Originally Posted by
Mario Miethig
The early to mid 80s were pretty scary times, especially with Reagan with his very anti Soviet and Evil Empire rhetoric. Plus I saw a documentary a few years back, about how the Soviets were on the brink of setting their Nuclear Arsenal on us, because their computer systems malfunctioned and they thought they were being attacked by NATO. The fella on duty that day was later fired, because he never pressed the alarm to inform his superiors that NATO were attacking. His gut instinct was that something was not right and he was proved correct.
A big difference between now and the 80s though, is that Putin takes no crap. Back in the 80s the Soviets had very old unwell men, like Brezhnev, Chernenko and Andropov in charge, who probably didn't have a clue what was going on.