My wife and I just watched the classic film called FailSafe with henry Fonda. It is all about the cold war, get it on netflix.
Fail safe is a great movie about the reality of the situation of nuclear war. Another Great movie about nuclear dynamics is the documentary Fog of War about Robert McNamara, reviewed earlier here. McNamara indicates that there were 3 times that we came to the brink of thermo nuclear destruction on his watch. Most people barely remember the one public event during the Cuban Missile crises. The median age in the U.S. is now 34. So half of us really have no idea what that very real fear was like.
A little known fact is that in 1983 we almost had a nuclear war, but one man stopped it. He currently lives on a $200 a month pension outside of Moscow. Read about him here. Shouldn't there be a statue or something for this guy. Many of you reading this today may not even be here unless Stanislav Petrov hadn't acted. Read more here. James Bond types in films make millions while the quiet hero's who save the world fade away... 
