So, I am writing a timeline based around a Cold War gone hot during he Cuban Missiles Crisis.
Due to my lack of ideas of where get decent/accurate information, I've been asking myself some things:
1) What would be the maximum number of nukes that could be launched without causing extremely large swaths of the Western hemisphere to turn uninhabitable, but also just enough that USA and USSR could nuke each other while also having nuclear bombs/missiles to spare to bomb countries that are aligned with the opposing side?
2) On the above, what could be a plausible list of "secondary targets"? I guessed that Cuba, East Germany, Finland, and the Baltic countries would be NATO's choices, while the USSR would target West Germany, United Kingdom [also because they would likely follow suit with the USA], the Netherlands, Italy [If they figure out that the United States was hosting nukes there], Turkey [Ditto], Japan and South Korea.
3) Was the number of nukes owned by both sides known to the general public, was it all classified or a mix of both?*
*= Important because it is going to impact on how the story is told.