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On June 12, 1982, perhaps three quarters of a million people gathered in New York’s Central Park, demanding a different kind of freeze — a worldwide halt to the production of nuclear weapons. The New York Times called it “the largest political demonstration in American history.” The Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign gained the support of mainstream groups like the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National Council of Churches, and the Roman Catholic Church. Unlike the European antinuclear movement, it called upon both the United States and the Soviet Union to disarm. But the campaign threatened the Reagan administration’s strategic modernization plans, and opponents of the freeze claimed that it was being orchestrated by “KGB leaders” and “Marxist leaning 60’s leftovers.” By the end of 1982, about 70 percent of the American people supported a nuclear freeze. And more than half worried that Reagan might involve the United States in a nuclear war.

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Nineteen eighty-three proved to be one of the most dangerous years of the Cold War. The new leader of the Soviet Union, Yuri Andropov, was old, paranoid, physically ill, and staunchly anti-American. A former head of the KGB, Andropov had for many years played a leading role in the suppression of dissent throughout the Soviet bloc. The election of Ronald Reagan persuaded him that the United States might seek to launch a first strike. The KGB began an intensive, worldwide effort to detect American preparations for a surprise attack, code-named Operation RYAN. Andropov’s concerns were heightened by the Reagan administration’s top secret psychological warfare program, designed to spook and confuse the Kremlin. American naval exercises were staged without warning near important military bases along the Soviet coastline; SAC bombers entered Soviet airspace and then left it, testing the air defenses. The Soviet Union played its own version of the game, keeping half a dozen ballistic-missile submarines off the coast of the United States.

On March 8, 1983, at the annual convention of the National Association of Evangelicals, President Reagan called the Soviet Union “the focus of evil in the modern world… an evil empire.” Two weeks later, Reagan announced his Strategic Defense Initiative, soon known as Star Wars, a long-range plan to defend the United States by shooting down enemy missiles from outer space. The technology necessary for such a system did not yet exist — and Reagan acknowledged that it might not exist for another ten or twenty years. But Star Wars deepened the Kremlin’s fears of a first strike. An American missile defense system was unlikely to be effective against an all-out Soviet attack. It might, however, prove useful in destroying any Soviet missiles that survived an American first strike. Andropov strongly criticized the plan and warned that it would start a new arms race. “Engaging in this is not just irresponsible,” Andropov said. “It is insane.”

The Pershing II missiles were supposed to arrive in West Germany at the end of November, and anxieties about nuclear war increased throughout Europe as the date approached. On the evening of September 1, Soviet fighter planes shot down a civilian airliner, Korean Airlines Flight 007, killing all 269 of its passengers. The Boeing 747 had accidentally strayed into Soviet airspace, not far from a missile test site, and the airliner was mistaken for an American reconnaissance plane. The Kremlin denied that it had anything to do with the tragedy — until the United States released audio recordings of Soviet pilots being ordered to shoot down the plane. President Reagan called the attack “an act of barbarism” and a “crime against humanity [that] must never be forgotten.”

A few weeks later alarms went off in an air defense bunker south of Moscow. A Soviet early-warning satellite had detected five Minuteman missiles approaching from the United States. The commanding officer on duty, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, tried to make sense of the warning. An American first strike would surely involve more than five missiles — but perhaps this was merely the first wave. The Soviet general staff was alerted, and it was Petrov’s job to advise them whether the missile attack was real. Any retaliation would have to be ordered soon. Petrov decided it was a false alarm. An investigation later found that the missile launches spotted by the Soviet satellite were actually rays of sunlight reflected off clouds.