These world leaders had begun the Cuban missile crisis thinking of politics as a chessboard, a game of moves and counter-moves. But by the end they realized, almost too late, that they were throwing dice. This series brought to you by DomiNations! Celebrate DomiNations 3 year anniversary by sharing your experience here: form.jotform.com/weplay123/welcome-to-the-3-year-anniversary
Am I the only one that was completely surprised at that moment of animation in which Dan closes his hand around the chess piece and turns it into a dice? Like, actual animation? In THE Extra Credits? Kudos to the team.
Blew my mind. Exactly like that Lord of the Rings play where Frodo disappears center stage with nothing but a cloak and I can literally see the floor he's standing on. At first I'm like 'yup, chess into dice, solid metaphor' and then its 'wait, WHAT? Did I actually see that just now?'
I suppose in a way, it makes sense. Grenades wouldn't be strong enough in theory to deal damage to a nuclear sub's pressure defenses, and would make a hell of a racket.
actually it is quite common. also, logical, since it is harder to pass radio signal through water as it changes frequently and signal gets dispersed. But signaling with fire is even done today. In protective edge, Israel stroke houses of hammas affiliates with non lethal rounds to shake it, and let people evacuate it before house destruction (although notification were spread beforehand, not in all cases hammas affiliates and their families left before the signaling)
Saviour86 You mean with guns? Small arms would barely make it 50 feet before they lost pretty much all inertia and just floated away, they may not even make it 50 feet. The ships’ 5” cannons also wouldn’t make it far down enough, if you could even point the ships’ cannons down that much. Grenades are more predictable and can actually sink down and make some noise. Bullets would do fuck all, and probably not hit the submarine. Cannon shells maybe could hit the submarine, likely not at the submarine’s depth, but if they did, they would have lost so much velocity that they probably wouldn’t even detonate upon impact because there’s not enough force to set off the fuse.
Vasili Arkhipov: one of the few people in history whose actions literally saved the world. He kept a cool head about the situation, even after 48 hours in a dark and sweltering submarine with no way of knowing what was going on. What a legend.
In all honesty I agree while credit goes to many for their hard work and dedication Arkhipov deserves his own memorial for his level headed thinking and demenor because had he not been there Kruschev and Kennedy would have been powerless to stop the world from going to war
@@kerdunne3422 I had to pause the video and take a deep breath. The world so could've been so different had Bobby not have died in that young man's arms
2019 and the story of the Cuban missile crisis is still terrifying. My sincere thanks to Vasili Arkhipov and all the others who literally saved the world. PS Not the only Russian soldier to see sense over orders during the cold war and in doing so saved the world.
I like how Castro was actually frustrated by the fact that Cuba wouldn't become a nuclear wasteland martyred for his own political beliefs. What a considerate leader.
Wolf6120 maybe, just maybe, he wasn't trusting US to keep their end of the deal. But or realized that the deal didn't say anything about hostile covert operations - which he indeed had to deal with a stupidly large number of later.
Cuba has been played like a chess pawn, the USSR never consult Cuba during the negotiation, they could have ask for the end of the embargo or the restitution of the Guantanamo Bay.
darksid007 as far as I'm concerned getting the non-invation treaty and the missile removal was more than fair... playing for more concesions would have been risky
I know this is in grey, but I somewhat commend the maturity shown by Kennedy and Khrushchev during the entire scenario to take the diplomatic route when several, including some generals, would have simply decided to press the button. I am curious as to which route the current leadership of both nations would prefer to choose... And yeah, Vasili Arkhipov saved the world. He is the reason I am commenting on this video. Fun fact: we did not knew about this incident until 2002.
Jeffrey Smith it’d be fair to say that his decision saved all life from that moment to as long as the human race survives, so it may not be 7 billion yet, but it will be barring a catastrophic situation.
The video was presented beautifully. This video should be shown during history classes when students cover the topic. It truly is the most pivotal point in all human history as if one little thing went wrong: none of us would be alive today.
I love the use of the “doomsday clock” (it’s a real thing to those who didn’t know.) because it really brings across how close to nuclear annihilation we were.
One man's choice helped spare the world from nuclear fire, my hat's off to the Soviet Flotilla Commander Vasili Arkhipov. His choice helped give Kennedy and Khrushchev the time needed to come to an agreement. Had he chose to agree to the launch the world would have been burned with nuclear fire.
There were a couple of cases like him, from the few both Soviet and American commanders. Every false alarm they had with the very, very unreliable technology of the time could have been a doom's day if not by the level headed people of history who said "Guys, let's not destroy the world today. Please"
Or maybe, we're doomed to repeat it anyway. Our leaders have been well aware of history for a long long time, yet we still have the same pitfalls. Maybe it's just a big bang type thing. Expansion and collapse, over and over again. The collapse energizes the expansion, the expansion energizes the collapse. I look at the American role in The Cuban Missile Crisis straight through the Vietnam War, and really... American leadership was in a non-stop string of decisions forced upon them by circumstance. There's only a handful of real blunders made by the USA leadership in that entire span.Each administration did what their hands were forced to do for the most part. In most wars, there's some decision made on both sides that the people making the decision would change retrospectively. In the Vietnam Era... Every president was put in an even more inflexible position by the presidents prior... and though it's the POPULAR view that Vietnam was a mistake to even get involved in... That's revisionist history. It would have been nice if the UN or some European Allies helped with Vietnam... but after they didn't, the course that things took was very much set in place. It was a non-stop inflexible cause-reaction chain straight from the end of WW2 all the way until Nixon resigned and Congress voted down the Vietnam resolution (that was already in place for 2 years.) That shit's slimy btw. We made a resolution with the Vietnamese. Got back our POW's... and then 2 years later, congress pulled the rug out on the whole damn thing and said,"Here' Nork Vietnam... Have a South Vietnam. But that's what happens in a congressional sytem. Every so often, one party gets to thoughtlessly carry out the whims of their party, and then after a while, the pendulum swings the other way. I feel like as a kid I couldn't understand, but now, I've seen a full swing of the pendulum. I used to think that information would save us all from the cycle... but everyone chooses their own information sources anyway. The pendulum will be with us a least a little longer it seems. :/
Aegix Drakan But now they are slightly more catious. More warnings and approvals. They know the power their country holds and what happens if it's used.
