Cold War History?

Kelly

Kelly

24 Steel Wheels of Shoegaze
I listen to a lot of audiobooks on the road and one of my favorite subjects is Cold War history. I recently finished Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety, and also The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and its Dangerous Legacy.

Wondering if anyone has a recommendation in that vein?
 
Might not be the exact genre, but Gulag A History by Anne Applebaum was a good read. It won a Pulitzer. Amazon shows it is available on audiobook. It covers Stalin's purges and insane power moves to wield absolute control over Soviet Russia.
 
The Cold War is one history subject I'm sorry to say I haven't read much of.

I did read a biography on Carl Brashear (Men of Honor…Cuba Gooding Jr.) that was pretty good, can't remember the author though, sorry. I remember it had a good section on recovering that nuke that went missing off of Spain.

There was a pretty decent book on one of the Russian subs going down, and the rescue mission to save the crew. But again, I can't remember the name or the author :(
 
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living through it was......well....interesting.
duck and cover.
 
there are also several Tom Clancy novels that take place during the "cold war". if you're interested in extremely accurate fiction.
 
It's an interesting topic, and scary to contemplate how easily we could have been nuked at some point.

And still could be! party0009


War history is a dish best served cold... *insert Khan smiley here*
 
I lived through it, and was one of those kids who did frequent "duck and cover" drills. It made for a surreal childhood experience. I still remember wondering how being under a flimsy desk was going to save me from nuclear annihilation.

I tend not to read about that time, so I have no book recommendations. I did hear an interesting story on Mysteries at the Monument about a Russian submarine that lost radio communication during the Cuban missile crisis that almost launched a nuclear missile. Luckily the superior officer over-ruled the one who wanted to launch. :eek:
 
Gary Blanchard said:
I lived through it, and was one of those kids who did frequent "duck and cover" drills. It made for a surreal childhood experience. I still remember wondering how being under a flimsy desk was going to save me from nuclear annihilation.

I tend not to read about that time, so I have no book recommendations. I did hear an interesting story on Mysteries at the Monument about a Russian submarine that lost radio communication during the Cuban missile crisis that almost launched a nuclear missile. Luckily the superior officer over-ruled the one who wanted to launch. :eek:
Click to expand...

yea...."over ruled" in russian = shot.
 
I might be able to get you a copy of the very lengthy report my brother wrote for the UN many years ago called "A Global Agenda" which came on the heels of the Soviet collapse and specifically addresses the policy of nuclear proliferation at the time and the rather alarming lack of accountability concerning the whereabouts of the entirety of the former Soviet nuclear inventory. It will scare the piss out of you.

I don't miss the Cold War. Not at all. As frightened as many people are these days about the threat of terror attacks and all that other relative baby shit, it doesn't even slightly compare to the daily resignation to the fact that a full scale thermonuclear exchange was imminent.

Those couple of years of Soviet instability after Brezhnev kicked the bucket and they kept plugging in half dead geezers to replace him only for them to drop dead too, was some scary shit.

I honestly didn't expect 2015 would ever come to pass, or 1995 for that matter.

Having to watch "The Day After" and talk about it in school at the age of 11? Is something I am very glad my kids have not had to deal with.
 
^^^^^^
i served in the usaf during the cold war. in the job i had, we were required to watch a movie called "Failsafe" because the protocol at that time was exactly that. we had nuclear weapons on my base and they were ready to be loaded on aircraft 24/7. we even practiced it every couple months.
i remember an incident, that i can't be more specific about other than to say, that one day the teletype machines started going freakin' bonkers. the message traffic was crazy and you had to first read the zulu code to even try to figure out what was going on in what order.
the message that scared my undies off was an order, ordering an entire squadron of aircraft (not allowed to tell what kind or from what base) to an airbase in south korea (can't say which one) at "ALL POSSIBLE SPEED". most folks won't get what that means, but it means they had been given presidential authorization to scream across the USA at mach 2.5. get there as fast as you can, anyway that you can.
i have to presume they were obviously "loaded for bear....soviet bear."

scary times:eek:
 
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^^^^^
@335clone
we still have those, but they're mostly used for warning about bad storms.
however, depending on the pattern and length of the blasts, they're STILL used for incoming aircraft/missles. you just never hear that pattern in civilian life. we used that "air raid" pattern in the USAF several times per year to announce a war exercise and everyone would start scrambling to get to their "combat positions".
 
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