Apocalypse Averted – The 1986 Global War Scare

In the West, this was called Road To War. It was what military officers and intelligence figures put a lot of thought into in their war game scenarios. An event would happen and there would come a response to that leading to another action. If a war was ever going to happen between the Soviet Bloc and the West, this was the type of scenario that would set it off. A violent change in Soviet leadership followed by a mobilisation there was one of them. Those ‘games’ didn’t involve an air crash with hints that maybe it might have been the work of the West nor that the Soviets would mobilise openly without hiding it, yet that was the general theme.

Therefore, it was planned for and there was a response.

Generals and spooks briefed their political superiors. The Soviets were mobilising! They were going to send tanks over the Iron Curtain! This was the final act of the drama from the past forty years! This evidence was as clear as day. Soviet radio and television broadcasts explained to the Soviet people the threat to their Motherland and told reservists to report to mobilisation stations. Signals intelligence, communications intercepts and reports from spies showed that what was being done in public really was happening. Throughout the Soviet client states – admittedly with less passion – the leaders of the majority of those countries (not all though) were following Ligachev’s lead.

The Soviet Bloc was getting ready for war. Politicians in the West were told that the only thing to do was for the West to do the same. Preparation for defence against the war the Soviets were about to launch had to begin. That meant everything from being prepared to fight border clashes to a full-scale conventional war to a worldwide nuclear exchange.

Those politicians might not have wanted to believe what they were being told, but everything pointed to that. They met with their co-leaders in other countries and talked among themselves. There was seen to be no other choice but to start to prepare for war. Diplomacy was going to be tried, real efforts were going to be made on that front, but so too were soldiers, ships, aircraft and missiles all be readied to fight as well.



A lot of this played out in the open.

People in the West were aware that Gorbachev had died. There were news reports that Ligachev had taken over; more when there came statements from the Soviet government that ‘the CIA’ had killed Gorbachev. Soviet mobilisation was covered less as governments tried to censor information and put pressure on media organisations, yet that news came out too. Trying to dampen the news had the result in many cases of only bringing wild rumours instead of facts.

Then there were the leaks. These became more pronounced as NATO nations and other countries started the process of getting ready for the war which they did not want but would fight nonetheless because they had no other choice. The reaction that the Third World War was coming was not was expected by the authorities yet, naturally, with hindsight from many years later, it should have been expected.

Open protests broke out. There were already anti-war and anti-nuclear groups: the infrastructure for protest was there. From North America through Western Europe and elsewhere too in what was considered to be the West (parts of the Far East and down into Australia and New Zealand), people were opposed to the idea of war and acted to try to stop that. The intention was that their voice would be heard and there would be no war. Crackdowns started to happen when violence occurred with the protests due to actions that took place outside of the control from organisers though sometimes the authorities cracked down regardless.

The movements grew exponentially after that.



The KGB was out of control with its chairman deposed. Chebrikov was replaced by Kryuchkov and it was the latter who fed to Ligachev the lies that the CIA had killed Gorbachev. He did so for personal gain though it is far from apparent that he was aiming to see a war start or nearly start by what he did. Whether the new KGB chairman had the wit to see what he created is open for debate: he could hardly be asked afterwards by anyone looking into the root causes of the war at any time afterwards.

As politicians made statements, military preparations started and the anti-war movements erupted, the KGB begun doing what was necessary to fight the war that the General Secretary and the chairman said was coming. There were many instances of those at the top not knowing what those in the middle and especially those at the bottom were doing: Kryuchkov struggled to get control of the KGB effectively and at the same time was seen as trying to justify his place beside Ligachev by reporting to him how ready he was making sure that the KGB was to defend the Soviet Union. The left hand often didn’t know what the right hand was doing and even when it did the implications weren’t seen as being as significant.

The KGB would fight to defend the country by striking abroad.

KGB spies were active trying to gain as many secrets as possible to report back on the war that the West was about to launch; they took chances that they wouldn’t normally do and exposed their activities. Other spies were active within the anti-war movement within the West and (foolishly) trying to control that. There were more sent to feed disinformation into the media in the West to try and assuage public opinion to forestall the war as well.