Khrushchev visited a pig farm and was photographed there. In the newspaper office, a discussion is underway about how to caption the picture. "Comrade Khrushchev among pigs," "Comrade Khrushchev and pigs," and "Pigs surround comrade Khrushchev" are all rejected. Finally, the editor announces his decision: "Third from left - comrade Khrushchev." - Classic joke
I've heard another variation: Kruschev is visiting a America, and is invited to visit an American pig farm. A photo of him is taken and rushed back home to be published by the Pravdra. In the newspaper office they try to decide what to caption the picture with. "Comrade Kruschev amongst American Swine!" says one of the editors. "Comrade Kruschev in good company!" says another. Then finally the boss exclaims: "Comrade Kruschev - third from the left!"
Yea well, some times you have to do what you have to do, avoid a nuclear war on exchange of your job, after all there may be no office to go the next day.
It's because of arkhipov that u were alive to make this video, I was alive to watch it, and that delivery guy was alive to give me that pizza last night😅
R.I.P John And Robert Kennedy. Hats off to Vasili Arkhipov voted against nuclear torpedo And Respect to Nikita Khrushchev. These men saved world from nuclear destruction. F to all four of these men.
We'd be dead, underground or not. Nuclear war on the scale the Cold War required would have destroyed the atmosphere and rendered the Earth as completely uninhabitable for any form of life. You'd have a better chance on Mars. You don't need to actually destroy the entire planet with the impact of nuclear explosions to end humanity and everything else - even a small-scale nuclear war would be the end of our entire species; as nuclear events have consequences far beyond their initial boom.
Fadley Stalin wouldn’t have escalated the situation. He may have been a staunch revolutionary but he was well aware of the dangers of nuclear war and never desired one.
@@JacatackLP because it was founded on the blockading Berlin and threatening the lives of innocents through Starvation. Its part of the series called the Berlin Airlift
Maybe there would still be a Soviet Union in 2018, but a stable one in friendly terms with the West. There would be no Russian federation, no Vladimir Putin, no Russian sabotage cases in the West...
This entire thing really teaches you the importance of communication. Just imagine all the death and conflict through out history caused by a simple misunderstanding...
You guys know how sometimes, we talk about fermi's paradoz, and speculate why we dont find other inteligent beings. One of the theories is that there is an impassable barrier, the great filter. The Cuban Missile Crisis, might have been OUR great filter, and we passed.
That is plausible. However, I think that if the Cuban missile crisis had indeed escalated into nuclear war, humanity wouldn't have gone extinct. The two major powers would have annihilated each other but the rest of the world would only be affected by the subsequent nuclear winter, which many humans would definitely have survived. It would have set civilzation back a lot, but it wouldn't have annihilated us. Just saying.
If we include allies in this story, nuclear bombs would destroy the world many times over. Most, if not all of the world’s population centers would be affected because they ally with a side or they are geographically close to those countries. The effects would be spread all around the world by wind and ocean currents, causing radiation poisoning and birth defects way beyond the scope of the initial blast. At most, maybe few rural places would have survivors. Let’s hope you’ve saved enough bottle caps.
+Shell B As far as I know, radiation poisoning wouldn't be the major issue, but the nuclear winter induced by the bombs. And nuclear winter is still, winter. It would be survivable imo.
@@feynstein1004 The thing about nuclear winters is that it isn't like a normal winter, with seasons... It's more like a Game of Thrones Winter, lasting many many years. Like, potentially even half a century long. That means limited farming, if any, and entire ecosystems would collapse, leading to the fall of many farm-able plants/animals. All our greenhouses would be destroyed - since they're usually near to population centers. so would people survive? Maybe some of the people who are used to cold climates, in places which still have plant life, and are not dependent on the outside world for necessities. And then we'd have to hope that there's enough genetic diversity to sustain an entire species. Either way, humanity as we know it would have gone extinct.
The sheer amount of things that had to go right for that to happen is insane. On *any* other submarine in that flotilla, a nuclear warhead would've been launched, and yet that situation happened on the *one* submarine where it just happened to require a third man.
The Kennedy's: We have averted nuclear disaster. And saved the world from total annihilation! God: Well done my children. You have saved the planet. Your work is done. Return home. Vasili Arkhipov: I have averted War and our people may live on. God: Well done my child. You have played your role perfectly. Now enjoy your life in peace knowing you saved the world.
