nuclear war

What were some times when a small scale nuclear war could have taken place not one that ends the world but just one that affects some region or nation? To me the main thing that comes to mind is India and Pakistan but North Korea might also be a possibility.

The Great Oops September 26th, a bit after midnight Moscow time, a Soviet missile detection system on the outside of the city malfunctioned, showing that apparently that the US had launched a large scale missile attack [1]. The system automatically reported that to officials in Moscow. There...

This seems to be a discussion that comes up a lot vis a vis Cuban war TLs, and I think its worth trying to pin down some sort of consensus that isn't just people talking past each other. According to "The Cuban Missile Crisis: A nuclear order of battle, October and November 1962," "The Soviet...

Today is the 40-year anniversary of the false alarm incident in which Stanislav Petrov prevented a nuclear war from happening (depending on what part of the world you’re in - it was just after midnight on Sept. 26, 1983 in Russia when the incident happened, so it would have been the middle of...

I am fascinated by stories about nuclear warfare or WW3 that do not actually cause the apocalypse, or cause the a majority of the world to turn into Fallout, Wasteland, Atom RPG, or Mad Max, even despite nuclear strikes on massively populated cities, millions of deaths, and a total reset of...

Every cold war gone hot scenario i've seen involves the government turning the United Kingdom into a authoritarian dictatorship in the run up to nuclear war, with people being penned in their cities to die like animals and T.V/Radio becoming a unwatchable government mouthpiece that offers no...

Most timelines I have seen that use the idea of nuclear weapons never existing use it as a way for world war 3 to happen some time during the Cold War. No I was wondering if this was necessarily always going to be the case. Imagine a world where nuclear weapons didn’t exist yet the Cold War...

With a PoD after WW2, how could there be a nuclear exchange set off between the United Kingdom and France? The only condition of this scenario is that the first nuke that goes off has to be either French or British and directed at their rival across the Channel (or at one of their colonial...

Let's say this nuclear exchange occurs between 1966 and 1970, assuming the contingency operations of every major power goes as planned and civilization manages to rebuild, what would a post-nuclear world look like say 30 to 40 years after? How would this affect culture including music, cars, and...

In 1983 the Soviet computers revealed the arrival of American missiles, alarm in reality it was a fake and thanks to the military Petrov the war did not break out, what would have happened instead if the USSR had reacted? The war breaks out and the main cities of the world are bombed but the...

- Hey there BLC!! - Hello voice of doubt in my head. - What's this? - Urm... just a little side project. - Whatever happened to "War makes for Strange Bedfellows" - Oh it's still alive, don't worry. That's still my priority. I'm still working on the next chapters. - So why this? - Well, the...

As we all know, the US was the country which created the first nuclear weapons and the only country to use them in war, bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons to finally end the Pacific War. After that, the US kept the largest nuclear arsenal as many more countries developed nuclear...

In the thread of The Anglo/American Nazi War there's a period of about 10 years after the defeat of the USSR where the Allies stop fighting Germany head on, only to reignite the war in 1954. This is crucial for the story and ultimately leads to a dystopian post-war world; but in real life...

Many of those on this board have read the TL/Story I did based on the classic by Amerigo Vespucci, The Cuban Missile War, namely Voices of Doomsday. In the story at entry #171 I believe I mentioned a PSA that was recorded by Arthur Godfrey back in the 50's to be played on CONELRAD in the event...

Consider a scenario where a general war broke out between NATO + allies and the Warsaw Pact + allies in what could be described as the 'peak' of the Cold War - the period between the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and the Chernobyl disaster (1979-1986). In this period, both alliances were at...

Lets say that the UAR survives and develops nukes alongside Israel. By 1975 a crisis happens and both sides go to war firing hundreds of nuclear missiles at each other.

In order to understand this timeline. The year is 2000.The year of Twilight War. 5 years since the Sino-Soviet conflict escalated into a full-blown war as dragging both Western Powers and Eastern Powers into the cycle of destruction. In Europe, the theater of operations had been fought to a near...

I had considered reading through 1983: Doomsday, but I've seen a lot of critique that it's quite unrealistic. Any recommendations for other TLs where WWIII kicks off during the Cold War? They can address the war directly or deal mainly with the aftermath. The WWIII scenario doesn't have to...

Was direct conflict possible between NATO and the Warsaw Pact nations without immediately resulting in a total nuclear war? If not, when did it become impossible to avoid? I postulate that past 1960, the two could never come into direct conflict without such a result.

Inspired by Cuban Missile Crisis escalates and Fatherland/Thousand Week Reich type Axis Victory TLs. So supposed that Germany gets incredibly lucky and pushes the Soviet Union passed the Urals by 1943, soon after somehow establishing a ceasefire with the Western Allies by 1944. The Allies have...