The fall of 1962 was a remarkable part of the history of the United States and the world, too. As Soviet general and Army Chief of Operations Anatoly Gribkov said: “Nuclear catastrophe was hanging by a thread ... and we weren't counting days or hours, but minutes.”1 The fate of the world was in the hand of the two greatest nations of the time, considering size, influence and power, namely the United States and the Soviet Union. The eagerness of both superpowers for world dominance has almost cost the world the loss of much of its population due to a very close threat of total nuclear warfare, which was fortunately avoided thanks to the recognition of the leaders of the respective nations of the potential outcome of continuing the fight for their ‘just’ cause. As such big decisions are always made by a few selected people, we have to put them and the circumstances under microscope in order to understand the events that guided them in their actions and the weight on their shoulders that made their choices uneasy.