That moment at the end of the episode was the first time my eyes have watered at any media in years. That was a powerful, and terrifying moment. It's scary to look at the doomsday clock now and see it back at two minutes to midnight...
One of the most fascinating things about the era is how much Kennedy and Kruchev's power depended on their relationship with each other. That is, because they had begun to work together and understand each other it was important to keep both of them in power. I think had Kennedy lived, Kruschev would not have been ousted
Vasily Arkhipov, along with fellow Russian Stanislav Petrov (who suspected a malfunction in the USSR missile detective system), deserve statues around the world. These two men are basically the ones that kept all of humanity from being nothing but a pile of ashes.
Nice usage of Ascension in C at the end. It's interesting that we went from Catherine the Great to Vladimir Putin. Anyway, still love the music. One of my fave from you guys.
it took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize "2 minutes to midnight" wasn't just the time the video was uploaded, but rather that infamous doomsday clock.
It's so ironic that back then, a minute to midnight was three people in a submarine deciding whether to strike or not, whereas a minute to midnight back in 2018 or somewhere was a tweet
Correct me if I wrong, but the series did not make the point why NATO tried to protect Turkey with the missiles in the first place. Soviet Union really wanted to get control over the Turkish Straits, and it also had some territorial claims for Eastern Anatolia and Turkish Black Sea Coast. Though after the death of Stalin these claims gradually faded from the Soviet international activities, they were never officially denounced. Wikipedia has more details: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Straits_crisis en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_territorial_claims_against_Turkey Without mentioning this part of the Soviet-Turkey relations the whole crisis may look like USSR just answering some kind of a reckless provocation from the US, but in fact it was a fully reasonable defence of the NATO ally.
you can't use wikipedia as source citations for these kinds of things, interest parties could have altered or even written those pages. no university would take wikipedia citations seriously
And for this reason you think a real launch would have help everyone.... I don't give an f what the reason is. 1000000 years of fallout anywhere else on 🌎 is the one and only enemy of war of this scale.
@@acid2all87 There's only a 5% chance of that.There are many rules in place on Wikipedia that don't allow interest parties to write articles to sway people to one side.Articles like that which DO get published are often re-written or completely deleted.
Dang, imagine being shot in the back and using your last breaths to comfort the terrified person watching you die. Knowing nothing else about the man, *that* is a class act if I've ever heard one.
I like these series. It's not like I haven't read about the Cuban missile crisis before, but these series still help to better visualize and understand what happened. However, I think that there should've been a mention of Bay of Pigs invasion and assassination attempts on Fidel Castro. In a lot of comments the people here seem to think that all Castro wanted was war. But that's not really the case. He just didn't trust the Americans who had tried invasion before and had given their support to the dictator that ruled Cuba before Castro. And then there's the failed assassination attempts on Fidel Castro's life. He had every reason not to trust the Americans. Some of the other Extra History videos have had the same problem of oversimplifying history. But I suppose that's the idea of these videos? To give a short but informative version of the story. Well done anyway!
You guys do a hell of a good job with these videos. Thanks for producing such enjoyable history content. Lord knows you aren't going to find it on the History Channel anymore.
Well yeah, he had. First of all, 'private property' as a whole was not prohibited - owning 'means of production' was. In fact, a lot of ordinary city-dwellers had and still have summer houses, although Khrushev's personal one was bigger and better furnished than most. Second, the vacation house they mention here likely was one of the Party or state-owned ones. It came with the position of First Secretary. When Khrushev was deposed, he and his family no longer had access to that house, and it was given to some other Party functionary.
Kaiza More so for party members. If you don't have money that can buy anything all that useful, what do you reward people with? Vacations were a good way of doing this. Jumping the queue for lineups, larger apartments or cottages, this is how the Soviet Union worked.
Its called a Dacha, and it's a Russian custom. They were typically rinky dink shacks which most people had. Also, private property refers to property which is used to generate wealth, you're thinking of personal property.
You guys forgot the part where the Soviet spy gave up cover to tell a news anchor who had White House contacts to tell President Kennedy that the Soviets want a diplomatic solution. That's how RFK knew using the back channel could be fruitful.
HalfTangible well because Kim jong un doesn’t give a fuck about mutually assured destruction, and I fail to see the benefit of the Donald’s approach, plus putin isn’t exactly a bastion of peace and stability
I think the clock is broken at this point its never actualy got to midnight no matter how many hours it had pass that was either a lame joke or a cleaver metafore
These episodes are extremely well written, your sense of dramatic flow makes simple recollection of historical events genuinely nail-biting and it's really enjoyable to watch
These world leaders had begun the Cuban missile crisis thinking of politics as a chessboard, a game of moves and counter-moves. But by the end they realized, almost too late, that they were throwing dice.
This series brought to you by DomiNations! Celebrate DomiNations 3 year anniversary by sharing your experience here: form.jotform.com/weplay123/welcome-to-the-3-year-anniversary
Extra Credits I am here!
Wow so close to destruction good thing we still have Kennedy.
Extra Credits gr8
Could you update your short stories and chronological order playlists?
Extra Credits o
"The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five."
-Carl Sagan
That is... terrifyingly accurate
And both trying to get even more matches.
Except every other nation is also there
Don't wooosh me but the Mario maker player ?
Edit ?
and everybody is trying to get more power than the other
Am I the only one that was completely surprised at that moment of animation in which Dan closes his hand around the chess piece and turns it into a dice?
