# Has anyone ever literally saved the world? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 14, 2009, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-literally-saved-the-world/502950 "2009-07-14T05:03:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2009, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-literally-saved-the-world/502950/21 "2009-07-14T17:13:47Z")
> [@handsomeharry](#): > > I have to wonder if we can really credit JFK for saving the world, since he was the one that precipitated the crisis. Kru had only done what anybody in his position would have done. Kennedy had attacked a sovereign nation, and Kru had only responded with the only option available. The US had missiles installed within 2 miles from USSR territory. When Kru installed his missiles, 90 miles away from the US, Kennedy went, er, ballistic, and the crisis was on. > [@Quercus](#): > > I think that’s a good point. Is it really “saving the world” if the supervillan disables the planetary-death-ray that he designed, built, and pushed the countdown button for? What a truly _ **bizarre** _ interpretation! You place the primary blame on Kennedy for installing those essentially obsolete Jupiter missiles a few miles from Soviet territory? You actually imagine it really _was_ Kennedy who chose to deploy or keep those missiles in Turkey!?! Let’s clear up that nonsensical claim forthwith: [PGM-19 Jupiter Military deployment](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_missile#Military_deployment) > [@PGM-19 Jupiter Military deployment](#): > > - > - > > In **April, 1958** , the U.S. Department of Defense notified the U.S. Air Force it had tentatively planned to deploy the first three Jupiter squadrons (45 missiles) in France. Negotiations between France and the U.S. fell through in June, 1958. Charles De Gaulle, the new French President, refused to accept the basing of any Jupiter MRBM missiles in France. This prompted United States to explore the possibility of deploying the missiles in Italy and **Turkey**. The U. S. Air Force was already implementing plans to base four squadrons (60 missiles) - subsequently to be redefined as twenty RAF Squadrons each with three missiles - of PGM-17 Thor IRBMs in Britain on airfields stretching from Yorkshire to East Anglia. > > In **April 1959** , The Secretary of the Air Force issued implementing instructions to U. S. Air Force to deploy two Jupiter MRBM squadrons to Italy. The two squadrons totaling 30 missiles were deployed at 10 sites in Italy from 1961 to 1963. They were operated by Italian Air Force crews, but U.S. Air Force personnel controlled arming of the nuclear warheads. These missiles were deployed around the Italian countryside and operated by the 36ª Aerobrigata Interdizione Strategica (36th Strategic Interdiction Air Squadron, Italian Air Force), stationed out of the Gioia Del Colle Air Base, Italy. In 1962, a Bulgarian MiG-17 reconnaissance airplane is reported to have crashed into an olive grove near one of the US Jupiter missile launch sites in Italy, after overflying the site. > > **October 1959** , the location of the third and final Jupiter MRBM squadron was settled **when the Government to Government agreement was signed with Turkey. United States and Turkey concluded an agreement to deploy one Jupiter squadron on NATO’s southern flank.** Yet Kennedy did not become President until **January 20, 1961!** I can see no intellectually honest way _at all_ to claim, as you did, that _“… he [Kennedy] was the one that precipitated the crisis…”_ It was the Pentagon who installed the missiles in Turkey; otherwise, they would be violating a vital treaty between Turkey’s government and the Eisenhower administration! And that took place **more than a year _before_ JFK became President** , and so it was Khrushchev, the Politburo, and to a lesser extent Castro who were the proximate as well as the primary causes of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Unless, of course, you can prove that Kennedy traveled backwards in time? ---
**Author:** ![acetylene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@acetylene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/acetylene)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2009, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-literally-saved-the-world/502950/22 "2009-07-14T17:37:19Z")
> [@ambushed](#): > > (3): **Nikita Khrushchev** : He, too, pushed back hard against the Soviet hardliners urging him in that “pleasant” old Soviet way of threatening to purge Khrushchev and make war in his place. **However** , Khrushchev’s contributions towards avoiding a nuclear war went much, much farther. The **key** was his personal (if odd) secret message to JFK of offering a compromise that would allow both nations to end the hostilities while saving face for both. (And how I’d love to read that letter! But I can’t find it.) I found the following [here](http://www.state.gov/www/about_state/history/volume_vi/exchanges.html): > [@Nikita Kruschev](#): > > I therefore make this proposal: We are willing to remove from Cuba the means which you regard as offensive. We are willing to carry this out and to make this pledge in the United Nations. Your representatives will make a declaration to the effect that the United States, for its part, considering the uneasiness and anxiety of the Soviet State, will remove its analogous means from Turkey. Let us reach agreement as to the period of time needed by you and by us to bring this about. And, after that, persons entrusted by the United Nations Security Council could inspect on the spot the fulfillment of the pledges made. Of course, the permission of the Governments of Cuba and Turkey is necessary for the entry into those countries of these representatives and for the inspection of the fulfillment of the pledge made by each side. Of course it would be best if these representatives enjoyed the confidence of the Security Council as well as yours and mine–both the United States and the Soviet Union–and also that of Turkey and Cuba. I do not think it would be difficult to select people who would enjoy the trust and respect of all parties concerned. The link is a very long but quite interesting page containing all of the correspondence between Kruschev and JFK. The above quote is from\*\* Letter 66\*\*. Or were you referring to a more secret letter? ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2009, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-literally-saved-the-world/502950/23 "2009-07-14T21:50:44Z")
