People say that the world has never come closer to destroying itself than in October, 1962. There has not been another time in history in which two superpowers with nuclear abilities challengend each other,that could have brought a premature end to the world. With the threat of muclear warfare, never before had the death of so many people become so near. The Kennedy administration had been put through a test. A test that, if failed, could have meant the death of more than 200 million people around the world. This event showed just how serious the issue of living in the nuclear age can be.
             For thirteen days in October of 1962, the United States and the Soviet Union came to the edge of a nuclear war. Before October, the United States intellignece knew that the Soviets were sending weapons to Cuba, but did not know whether these arms included offensive weapons. Moscow had never sent offensive weapons anywhere out of Russia, not even China, who was one of Russia's strongest allies at the time. The Soviet government told its ambasssador to reassure the U.S. that only defensive weapons were being placed in Cuba. President Kennedy announced to the ambassador that he would not order an invasion of Cuba unless he knew that Cuba had become an offensive base for the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union assured the United States that this would not happen, however, on October 16, when President Kennedy was informed that the U.S. had discovered nuclear missiles in Cuba. The president was shocked. He could fathom why the Soviet Union would take such a risk, a riskthat could lead to nuclear confrontation. After many meetings with Kennedy and his administration, four possibilities had been drawn up.
             One reason of why the Soviet Union might have placed ballistic missles in Cuba was for Cuban defense. After Kennedy informed the world of Krushchev's missles placed in Cuba, Krushchev emphasized that it was "eclusively designed to improve Cuba's defensie ca...