Most likely WW3

Which event(s) was/were most likely to cause WW3?

  • Berlin Airlift (1948)

    Votes: 11 13.8%
  • Korean War (1950-53)

    Votes: 12 15.0%
  • Hungarian Revolution (1956)

    Votes: 4 5.0%
  • Suez Crisis (1956)

    Votes: 4 5.0%
  • Berlin Crisis (1961)

    Votes: 8 10.0%
  • Cuban Missile Crisis (1962)

    Votes: 56 70.0%
  • Sino-Soviet Border Conflict (1969)

    Votes: 8 10.0%
  • Yom Kippur War (1973)

    Votes: 8 10.0%
  • Petrov Incident (1983)

    Votes: 19 23.8%
  • Able Archer (1983)

    Votes: 35 43.8%
  • Collapse of the Soviet Bloc (1988-1991)

    Votes: 7 8.8%
  • Norwegian Rocket Incident (1995)

    Votes: 1 1.3%
  • Russo-Georgian War (2008)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Crimean Crisis/Conflict in Ukraine (2014-present)

    Votes: 8 10.0%
  • Some other event (please specify in comments)

    Votes: 3 3.8%
  • WW3 was never likely to occur

    Votes: 2 2.5%

  • Total voters
    80
What is says on the tin.

I personally think that the Cuban Crisis and Able Archer were the closest. During the Able Archer exercise, the Soviets were seriously afraid of a NATO attack. So perhaps if another incident like Petrov's had happened in November 1983, I wouldn't be here to make this poll.

In my opinion, someone intentionally starting a nuclear war is unlikely, but an accident or series of accidents could easily escalate out of control. Especially in the early years of the Cold War, before modern communication technologies existed.
 
I concur with the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was the only time the USAF Strategic Air Command (which operated the ICBMs and bombers) was ordered to DEFCON 2, and there was that incident where the U.S. Navy dropped depth charges on the Soviet submarine B-59, which was armed with a nuclear torpedo and had orders to use it if the sub's hull was breached. It's really scary how close the world came to a nuclear war at the time.

The Petrov incident would be a close second. If Colonel Petrov had been somewhere else at the time, if someone else had been the duty officer at Serpukhov-15 at that fateful moment, perhaps the false alarm would be misidentified as an actual nuclear first strike by the U.S. In that event the Soviets would have launched a "retaliatory" strike against the Americans, which the latter would have seen as a first strike and responded accordingly. Doomsday would ensue...

A nuclear war in 1983 would be much, much worse than one in 1962. The Soviets had very few ballistic missiles in 1962 that could reach the United States, and their nuclear arsenal was much smaller than the Americans. The USA had the overwhelming nuclear advantage at the time. In 1983 the Soviets had exceeded the Americans in both missiles and warheads. Both superpowers would have obliterated each other, along with their respective allies. There would be no victors in that war.
 
I went for several, I think we are forgetting the south China sea, North Korea and also Syria
 
Operation unthinkable comes to mind

But yeah i went for the Cuban Missile crisis. I also went for the Crimean Crisis simply because it so close and recent and i believe what should have happened gets close to WW3
 
I would agree that Cuban Missile Crisis and Able Archer were the most likely. The first because of escalation & spinning out of control, the second because it seems to be the episode where a true 'accident" could have started things off. I don't buy WWIII would never have happened, or won't in the future - in some ways we have been lucky it didn't occur in the last 71 years.
 
Able Archer always seemed worse to me because the American side never knew what was going on in Moscow, so Petrov was the only moderating influence that mattered. It would have been so easy to take the warning for what it was and kill everyone.
 
Korean War is definitely one of my choices.

If, by some means, MacArthur manages to launch his nukes at China, it's WW3 as the USSR won't like that one bit.

But the best choice? Cuban Missile Crisis. There was actually a good chance war could've broken out if a certain Soviet sub approved its launch orders and launched missiles towards America.
 
IMHO I think a full on Soviet response to the US using nukes on Chinese bases relatively close to Korea/supporting the war is unlikely. Posturing, possibly a reintroduction of the Berlin blockade, perhaps with shooting down transports but no WWIII. In the 1950-53 time frame the USSR has very few deliverable atomic weapons compared to the USA and very limited odds of delivering any of those weapons to US soil. The US will be able to inflict way more damage on the USSR. Since the POD for this is the nuclear threshold has been crossed, a Soviet attempt to move in to western europe conventionally will be met with nukes.

Overall when the USA had an overwhelming nuclear advantage it was not inclined to use it, and the Soviets were not so insane as to come to a gunfight with just a knife. The USSR never reached a point where their nuclear advantage was such they could hit the USA/NATO and not be wrecked in return, and during the period when it had a good shot at trashing NATO conventionally they knew it would mean nukes would get used. When the correlation of forces was massively in the US favor (nukes calculated in) the US was not going to start a war, and the correlation of forces never moved far enough the other way for the USSR to see starting WWIII as anything but mutual suicide. To me, and many others, WWIII between the USSR/WP & USA/NATO was only going to start by accident or miscalculation - and the USSR was not going to see itself incinerated to protect Mao, the Kims, or Fidel.

As nukes are becoming more widely available, and many of them in the hands of countries/leaders as responsible as toddlers with kitchen matches we may be having this discussion in the future using an internet made of smoke signals.

FWIW the sub in question had no missiles, the question was would it use a nuclear torpedo against the US Navy forces that were trying to bring it to the surface (if it fired conventional weapons it would be ugly but unlikely to be the big one).
 
Top