1983 Able Archer

     Reagan offended USSR by saying, “Evil empire” this built up more tensions that were high. Russians started freaking out because of this and expected a surprise attack by the US. At the same time the US was building up thousands of nuclear warheads. Reagan created project “Star Wars” this was a manned rocket ship that could shoot down Soviet nukes from space. Project “Star Wars” terrified the Soviets even more because they had been spending ¼ of its income on its missiles and army and this could completely wreck the already poor economy. Part of this ¼ was spent on satellite tech that could detect the launch of a nuke from the US to Russia.

    Able Archer was a Soviet “game” to help train for what might be a nuclear armageddon. This protection and detection operation involved practice codes being sent to USSR base who from there would alert the players of the “game”. If the players of the game started to “win” it would mess up the training for the rest of the people training. So Able Archer always ended in a nuclear armageddon.

    The USSR was convinced that the US would attack in disguise of an exercise (Able Archer, passenger plane, cargo plane, etc.). This led to another disaster in 1983, when a Korean passenger plane was mistaken for a US spy plane trying to gather info. You can guess how that ended up. And if you can’t the USSR blew it out of the sky. This turned most of the world against Russia.

   In defense of this opposition Russia sent secret agents to gather info of NATO’s plans and were sent to their HQ’s. This intelligence was of course given back to USSR officials. Above this East Germany was giving info on what was once secret missile silo’s.

The exercise now ended. The Soviets hadn’t pushed the button. This could’ve been the largest world war to have existed. Even if the US had won we would’ve lost a total of 150,000,000 lives. And Russia would’ve lost much more.