"Later, Robert McNamara would reveal something of his state of mind on October 27, “the Saturday before the Sunday in which Khrushchev announced withdrawal of the missiles … and a U-2 was shot down … I remember leaving the White House at the end of that Saturday. It was a beautiful fall day. And thinking that might well be the last sunset I saw. You couldn’t tell what was going to follow.” Could I have been that far off in my own belief that nuclear war was extremely unlikely? Could they have been right? The answer to both is yes—though for different reasons than most of them supposed. The fact is that on Saturday, October 27, 1962, a chain of events was in motion that might have come close to ending civilization. How close? A handbreadth. That is despite the fact, as I have come to believe, that both leaders, Khrushchev and Kennedy, were determined to avoid armed conflict—that both, in fact, were prepared to settle on the other’s terms, if necessary, rather than go to war. And yet they each hoped, by threatening war, to achieve a better bargain. For the sake of a better deal they both were willing to postpone by hours or days the settlement that each was willing to make. And meanwhile, during those hours, their subordinates (unaware that they were supporting a pure bluff in a game of bargaining) were taking military actions that could unleash an unstoppable train of events, ultimately pulling the trigger on a Doomsday Machine."