The Nightmare Stopped: 50th Anniversaryof The Cuban Missle Crisis

[dazzledbylight]

This past Tues Oct 22 was beginning of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
It's the day when Pres John F Kennedy went on TV to address the USA
about the missiiles in Cuba.

>Here is a brief summary from the Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia.
>Following that is a link to George Washington University's The National Security Archive.
>Finally an excert to JFK's Speech on working towards peace half a year before he was assasinated plus a klink to the full speech.

I'll put my comments below ina separate post

Encyclopedia > History > United States, Canada, and Greenland > U.S. History

Cuban Missile Crisis
Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962, major cold war confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. After the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the USSR increased its support of Fidel Castro's Cuban regime, and in the summer of 1962, Nikita Khrushchev secretly decided to install ballistic missiles in Cuba. When U.S. reconnaissance flights revealed the clandestine construction of missile launching sites, President Kennedy publicly denounced (Oct. 22, 1962) the Soviet actions. He imposed a naval blockade on Cuba and declared that any missile launched from Cuba would warrant a full-scale retaliatory attack by the United States against the Soviet Union. On Oct. 24, Russian ships carrying missiles to Cuba turned back, and when Khrushchev agreed (Oct. 28) to withdraw the missiles and dismantle the missile sites, the crisis ended as suddenly as it had begun. The United States ended its blockade on Nov. 20, and by the end of the year the missiles and bombers were removed from Cuba. The United States, in return, pledged not to invade Cuba, and subsequently secretly removed ballistic missiles it had placed in Turkey.

See R. F. Kennedy, Thirteen Days (1969, repr. 1971); A. Chayes, The Cuban Missile Crisis (1974); R. Garthoff, Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis (1989); A. Fursenko and T. Naftali, "One Hell of a Gamble" (1997); E. R. May and P. D. Zelikow, ed., The Kennedy Tapes (1997); M. Franke

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2011, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/annals.htm


http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Ready-Reference/JFK-Speeches/Commencement-Address-at-American-University-June-10-1963.aspx

Pres John F Kennedy at The American University -Commencement Speech

So, let us not be blind to our differences--but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.

 

[dazzledbylight]

Well... I was 9 yrs old when this happened.
I'm not sure if I saw the president's address that night- i suppose my parents watched it.

I was however in one of the gifted classess- we often got The New York Times. I have memories of the headlines, photos. And seeing a bit of the ships on TV cutting through the waters. And I lived in New York City. Target #1 or 2. (well that hasn't changed much!)

I was a precoscious child re the sciences, sometimes social/cultural/spiritual issues, too. My cousins and I we'd watch SF movies by the time i was 8 yrs old. The seminal Forbidden Planet, The Giant Behemoth et al.

TGB was about radiation from Atomic Tests, massive amounts of fish end up dying floating to shores then, the behemoth arises and goes on the attack.
Another movie about ants becoming the size of ?elephants...again radiation effects.

So i allready know the bombs were dangerous because they were big bombs plus released this dangerous radiation.

We never never did the hiding under ouir chairs/desks for nuclear drills.. just
went and lined up in our gymnasium or in hallways.
But...o-m-g the Air Sirens' wailing !
We had one on top of our school! You could hear them in the distance getting louder if you were at home for one of the drills. Terrifying, Very haunting!

I don't know if we did the school thing every month, but itb sure seemed likev they did the siren drills often. Once a month, 2 months.

This went on for a fair amount of years ....maybe they did them less frequently over time. i'm not when they finally totally stopped them! I do remember though at one point i realized they were gone!

One time and this was in the mid-ninety's (!!!) i was on a bus , looked out and saw the awning of a restaurant called "Two Minute Warning". For split second I froze/felt really weird/startled-double take/ before I realized it's a Sports Bar!

The two minute warning was also associated will these drills.

And another time in the late ninty's, early 00's I had the radio on sitting on my bed when it wassuddenly interupted by a [U]real Emergency Broadcast Warning[/U] I half-startled out of my bed untill i realized if course this is NOT a Nuclear Ammaggedon Scenario.



Besides a few other of the bigest cities, the otherAmericans who would be as immediately startledc would be those living in tiowns /?cities where the Nuclear Missile Silos were/are located!

In The Day After movie you see residents of such a place looking up as they hear the roar and they see the missiles rising in the sky! Omg i got the chills! i can get they shivers just replaying it in my mind.

It was an incredibly surreal time to be old enough to be aware for the most part of what could happen.

 

[dazzledbylight]

My google question was about when Air Raid sirens were phased out/how frequent they were tested so from one site these were answers in 2000, 2002

Las Vegas is eliminating theirs:
(2002 article)
then responce
Quote:
O'Brien conducted a study on the sirens last year and recommended their use be discontinued because current technology made them obsolete. The Clark County Public Safety Coordination Team obliged his request in a motion passed in July.
...
O'Brien says the electronic news media and the Emergency Broadcast System are much more useful than the sirens when it comes to alerting the public.

...
Another major deficiency of the air raid system is that there's not enough of the sirens spread around the Las Vegas area to alert even half the population.
...
The sirens are perched largely atop public buildings such as schools and fire stations and have never been activated for an actual emergency, he said.
So, while many places still have and need special-purpose warning sirens (for tornadoes or nuke accidents), the cold war air-raid siren is kind of useless.

if i was not so tired I would be lmao-- ( at first red highlight)

my initial reaction was...."maybe because Las Vages isn't in the first or even second round of USA Cities to be nuked; so of course you don't have as many so they don't sound as loud en masse!!!"

In NYC you couldn't Escape it except maybe in the very deepest subway stations!

What was interesting about same or different warning systems often being tested for nuke plants, and tornado alley.

 

[dazzledbylight]

one last intro thot

there's an NPR reporter nanmed Margot Adler. I once saw her as part of a small panel giving a talk on The Sixties of which I was a part but missed certain things becasue I was near the end of the middle group...if you divided the boomers into 3 chronological groups...her idea i think... There are general pyschological differences between us because the events we experienced I discussed with a friend 4 yrs younger than me (the youngest group/last third) and agreed.



But one thing she said -- she is at least 4-5 yrs older (which many know can be a big diference depending on which age range snd what event)

She felt as though when the CMC was safely resloved she almost felt like a split occured- almost sensing an alternate earth apart from ours were it didn't end peacefully at all! (shudders)

 

[digitize]

The Cuban Missile Crisis was truly one of the more fascinating events of human history. And I can't imagine how horrifying it must have been to have lived through it.

 

[the iron horse]

The Cuban Missile Crisis was truly one of the more fascinating events of human history. And I can't imagine how horrifying it must have been to have lived through it.

I was a young kid, but I remember it well.

My parents were really concerned and upset.

It was horrifying.

I remember us watching President Kennedy on the television.

It taught me at a young age just how quickly this world could
come apart.