Latest point Cold war could have gone hot?

What do you think was the latest time Cold war could have gone hot, that is direct conflict between SU/WarPac and US/NATO? With a POD that leads directly to war, not something like "Khruscev doesn't become SecGen so SU attacks in mid 1970s". POD like in Red Storm Rising where destruction of rafinery leads to Soviet invasion.

My guess would be 1986.
 
1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt

goes better than OTL, but far from perfect. Junta decides that inner peace is only found through war with an enemy...

I doubt anybody would think red army was capable of taking on NATO in 1991, not with WarPac going out of existance and Eastern bloc states more likely to attack Red army than NATO.
 
1973, during the Yom Kippur War. The U.S. fails to resupply Israel while the USSR continues to resupply Egypt and Syria. Eventually IDF is forced to use tacnuke against tank invasion, things go downhill from there.
 
Assuming you don't get rid of Gorby as part of the series-of-PODs, early-mid 1980s is about right.

A Soviet Union where the hard-liners maintain control? We're seeing a 1980's for sure.

Actually, even under Gorbachev, it could still happen. We seriously could have had a "Wargames" situation where a misunderstanding could have devolved into a nuclear war. A missile cut off from the chain of command during a stressful international incident could launch a missile. A flock of geese becomes a threat to national security. Any of these things, even under Gorbachev, would of forced their hands.
 
I'd agree with pretty much up to the last days of the Soviet Union. As I recall even after it collapsed we almost had a nuclear exchange with Russia proper in the 90s over a misidentified satellite or something. Yeltsin was given the Russian football and we got lucky he wasn't drunk as I recall.
 

Delta Force

Banned
Able Archer 83 is the closest the world has come to nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The early 1980s was a period of major tensions between the Soviets and the Americans, as Reagan called for the creation of the SDI and deployed Pershing II missiles to Europe. In the middle of these tensions NATO decided to hold a series of wargames simulating the escalation of a global crisis up to DEFCON 1, culminating in a simulated nuclear attack. The Soviets were worried about a first strike attack by the new Pershing II missiles and thought that a nuclear attack was most likely to occur during war games or a military exercise. As part of Operation RYAN the Soviets had infiltrated agents into the NATO nuclear command and control apparatus but the spies were only ordered to report their observations, not their analysis of the situation. When the Operation RYAN agents started noticing preparations for a nuclear attack and when Soviet signals intelligence started noticing increased encrypted communication between the US and UK (thought to be sharing information for an attack, actually communication regarding the Invasion of Grenada) and NATO switching to classified communications channels it fit into Soviet views of what a nuclear attack would look like. Since Soviet doctrine always relied on a nuclear exchange prior to initiating conventional war (and always thought the US had the same doctrine) all it takes is for the Soviets to decide to hit NATO first for a nuclear exchange to occur.
 
Since Soviet doctrine always relied on a nuclear exchange prior to initiating conventional war

Not in the 1980s it didn't. The attitude of the Soviet military had very much shifted away from the "nukes fly, but are survivable and the war continues" to the "nuclear war is unsurvivable" by the 1980's. The only thing that remained in this doctrinal shift was that a nuclear war could never remain limited.

(and always thought the US had the same doctrine)

No they didn't, they just thought (probably correctly) that the US was kidding itself if it thought that a nuclear war could remain limited.
 
What about conventional war, along the lines of Red Storm Rising?

I'd go with early '90s after a a successful coup by hardliners. The hardliners try to reestablish the Soviet Empire in Europe and elsewhere by force and NATO intervenes to defend former members of the Warsaw Pact. Not sure if it would stay wholly conventional for long but it would certainly start that way.
Not sure how to make a classic Cold War hot war with Soviet tanks pouring through the Fulda Gap that doesn't involve immediate use of nukes or at least chemical weapons from the start much after the Korean War.
 
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