Like, actual animation? In THE Extra Credits?
Kudos to the team.
i was looking for this comment! It was AWESOME hahaha
That was a powerful, awesome moment and I loved it. Small flourishes for emphasis like this are cool!
Yeah, that moment really sealed the deal. Chef's kiss. Mwah!
🤩
Blew my mind. Exactly like that Lord of the Rings play where Frodo disappears center stage with nothing but a cloak and I can literally see the floor he's standing on. At first I'm like 'yup, chess into dice, solid metaphor' and then its 'wait, WHAT? Did I actually see that just now?'
"They've signaled it with grenades" well that's a phrase you don't hear every day.
I suppose in a way, it makes sense. Grenades wouldn't be strong enough in theory to deal damage to a nuclear sub's pressure defenses, and would make a hell of a racket.
actually it is quite common. also, logical, since it is harder to pass radio signal through water as it changes frequently and signal gets dispersed. But signaling with fire is even done today. In protective edge, Israel stroke houses of hammas affiliates with non lethal rounds to shake it, and let people evacuate it before house destruction (although notification were spread beforehand, not in all cases hammas affiliates and their families left before the signaling)
they were signaling the submarine to rise up above water as it is surrounded
Saviour86 You mean with guns? Small arms would barely make it 50 feet before they lost pretty much all inertia and just floated away, they may not even make it 50 feet. The ships’ 5” cannons also wouldn’t make it far down enough, if you could even point the ships’ cannons down that much. Grenades are more predictable and can actually sink down and make some noise. Bullets would do fuck all, and probably not hit the submarine. Cannon shells maybe could hit the submarine, likely not at the submarine’s depth, but if they did, they would have lost so much velocity that they probably wouldn’t even detonate upon impact because there’s not enough force to set off the fuse.
Saviour86 have you tried shooting through choppy sea water? The grenades did no damage to the sub, but created enough noise to act as a signal.
Vasili Arkhipov: one of the few people in history whose actions literally saved the world. He kept a cool head about the situation, even after 48 hours in a dark and sweltering submarine with no way of knowing what was going on. What a legend.
Hats off to Vasili Arkhipov, the man who saved the world.
John Smith and stalinstrav petrov
Choosing not to destroy the world is *not* the same as saving it.
Definitely, he stood his ground
In all honesty I agree while credit goes to many for their hard work and dedication Arkhipov deserves his own memorial for his level headed thinking and demenor because had he not been there Kruschev and Kennedy would have been powerless to stop the world from going to war
@@seermayton-el3488 im pretty sure he has a memorial
I had no idea Robert Kennedy died so gracefully.
10:04
Rest in peace our fallen soldier.
"is everyone okay?"
"Everything is gonna to be okay."
Robert Kennedy's last words
That was a badass way to die, high respects for him and his choices to keep his helper calm.
Imagine if he had lived and become president. What amazing things would he have achieved? Sadly we'll never know.
@@kerdunne3422 I had to pause the video and take a deep breath. The world so could've been so different had Bobby not have died in that young man's arms
2019 and the story of the Cuban missile crisis is still terrifying.
My sincere thanks to Vasili Arkhipov and all the others who literally saved the world.
PS
Not the only Russian soldier to see sense over orders during the cold war and in doing so saved the world.
that's what happens when you make sure your people have actual heart and a human brain and not brainwashed
2022 and the story is still terrifying.
2023 and were inching closer to death
I like how Castro was actually frustrated by the fact that Cuba wouldn't become a nuclear wasteland martyred for his own political beliefs. What a considerate leader.
Communism sure is great! (When you're guaranteed to not die of starvation or be assassinated)
I don't know what Fedel Castro wanted, but I doubt that he wanted to die.
Wolf6120 maybe, just maybe, he wasn't trusting US to keep their end of the deal. But or realized that the deal didn't say anything about hostile covert operations - which he indeed had to deal with a stupidly large number of later.
Cuba has been played like a chess pawn, the USSR never consult Cuba during the negotiation, they could have ask for the end of the embargo or the restitution of the Guantanamo Bay.
darksid007 as far as I'm concerned getting the non-invation treaty and the missile removal was more than fair... playing for more concesions would have been risky
"This decision is tough becuase well, its so reasonable" is really the outline of the American government
Khrushchev: "Hey, you know if you remove your missiles from Turkey, we'd remove ours from Cuba?"
Kennedy: "yeah. Yeah that sounds good to me"
Oversimplified.
Oversimplified
But true!
Oversimplified.
OVERSIMPLIFIED
"Is everybody okay?
...
Everything's going to be okay."
Heartbreaking.
"everything's going to be ok"
I'm not crying. YOU'RE CRYING!
"Is everybody okay...?
"Everything is going to be okay..."
It's a bad day for rain.
Garret LeBuis it's not raining...
the dragon slayer it's pouring
the dragon slayer Then why is there water running down my face...?
Someone cutting dem damn Onions again... i will find this bastard and do something...
the dragon slayer
Yes, it is.
I know this is in grey, but I somewhat commend the maturity shown by Kennedy and Khrushchev during the entire scenario to take the diplomatic route when several, including some generals, would have simply decided to press the button. I am curious as to which route the current leadership of both nations would prefer to choose...
