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How many here lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis? Login/Join 
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posted
I did.

I was about 11 at the time and it scared the absolute piss out of me for a long time.

People who DON'T remember will find it hard to believe but we were doing air raid drills, bomb drills, stocking our basements with rations, building bomb shelters, etc.

Just like some in South Korea and Japan now.

I am always fascinated by documentaries that say we were close to nuclear war. I have learned that apparently we were closer than most knew.

Apparently, a Soviet Sub commander was given an order to fire a nuclear torpedo at an American aircraft carrier. After a lot of drama, he decided not to launch. I have heard that this true story was the basis for the movie, Crimson Tide - one of my favorite movies of all time.

P


"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

John F. Kennedy
 
Posts: 169 | Registered: April 22, 2013Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Delusions of Adequacy
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The main thing I remember is that my cousins, who lived in Southwestern NY State, thought it was all happening in Cuba, NY, which was about ten miles away.




I have my own style of humor. I call it Snarkasm.
 
Posts: 17944 | Location: Virginia | Registered: June 02, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Three Generations
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I would've been 12, and I had no idea it was even happening. I don't recall ANY sort of stress at all either at home or in school.

Then again, I do tend toward the oblivious...




Be careful when following the masses. Sometimes the M is silent.
 
Posts: 15235 | Location: Downeast Maine | Registered: March 10, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Well I lived through it, but I was not yet 2 years old. Wink And as much as my mother discusses WWII history, she never discusses anything about those 13 days. And speaking of 13 days, I thought the movie was good, but the actors needed a little more work on their Baaaahston accents...ESPECIALLY Kevin Costner.

p.s. I do like that quote of JFK's.



"If you’re a leader, you lead the way. Not just on the easy ones; you take the tough ones too…” – MAJ Richard D. Winters (1918-2011), E Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne

"Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil... Therefore, as tongues of fire lick up straw and as dry grass sinks down in the flames, so their roots will decay and their flowers blow away like dust; for they have rejected the law of the Lord Almighty and spurned the word of the Holy One of Israel." - Isaiah 5:20,24
 
Posts: 11066 | Location: NW Houston | Registered: April 04, 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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nope,

born that next year,,

was 2months old when JfK was shot



https://www.chesterfieldarmament.com/

 
Posts: 10423 | Location: Beach VA,not VA Beach | Registered: July 17, 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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quote:
Originally posted by lyman:
nope, born that next year...


Was it close to being 9 months after? Wink
 
Posts: 2856 | Location: San Diego, CA  | Registered: July 14, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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I was on the USS Boxer off the coast of Cuba. Didn’t know what was going on just missed port call.
 
Posts: 449 | Registered: October 29, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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For many who did not live through the crisis. History lesson by Paulie;

 
Posts: 17238 | Location: Stuck at home | Registered: January 02, 2015Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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quote:
Cuban Missile Crisis


The Cuban Missile Crisis was a non-issue to me at the age of 16. As a newly licensed driver, I was way more involved in making sure I had gas money to feed a 55 Oldsmobile. Smile
 
Posts: 191 | Location: Dallas Texas | Registered: March 13, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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I did. Nine years old, but I remember well the standoff between Kennedy and Khrushchev, and the news coverage on black and white television.
 
Posts: 2694 | Registered: November 02, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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I was 15 and while it was scary there was dumb shit too. We had drills to get under our desks if there was a nuclear explosion.

I got in trouble by pointing out in class that we were in a major steel producing city and likely a major target with multiple missiles aimed at us and not likely to survive. My principal called my Dad and told him I was scaring the crap out of my classmates. My Dad said I was probably right but not to talk about it at school.

We had a stocked bomb shelter and the last few days of the crisis I stayed home from school so I could access it with the family.


Bayouman
Never let the enemy pick the battle site.
 
Posts: 727 | Location: New Orleans, Louisiana  | Registered: June 28, 2001Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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I was 12, had a paper route and was into watching news on TV.

Couple of families in the neighborhood built fallout shelters. Kind of scary!
 
Posts: 974 | Location: Confluence of Mississippi & Ohio Rivers | Registered: October 12, 2002Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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I was in the Navy at Kunia Hawaii intelligence center. (FOCCPAC) Yes, I lived it, and yes we were very close. All hands on deck for very extended duty. Thank God it turned in the last few hours.



Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves.

-D.H. Lawrence
 
Posts: 11524 | Location: Fort Worth, Texas | Registered: February 07, 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Void Where Prohibited
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I was seven at the time. I didn't really know what was going on, but my mother was really scared by it. I do remember that she had my father put a mattress on the floor in their bedroom so my brother and I could sleep right next to them.

After that, in school we did the "Air Raid" drills, going to the basement of the school and getting down on the floor covering our heads with our hands (a lot of good that would have done).



"If Gun Control worked, Chicago would look like Mayberry, not Thunderdome" - Cam Edwards
 
Posts: 16519 | Location: Under the Boot of Tyranny in Connectistan | Registered: February 02, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Nothing better than hiding under your desk, during drills.
Like that was going to save you...
There was CD/airraid shelters, what g=happened to them.
The Russians have underground systems that accommodate entire cities. medical/food cots, they were better prepared than we are. And they still are!
The politicians are well protected, however. On 9/11 they all bolted to W VA. and left us to hang out and dry.... Bastards.
In te event of a nuke, THEY are the ones hit,I hope they do hit!


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Posts: 8357 | Location: 18 miles long, 6 Miles at Sea | Registered: January 22, 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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I was in 5th grade living a few miles from midtown Manhattan. It was real enough for us. We had the air raid drills to the basement of a school building built in the 30's.


Richard Scalzo
Epping, NH

http://www.bigeastakitarescue.net
 
Posts: 5803 | Location: Epping, NH | Registered: October 16, 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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My mother told us that if it went, we would never see each other again because my sisters and brother all went to different schools and my dad was probably going to die in the first strike.

Great memories... yea, I remember.


Cheers, Doug in Colorado

NRA Endowment Life Member
 
Posts: 648 | Location: Colorado | Registered: February 17, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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I was 12, but I don’t remember doing the drills. I clearly remember when Kennedy was shot. Of course being in junior high, I probably wasn’t paying attention to the news, but the 7 days off for JFK’s funeral, everyone took notice of that.


———-
Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for thou art crunchy and taste good with catsup.
 
Posts: 4306 | Location: DFW | Registered: May 21, 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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I was in the Army reserves who's Unit was called up to await train transport to Florida for deployment to Cuba.

Right about that time, Khrushchev "blinked" and the world was saved from Nuclear disaster.

Here is the Soviet Sub commander who probably saved us from a Nuclear war....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov


*********
"Some people are alive today because it's against the law to kill them".
 
Posts: 8228 | Location: Arizona | Registered: August 17, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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I did. I was in high school then.

I had not yet enlisted, but the local Navy Reserve guy was after me to sign up as a Radioman, which I did, the next summer.

I guess it was a pretty tense time. There were about 5 or 6 air force bases around San Antonio and Austin, so we got good practice hiding under our desks!




Luckily, I have enough willpower to control the driving ambition that rages within me.

When you had the votes, we did things your way. Now, we have the votes and you will be doing things our way. This lesson in political reality from Lyndon B. Johnson

"Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." - Justice Janice Rogers Brown
 
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