TimeGhost
Published on 27 Nov 2017On October 25, 1962 while the US Navy are looking for something to do in the Caribbean, both USSR Chairman Khrushchev and US President Kennedy are questioning the success of their actions. Meanwhile US Ambassador to the UN Adlai Stevenson is about to face off with USSR Ambassador to the UN, Valerian Zorin in a historic showdown at the United Nations headquarters in New York.
January 25, 2018
Day 10 Cuban Missile Crisis – Showdown at the U.N. Corral
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January 24, 2018
Day 9 Cuban Missile Crisis – Blockade starts and low altitude flybys over Cuba
TimeGhost
Published on 23 Nov 2017On October 24, 1962 the US led blockade on Cuba goes into effect, but it’s not the be the showdown that it looks like! In the same time the US Navy starts flying RF8 Crusader reconnaissance jets 400 feet over the missile sites on Cuba, to see what’s really going on. As the jets roar over the heads of the Cuban and Soviet soldiers, the crisis deepens.
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January 23, 2018
Day 8 Cuban Missile Crisis – Kennedy and Khrushchev face reality
TimeGhost
Published on 20 Nov 2017On October 23, 1962 as the blockade on Cuba is being prepared, US President John F. Kennedy and USSR Chairman Nikita Khrushchev question their own actions realising that they might have gone a step too far. By now the dice have been rolled and it’s too late to stop the wheels from spinning. Both leaders try to justify their decisions to maintain their political power.
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January 22, 2018
Day 7 Cuban Missile Crisis – USA announces a blockade on Cuba
TimeGhost
Published on 16 Nov 2017On October 22, 1962 the world is shocked to find out that the US and the USSR are facing off with nuclear arms in the Caribbean. In the world’s first televised announcement of an international military crisis, US President John F. Kennedy sets off panic and sudden fear of a third world war, with nuclear arms involved.
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January 21, 2018
Day 6 Cuban Missile Crisis – Mr. President did you say blockade, or invade Cuba?
TimeGhost
Published on 13 Nov 2017On October 21 1962, politicians and military in both the US and in the USSR seem to have contradictory views on what to do next. The questions on the table; blockade AND invade Cuba, or just a quarantine? Should the Soviet local commanders on Cuba get to play with the little nukes as they like, or rather wait for permission? When it’s only the world as we know it that’s at stake…
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January 20, 2018
Day 5 Cuban Missile Crisis – President Kennedy Considers War
TimeGhost
Published on 9 Nov 2017On Saturday October 20th, 1962, US President John F Kennedy moves to side more with the hawks advising a forceful response to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Meanwhile in Moscow, the Soviets now believe that they deterred the Americans from using force.
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January 19, 2018
Day 4 Cuban Missile Crisis – Soviet nukes ready to strike the US
TimeGhost
Published on 6 Nov 2017On the 19th of October 1962, the Soviet nuclear forces on Cuba are working on getting the warheads for their SS4 missiles combat ready. In Washington, President John F. Kennedy faces off with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, including General Curtis LeMay (his arch enemy), who demand more freedom for military action.
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January 18, 2018
Day 3 Cuban Missile Crisis – The Soviet Nuclear Forces on Cuba
TimeGhost
Published on 2 Nov 2017On October 18 1962, President Kennedy meets with USSR Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, one of the architects of placement of missiles on Cuba. While the two beat around the bush, Khrushchev and Gromyko’s execution of the Soviet military and nuclear build up on Cuba continues.
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January 17, 2018
Day 2 Cuban Missile Crisis – Preparing to Invade Cuba
TimeGhost
Published on 30 Oct 2017On October 17th, 1962, preparations for an invasion of Cuba under the codename Ortsac were set in motion. The U2 Dragon Lady spy plane continued to yield more alarming pictures of Cuban missile sites and President Kennedy was urged to restrain his dogs of war.
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January 16, 2018
Day 1 Cuban Missile Crisis – Shall we destroy Cuba, Mr. President?
TimeGhost
Published on 26 Oct 2017On 16 October 1962. the Cuban Missile Crisis begins. President Kennedy assembles his advisors in EXCOMM to find an adequate response to the threat posed by Soviet nuclear missiles on Cuba.
On October 14 1962, Air Force pilot Richard Heyer flies over the island of Cuba in a U2 spy plane. The photos he brings back show three installations of Soviet nuclear Medium Range Ballistic Missile launch sites, with SS-4 and SS-5 missiles waiting to be made deployable. Russia now has nuclear first strike capacity and could launch an attack on the US mainland just as quickly as the Americans could on Russia from Turkey.
Spartacus Olsson
Camera by: Jonas Klein
Edited by: Spartacus Olsson, Jonas KleinA TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH
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January 15, 2018
Day 0 Cuban Missile Crisis – Atomic Tests and Missiles Discovered
TimeGhost
Published on 24 Oct 2017In the summer of 1962, a war of words between the United States and the Soviet Union and a number of nuclear tests on both sides increased tensions that had been mounting for years. Both sides were living under increasing panic that the other would ‘press the button’ and launch a preemptive nuclear strike, possibly destroying the world in the process. When on October 14 1962 the US discovered missiles on Cuba, that fear increased and almost came true.
Simulate a nuclear bomb anywhere: http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Spartacus Olsson
Produced and Directed by: Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Camera by: Jonas Klein
Edited by: Jonas Klein, Spartacus OlssonA TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH
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January 14, 2018
Prologue 2 Cuban Missile Crisis – The Cold War Heats Up
TimeGhost
Published on 19 Oct 2017For 13 days in October 1962 the world came closer to nuclear holocaust than ever before, but the Cuban Missile Crisis didn’t start in Cuba – it had its roots in Berlin, Italy and Turkey, the domestic political situation in the US facing the newly elected President John F Kennedy, and in the USSR, where Premier Nikita Khrushchev had taken leadership of the Soviet through a harsh four year power struggle after Stalin’s death in 1953.
Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Spartacus Olsson
Produced and Directed by: Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Camera and editing by: Jonas KleinA TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH
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January 13, 2018
Prologue 1 Cuban Missile Crisis – The Cold War Begins
TimeGhost
Published on 17 Oct 2017This series follows the Cuban Missile Crisis day, by day. In this initial prologue we explore some of the background to the crisis. During the 1950s the ideological divide between totalitarian Communism and democratic capitalism pits the USSR against the US as both super powers try to expand their sphere of influence. In parallel a series of misunderstandings and false assumptions heats up the nuclear arms race and sees the US pull further ahead of the USSR in military dominance. The increasing pressure on both sides eventually brings them head to head during several covert operations, proxy wars and, direct confrontations including the Berlin Crisis and eventually the Cuban Missile Crisis.
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November 30, 2017
QotD: Nuclear winter
In 1975, the National Academy of Sciences reported on “Long-Term Worldwide Effects of Multiple Nuclear Weapons Detonations” but the report estimated the effect of dust from nuclear blasts to be relatively minor. In 1979, the Office of Technology Assessment issued a report on “The Effects of Nuclear War” and stated that nuclear war could perhaps produce irreversible adverse consequences on the environment. However, because the scientific processes involved were poorly understood, the report stated it was not possible to estimate the probable magnitude of such damage.
Three years later, in 1982, the Swedish Academy of Sciences commissioned a report entitled “The Atmosphere after a Nuclear War: Twilight at Noon,” which attempted to quantify the effect of smoke from burning forests and cities. The authors speculated that there would be so much smoke that a large cloud over the northern hemisphere would reduce incoming sunlight below the level required for photosynthesis, and that this would last for weeks or even longer.
The following year, five scientists including Richard Turco and Carl Sagan published a paper in Science called “Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions.” This was the so-called TTAPS report, which attempted to quantify more rigorously the atmospheric effects, with the added credibility to be gained from an actual computer model of climate. At the heart of the TTAPS undertaking was another equation, never specifically expressed, but one that could be paraphrased as follows:
Ds = Wn Ws Wh Tf Tb Pt Pr Pe etc(The amount of tropospheric dust = # warheads × size warheads × warhead detonation height × flammability of targets × Target burn duration × Particles entering the Troposphere × Particle reflectivity × Particle endurance, and so on.)
The similarity to the Drake equation is striking. As with the Drake equation, none of the variables can be determined. None at all. The TTAPS study addressed this problem in part by mapping out different wartime scenarios and assigning numbers to some of the variables, but even so, the remaining variables were — and are — simply unknowable. Nobody knows how much smoke will be generated when cities burn, creating particles of what kind, and for how long. No one knows the effect of local weather conditions on the amount of particles that will be injected into the troposphere. No one knows how long the particles will remain in the troposphere. And so on.
And remember, this is only four years after the OTA study concluded that the underlying scientific processes were so poorly known that no estimates could be reliably made. Nevertheless, the TTAPS study not only made those estimates, but concluded they were catastrophic.
According to Sagan and his coworkers, even a limited 5,000 megaton nuclear exchange would cause a global temperature drop of more than 35 degrees Centigrade, and this change would last for three months. The greatest volcanic eruptions that we know of changed world temperatures somewhere between 0.5 and 2 degrees Centigrade. Ice ages changed global temperatures by 10 degrees. Here we have an estimated change three times greater than any ice age. One might expect it to be the subject of some dispute.
But Sagan and his coworkers were prepared, for nuclear winter was from the outset the subject of a well-orchestrated media campaign. The first announcement of nuclear winter appeared in an article by Sagan in the Sunday supplement, Parade. The very next day, a highly-publicized, high-profile conference on the long-term consequences of nuclear war was held in Washington, chaired by Carl Sagan and Paul Ehrlich, the most famous and media-savvy scientists of their generation. Sagan appeared on the Johnny Carson show 40 times. Ehrlich was on 25 times. Following the conference, there were press conferences, meetings with congressmen, and so on. The formal papers in Science came months later.
This is not the way science is done, it is the way products are sold.
Michael Crichton, “Aliens Cause Global Warming”: the Caltech Michelin Lecture, 2003-01-17.
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July 23, 2017
QotD: Australian aboriginal languages
Little moments like that kept adding up, incrementally nudging me away from leftism but not yet to full conversion. In 1988, watching a John Pilger documentary with lefty friends, another such moment occurred.
Pilger, as usual, was complaining about colonialism and racism and Aboriginal injustice, so naturally we — uniformly white, urban and privileged — were lapping it up. The documentary then shifted to the former nuclear testing site at Maralinga in South Australia, where seven British bombs were detonated in the 1950s and 1960s. Pointing to a sign warning of radiation danger, Pilger observed mournfully that it was written in several languages — “but not in the Aboriginal language”.
Startled by this claim, I looked around the room. Everyone was silent, including a few who had studied Aboriginal history in considerable depth, and so must have known that Pilger’s line was completely wrong. So I just said it: “There is no single Aboriginal language. And no Aboriginal language has a written form.”
I didn’t last long with that bunch of friends, either. Small note to self: my comrades will deny even their own knowledge if it runs counter to a preferred leftist version of events.
Tim Blair, “The Setting of Their Leftist Suns”, Quadrant, 2017-06-17.
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