From the Suez crisis to that of Cuba: every time the world has been on the brink of atomic war

LONDON – “Launch a nuclear torpedo against the American fleet!”. It was October 1962. If the deputy commander of a Soviet submarine off the coast of Cuba had not disobeyed the order of his superior, the Third World War would have broken out: with nuclear weapons. “The world has never been this close to nuclear Armageddon,” Joe Biden said yesterdayspeaking of Vladimir Putin’s threat to use a tactical atomic weapon in the war in Ukraine.