At the same time, further KGB operatives – along with those from fraternal organisations within the Soviet Bloc – were instructed to begin ‘active measures’. The sword & the shield of the Soviet state wouldn’t sit idly by and watch the West do what the Nazis had failed to do.



In the United States, Reagan was in no way eager for a war. The allegations that the CIA had killed Gorbachev and that his country was getting ready for a war against the Soviet Union were false and he made a point of denying them in public and also in private. He urged his intelligence services to tell him why the Soviets were doing what they were with the responses being contradictory. There were those that told him that it was a deliberate move by the Soviets to increase tensions for gain while others said it was all a series of events spiralling out of control. Either way, Reagan wasn’t happy with what he heard. He did not want a war and was determined to stop one happening. A two-fold approach was taken. The United States would react accordingly to military tensions being increased like they were – everything short of an outright mobilisation – and at the same time attempt to engage in meaningful dialogue with the Soviets too.

Prime Minister Thatcher, President Mitterrand and Chancellor Kohl led Western European efforts to do the same as Reagan was doing. The leaders of the leading European NATO nations were likeminded in not wanting a war. Intelligence came to them showing Soviet preparations and they tried to match those while, as the United States, was doing, stopping just short of outright mobilisation. There was talk of August 1914 and no one wanted to see a repeat of that. They faced more domestic pressures than Reagan did though with the anti-war movements in their countries and elsewhere in Western Europe getting bigger and bringing more violence daily. There was the geographic factor too: they were closer to the Soviets than the Americans were.

Nations elsewhere in the world friendly to the West or Western-aligned supported the positions of Washington, London, Paris and Bonn. Through South America, the Middle East, the Far East, Australasia and other places, leaders stood firm in opposition to Soviet war preparations. Israel was among this group of nations, South Africa too. Their presence in what was starting to be unofficially called the Allies caused problems for other governments. As both countries made public statements of support for the position of others that they would all stand together against any Soviet aggression, that inflamed other nations as well as elements of the protesting peace movements.

This could have become a bigger deal than it was yet by this point, as October turned to November, there were more pressing matters to be attended to. The KGB started kidnapping people, setting off bombs and also beginning to assassinate key figures.

NATO mobilisation started on November 4th.

Like the Soviet one which it followed, the mobilisation wasn’t a secret. It was done in the open with announcements made several hours before it started from political leaders that it would begin. Freedom and democracy would be protected. There was clear aggressive intent from the Soviets, people were told, and that would be countered by defensive measures undertaken.

Operation REFORGER began. The United States started flying troops to Western Europe to meet up with pre-positioned equipment stored there at POMCUS sites. Other regular troops at home started getting ready to ship out themselves with their weapons and equipment getting underway to ports of embarkation. The US Air Force and the US Navy was mobilised too. Moreover, the US National Guard was also called out with formations readied for deployments overseas and at home.

Through Western Europe, the same happened. NATO countries mobilised their troops with regulars deploying to wartime locations and reservists turning up at mobilisation stations. There were problems due to some absenteeism and also civil disturbances, but the process was underway. Britain, France, West Germany and the others were all sending men ready to get in-place to fight.

Other nations worldwide mobilised too. Some welcomed US military forces as the Americans set for a global presence though most countries in what were the Allies were relying upon themselves along with neighbours; nations that wanted to stay neutral mobilised as well after seeing they had no choice but to. Millions of men were going off to war all across the globe. It was going to take time, but it had started. What politicians hadn’t wanted as little as their people did, was happening.



NATO mobilisation came alongside Transition to War measures enacted across those countries. Subversives, real and potential, were interned. Restrictions on movements and communications were brought in. The media was censored. Banks wouldn’t allow for the withdrawal of cash and the money markets were closed. Schools weren’t open, public events were cancelled and hospitals were prepared to take large numbers of casualties. Power supplies and other public utility connections came under full state control. Main roads were shut along with the railways, airports and seaports: open only to military use and for support of the coming war effort. Police and other security forces were sent out to enforce partial martial law.

Now, this wasn’t uniform. In some countries, especially the United States, the restrictions were less so than they were in others. The legality was fuzzy too. Britain had existing legislation that was passed by a quick vote and the restrictions were enacted overnight. Yet, afterwards, once the war scare was over and through the following years, what happened would be challenged in the courts and be the subject of fierce public debate. This was mirrored in other countries were what were seen as draconian security measures were brought in to combat a threat that never happened. Had it happened, maybe the later controversy would have been averted, yet no war eventually came and the readiness for that was held up for extreme criticism and recriminations.

