When Angels Wept: A What-If History of the Cuban Missile Crisis is a 2010 Alternate History novel written by Eric Swedin. It posits a simple question: what if the titular crisis had spun out of control?
In 1961, following the failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion, Fidel Castro feared an invasion by the U.S. was imminent. With the help of his new ally, the Soviet Union, they sneaked into Cuba strategic missiles tipped with nuclear warheads and Soviet troops armed with tactical nuclear weapons. However, an American U-2 spy plane flight would soon find the Soviet missile sites in October 1962, thus sparking the famous missile crisis. For thirteen terrifying days, the world watched nervously as the two superpowers moved toward escalation, holding the world’s fate in their hands. Finally, Nikita Khrushchev blinked. He agreed to withdraw the weapons from Cuba in return for John F. Kennedy’s pledge not to invade the island.
In the novel, the fateful U-2 spy mission is delayed due to poor weather, leaving the Cubans and Soviets more time to build up their missile sites. The result is a far more dire situation, where Kennedy and his generals feel forced to act much swifter and more harshly, leading to a military invasion and, ultimately, a global nuclear exchange, referred to as "The Fire". Written from the perspective of an unnamed American-born Australian historian decades later, it details how these events happened, the aftermath and how the world can hopefully learn from them.
When Angels Wept provides examples of:
- 20 Minutes into the Future: The story is told through a textbook written in 1996.
- The Alliance: A New Commonwealth is established after the Fire, now including the United States, which petitions to join the United Nations in 1975.
- Allohistorical Allusion: The United States remains as the world's sole superpower after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It just came decades earlier and took a nuclear war to occur.
- Apocalypse How: The Fire is a Class 0 for most of the Northern Hemisphere. The worst of the damage is in Russia, where it borders on Class 1: over 134 cities are nuked, the population is shrunken and starving, and their industrial base is utterly demolished.
- Apocalypse Not: As devastating as the Fire is, it doesn't prove to be the end of humanity or even civilization itself. Reconstruction takes place not long afterward, and many nations escape nuclear destruction entirely. Even cities like Chicago, which took several direct hits, are rebuilt and repopulated.
- Balkanize Me: After the Fire, the Soviet Union's member states break away, while Russia itself fractures into Muscovy and the Siberian Federation.
- With the destruction of Beijing during the Fire, China splinters into a handful of warlord states. The Nationalists launch an invasion from Taiwan and reconquer the Fujian Province, but find themselves unable to press further.
- Inverted with South Korea, who manages to conquer the North after it's hit with 35 American bombs.
- Bittersweet Ending: While hundreds of millions died in the Fire and the consequences are still being felt decades later, the Cold War is long over and the world is recovering.
- Bury Your Disabled: There's speculation that people in the former Soviet Union kill children with lower I.Q.'s because they're too much of a burden on their communities.
- Depopulation Bomb: The United States loses 31.5 million- 16.4% of its population- in the two years after the Fire. The Soviet population, meanwhile, drops from 218 million to 74 million- a loss of 66%- within five years. Globally, thanks to additional nuclear strikes, famine, disease, radiation sickness and the resulting nuclear cooling, it's estimated that nearly a billion people died.
- Double-Blind What-If: The story ends with speculation about what would've happened if the U-2 mission had occurred as planned, and given more time for Kennedy's decision-making. The writer muses on whether the crisis could've been averted and maybe shocked the world away from nuclear war, though he remains skeptical of the idea that the Cold War could've ever ended peacefully.To assume such a scenario requires more faith in humanity than I have.
- Nuclear winter, a term coined in our world in 1983, is an obscure concept and only discussed as a theoretical possibility should the arms race have continued and the war come later.
- Epic Fail: A note is made that, out of all the bombs fired at the U.S., only about 10% of them actually reached their targets.
- Fallen States of America: Averted. While badly damaged by the Fire and a second civil war, the United States manages to survive as a political entity and recover, returning to its pre-Fire GDP by 1976 and population by 1984. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, it's now become the world's sole superpower, and has dismantled its remaining nuclear stockpile.
- The Federation: Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland unite as the Scandinavian Federation after the Fire.
- Forbidden Zone: In he post-Fire U.S., exclusion zones have been established in a large portion of North Dakota, Amarillo, Texas; and New York City and Long Island, all of which were sites of groundburst nuclear weapons.
- For Want Of A Nail: Due to bad weather, the U-2 mission that would've revealed the Cuban missile sites is launched a week late, on October 21.
- Foregone Conclusion: It's made clear from the premise alone that nuclear war is going to happen. We can only learn the chain of events that lead up to it.
- Gaia's Lament: The environment takes a serious beating during the Fire. The worst of the damage is actually in the stratosphere, where nitrous oxides in the smoke and debris damage the ozone layer, causing it to degrade by 52% in the Northern Hemisphere and 12% in the Southern. Greater exposure to UV rays cause rates of skin cancer in humans and animals to shoot up a thousand fold, and also makes it difficult for plants to grow. In the decades since, it's shown substantial recovery.