> [@acetylene](#): > > > [@ambushed](#): > > > > … (3): **Nikita Khrushchev** : He, too, pushed back hard against the Soviet hardliners urging him in that “pleasant” old Soviet way of threatening to purge Khrushchev and make war in his place. **However** , Khrushchev’s contributions towards avoiding a nuclear war went much, much farther. The **key** was his personal (if odd) secret message to JFK of offering a compromise that would allow both nations to end the hostilities while saving face for both. (And how I’d love to read that letter! But I can’t find it.) > > I found the following [here](http://www.state.gov/www/about_state/history/volume_vi/exchanges.html): > > The link is a very long but quite interesting page containing all of the correspondence between Kruschev and JFK. The above quote is from\*\* Letter 66\*\*. > Or were you referring to a more secret letter? How would _I_ know? That’s what “secret” means! 😃 Seriously, thank you for your fine detective work. The letter I was referring to was considered very odd and rambling by the Kennedy Cabinet for the leader of the Soviet Union. They didn’t know what to make of it; they feared that Khrushchev might be suffering from serious mental problems resulting from all the [del]END OF THE WORLD![/del] … er…, _stress_ of the situation. But thanks to your link, I was able to read several other of the many Khrushchev letters there. One contained some specific sentences that I’d heard the actor Howard Da Silva – who played Khrushchev in the very good teleplay: [The Missiles of October](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071847/) (choosing [Da Silva](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0196247/bio), one of my favorite character actors ever, to play Nikita Khrushchev is drenched with irony and humor, since Da Silva was a victim of despicable [Joseph McCarthy’s](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy) HUAC witch hunt who then blacklisted the actor for his “communist sympathies”!) – read aloud in a voice-over while Kennedy read the letter in the White House. I’d heard it decades ago, but it was so stirring and vivid that I recognized it immediately when I read it at the site you linked to. Those words were: > [@Nikita Khrushchev](#): > > Mr. President, we and you ought not now to pull on the ends of the rope in which you have tied the knot of war, because the more the two of us pull, the tighter that knot will be tied. And a moment may come when that knot will be tied so tight that even he who tied it will not have the strength to untie it, and then it will be necessary to cut that knot, and what that would mean is not for me to explain to you, because you yourself understand perfectly of what terrible forces our countries dispose. That occurs in **Letter 65.** on the page to which you linked (you got amazingly close!) Since there are no anchors on that page for the letter in question, here’s a [direct link to **Letter 65.**](http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/nikita2.htm): Telegram From the Embassy in the Soviet Union to the Department of State, Moscow, October 26, 1962, 7 p.m. **acetylene** , I can’t thank you enough for your excellent detective work and perspicacity in pointing out the path to that amazing historical document! ---
**Author:** ![Philster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/13edae/32.png) [@Philster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Philster)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2009, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-literally-saved-the-world/502950/24 "2009-07-14T22:25:24Z")
I am here to supplement my original post and nomination for those who figured out how to take nitrogen from the air and get it into fertilizer (“fixing” it). Without the solution, billions would starve. Stop with the talk of millions. > **[The World's Greatest Fix](https://books.google.com/books?id=8sCTfc9AVNoC&pg=PA120&lpg=PA120&dq=how%2Bnitrogen%2Bfixing%2Bsaved%2Bthe%2Bworld&source=bl&ots=appjtJ4nJq&sig=v-3Dq_KmXT0ZpX1UR-jalZmIlI0&hl=en&ei=TQVdSreqPIWGNpndsa4C&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4)** > > In the tradition of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, this gives the very early history of how human ingenuity overcame the risk of famine through productive agriculture. Starting with a layman's guide to the chemistry of nitrogen fixation, the... ---
**Author:** ![Gbro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Gbro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gbro)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2009, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-literally-saved-the-world/502950/25 "2009-07-14T23:09:45Z")
> [@The\_Controvert](#): > > There are numerous examples of people saving the world in fiction. Sometimes multiple times before lunch. > > What’s the best example of this in real life? Who can be said to have saved the most human lives? The Bible is loaded with examples of how the world was destroyed and then saved. In looking for the scripture to best fit this I have to post this, 1st Corinthians chapter 3 verse 19. (Fits this secular site) ---