Across the United States, some of the security measures brought in across Western Europe were the envy of a few and the scorn of many. Americans had their rights and those wouldn’t be trampled upon. There were transition to war restrictions on civilians yet in comparison to what happened within other NATO nations they were few and didn’t affect many. However, the opposition to what there was within the United States was better organised and also more-effective later in court challenges than was the case in Western Europe.

On both sides of the North Atlantic, through North America and Western Europe, the anti-war and peace movements were cracked down upon by the authorities. That varied from country to country in how it was done along with the effectiveness. The responses to official measures to break up the protests that were seen as harming the preparations for war differed too. Rioting broke out everywhere and there was a lot of civil disobedience. Looting took place and so too did ethnic violence within communities.

A lot of people lost their lives as everyone got ready for war.



That war was something that NATO didn’t want yet hoped that if they had to fight it, it would be a conventional one. Hope was one thing. Reality was another. Nuclear war was a real possibility, maybe even inevitable. Preparations were made for nuclear warfare too.

There was a dispersion of key people and parts of government to underground sites. Nations buried gold & currency reserves, artworks and even key industrial parts. Evacuation centres were set up away from cities… with varying degrees of success in that as so many people flocked to them. Nuclear forces were moved away from peacetime stations and hidden where they could ride out a first strike and take part in retaliation. There were orders sent to nuclear forces to act in certain ways in the event of an exchange so that if their country was destroyed then return shots would be fired no matter what. If countries were going down, they were taking others with them.

The Soviets did the same. They got ready for nuclear war too.

There was a conviction instilled into Ligachev by those advisers of his that because their plans had been discovered and there was to be no ground war to invade Eastern Europe, they would fight a conventional one instead. When the news came to him that maybe the Soviet Armed Forces weren’t in the best shape to fight a non-nuclear war, but were ready to fight one with weapons of mass destruction, then he issued new orders that when the fighting started it would begin with nuclear weapons.



Everyone was ready to fight World War Three. Armies, air forces, navies and missile forces were all standing by. All they needed was orders to strike. Commanders held men on tight leashes, held back themselves by their political masters. There were those on both sides who urged for a pre-emptive strike, but the politicians were waiting for the other side to make the first move. The power blocs, which had dragged in so many others into the stand-off, feared the consequences though.

There were signs that each was waiting for too, signs that would show that war was about to truly begin. Those didn’t occur.

KGB activities with their Grey Terror had happened, but true Spetsnaz activities hadn’t begun across the West. Soviet commandos were not active hitting military targets in the rear opening the way for the rest of the Soviet military. There was no Soviet submarine deployment out into the North Atlantic and the North Pacific either. NATO surveillance activity along the Iron Curtain couldn’t detect signs of last-minute preparations for an invasion coming westwards.

The Soviets were waiting for the US Navy to push their carriers up towards their coastlines and also strategic missile submarines under the Arctic ice. They were watching from afar NATO troop movements and didn’t see them either ready to strike into East Germany. Neither were those same troops getting ready to suddenly disperse to avoid being caught in a nuclear strike that they planned to unleash on them: what NATO learnt post-crisis was that the Soviets regarded that as a sign of hostile intentions, because when that was done it would mean NATO was about to fight a nuclear war.

The start of the war was on hold. Both sides were waiting for the other to strike the first blow and wouldn’t do so themselves first.

Good story and sounds like the collapse of the Soviet empire is going to be bloodier and messier than OTL, in the west to a degree as well. On the good side it might make it more efficient in avoiding the OTL mess in the 1990's and then the lurch back into dictatorship under someone like Putin. Also hopefully avoiding the triumphalism that marred elements of the west, especially on the right, which could be a factor in a better environment in both east and west by now.

Wow.

What a STORY! I was a teenager back then (15 years old) when this story took place. I can only imagine that my parents and I would have probably prepared for the worst and hope the missiles didn't start flying. In retrospect, we've come so close to nuclear war with the Soviets so many times and there were times we didn't even know it until many years later after the fact.