[Zhang Fei]

[Even at the height of the Cold War, with armies and navies facing off on a hair-trigger world-wide, with land and sea-based ICBMs ready to launch, the treaty guaranteeing free transit of anybody and anything (NATO military supplies, whatever), was not hindered.]

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It was only rhetorically on hair trigger alert. Everyone from top to bottom understood that starting a nuclear war meant killing their own families and friends. That’s why nothing happened despite repeated opportunities to do so. People like having family and friends around, and no amount of attempted brainwashing will change that. They’ll say all the right things to keep their jobs. But when ordered to do exactly as they’re told, many will balk.

Note that during the confrontation over access to Berlin, the *Russians* cut off road and rail access. Did Kennedy nuke Russia? No - he mounted the Berlin airlift. The Russians don’t need to mount an airlift to resupply Konigsberg, although they could certainly do so - they have access from the sea.

[Travis McGee]

I specifically mentioned treaties POST the 48-49 Berlin Airlift.

Were you too high on fentanyl hopium to notice?

If you are still conscious, and not too high, I was actually, physically, diving aboard several nuclear submarines from time to time in the 1980s.

Let me tell you, brother, those USN submarine crews were on a second-by-second wartime-footing nuclear hair-trigger. They were keeping track of the Soviet subs, and vice-versa, and life or death could come down to who reacted first and more effectively to the sound, say, of a distant torpedo tube outer door opening. It was hair-trigger wartime operations from submerging to surfacing (much later.)

If your 1980s nuclear submarine Cold War memories differ from mine, I’m all ears.