Assessment Quote by James Fallows

“From 1957 through 1961, Khrushchev openly, repeatedly, and bloodcurdlingly threatened the West with nuclear annihilation. Soviet missile capabilities were so far superior to those…

— John Lewis Gaddis

“Kennedy, who had campaigned strongly on the “Missile Gap” issue, soon discovered as president that the Soviet Union didn’t have the 500 missiles feared—it…

— Garrett M. Graff

“How many nuclear missiles would have to be launched at the United States to turn it into a complete wasteland? —Anonymous”

— Randall Munroe

“again concluded that the Soviet Union “with a high degree of confidence” could kill the president, vice president, and all fourteen remaining successors within…

— Garrett M. Graff

It is true that at the time [1962] we had a strategic nuclear force of approximately five thousand warheads compared to the Soviet's three hundred.

— Robert McNamara

Remember, weapons of mass destruction don't mean missiles.

— Noam Chomsky

I wouldn't give up on Russia, and with oil at $90 a barrel, they can refurbish their strategic capabilities and under an authoritarian regime,…

— John Bolton

When I turn on the TV in Russia I see a general calmly claiming that our missiles are ahead of the latest American models…

— Vladimir Sorokin

Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged,…

— George F. Kennan

If both sides reduced their long-range missiles by 50%, SDI would be an unacceptable threat to the remaining Soviet rocket forces.

— Sergey Akhromeyev

...but highly placed sources within the Kennedy Administration disagreed: "[T]he assumption that the strategic nuclear balance mattered in any way was wrong... As far…

— Robert McNamara

Markets really matter. Because the bigger the market, the more targets there are for the missile to hit.

— Josh Kopelman