The 1983 Stanislov Petrov incident was overblown, he got readings of 5 or so missiles only coming from the general area of one of many Minuteman and Titan complexes and no one actually believed the sneak attack would start with 5 missiles with a 30-minute time of arrival and not a synchronized all out strike.
The 1986 K-219 incident, if it went wrong would have been very bizarre because they were on the red phone and there wasn't confusion. If a bunch of US cities were nuked but they knew it was by accident due to the USS Augusta breaking radio silence to tell the Navy it was a fire in the Soviet SSBN, fuck knows what would have happened.
Maybe a literal nuclear exchange, as in the Soviets offering up cities of equal population/significance to equalize like the movie Fail Safe.
That would have been a weird timeline, probably a world ban on nuclear weapons and a voluntary collapse of the US and Soviet Union out of shame.
Jaxon Martinez
lmao
Luke Thompson
Ikr, wtf does that even mean? no country would collapse "out of shame"
Austin Smith
High definition footage of New York and Moscow after being hit with thermonuclear warheads and all the pictures of burnt survivors and people dying in their millions with their hair falling out being skeletonized while Reagan and Gorbachev were in power would have had lynchmobs storming every nuclear missile base and there would have most certainly been a strange arrangement in the aftermath.
Anthony Long
That wouldn't be shame tho, just the natural series of events on the case of an unexpected nuclear exchange.
Aaron Cruz
outrage is more accurate
It would have been anywhere from 1 to 16 big cities blown up but Reagan would have survived
Gorbachev would be given a chance to evacuate Moscow if NY or DC was hit
It wouldn't have been like Threads because no military targets would have been struck and the deterrence patrols wouldn't be EMPing transistors causing comms chaos, just nuking cities. It would be an agreed retaliatory strike on the Soviet Union. Imagine Greenham Common on a global scale but instead of feminists making banshee noises it would be civilians storming every airbase and missile complex, probably killing every nuclear power plant worker too.
