It’s a time in history. Missiles are flying, drones are soaring, aircraft carrier groups are deploying, and people are dying. Sensational stuff. It could get more sensational if the itchy finger on the nuclear buttons gets orders to fire. Then there’s no turning back.
How did we get here?
I recently requested a foreign think tank to focus on two scenarios, both plausible. The planet Earth has too many inhabitants: 8.3 billion. Way too many? Best to bring it down to a more manageable four billion.
A nuclear exchange would create a nuclear winter lasting 150 to 200 years. Afterwards, human life could restart with four billion people.
Or a pandemic could unleash a death trap for three or four billion people. COVID was small stuff. More people died defending Stalingrad in the World War II than the COVID death toll.
In my rather boring, uneventful life, I have witnessed one nuclear standoff - the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. But the most serious nuclear crisis happened in 1970–1971, at our (Pakistan’s) very doorstep in the territorial waters of the Bay of Bengal.
Little is known of this event. The citizens of Pakistan have a historic right to know how close this region came to a nuclear exchange in 1970–71.
First, Cuba.
I was a high school student in California when the crisis erupted. It was a 13-day standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union when Soviet nuclear missiles were discovered in Cuba, just 90 miles off mainland USA.
President John F. Kennedy and his cabinet imposed a naval blockade. After tense negotiations, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev agreed to withdraw the missiles in exchange for a US promise not to invade Cuba and to remove American missiles from Turkey.
We students were having a great time. Drills, safety procedures, first aid.
The following slogan was floating around (campus humor): “In case of a red alert, sit down, remove your glasses and sharp objects. Sit on the nearest chair, lower your head between your knees. Now kiss your ass goodbye.”
On 12 November 1970, a cyclone named Bhola battered the then East Pakistan — the most devastating storm of the century. The federal government in Islamabad was blamed for failing to give advance warning and for slow relief efforts afterwards. Very serious allegations were traded.
The elections that followed morphed into an independence struggle for a separate state of Bangladesh. Mishandling by President Yahya Khan and his team led to military intervention in East Pakistan by the Pakistan Army.
At that time, US President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger were closely allied with Islamabad. Events had gone against Pakistan, and finally Nixon ordered the USS Enterprise to deploy to the Bay of Bengal as a show of support for Pakistan.
It was at the time, the largest nuclear-powered aircraft carrier ever constructed and the flagship of the Seventh Fleet. Whenever the United States needed to remind a country that America was indeed a superpower, that’s where the Big E went. A thousand feet long, its hangars could hold 90 aircraft. Its nuclear reactors could power the ship for up to ten years without returning to port. At the helm was Captain Ernest E. Tissot Jr, a hero of the World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. Five thousand sailors kept the vast war machine running.
The Russians, supporting India, were tracking the Enterprise. The Soviet naval commander-in-chief in Moscow immediately ordered two nuclear-armed submarines to deploy in the Bay of Bengal. Rear Admiral Vladimir Kruglyakov was in command. His orders: stop the Enterprise from advancing by any means. Start the World War III if necessary.
December 15, 1971. Admiral Kruglyakov is on high alert. Two Soviet submarines under his command are waiting a few hundred feet below the surface. At the Big E’s current pace, Kruglyakov calculated he would need to launch his torpedoes in sixty minutes.
The Enterprise came into sight and stopped its forward movement.
The Soviet and US forces were at a standoff — more than a dozen ships. The Bay of Bengal had become a live-action nuclear game. The Big E crept forward. Kruglyakov messaged Moscow: “I have targeted and locked onto the Enterprise. The clock is ticking to zero.”
Then Captain Tissot got a message from the US Pacific Commander: Dhaka has fallen. The war is over.
The two commanders breathed a sigh of relief.
The current war scenario
The current war scenario can swing any way — from moderate to devastating. The rich are already fleeing to safe havens. I would recommend two such places. New Zealand: far out in the Pacific. Mostly sheep, cricket, tennis — and rugby. Nobody would waste a nuclear weapon on New Zealand.
The other is the Falkland Islands, also known as the Malvinas. Far, far away. Margaret Thatcher is no longer around to send warships. English-speaking. A safe place, as long as you can still sing “Rule Britannia.”
Or, if you take your survival seriously, shop for bomb shelters. An early market is emerging.
Note: Epstein Island is not safe. It is on the nuke list of many powerful people — destroy the evidence.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2026
The writer is a former Executive Director of the Management Association of Pakistan