When given the opportunity to write a research paper on any conflict or battle during recent American History, one has a number of options: World War Two, the War in Vietnam, and the Korean conflict to name but a few. However, I have chosen a brief period of two weeks during which the very existence of the United States was seriously threatened.
             To most of my generation the Cuban missile crisis is nonexistent. No one tends to look at non-physical actions as ones of any importance. However, if the successes and failures of past generations are not properly looked at we will be blind as to what should be done in the future. The anxiety and emotions felt by 200 million Americans as the U.S. was on the brink of nuclear war has since been forgotten.
             The Cuban missile crisis is an important facet of American history for many reasons. When Eisenhower yielded the presidency to Kennedy the gross yield of all U.S. weapons probably equaled about one million times that of the bomb that had obliterated Hiroshima. We must pay close attention to these figures because, in October 1962 the United States was on the brink of a nuclear war with the Soviet Union; we must realize just how close we came to death if it was not for the quick actions of many brave men and women in charge of intelligence.
             The blast of an atomic bomb is measured in thousands of tons of TNT, in contrast the blast of a hydrogen bomb, which is measured in millions of tons of TNT. The Hiroshima bomb was ten feet long, weighed almost 5 tons, and required a crew of experts' days to load. In contrast, by the time of the missile crisis, bombs twenty times more powerful were three feet long and could be strapped to an ordinary bomber. The public learned how toxic nuclear weapons were when Strontium-90 generated by tests in Nevada showed up in milk in New Jersey.
             The Cuban missile crisis began on October 14, 1962 when CIA U2 spy planes took aerial photographs of Cuba a...