The Cuban Missiles Crisis didn’t end peacefully and the 'swinging sixties' didn't happen because on Saturday 27th October 1962 American and Soviet brinkmanship resulted in the most terrible war in human history.
The world of Timeline 10/27/62 is the forever changed world that emerges after the thermonuclear fires have burned themselves out.
‘Operation Anadyr’ is about the first hours of that alternative history of the world.
World War III probably wouldn’t have lasted very long because one side would have been swiftly obliterated in the first 24 hours of a cataclysm like no other in human history. In the aftermath, the USA, mourning the dead in half-a-dozen wrecked cities would have been the last major industrial and military power left standing. That world could never, ever be the world we know today.
So, how close did we come to the edge of the abyss? Much closer than most people like to contemplate. On Saturday 27th October 1962, north east of Cuba, the commander of Soviet submarine B-59 had to be talked out of firing a nuclear-tipped torpedo at the American destroyer USS Beale. Fortunately for us all, the submarine’s second-in-command, Vasili Arkhipov, dissented and Armageddon was narrowly averted.
The Timeline 10/27/62 series is an alternative history of the modern world in which nobody ever got to know the name of Vasili Arkhipov because he died in the first act of the most terrible war in history.
‘Operation Anadyr’ is therefore, the first verse in the story of what happened after Vasili Arkhipov failed to prevail upon the commanding officer of the B-59 to see reason.
Welcome to the Timeline 10/27/62 universe.
Author’s note to readers: since the publication of ‘Operation Anadyr’ in October 2014, the Timeline 10/27/62 series has branched into and explored a number of additional narrative arcs and themes, and in several standalone stories.
For my readers who prefer to read the Timeline 10/27/62 books in the chronological order of the overall narrative arc OPERATION ANADYR = 1.
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