The Writers' Circle

It seems that wherever you go nowadays you're tripping over a comic book hero. Only the other day I went down to the supermarket to buy a new washing up bowl, and had to fight my way through spidermen and wonder-women all busy loading their baskets with fish slices and fondue sets in order to secure my purchase. Even the girl on the check-out had a badge which read: Super-market cashier!
That's not to say that I am against these people. Where would we be if whenever we couldn't find our car keys we were unable to call up Super lost car key man, or worse still pass adolescence without having Cat-woman as a fantasy figure. It's just that there are so many of them! And contrary to popular perception not one of them has actually managed to save the world. In fact the only person who has saved mankind from destruction was not a superhero at all. He was a rather grubby, dishonest clerk who worked in an insurance office. His name was Barry Duff, and until now his story has never been told.

It all happened during the Cuban missile crises of 1962. Most of the history books will have you believe that what happened was that the Soviet Union transported some very large fireworks to the Island of Cuba and pointed them at the United States. The Americans who were not used to people pointing weapons at them (collectively at least) became somewhat upset about this and President Kennedy had a row with President Khrushchev.
Kennedy won the argument, and the Soviets took all of their missiles back to Russia and pointed them at Germany instead. This of course is absolute rubbish.

What really happened was that since the end of the second world war and with the advent of the atomic bomb, both America and the Soviet Union had been building up considerable stocks of nuclear weapons. They both also had large armed forces and no-one to go to war against, and there is no point giving generals new weapons to play with and then not allowing them to use them. It's a bit like giving an eight year old child the toy of their dreams for Christmas, but not letting them take it out of the box. Tantrums and sulkiness tend to follow. With no wars to fight, generals start getting irritable. At best this means that they spend a lot of time moaning about their pension schemes, and at worst it means a military coup. Neither option being particularly desirable. Therefore the two great super-powers decided that a small limited nuclear war between themselves would be a good way to allow the generals to let off steam.
The beauty of it all was that the use of nuclear weapons meant that it could all be over and done with in a day. Not only that, but all of the hardware had already been bought and paid for, so it could be done on the cheap, and by tea-time all of the surviving members of the military would get lots of medals. America could then get on with building ridiculously large cars and Russia could get on with bringing in the turnip harvest.
But where to stage it? As there was an element of danger involved, and the best defence against being flash-fried by a nuclear weapon is to be as far away from it as possible when it explodes, it needed to be a long way away from both Washington and Moscow. It also had to be kept away from Western Europe in case one of the European states - none of whom were in on the party - foolishly decided to join in, which would mean the triggering of a world war, something that everyone was trying to avoid.
They toyed with the idea of lobbing boxes of instant sunshine at each other across the Baring Strait, but the proximity of Canada ruled it out. Eventually a breakthrough came when Fidel Castro the communist dictator of Cuba said that they could use his place. This would be ideal. The Russians could fire their missiles at Florida (Long way from Washington) and blow apart a large area of mosquito infested swampland, and the Americans could wipe out Cuba (Long way from Moscow). It also had the added bonus of incinerating a five and a half foot high irritating mouse that spent its time annoying visitors to a theme park in Orlando.

Now you may ask why Fidel Castro would have been so stupid as to allow his homeland to be obliterated by someone whom he was not at war with. Admittedly, he and Khrushchev were very pally, but friendship does not usually extend to the point that one allows one's best mate to instigate the destruction of all of your possessions. Castro however was not worried, indeed he was quite looking forward to seeing his homeland sink into the waters of the Caribbean because he was fully insured, and when the radio-active dust had settled he could buy a bigger and better island with the insurance pay-out.

All really big things - ships, jumbo jets, sky-scrapers, nation states etc are insured with Lloyd's of London, and as Castro had already had a red letter from Lloyd's telling him that his insurance was overdue, he sent the Cuban ambassador in London around to pay the bill.
The ambassador duly walked down to Lloyd's offices, where he handed over a large bag of cash to settle the account.
All would have been well except that the person he handed the money over to was our hero- Barry Duff, who in emulation of the fiscal policy of the Cuban leader had also not paid one of his bills; In Barry's case it was three pounds ten shillings and sixpence that was owed to the London Gas Board. Barry was concerned that if his gas was cut off, he would not be able to heat any water in his flat, and so to ease matters, instead of handing Castro's money straight away to the cashier's office he paid the gas bill with some of it, hid the rest, and planned to pay it in, together with the shortfall when he received his pay-check at the end of the month.
During the next fortnight America and Russia got ready to launch their missiles, and were only 48 hours away from controlled Armageddon when Fidel Castro received a letter from Lloyd's informing him that his insurance was now out of date, and therefore invalid. As a result of this letter, Castro whom the day before had been egging Khrushchev on to destroy the imperialist dogs to the north, now informed his political soul-mate that the war was off, and he would have to take all of his missiles back. He also mentioned in passing that as there were a lot more Cubans in Cuba than Russians, if he didn't take them back then Castro would take them himself.
Dictators can be very fickle at times.

Khrushchev, seething with rage had little choice but to comply.
The Americans were a bit disappointed as well, and tried to put a gloss on it by giving out the well known story of Kennedy winning the argument with Khrushchev.

In many ways it was as well that the mutually agreed nuclear strike did not take place, as both great powers had overlooked the interest that the smaller nations were taking in the developments. The U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R were not the only people who had bored generals and nuclear weapons, and once the shooting had started both Britain and France were hoping to loose the odd one off when everyone else was looking the other way. The conflict would have escalated, and much of civilisation would had been wiped out.

In the years that followed, inter-continental ballistic missiles were produced which meant that all the major players could hit each other from launch sites within their own borders thus insuring that no individual was likely to start a nuclear war as they would be unlikely to be around when the victory parades were taking place at the end of it.
The nuclear powers were therefore forced to enter conventional foreign wars as ways of keeping their generals occupied.

The World which had held it's breath during the course of the Cuban missile crises could now breath easily once more.
Unfortunately, we still have the mouse.