**Author:** ![HorseloverFat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8e8cbc/32.png) [@HorseloverFat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HorseloverFat)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2009, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-literally-saved-the-world/502950/26 "2009-07-14T23:42:01Z")
> [@](#): > > he Bible is loaded with examples of how the world was destroyed and then saved. If we’re allowed to use fiction then Im voting Captain America or perhaps Superman. If the Cap didnt defeat Red Skull then we’d all be speaking German right now! ---
**Author:** ![otorophile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3ab097/32.png) [@otorophile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/otorophile)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2009, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-literally-saved-the-world/502950/27 "2009-07-14T23:46:52Z")
An example like Petrov is [Vasily Arkipov](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Alexandrovich_Arkhipov), who was the lone vote in not firing a nuclear-armed sub during the Cuban missile crisis. ---
**Author:** ![Animastryfe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8797f3/32.png) [@Animastryfe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Animastryfe)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2009, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-literally-saved-the-world/502950/28 "2009-07-14T23:51:14Z")
> [@WarmNPrickly](#): > > [Fritz Haber](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber) > > Ironicly he also is called “the father of chemical warfare”. I suppose the net result is still lives saved. ---
**Author:** ![Cunctator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/43a26b/32.png) [@Cunctator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cunctator)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2009, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-literally-saved-the-world/502950/29 "2009-07-14T23:55:05Z")
Wikipedia estimates that [Howard Florey’s](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Florey) discoveries > [@](#): > > are estimated to have saved over 80 million lives, worldwide. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2009, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-literally-saved-the-world/502950/30 "2009-07-14T23:59:00Z")
> [@Waffle\_Decider](#): > > [Stanislav Petrov](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov) may qualify. He probably prevented a nuclear exchange between the US and USSR in 1983 by correctly identifying a missile attach warning as a false alarm. A missile attach warning, huh? Good thing his e-mail program’s virus protection was up to date. ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2009, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-literally-saved-the-world/502950/31 "2009-07-15T02:21:21Z")
> [@Philster](#): > > I am here to supplement my original post and nomination for those who figured out how to take nitrogen from the air and get it into fertilizer (“fixing” it). > > Without the solution, billions would starve. Stop with the talk of millions. > > [The World's Greatest Fix: A History of Nitrogen and Agriculture - G. J. Leigh - Google Books](http://books.google.com/books?id=8sCTfc9AVNoC&pg=PA120&lpg=PA120&dq=how+nitrogen+fixing+saved+the+world&source=bl&ots=appjtJ4nJq&sig=v-3Dq_KmXT0ZpX1UR-jalZmIlI0&hl=en&ei=TQVdSreqPIWGNpndsa4C&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4) Nah, I don’t think that would cut it. No specific, irreplaceable individual(s) were necessary for humanity to discover, invent or implement that or any number of billions of other ideas, knowledge, solutions, technology, etc. No matter what, all that and most everything else would have been accomplished before too long by some person or group. Often, the time just becomes ripe for a vital discovery. Consider relativity or evolution by natural selection, for example: both Einstein and Darwin were very nearly scooped (if not \*actually \*scooped, especially in the case of relativity). Whereas the Kennedy brothers and Khrushchev (and arguably also McNamara) were utterly and completely \*\*\*irreplaceable \*\*\*in resolving the Cuban Missile Crisis. And thereby saved the _ **world** _, not just humanity. And even though we now know that the “Nuclear Winter” scenario wasn’t nearly as plausibly severe as we once thought, I suspect \*trillions \*of humans, other animals, and plants combined would likely have perished if a full nuclear WW III broke out. Molest me not with your talk of scant _billions_… ---
**Author:** ![WarmNPrickly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d78d45/32.png) [@WarmNPrickly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WarmNPrickly)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2009, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-literally-saved-the-world/502950/32 "2009-07-15T02:27:47Z")
> [@Animastryfe](#): > > I suppose the net result is still lives saved. I wonder if this can really be called lives saved though, since had the Haber Bosch process never been developed, many people simply would not have been born. ---
