U.S. culture/society after a Cuban Missile War?

Let's say that the Cuban Missile Crisis goes hot in 1962. Europe and the Soviet Union are reduced to post-nuclear wastelands, while the United States have emerged from the conflict largely intact (though having lost a number of cities and/or military installations). What could life in the post-war U.S. look like? I'm also interested in what sort of differences it would make if the U.S. was perceived as the guilty party who escalated the crisis into a full-fledged shooting war v.s. if the U.S.S.R. was perceived as the aggressor.
 
OK. SAC blasted the 2nd World back beyond the Stone Age, and the USSR did much the same to everything East of the Oder in Europe in its deaththroes

You think any country will risk pissing off an enraged Hegemon with now discredited Communist talking points?
Would be a pretty good time for Uncle Ho in North Vietnam and Sukarno in Indonesia to lie low
 
Would the U.S be seen as the aggressor? That would be hard.

Anyways, what is fair to say American casualties? 50 million? 100 million? How is Canada doing?
 
Anyways, what is fair to say American casualties? 50 million? 100 million? How is Canada doing?

IMO, it all depends how it starts.
If it starts before the IRBMs are ready in Cuba, and the SS-6 Sapwoods are caught fueling on the Pads, it's possible no US cities are lost
For Canada, it depends how far the USSR bombers get before being taken out by ADC/ANG/RCAF nuclear armed interceptors
 
Would the U.S be seen as the aggressor? That would be hard.

Anyways, what is fair to say American casualties? 50 million? 100 million? How is Canada doing?

Way too high. Ten to twenty million would be the worst case, probably less. The Northeast is probably where the bulk of the fatalities will be, due to a combination of blast effects, radiation sickness, post attack illness, exposure and starvation. The Northeast is the place where bombers are most likely to get through and has the most obvious targets. New York City is the fattest target and it is also a choke point for transportation to Long Island, which would affect getting aid and food out that way. Boston, DC, Philadelphia, Newark, Baltimore and Norfolk are other likely heavily populated hits in the Northeast. Their populations were (in 1960, in millions) New York 7.7 Philadelphia 2 Baltimore .9 DC .75 Boston .7 Norfolk .3 Total there is 12.35 million. If the fatality rate is 50%, that would get you to about six million out of a national population of about 180 million. A terrible toll to be sure, but not one that would threaten the continuation of the US as a functioning government and economy. Canada is going to depend on how Montreal and Toronto fare. If they are hit, things are bad. If not, things are not so bad.

The Soviets simply didn't have the number of working delivery systems to enable them to hit every place worth hitting in 1962. That would soon change, but in 1962, they were badly outmatched. They'll get a few missiles and bombers through, but not as many as people would think. The result is a decisive US victory with the USSR and probably China completely destroyed.
 
I think it is likely the us wouldnt remain capitalist after the war. It may be a pyrhic victory for capitalism as the post war effort to rebuild would require a large omnipresent government.

It wouldnt be communist, maybe not even socialist but some weird combo of state dominated market syndicalism(?).

Democracy would remain but for a couple years only limited legally to a handful of voters. The president and congress may be reduced to a figurehead role while FEMA and the Military are given a free hand in running things.
 
I think it is likely the us wouldnt remain capitalist after the war. It may be a pyrhic victory for capitalism as the post war effort to rebuild would require a large omnipresent government.

It wouldnt be communist, maybe not even socialist but some weird combo of state dominated market syndicalism(?).

Democracy would remain but for a couple years only limited legally to a handful of voters. The president and congress may be reduced to a figurehead role while FEMA and the Military are given a free hand in running things.

Don't see any of that happening.
It needs taxes to go up, sure, as well as new Works programs for rebuilding.

The Civil War was a far harder test, and Votes went on, as did Capitalism, right on thru Reconstruction.

You would see Civil Rights curtailed, with Martial Law in damaged areas
 
The Northeast and Pacific northwest would be very heavily damaged. You'd likely see a lot of refugees settling in other parts of the US.

There might be a liberalizing factor in parts of the country if two of the nation's more liberal regions suddenly sent large swathes of people elsewhere.