And yeah, Vasili Arkhipov saved the world. He is the reason I am commenting on this video. Fun fact: we did not knew about this incident until 2002.
i honestly think that both Trump and Putin would try diplomacy and avoid conflict at all cost.
Given both of them is warmongering and treatning neuclear anniliation while simutationally bragging about their genitals, i fear for the world...
@@andmos1001
Putin, at least, I don't believe will press the button. Trump I am worried about.
@@festethephule7553 True. Putin had spent too much time building a comfortable nest for himself and his buddies to throw it all away.
@@festethephule7553 No one believes in anything these days. No faith. Just optics
Vasili Arkhipov, a Soviet submarine flotilla commander saved 7 billion people from nuclear annihilation.
*GIVE THAT MAN A RAISE*
Jeffrey Smith it’d be fair to say that his decision saved all life from that moment to as long as the human race survives, so it may not be 7 billion yet, but it will be barring a catastrophic situation.
One decision.
That was something that could've happened so many damn times.
He is true hero of soviet union.
Jeffrey Smith 5 billion dude
Something surprising, this man went missing after the incident.
"The only winning move is not to play"
This is why I’m happy that Australia has no nukes
@@fraserpittard4382I mean Australia's a wasteland already. Why do you think Mad Max is set there?
Wargames
@ytsas49007 Wargames. The original not shit one.
'A strange game, Doctor Falken.'
...
'Would you like a nice game of CHESS?'
Vasili Arkhipov.
We OWE that man.
Aurora borealis? At this time of year? At this time of day? In this part of the country? Localised entirely within the arctic circle?
Wymar Sane Yes.
Dandy Man can i see it?
...No
Zackery Young No.
Well you are an odd youtube commenter....but I must say you quote a good meme...
130 degrees.......... Ah, my old nemesis, Fahrenheit.
I doubt that Soviets were measuring in Fahrenheit.
I doubt they would survive 130 celsius air temp
orhblin I was like how can anyone survive 130° Celsius.....ohhh America Fahrenheit
Vasiliy Kolebanov One thing the Soviets did well was use the metric system.
it's about 55°C
So pretty bad
Dude like
I knew from the beginning nothing would end up happening because like I’m alive right now
But fuck was this series stressful
You said it, buddy
The video was presented beautifully. This video should be shown during history classes when students cover the topic. It truly is the most pivotal point in all human history as if one little thing went wrong: none of us would be alive today.
Same man
I love the use of the “doomsday clock” (it’s a real thing to those who didn’t know.) because it really brings across how close to nuclear annihilation we were.
IKR right now it's 100 seconds to midnight, we're even closer to nuclear decimation than ever before. Including this cuban missile crisis
Vasili is practically a hero.
SIDDHANT TEWARI Indeed my friend. Indeed.
And he was of course properly punished for it. Soviet officials thought he should have voted yes.
What a legend.
Not practically... He IS a hero
How many men can say they saved human civilization and the world in general? Vasili can. Or could, dunno if he is alive.
One man's choice helped spare the world from nuclear fire, my hat's off to the Soviet Flotilla Commander Vasili Arkhipov. His choice helped give Kennedy and Khrushchev the time needed to come to an agreement. Had he chose to agree to the launch the world would have been burned with nuclear fire.
There were a couple of cases like him, from the few both Soviet and American commanders. Every false alarm they had with the very, very unreliable technology of the time could have been a doom's day if not by the level headed people of history who said "Guys, let's not destroy the world today. Please"
+Luis Agree,Komrad.
Well he should have said yes and spare us all the trouble of arguing over the internet
You gotta respect someone who gets shot and starts comforting the people watching them die.
Yet again, clear communication is shown to be a blessing, and its absence a terror.
Bthsr71 yesss
vasily arkipov, the man who saved the world
Choosing not to destroy the world is *not* the same as saving it..
richard trumpet sometimes that’s all you need.
Holy shit... Did that last part about RFK hit anyone else in the feels?
Right in the heart
Those that ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
ComplicatedNickname gay
That's the truth
Who are you, that do not know your history?
Or maybe, we're doomed to repeat it anyway. Our leaders have been well aware of history for a long long time, yet we still have the same pitfalls.
Maybe it's just a big bang type thing. Expansion and collapse, over and over again. The collapse energizes the expansion, the expansion energizes the collapse.
I look at the American role in The Cuban Missile Crisis straight through the Vietnam War, and really... American leadership was in a non-stop string of decisions forced upon them by circumstance. There's only a handful of real blunders made by the USA leadership in that entire span.Each administration did what their hands were forced to do for the most part.
In most wars, there's some decision made on both sides that the people making the decision would change retrospectively. In the Vietnam Era... Every president was put in an even more inflexible position by the presidents prior... and though it's the POPULAR view that Vietnam was a mistake to even get involved in... That's revisionist history.
It would have been nice if the UN or some European Allies helped with Vietnam... but after they didn't, the course that things took was very much set in place. It was a non-stop inflexible cause-reaction chain straight from the end of WW2 all the way until Nixon resigned and Congress voted down the Vietnam resolution (that was already in place for 2 years.)
That shit's slimy btw.
We made a resolution with the Vietnamese. Got back our POW's... and then 2 years later, congress pulled the rug out on the whole damn thing and said,"Here' Nork Vietnam... Have a South Vietnam.
But that's what happens in a congressional sytem. Every so often, one party gets to thoughtlessly carry out the whims of their party, and then after a while, the pendulum swings the other way.
