Cuban Missile Crisis?

I've got to do a report on the Cuban Missile Crisis, and I was told I could do a what if so..

What if the Cuban Missile Crisis turned into a full blown war?

How would today look?

How would the war play out, where would the nuclear weapons be used?

How many nuclear warheads did the US or the Soviets have and of what types (SLBM, ICBM, Bomber Droped)?

And how would the conventional stages go?
 
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General - use the site search engine. And, asking others to do your research for you defeats the purpose of you doing a report......it's like asking someone else to workout for you, it gets done but your muscles (physical or mental) get no exercise and therefore no growth or benefit.
 
Brainstorming with other people having similar interests seems entirely legit, and by no means implies laziness, to my mind anyway.
 

TheKinkster

Banned
A VERY good source of information for this is the story Second Holocaust, in the book What Ifs of American History.

Basically, the Soviets had FAR fewer weapons then we thought they did at that point...they might have hit the US a few blows, but the Soviet Union would have ceased to exist as a nation.
 
This has a rough estimate of global nuclear stockpiles in terms of aggregate numbers of bombs. It's the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which is definitely a legit citation. They estimate the US had 27,609 bombs, the USSR 3,322.

However, the real question is delivery vehicles. This gives a detailed breakdown of US and Soviet OrBats, at least in terms of strategic forces and forces in the Cuban area. Although Alternate Wars is not exactly a scholarly source, it cites scholarly sources, which could be obtained if your teacher wants that.

Bear in mind that a large percentage of the listed Soviet forces will not reach the CONUS. They'll be targeted against Europe, or destroyed by US air defenses, or fall to mechanical failure, or (if the US strikes first) be destroyed before launching, or just plain miss. In particular, all but 11 of the Soviets' submarine-launched missiles had a range of 80 nautical miles or less; they'll have a hard time getting close enough to the CONUS without being taken out. Also, the 3M Bison-Bs cannot hit the US and return to base without refueling, and I've been frustratingly unsuccessful in determining if the Soviets had enough refueling capacity for all of them.
 
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Sadly the search function on this site is a bit erratic. Personally I use Google by typing "Alternate History..." and then what term you're looking for, so "Alternate History Cuban Missile Crisis" should get you some results from this site, the TL by Amerigo Vespucci linked to above is easily the best you'll find.
 
Thanks for all the help guys. And the TL is great. I just wanted to get a good consensus from the "experts" before I started drawing conclusions on my own. Frankly I don't know much about the CMC other than that it happened, so this has helped me get a good idea about where to go.

General - use the site search engine. And, asking others to do your research for you defeats the purpose of you doing a report......it's like asking someone else to workout for you, it gets done but your muscles (physical or mental) get no exercise and therefore no growth or benefit.


I considered this more of a brainstorm than a place to steal ideas. Sorry about the confusion.
 
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