"Okay, well, this was back when nuclear weapons were a new thing, and the only reason the United States and Russia weren't at war was because no one trusted anyone else not to use them, so everyone was terrified that someone was going to start firing nuclear missiles and then everyone was going to start firing nuclear missiles. So, naturally, people started posturing about how good their nuclear missiles were and how they could totally hit the other guy with them so the other guy knew not to mess with them. And this is part of Earth Standard History, apparently, but in my world much of the really stupid stuff was because of the machinations of this one guy who wanted nuclear winter, and the grand finale was going to be at Cuba, but my father and his best friend who is also my best friend's father and a bunch of their other friends stopped him."