I feel like as a kid I couldn't understand, but now, I've seen a full swing of the pendulum. I used to think that information would save us all from the cycle... but everyone chooses their own information sources anyway. The pendulum will be with us a least a little longer it seems. :/
And those who know it, can improve the plans for good or for evil.
So many politicians today STILL treat the world like it's a chessboard. None of them realize they are still throwing dice. :(
silly politicians chess doesn't use dice.
Aegix Drakan
Really half chess, half dice.
Aegix Drakan But now they are slightly more catious. More warnings and approvals. They know the power their country holds and what happens if it's used.
Dice with dozens of sides, only a few of them not leading to nuclear war.
Ike Okereke Ches + Dice = D&D??? Down with the nerds in power!!!1!
Can you do the Balkan wars it's something that not many people talk about
It's a difficult topic to cover, trust me. The wounds still haven't healed.
TheLordboki it may "upset" some people but so what
First Balkan War, Second Balkan War, First World War, Yugoslav Wars... can't this area settle down ?
rodrigopaim82 Welcome to the Balkans
nagib rich *south slavs
Khrushchev visited a pig farm and was photographed there. In the newspaper office, a discussion is underway about how to caption the picture. "Comrade Khrushchev among pigs," "Comrade Khrushchev and pigs," and "Pigs surround comrade Khrushchev" are all rejected. Finally, the editor announces his decision: "Third from left - comrade Khrushchev."
- Classic joke
I've heard another variation:
Kruschev is visiting a America, and is invited to visit an American pig farm. A photo of him is taken and rushed back home to be published by the Pravdra. In the newspaper office they try to decide what to caption the picture with. "Comrade Kruschev amongst American Swine!" says one of the editors. "Comrade Kruschev in good company!" says another. Then finally the boss exclaims: "Comrade Kruschev - third from the left!"
I once saw a documentary about jokes in the east during sojwet times... time well spent ;)
Yea well, some times you have to do what you have to do, avoid a nuclear war on exchange of your job, after all there may be no office to go the next day.
Si Wi Please tell me the name I NEED to watch that!
I watched it on german TV (channel Phonix) ages ago
"Castro trashed his office" Idk why but I found this hilarious 😂
He and Che were actually incredibly volatile. Che killed people almost at random, especially when he was briefly in charge of a prison
It's because of arkhipov that u were alive to make this video, I was alive to watch it, and that delivery guy was alive to give me that pizza last night😅
Started watching and i was confused when i heard " A youtube pilot" haha. Ohhh mornings.
Oh, shucks!
Same
smashervt U-2
Like the Irish band.
“As of 2018 the clock is 2 minutes from midnight”
“Wait what”
Iron Maiden reference FTW?
Ethan Phillips 90 seconds now
Well he was right 2 minutes later and the world is burning
Wait. That was 2 years ago. It's 2020 now.
Late response I know, but look up the doomsday clock.
That “2 minutes till midnight” part is scarily accurate right about now 😣
The clock sits at 100 minutes to midnight
@@msn8390 *seconds
R.I.P John And Robert Kennedy. Hats off to Vasili Arkhipov voted against nuclear torpedo And Respect to Nikita Khrushchev. These men saved world from nuclear destruction. F to all four of these men.
i'm glad nikita kreuschev is actually more reasonable and not hardcore like castro or stalin, else we might be living in underground today
We'd be dead, underground or not. Nuclear war on the scale the Cold War required would have destroyed the atmosphere and rendered the Earth as completely uninhabitable for any form of life. You'd have a better chance on Mars. You don't need to actually destroy the entire planet with the impact of nuclear explosions to end humanity and everything else - even a small-scale nuclear war would be the end of our entire species; as nuclear events have consequences far beyond their initial boom.
Fadley
Stalin wouldn’t have escalated the situation. He may have been a staunch revolutionary but he was well aware of the dangers of nuclear war and never desired one.
@@JacatackLP He was also violent and less eager for diplomacy. Don't forget who raised the Iron Curtain to begin with
Michael Fort how was the “Iron Curtain” anything but defensive?
@@JacatackLP because it was founded on the blockading Berlin and threatening the lives of innocents through Starvation. Its part of the series called the Berlin Airlift
Seems a little too similar to be coincidence... Two Kennedys, both wanting de-escalation, both shot.
the internet and softening of the soviet stranglehold over warsaw pact countries by allowing them to protest broke the union. not american escalation.
Maybe there would still be a Soviet Union in 2018, but a stable one in friendly terms with the West. There would be no Russian federation, no Vladimir Putin, no Russian sabotage cases in the West...
+Fredrik Dunge where are you from?
I thought your name sounded German. Although Swedish and German are both similar.
I didn't know that. And now I will not likely forget it.
Isn't Swedish technically a Germanic language? Or am I misinformed?
Dr. Strangelove is looking less and less like satire and more like a disguised documentary.
This entire thing really teaches you the importance of communication. Just imagine all the death and conflict through out history caused by a simple misunderstanding...
You guys know how sometimes, we talk about fermi's paradoz, and speculate why we dont find other inteligent beings. One of the theories is that there is an impassable barrier, the great filter. The Cuban Missile Crisis, might have been OUR great filter, and we passed.
