What if...

I'm a bit shaken at the moment by a thought that occurred to me last night. I was reading a piece about the "Adlai Stevenson Photos" of Cuba - when the then Sec of State pulled out the A2 photos of the soviet missiles, but what got me thinking was how close the United States and USSR came to engaging in nuclear war.

Now regardless of whether Kim Jong-Il and (much less likely) Saddam has nuclear weapons, a lot of others do - including Russia, China, India, and Pakistan. How close could these countries get to using these things? Everyone writes this stuff off, but the Kashmir situation last year was pretty scary.