Fiona Hill

And this Euromissile Crisis over SS-20 and Pershing missiles went on from 1977, so when I was about 11 or 12, all the way through into the later part of the 1980s.

And in 1983, we came extraordinarily close to a nuclear conflict.

It was very much another rerun of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

So 20 years on, same kind of thing.

The Soviets misread, although I didn't know this at the time.

I know a lot of this, you know, after the fact.

But the tension was palpable.

But what happened was the Soviets misread the intentions of a series of exercises that

Operation Able Archer that the United States was conducting and actually thought that the United States might be preparing for a first nuclear strike.

And that then set up a whole set of literal chain reactions in the Soviet Union.

Eventually, it was recognized that all of this was really based on misperceptions.

And of course, that later led to negotiations between Gorbachev and Reagan for the Intermediate Nuclear Forces, the INF Treaty.

But in 1983, that tension was just acute.

And for as a teenager, we were basically being prepped the whole time for the inevitability of nuclear Armageddon.

There were TV series, films in the United States and the UK, threads the day after.

We had all these public service announcements telling us to seek sanctuary or cover in the inevitability of a nuclear blast.

And my house was so small, they said, look for a room without a window.

There were no rooms without windows.

My dad put on these really thick curtains over the window.

You know, instead if there was a nuclear flash, you know, we'd have to, you know, get down on the floor, not look up, but the curtains would help.