The Civil War killed 2.5-3% of the US population. The US population in 1960 was 180 million, so assuming 10-20 million deaths, that's 5.5-11% of the population. Yikes.

Germany lost a comparable percentage of its population during the Second War, but odds are the US would be nowhere near as devastated.
 
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The Northeast is probably where the bulk of the fatalities will be, due to a combination of blast effects, radiation sickness, post attack illness, exposure and starvation. The Northeast is the place where bombers are most likely to get through and has the most obvious targets. New York City is the fattest target and it is also a choke point for transportation to Long Island, which would affect getting aid and food out that way. Boston, DC, Philadelphia, Newark, Baltimore and Norfolk are other likely heavily populated hits in the Northeast.

That's all true, and the hardest area to hit.
Even with ICBMs that had the range, they used Blunt Body RVs, design copied/stolen from the US. Next gen RVs used biconic shapes.
The difference? Blunt shapes shed velocity like nobody's business, while biconic stayed hypersonic all the way down
Blunt Body shapes dropped below Mach 1, which made them ideal for spacecraft. Warheads, not so much
What this means, incoming Soviet RVs would fall into Bomarc and Nike Hercules SAM performance envelope for interceptions

They didn't have many city killers in service, yet during the CMC
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They had a handful of ICBMs that could reach NY, and some diesel Boomers that were not deployed during the Crisis, but the USN was keeping tabs.
Last, Bombers. Good luck with the ADC and ANG, plus the Sam Batteries around most Metro areas.
 
Don't see any of that happening.
It needs taxes to go up, sure, as well as new Works programs for rebuilding.

The Civil War was a far harder test, and Votes went on, as did Capitalism, right on thru Reconstruction.

You would see Civil Rights curtailed, with Martial Law in damaged areas
The civil war would pale in comparison to WW3... even one where america escapes unscathed. There would still be almost a billion plus people dead globally, trillions of dollars in financial records woudl get destroyed, and global supply chains would be disrupted.

Im a supporter of the free market but its hard to imagine a post nuclear world where corporations like chrysler or mcdonalds retains the power they had. Any corporation of value would get nationalized, any "rich" person would be given ration coupons like everyone else, and any people opposed would likely be drafted into forced labor as punishment.
 
The civil war would pale in comparison to WW3... even one where america escapes unscathed. There would still be almost a billion plus people dead globally, trillions of dollars in financial records woudl get destroyed, and global supply chains would be disrupted.

Im a supporter of the free market but its hard to imagine a post nuclear world where corporations like chrysler or mcdonalds retains the power they had. Any corporation of value would get nationalized, any "rich" person would be given ration coupons like everyone else, and any people opposed would likely be drafted into forced labor as punishment.

Its the United States a nation founded on liberty and freedom sure corporations may not retain the power they had but they'll still be there do you think Kennedy would become a dictator? Or Johnson? The free market would continue badly hampered but, it would recover I doubt any US president will abolish it. There are still markets in South America and Australasia, you'll probably see more American investment into Africa and India as well. The US economy will survive its gonna be a radical re-orientation but, I don't doubt its survival
 
The US is one of the world's more economically isolated economies. Even today only 12% of GDP is tied to international trade. Discount NAFTA and it's more like 7-8%.

Latin America likely ends up unscathed and the Venezuelans and Mexicans get a big economic windfall as their oil replaces Saudi oil. US domestic production likely goes up as well.

Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa would be advanced industrial markets as well that manage to stick out the war.

Higher energy costs, higher food costs due to higher transport costs, but I don't see economic nationalization induced by the collapse of global trade happening.
 
First, World War III as I see it.

USSR has 20-30 missiles capable of hitting the continental US. Their bombers are almost all going on one-way trips to get there and most of their bombs are lower-yield. One soviet era engineer i spoke with estimated half of the bombs of that time were expected to fail as were at least half the delivery mechanisms. Given US defenses for the continental US i think this means about 15-20 bombs get through with Omaha, DC, Seattle, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Boston, and maybe another city or two being hit or nearly hit. The trauma of the war and likely martial lae after will be one thing but the lack of or severe retardation of a Civil Rights Movement means the country is more conservative for personal freedoms and individual liberties but not for healthcare (universal) or taxation which is likely still heavy and moreso against the wealthy.