**Author:** ![BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bcef8e/32.png) [@BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2009, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-literally-saved-the-world/502950/33 "2009-07-15T02:59:34Z")
> [@Waffle\_Decider](#): > > [Stanislav Petrov](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov) may qualify. He probably prevented a nuclear exchange between the US and USSR in 1983 by correctly identifying a missile attach warning as a false alarm. Someone gave a speech about this at my high school. The presenter used a visual (or more accurately auditory) aid likening nuclear bombs to pins, which she dropped into an empty bowl. She said that the two nuclear bombs dropped on Japan during WWII would have sounded like this, and proceeded to drop two pins, making a soft plinking sound. Then she said that if the person manning the station in the USSR at the time hadn’t recognized the warning as a mistake, the nuclear missles launched at America would have sounded like this, and here she picked up another bowl full of pins and poured it into the empty bowl. It’s not a demonstration I’ll soon forget. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2009, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-literally-saved-the-world/502950/34 "2009-07-15T03:33:02Z")
> [@rbroome](#): > > Even more scary, the West had no idea how close we were to war for 30 years. A lot of American families were packed and ready to head for the hills. I’m glad I’m not old enough to remember. ---
**Author:** ![Philster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/13edae/32.png) [@Philster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Philster)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2009, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-literally-saved-the-world/502950/35 "2009-07-15T05:26:43Z")
> [@ambushed](#): > > Nah, I don’t think that would cut it. No specific, irreplaceable individual(s) were necessary for humanity to discover, invent or implement that or any number of billions of other ideas, knowledge, solutions, technology, etc. No matter what, all that and most everything else would have been accomplished before too long by some person or group. Often, the time just becomes ripe for a vital discovery. Consider relativity or evolution by natural selection, for example: both Einstein and Darwin were very nearly scooped (if not \*actually \*scooped, especially in the case of relativity). > > Whereas the Kennedy brothers and Khrushchev (and arguably also McNamara) were utterly and completely \*\*\*irreplaceable \*\*\*in resolving the Cuban Missile Crisis. And thereby saved the _ **world** _, not just humanity. > > And even though we now know that the “Nuclear Winter” scenario wasn’t nearly as plausibly severe as we once thought, I suspect \*trillions \*of humans, other animals, and plants combined would likely have perished if a full nuclear WW III broke out. > > Molest me not with your talk of scant _billions_… So I can save the world be creating a situation that risks the whole world and then figuring a way out of it? ---
**Author:** ![badger197](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8dc957/32.png) [@badger197](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/badger197)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2009, 9:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-literally-saved-the-world/502950/36 "2009-07-15T09:58:38Z")
> [@ambushed](#): > > My answer also relates to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Here’s the people I nominate, in order: > > (1): **Robert McNamara** : As Secretary of Defense, he was the individual who “was most responsible for solving the Cuban Missile Crisis”. He was the first to suggest a Naval blockade within Kennedy’s inner circle. Had he remained CEO or whatever for Ford, we very likely would \*\*not \*\*be here now. > > I think it’s deeply offensive for all those who are thrilled by McNamara’s recent death because of his deep and powerful influence in vigorously pushing the Vietnam War, but if saving the world doesn’t count at _least_ as a mitigating factor against those charges, _ **what would?** _ > > (RFK and JFK nominations snipped) For an alternative view of McNamara’s role during the Cuban Missile Crisis, see: [http://hnn.us/articles/97687.html](http://hnn.us/articles/97687.html) Based on tapes made in the Kennedy White House, this author asserts that: “Unfortunately, as Fred Kaplan has observed, ‘McNamara’s recollection of the Cuban Missile Crisis is a self-serving travesty.’ McNamara told [filmmaker Errol] Morris that he was JFK’s principal ally in ‘trying to keep us out of war.’ In fact, after the first two days of ExComm meetings, McNamara ‘became an increasingly firm advocate of bombing the Soviet missile sites … and of then invading the island of Cuba itself—even if doing so risked sparking a larger war with the USSR.’” And, after an American U2 spy plane was shot down over Cuba by a surface to air missile, McNamara urged: “We oughta go in at dawn and take out that SAM site… And we oughta send a surveillance aircraft in tomorrow in the regular flights early in the morning, and we oughta be prepared to take out more SAM sites and knock out the… aircraft.” Perhaps, McNamara was not such a world-saver in this instance… ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2009, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-literally-saved-the-world/502950/37 "2009-07-15T13:21:45Z")
