The Chilling Soviet Plan to Crush the West in Seven Days...

A secret Cold War strategy planned nuclear devastation across Europe in just a week. Could the Soviets have won World War III? Or would it have doomed us all? Let’s find out.

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[Billy_t__]

Me: let me find something light to watch to distract me from existential dread
Simon: nah

[Zeppathy]

Can we agree that taking over the world is pointless if you make it uninhabitable in the process?

[badluck]

The Soviet Union had a plan for a 7-day special military operation?

[cliffordthies]

I was at the Fulda gap at roughly the time talked about. I was covering radiacmeters with my men, explaining what the readings meant. At this level, I said, it means we're going to get sick die, but that ... we have six months to avenge our own deaths. My men started whooping it up. We were ready.

[GrandadTinkerer]

I used to work with a man who had been in the RAF in 1962, at the heart of the Cuban missile crisis.
He described graphically, the sense of absolute dread, that he and his colleagues felt while watching Vulcan bombers, fully armed with nuclear bombs, seconds away from departing for Moscow!

[JakobIlar]

A strange game.
The only winning move is not to play.

[philh.]

slightly over seven minutes in and I just witnessed the most perfect, "how did that go?" ever said to camera, bravo sir.

[StarTrekLife]

YouTube: How many channels do you have Simon?
Simon: Yes

[Alan-pvbi]

Vasily Arkhipov saved us all in '62

[Royce]

"Metaphorical big red button marked *kaboom*" lol, got a chuckle out of me with that one.

[drpapa]

A Russian 7-day special military operation would take roughly 15 years to complete.

[williammurray]

Was stationed in West Germany in the early 80s. This is what we planned on happening to us if the balloons went up. Hence the song 99 Luftballoons. The plan held US dependents hostages.

[comentedonakeyboard]

The nuclear fallout would have been driven eastward, back into the motherland, by the jet stream.

[fe]

France was invaded 3 times by Germany in 70 years (1870, 1914 and 1940). They didn't want a 4th invasion.

[panderson]

I studied this topic fairly extensively back in the 80s. One thing that I remember coming across was a...formerly...secret Pentagon paper that said something along the lines of: If the Warsaw Pact ever decides to head west, barring the use of nukes, the only hope NATO had of stopping them was if...and they considered it a big IF...France decided to assist NATO, and if they decided to do it early enough for it to make a difference. If they waited too long to make up their minds, it would be just the French army...and some shattered remnants of NATO units...facing the entire Warsaw Pact by themselves.

[sartainja]

It amazes me that mankind has existed as long as we have concerning how stupid we are.

[kennardjohnson]

We had the same kind of plan, it was necessary to have such plans, meaning you needed plans for what ever the situation.

[inferi]

I absolutely love how Simon gave up trying to pronounce Marcinkiewicz and just went with Marci-kvwzwgfcyczgwfc, which is totally understandable.
Never change, fact boi.

[jackwardley]

I wouldn't say 500kt is a tactical nuke thats a strategic weapon. tactical Nuke I would say is more like 1kt-10kt

[melangellatc]

General Sir John Hackett wrote an excellent book (The Third World War: The Untold Story) about this at the time. Harold Coyle used his scenario of that war as a stage for Team Yankee.