Eventually the US recovers but the direction is very different. Satellites and the Space Race in general are on hold as the unipolar world needs no such show of force. Segregation may continue into the 1980s or even farther if its leadership is decapitated or 'agitators' are seen as potential Communist sympathizers. Computers and biological technologied will continue but at a slower pace, perhaps half what we saw in OTL (i.e. their 2017 computer is our 1994 or 1995 computer). With the major cities gone one or two might be kept as museum pieces and city blocks might be preserved to show the 'horrors of Communism' or somesuch. I expect a more jingoistic atmosphere in general and a more patriotic base overall reinforced by pro-military TV programming and radio. An Interstate Highway System is the spark of a Second New Deal with massive government investment kick-starting the economy as the splintered USSR and its sequelae are brought into the Marshall Plan. Overall the US looks more like a fascist state to the naked eye and criticism of the country against the 'politically correct' viewpoint can result in ostracization or even job loss.

Parts of the world hate us, especially Russian successor states, Japan, and Western Europe. Despite their suffering the nations of Eastern Europe love the 'American Saviors' as a Third French Empire becomed the rallying point for opposition to Washington. Without USSR support the Arab nations make peace with Israel after a much worse Twelve (Six) Day War that sees most of the Middle East a comparitively peaceful place by 1995. Africa has smoother decolonization with more stable democracies, especially at the central part of the continent.
 
The civil war would pale in comparison to WW3... even one where america escapes unscathed. There would still be almost a billion plus people dead globally, trillions of dollars in financial records woudl get destroyed, and global supply chains would be disrupted.

Im a supporter of the free market but its hard to imagine a post nuclear world where corporations like chrysler or mcdonalds retains the power they had. Any corporation of value would get nationalized, any "rich" person would be given ration coupons like everyone else, and any people opposed would likely be drafted into forced labor as punishment.

The world of 1962 was far more decentralized and the disruption far less than today. If your bank was Citibank or Chase Manhattan, you are probably out of luck as the records would be destroyed, but even then I suspect there was microfilming and off-site storage for much of this stuff. But bank records were made of paper then and the paper record of your account at the First National Bank of Bedford Falls would be intact. Similarly, a company with a headquarters in Manhattan that isn't using off-site storage of physical records or microfilm is going to have problems, the company based in Peoria will still have everything. Along the same lines, there was a lot more local sourcing in manufacturing and food production then. You simply didn't have US manufacturers that dependent upon components made overseas. The world of 1962 was still predominantly a manufacturing economy with imports being a small percentage of GDP and the US still having the capacity to manufacture nearly everything it consumed.

The idea that every big corporation would be nationalized is doubtful in my view. There may be a WW2-style level of central control and direction of production during reconstruction and there may be receiverships created for the assets of companies whose leadership is decimated and whose ownership becomes clouded by the destruction of records and inheritance issues, but this would be limited to a certain time frame and limited to companies with leadership and/or ownership issues. Even ownership is going to sort itself out in many instances since stock certificates were held in paper form.

This is a world where forensic accountants, business experts and attorneys are going to make tons of money sorting through this commercial chaos. But a nationalized economy? After decisively defeating Communism? Not going to happen. Too much power and money would fight that and the American people, seeing the chance to prosper in this new unipolar world, wouldn't stand for it, either.

As for rationing, perhaps for a spell during the initial chaos. But the US was a net food exporter in 1962 and most of its many markets are now smoldering piles of rubble and the US population just declined overnight by 5-10% with its farmland untouched by weapons and radiation. There is simply no need for food rationing and a big reason not to do it as it would be very bad for public morale and bad for farm prices, which conflicts with the policy goal of stimulating farm production to increase the food surplus for foreign aid and relief. The US may well be feeding the survivors of Western Europe as well as a number of food import dependent parts of the world. You want to encourage farmers to grow and raise as much as they can and allowing for higher farm prices by allowing domestic consumption to be market driven is the most efficient way to do that.
 