> [@handsomeharry](#): > > I have to wonder if we can really credit JFK for saving the world, since he was the one that precipitated the crisis. Kru had only done what anybody in his position would have done. Kennedy had attacked a sovereign nation, and Kru had only responded with the only option available. The US had missiles installed within 2 miles from USSR territory. When Kru installed his missiles, 90 miles away from the US, Kennedy went, er, ballistic, and the crisis was on. > [@Quercus](#): > > I think that’s a good point. Is it really “saving the world” if the supervillan disables the planetary-death-ray that he designed, built, and pushed the countdown button for? > [@Philster](#): > > **So I can save the world be creating a situation that risks the whole world and then figuring a way out of it?** I repeat: What a truly _ **bizarre** _ interpretation! You place the primary blame on the Kennedy Administration for installing those essentially obsolete Jupiter missiles a few miles from Soviet territory? You actually imagine it really was the _Kennedy Administration_ who chose to deploy or keep those missiles in Turkey!?! Let’s clear up that nonsensical claim **again** forthwith: [PGM-19 Jupiter Military deployment](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_missile#Military_deployment) > [@PGM-19 Jupiter Military deployment](#): > > In **April, 1958** , the U.S. Department of Defense notified the U.S. Air Force it had tentatively planned to deploy the first three Jupiter squadrons (45 missiles) in France. Negotiations between France and the U.S. fell through in June, 1958. Charles De Gaulle, the new French President, refused to accept the basing of any Jupiter MRBM missiles in France. This prompted United States to explore the possibility of deploying the missiles in Italy and Turkey. The U. S. Air Force was already implementing plans to base four squadrons (60 missiles) - subsequently to be redefined as twenty RAF Squadrons each with three missiles - of PGM-17 Thor IRBMs in Britain on airfields stretching from Yorkshire to East Anglia. > > **In April 1959** , The Secretary of the Air Force issued implementing instructions to U. S. Air Force to deploy two Jupiter MRBM squadrons to Italy. The two squadrons totaling 30 missiles were deployed at 10 sites in Italy from 1961 to 1963. They were operated by Italian Air Force crews, but U.S. Air Force personnel controlled arming of the nuclear warheads. These missiles were deployed around the Italian countryside and operated by the 36ª Aerobrigata Interdizione Strategica (36th Strategic Interdiction Air Squadron, Italian Air Force), stationed out of the Gioia Del Colle Air Base, Italy. In 1962, a Bulgarian MiG-17 reconnaissance airplane is reported to have crashed into an olive grove near one of the US Jupiter missile launch sites in Italy, after overflying the site. > > **October 1959** , the location of the third and final Jupiter MRBM squadron was settled **when the Government to Government agreement was signed with Turkey. United States and Turkey concluded an agreement to deploy one Jupiter squadron on NATO’s southern flank.** Yet Kennedy did not become President until **January 20, 1961!** I can see no intellectually honest way _at all_ to claim, as you did, that they _“… [created] a situation that risks the whole world and then figuring a way out of it?”_ It was the Pentagon who installed the missiles in Turkey; otherwise, they would be violating a vital treaty between Turkey’s government and the Eisenhower administration! And that took place **more than a year _before_ JFK became President!** Unless, of course, you can prove that they traveled backwards in time? Sheesh! ---
**Author:** ![Philster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/13edae/32.png) [@Philster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Philster)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2009, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-literally-saved-the-world/502950/38 "2009-07-15T14:30:23Z")
Get over yourself. You assume way too much. Team Kennedy flat-out stopped the destruction of billions of people? Really? We assume the Soviet Union wanted to provoke us into MAD? This thread might have to wind up in Great Debates, and die there. Team Kennedy: good for them! I love when Dems balls up and act like Republicans. Doesn’t mean billions would have died without them. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2009, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-literally-saved-the-world/502950/39 "2009-07-15T15:13:20Z")
> [@badger197](#): > > For an alternative view of McNamara’s role during the Cuban Missile Crisis, see: [http://hnn.us/articles/97687.html](http://hnn.us/articles/97687.html) > Based on tapes made in the Kennedy White House, this author asserts that: > > “Unfortunately, as Fred Kaplan has observed, ‘McNamara’s recollection of the Cuban Missile Crisis is a self-serving travesty.’ McNamara told [filmmaker Errol] Morris that he was JFK’s principal ally in ‘trying to keep us out of war.’ In fact, after the first two days of ExComm meetings, McNamara ‘became an increasingly firm advocate of bombing the Soviet missile sites … and of then invading the island of Cuba itself—even if doing so risked sparking a larger war with the USSR.’” Your link is pretty solid documentation disproving McNamara’s heroism. I’d like to see **ambushed** respond to it. It leaves JFK looking like the only reasonable person – well, JFK and Khrushchev looking like the only reasonable people – in the whole affair. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2009, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-literally-saved-the-world/502950/40 "2009-07-15T15:18:27Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > It leaves JFK looking like the only reasonable person – well, JFK and Khrushchev looking like the only reasonable people – in the whole affair. Now THATS a scary thought! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-literally-saved-the-world/502950.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-literally-saved-the-world/502950.md?page=3)