Overview
In November 1983, NATO conducted "Able Archer 83," a routine military exercise simulating a nuclear escalation. However, due to heightened Cold War tensions and the recent shoot down of KAL 007, the Soviet leadership became convinced that the exercise was a front for a real first-strike attack.
The Secret Nuclear Alert
The Soviet Union responded by placing their nuclear forces on high alert, loading warheads onto bombers and readying ICBMs. For several days, the world was closer to nuclear war than during the Cuban Missile Crisis, yet the American public and even many NATO leaders were completely unaware of how close the situation had come to catastrophe.
Declassification and Truth
The true scale of the "war scare" was kept secret for decades. It was only through declassified documents in 2015 that the public learned that Western intelligence had underestimated how paranoid the Soviet leadership had become during the exercise.