If you really want a chuckle, google the nike and bomarc missile defense systems of the fifties and sixties and what they were willing to give up to defeat the Russkies.
If you were alive at the time, as I was, you would have been scared shitless. The defense was as bad as the Russians. For example, Nike missiles had a range 25-50 miles with a sizable nuke payload. The military objective was to have the missile explode among a group of Bear bombers to destroy the threat. However, to do so, they would have do destroy them within a twenty-five to fifty mile radius of the launchers. The launchers were all in urban areas. Just visit a NIKE missile museum, not the shoe museum, you dolts, and talk to the curators. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy took the U.S. to Defcon 4 and had his finger on the button. The only other time Defcon 4 was reached was during 1983 during the Reagan administration. Ron had his finger on the button also. Both times, the Russians backed down.
We have come close, but only found out decades later.