Kurzgesagt! I remember having seen this
That is plausible. However, I think that if the Cuban missile crisis had indeed escalated into nuclear war, humanity wouldn't have gone extinct. The two major powers would have annihilated each other but the rest of the world would only be affected by the subsequent nuclear winter, which many humans would definitely have survived. It would have set civilzation back a lot, but it wouldn't have annihilated us. Just saying.
If we include allies in this story, nuclear bombs would destroy the world many times over. Most, if not all of the world’s population centers would be affected because they ally with a side or they are geographically close to those countries. The effects would be spread all around the world by wind and ocean currents, causing radiation poisoning and birth defects way beyond the scope of the initial blast. At most, maybe few rural places would have survivors. Let’s hope you’ve saved enough bottle caps.
+Shell B As far as I know, radiation poisoning wouldn't be the major issue, but the nuclear winter induced by the bombs. And nuclear winter is still, winter. It would be survivable imo.
@@feynstein1004 The thing about nuclear winters is that it isn't like a normal winter, with seasons... It's more like a Game of Thrones Winter, lasting many many years. Like, potentially even half a century long. That means limited farming, if any, and entire ecosystems would collapse, leading to the fall of many farm-able plants/animals. All our greenhouses would be destroyed - since they're usually near to population centers. so would people survive? Maybe some of the people who are used to cold climates, in places which still have plant life, and are not dependent on the outside world for necessities. And then we'd have to hope that there's enough genetic diversity to sustain an entire species. Either way, humanity as we know it would have gone extinct.
Oooh, using Catherine's tune at the end there. It is suitably sonorous.
Aww vasili was so downplayed. His defiance saved the world and had always been my fav story
The sheer amount of things that had to go right for that to happen is insane. On *any* other submarine in that flotilla, a nuclear warhead would've been launched, and yet that situation happened on the *one* submarine where it just happened to require a third man.
"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play." W.O.P.R aka Joshua - WarGames 1983
...would you like to play a game of chess?
6:49 Let’s all be grateful for this hero who saved the world.
Having recently discovered the show Drunk History, I propose a crossover: Extra Drunk History
David Starkey Sloshed History
Jon Construct Better yet: Hammered History
Vasili Arkhipov saved us all
As of 2021, at 100 seconds we are officially the closest to midnight we have ever been in history
The Kennedy's: We have averted nuclear disaster. And saved the world from total annihilation!
God: Well done my children. You have saved the planet. Your work is done. Return home.
Vasili Arkhipov: I have averted War and our people may live on.
God: Well done my child. You have played your role perfectly. Now enjoy your life in peace knowing you saved the world.
2022 and this story still gives me chills..
8:21 poor old man just wants some sleep
99% stress level in a nutshell
If ever the phrase “That was too close...” was most fitting, it was with this crisis.
That moment at the end of the episode was the first time my eyes have watered at any media in years. That was a powerful, and terrifying moment. It's scary to look at the doomsday clock now and see it back at two minutes to midnight...
RFK asking if everyone is okay got me in the end
How is humanity not dead yet.
Humans are ever so slightly better at surviving than they are at killing.
Cuz there's still future Extra Credit video will be coming.
Quantum immortality. I don't have time to explain it, but you should look it up, it's a cool concept.
Luck. There have been a LOT of close calls that we've had, that were only because of a random piece of luck saved us.
Because humanity is a paradoxical existence.
One of the most fascinating things about the era is how much Kennedy and Kruchev's power depended on their relationship with each other. That is, because they had begun to work together and understand each other it was important to keep both of them in power. I think had Kennedy lived, Kruschev would not have been ousted
Vasily Arkhipov, along with fellow Russian Stanislav Petrov (who suspected a malfunction in the USSR missile detective system), deserve statues around the world.
These two men are basically the ones that kept all of humanity from being nothing but a pile of ashes.
Oh my look at the hour!
Nice usage of Ascension in C at the end. It's interesting that we went from Catherine the Great to Vladimir Putin. Anyway, still love the music. One of my fave from you guys.
it took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize "2 minutes to midnight" wasn't just the time the video was uploaded, but rather that infamous doomsday clock.
It's so ironic that back then, a minute to midnight was three people in a submarine deciding whether to strike or not, whereas a minute to midnight back in 2018 or somewhere was a tweet
Now, the clock is 90 seconds to midnight.
Correct me if I wrong, but the series did not make the point why NATO tried to protect Turkey with the missiles in the first place.
Soviet Union really wanted to get control over the Turkish Straits, and it also had some territorial claims for Eastern Anatolia and Turkish Black Sea Coast. Though after the death of Stalin these claims gradually faded from the Soviet international activities, they were never officially denounced.
Wikipedia has more details:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Straits_crisis
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_territorial_claims_against_Turkey
Without mentioning this part of the Soviet-Turkey relations the whole crisis may look like USSR just answering some kind of a reckless provocation from the US, but in fact it was a fully reasonable defence of the NATO ally.
But they already said that" did the us sacrifice there ally for they own safety"
you can't use wikipedia as source citations for these kinds of things, interest parties could have altered or even written those pages.
no university would take wikipedia citations seriously
And for this reason you think a real launch would have help everyone.... I don't give an f what the reason is. 1000000 years of fallout anywhere else on 🌎 is the one and only enemy of war of this scale.
@@acid2all87
There's only a 5% chance of that.There are many rules in place on Wikipedia that don't allow interest parties to write articles to sway people to one side.Articles like that which DO get published are often re-written or completely deleted.
