Cuban Missile Crisis. DEFCON 2 for the first time in history. Thousands of nuclear weapons are on high alert, ready for use or already loaded onto aircraft in flight or submarines off the coast of the USSR. Hundreds of thousands of US Army soldiers are ready to invade Cuba, and hundreds of American ships are embargoing Soviet ships in Cuba. However, American forces in Europe and NATO are required to remain on DEFCON 5 to limit the risk of a conflict in Europe breaking out accidentally. The Americans are very concerned about a possible Soviet move in Europe. American soldiers stationed in Turkey are ordered to destroy American Jupiter missiles should the Turks attempt to take control of them. In reality, the CIA has severely underestimated Soviet military strength in Cuba, which actually consists of around a hundred tactical nuclear warheads that would be used to exterminate any American contingent, both on land and in the Atlantic. With bombs more powerful than the one that destroyed Hiroshima, the likely American response would have been an all-out nuclear attack on the Soviet Union.