- While the world manages to recover, large areas of North America, Europe and Northern Asia are still too radioactive to be safely habitable for humans. Nature, on the other hand, recovers fairly quickly.
- Giant Wall of Watery Doom: The fate of Pearl Harbor when a Soviet submarine fires a nuclear torpedo at its entrance. This results in a tsunami with fifty-foot waves, not only destroying the harbor facilities but damaging shorelines across the coast for six miles in both directions. The resulting fallout also reaches into Honolulu and kills half the population within two months.
- Historical Fiction: How the story actually starts out, detailing the real history behind everything from Castro's takeover of Cuba to the early days of the Crisis. It's only in October 1962 that the story moves into Alternate History.
- History Repeats: Once Mao and the Chinese Communist Party are wiped out, China enters another Warlord Era.Once again Chiang Kai-shek was only one warlord in a country of many, yet this time he did not have a legitimate claim to central power, other than his own claims, which fell on deaf ears.
- In Spite of a Nail: Lyndon Johnson becomes the 36th president, succeeding the deceased John F. Kennedy.
- Despite a brutal nuclear war and outside pressure from the New Commonwealth, Apartheid in South Africa still comes to an end in 1991.
- Irony: The Soviet Union is destroyed on November 7, 1962, the forty-fifth anniversary of the end of the Bolshevik Revolution.
- Land Down Under: Australia becomes a new global power after the Fire, with Sydney becoming the new home of the United Nations Headquarters and millions of immigrants from the Northern Hemisphere moving in, including the American-born writer.
- Monumental Damage: Inevitably so. During the destruction of Washington, D.C., every building at the National Mall- the White House, the Capitol, the Smithsonian museums, and the presidential monuments- are all obliterated.
- Never Found the Body: Both Kennedy and Khruschev are thought to have died in the destruction of their respective capitals, as their bodies were never recovered.
- Nuclear Mutant: Referenced but ultimately averted. While there exist rumors of children born after the Fire with four legs or psychic powers, there's no evidence for it; fetuses with such severe mutations simply don't survive.
- Nuclear Weapons Taboo: In-universe, understandably. After the Fire, America completely dismantled her remaining arsenal and the United Nations Nuclear Control Commission is on the lookout to ensure no one ever creates another nuclear weapon again.
- Person as Verb: After the Fire, "Kennedy" and "Khruschev" have both become expletives in their own right.
- Poor Communication Kills: Quite literally in many cases, as Khruschev fails to notify the Warsaw Pact members or China that a nuclear war is underway until bombs start dropping on them.
- Rapid Aging: One of the unforeseen consequences of the Fire is a disease known as Accelerated Growth Syndrome (AGS), which causes people to prematurely age, reaching full maturity around age ten, also causing intellectual disability as the brain fails to fully develop. The results are people who are much Younger Than They Look with I.Q.'s around 60-70.
- Reclaimed by Nature: Ten years after the Fire, United Nations commissioned teams are sent to investigate the damage in the former Soviet Union. They find large areas of Europe and Northern Asia, while still radioactive, are teaming with plants and wildlife, including bears, fish, and new species of radiotrophic fungi. The writer gets to visit the ruins of Yekaterinburg and sees it overtaken by greenery, now home to moose and birds.
- Second American Civil War: A brief one occurred a year after the Fire, where a highly reactionary New Confederacy emerged in opposition to the pre-Fire Civil Rights Movement. While the world worries the Neo-Confederates might get their hands on any remaining nukes, they're ultimately crushed within three years.
- Shown Their Work: Swedin himself is a history professor and the story is presented as a legitimate historical textbook, complete with references and cited sources.
- Sliding Scale of Alternate History Plausibility: A hard-as-diamond Type I. Swedin has said his work is closer to actual history than speculative fiction.
- Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: While unflinching in its depictions of the horrors of a nuclear war and its aftermath, the story falls closer to the idealistic end, as the world recovers and humanity works together to ensure nothing like the Fire ever happens again.
- Take That!: The writer mentions how, after the Fire, conspiracy theorists have accused the United States of being the aggressor and attacking the Soviet Union first, even though the evidence says otherwise, and that any attempt to correct them only leads to you getting accused of being part of the conspiracy.There is nothing like a conspiracy theorist to make a professional historian chew on the edge of his or her desk like a beaver driven mad.
- Title Drop: On the eve of the Fire, the writer recalls something his father said.My father had come home to watch the president with my mother. I remember that my parents looked very somber, even sad, and my father said, “the angels are weeping now.” We regularly went to the Presbyterian Church, but I do not remember my father mentioning angels before that—or ever again
- A World Half Full: On the one hand, the world is still scarred by the Fire, hundreds of millions have died, many cities and cultural treasures have been lost, diseases and genetic disorders are rampant and some hostile factions- such as the white minority government of Rhodesia- still cling to power. On the other hand, the Cold War is long over, nuclear winter didn't happen, humanity has survived and managed to recover, and the United Nations is committed to ensuring nuclear war never happens again. The writer muses that humanity is lucky that nuclear war happened in 1962. Had it come after a bit more proliferation, the damage would've been far worse.
- World War III: Natch.