No matter what people say vasili will always be a hero to not only his homeland but to also the US and the world itself.
Dang, imagine being shot in the back and using your last breaths to comfort the terrified person watching you die. Knowing nothing else about the man, *that* is a class act if I've ever heard one.
Gentlemen, it is now 90 seconds to midnight. God rest our souls now
OK, but who shot down that U2?
It’s still a mystery...
The missile shot down that U2
Fidel himself wearing a second fake mustache was maning the aa gun
That dumba$$ Castro.
Thanks to this video, the unsung hero Vasili Arkhipov, who can be truly appreciated for literally saving the world, is now a little more sung ☺
I like these series. It's not like I haven't read about the Cuban missile crisis before, but these series still help to better visualize and understand what happened. However, I think that there should've been a mention of Bay of Pigs invasion and assassination attempts on Fidel Castro. In a lot of comments the people here seem to think that all Castro wanted was war. But that's not really the case. He just didn't trust the Americans who had tried invasion before and had given their support to the dictator that ruled Cuba before Castro. And then there's the failed assassination attempts on Fidel Castro's life. He had every reason not to trust the Americans. Some of the other Extra History videos have had the same problem of oversimplifying history. But I suppose that's the idea of these videos? To give a short but informative version of the story. Well done anyway!
“Castro trashes his office.” 😂😂😂
"if this conversation leaks, the deal's off" HMMMMMMM
ITS BEEN LEAKED ! WE ARE ALL DEAD!
Will the peace win out, or will humanity come to an end? Find out on the next Extra Credits History
8:35 love that animation!
This series genuinely had me on the edge of my seat! Very well done :-D
“As of 2018 the clock is 2 minutes from midnight” gave me chills
Vasili doesn't get NEARLY enough recognition he deserves.
Imagine a fucking bear starting a world war...
You guys do a hell of a good job with these videos. Thanks for producing such enjoyable history content. Lord knows you aren't going to find it on the History Channel anymore.
The leader has a "Vacation House" in a country where private property is forbidden... lol
Well yeah, he had. First of all, 'private property' as a whole was not prohibited - owning 'means of production' was. In fact, a lot of ordinary city-dwellers had and still have summer houses, although Khrushev's personal one was bigger and better furnished than most. Second, the vacation house they mention here likely was one of the Party or state-owned ones. It came with the position of First Secretary. When Khrushev was deposed, he and his family no longer had access to that house, and it was given to some other Party functionary.
It wasn't technically owned by Khrushchev. It technically belonged to the state. And the Presidium could fire Khrushchev, which they did.
Kaiza More so for party members. If you don't have money that can buy anything all that useful, what do you reward people with? Vacations were a good way of doing this. Jumping the queue for lineups, larger apartments or cottages, this is how the Soviet Union worked.
Its called a Dacha, and it's a Russian custom. They were typically rinky dink shacks which most people had. Also, private property refers to property which is used to generate wealth, you're thinking of personal property.
First thought it was code word for getting into a nuclear bunker.
thank god for vasili. he saved the damn world and prevented an all out war.
That submarine officer should be hailed a world hero. He fucking saved the world.
This was informative as well as entertaining. A great video. Thank you.
I just realized that 2 minutes to midnight ment 2 years until 2020
Born in 1978, but here I am crying actual tears over the assassination of RFK. Well done, Extra History, as always.
I started to cry at the end of the episode about how lucky we were from a disaster... Thank you history lesson keep it up
Imagine being a normal recon pilot, just coming back to alaska, and when you land, you are told that you went over ussr and almost caused a war
You guys forgot the part where the Soviet spy gave up cover to tell a news anchor who had White House contacts to tell President Kennedy that the Soviets want a diplomatic solution. That's how RFK knew using the back channel could be fruitful.
I'd appretiate a video series of the breakup of Yugoslavia
August 2021 and we are 100 seconds to midnight. It’s ticking ever so steadily closer to midnight every year.
"Everything is going to be okay"
Wow that gave me goosebumps
As of 2018, the clock is at 2 minutes to midnight...
Adventurer32 Let's just hope that it does not go any futher.
Frankly I don't see how, beyond petty attempts to score political points.
HalfTangible well because Kim jong un doesn’t give a fuck about mutually assured destruction, and I fail to see the benefit of the Donald’s approach, plus putin isn’t exactly a bastion of peace and stability
And who's behind... it's Walpole.
I think the clock is broken at this point its never actualy got to midnight no matter how many hours it had pass that was either a lame joke or a cleaver metafore
2 minutes till midnight... gods help us all...
Can u please make an episode about the balkan revolutions of the 19th century or the balkan wars ??? It is a topic bately touched
I'd say check out the Great War channel, they cover that subject quite abit.
speaking of which, the guy from The Great War has another channel called TimeGhost, and a super detailed series on the cuban missile crisis
It would be more interesting if they did a whole Series on Marshal Tito. That would be interesting.
The Extra History Series is my favorite series on TH-cam.
Makes me want to friggen hug the guy in the U-boat for not letting billions of people die. He had a lot of responsibility there and he stood up.
These episodes are extremely well written, your sense of dramatic flow makes simple recollection of historical events genuinely nail-biting and it's really enjoyable to watch
that ending man, I'm sad :(. Great series!