USSR has 20-30 missiles capable of hitting the continental US. Their bombers are almost all going on one-way trips to get there and most of their bombs are lower-yield. One soviet era engineer i spoke with estimated half of the bombs of that time were expected to fail as were at least half the delivery mechanisms. Given US defenses for the continental US i think this means about 15-20 bombs get through with Omaha, DC, Seattle, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Boston, and maybe another city or two being hit or nearly hit.

In October 1962 the Soviets had 36 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), 138 long-range bombers with 392 nuclear warheads, and 72 submarine-launched ballistic-missile warheads (SLBMs). The U.S. nuclear arsenal in comparison was 203 ICBMs, 1,306 long-range bombers with 3,104 nuclear warheads, and 144 SLBMs


In the early 1960s, the CONUS air defense network consisted of over 2,600 interceptor aircraft with thousands of Genie and nuclear Falcon rockets, 274 Nike-Hercules batteries (with over 10,000 missiles), 439 BOMARC missiles, and hundreds of radars and air bases across three Defense Lines, all operated by 207,000 personnel.

1960 press conference

Q. Charles E. Shutt, Telenews: Mr. President, two of the many charges that your defense critics have made against you and your administration are that the administration has been complacent in advising the people of the danger we face in world affairs. The other is that economy may stand in the way of developing some weapon or a series of weapons we may need.

Sir, do you believe that the administration has misled the American people in any way, or that any money has been withheld from any weapon we might need?

THE PRESIDENT. If anybody--anybody--believes that I have deliberately misled the American people, I'd like to tell him to his face what I think about him. This is a charge that I think is despicable; I have never made it against anyone 'in the world, and I wouldn't unless he were in a bar of justice somewhere to be tried for something that was intolerable.

I would like to see somebody--people like yourselves--take the whole history of our defense organization from 1945 until this minute, and see what has been done. Frankly, this Nation unilaterally disarmed, and it wasn't until the danger or the great surprise attack in Korea came about that we starred in the other direction. In almost every field of development we were behind. We had to change our policy at that time, back in 1950, and from that time on, we sought one thing--adequacy; adequacy in our power to deter and defend ourselves, and particularly to help these areas which are so exposed to the menace of Communist imperialism so that they may give a reasonable defense of themselves and their lives and their rights, while their allies could come to their assistance. This is what I believe we've been trying to do with all our might.


I get tired of saying that defense is to be made an excuse for wasting dollars. I don't believe we should pay one cent for defense more than we have to.

But I do say this: our defense is not only strong, it is awesome, and it is respected elsewhere.
 
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I wonder how segregation and civil rights would develop after such a war. I ask, because Amerigo Vespucci in his Cuban Missile War TL had this:

August, 1963 — From his office within Mount Weather, President Johnson issues an
executive order making segregation on racial or religious grounds illegal in the United
States. The order, intended to assist rebuilding efforts and increase available manpower,
instead alienates his conservative political base.

I wonder if JFK or LBJ would do something like this?
 
One thing that I liked from other USA post Cuban missile crisis nuclear war is that the future USA actually builds more nuclear power plants.
 
I wonder how segregation and civil rights would develop after such a war. I ask, because Amerigo Vespucci in his Cuban Missile War TL had this:



I wonder if JFK or LBJ would do something like this?

I think this is largely correct and I think that but for a few diehards in the South, it would be accepted by the public. This was before women were really in the workforce in large numbers, though that will change as well, but the need for industrial, construction and agricultural workers will make this an imperative with or without government action. If government fails to act, I can see private industry doing so out of necessity. Another factor that is going to help things along is the vast wave of relief and triumph that will sweep across the nation. The worst fear of the age -- nuclear war -- came to pass and the nation not only survived, but won a decisive victory over Communism. Despite the destruction, the future is very bright for the United States. With that going on, it might be that the nation decides to turn the page on racism. It could also be that this isn't the case, but who knows? It would be a highly volatile and highly unusual situation that is hard to predict.
 
Satellites and the Space Race in general are on hold as the unipolar world needs no such show of force.

Though you might see the Military plans for Gemini go on, like MOL, used as manned observation Satellites and the Gemini used to transfer crew
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Got to keep a close eye on the remains of the USSR
 
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