An Alternate History novel by Ira Tabankin.
Point of departure is the Cuban Missile Crisis. In Tabankin's version, things moved a little faster and by the time the U.S. Military and President Kennedy became aware of the in-construction launch sites, there were already over a dozen hidden nukes ready to launch, and a bomber squadron. So, as tensions grow, and an invasion and bombing of Cuba are prepared, they launch, triggering nuclear war. Millions of people die in the four days following.
Forty American cities, the largest and most essential, are destroyed. Kennedy's Camelot goes up in flames, along with the President himself. The race to the moon is replaced with a scramble to rebuild America's financial and transportation hubs. The Great Society is strangled in it's crib. No Britain, no Beatles, no British Invasion. No easy contraceptive hormone pill, and so sexual revolution. Surprisingly, Vietnam still happens despite the threatening specter of another nuclear war, but who would ever protest sticking it to Dirty Commies?
Over all, technology is delayed by decades, particularly computer science, and American society becomes a great deal more conservative. This is considered a good thing.
The book itself charts the build up to the Cuban Missile Crisis (inaccurately) and then the two years following in the new timeline.
The End Of The World As We Might Have Known It contains:
- Dirty Commies: The impression one gets is that missiles in Turkey were just an excuse, the Russians were always and eagerly planning to nuke America.
- Nuke 'em: Europe is gone, as are large chunks of the U.S. and Russia, because of this kind of thinking.
