We came really close to war between two nuclear powers at the Cuban blockade[0]. A Russian submarine didn't torpedo a US ship only because 1 of 3 officers on the sub voted against it.

Rising nationalism and games of "chicken" don't mix well.

[0]: https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a23074/cuban-missi...

There wasn’t MAD during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The US had the ability to completely destroy the USSR but the reverse was not true, which is why they wanted to put missiles in Cuba in the first place.

If a war had occurred, the US would have suffered enormously, but it would have come out of the conflict largely intact. Think the “get our hair mussed” bit from Dr. Strangelove.

The Crisis just shows that war can be avoided even when one side has a huge advantage, if neither side really wants it.

Actually, the US only thought that there wasn't MAD. As mentioned in the documentary "The Fog of War", only decades later did the US discover that there were already nuclear missiles with warheads in Cuba when they began the blockade. And Castro was willing to use them!

That made the situation even more dangerous than they realized at the time. The US would not have come out intact. It's very lucky for everyone that the Soviets decided not to escalate the situation.

Of course, I suppose MAD isn't MAD if there isn't also mutual knowledge of mutually assured destruction. It's something even worse when both sides think they have the advantage.

Those would have hurt but they wouldn't have been a MAD-level threat. They could only reach the Southeastern US and there weren't that many.

No it did not. Up until eighties, accuracy of ICBMs was so bad, that they were completely useless against even a brigade sized formation in an open field. There is even a theory that Khrushchev intentionally nudged USA into believing into "missile gap," as a part of diversion.

TBMs were another story, but there USSR had a sizeable lead in them.

ICBMs wouldn't get used against military forces in the field. Shorter range missiles and other tactical weapons existed for that. ICBMs were for destroying military bases, factories, and cities. Their accuracy in the early 1960s sucked, but it was good enough for that job.

That's the very point — while US were to be wasting megatons on Soviet cities without a plan B, Soviet paratroopers would be already landing on their lawn, and their main force moving down whatever left of enemy land force with a rain of short range tactical nukes.

The Soviets had no ability to land any significant force in the US. They would have poured forces into Western Europe, but both sides had so many tactical nukes there that the whole place would have ended up flattened.

Yes, I meant that they would've rolled over the Europe while US were trying to shoot them from another side of the globe.

Right, so the outcome would have been: USSR wrecked by US strategic forces, Europe wrecked by medium-range forces on both sides, US hurt by Soviet strategic forces but largely intact. I didn’t mention Europe but that’s otherwise what I said.