 shot down over Cuba 4. The lost U-2 over Chukotka 5. Arkhipov's "no" on B-59 6. The invasion plan for Monday morning 💬 WHAT DO YOU THINK? Out of all six close calls, which one was the closest? Tell us in the comments — we read every one. 🔔 Subscribe if you want to see the next crisis from both sides. We promise to keep the hotline open. 📚 SOURCES & FURTHER READING • Michael Dobbs — One Minute to Midnight • Aleksandr Fursenko & Timothy Naftali — "One Hell of a Gamble": Khrushchev, Castro and Kennedy, 1958–1964 • Sheldon M. Stern — The Week the World Stood Still (the ExComm tapes) • Robert F. Kennedy — Thirteen Days • Serhii Plokhy — Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis • Svetlana Savranskaya — accounts of the Soviet submarines, National Security Archive • John F. Kennedy Presidential Library — ExComm recordings and the 22 October address Some details, especially about what happened on board B-59, come from later eyewitness accounts and vary between sources. #CubanMissileCrisis #ColdWar #History #AnimatedHistory #BothFronts #JFK #Khrushchev #1962