ABSTRACT
This chapter uses the term "intense crisis" to mark a crisis in which a significant number of people actually envisage that nuclear war may really occur, yet nuclear weapons have not yet been employed. Rungs 10–20 are included in this category of intense crisis. People have, of course, already experienced a large conventional war in Korea, and many in Washington thought at that time that it was the prelude to World War III. Whether or not there is a conventional or barely nuclear war, the crisis could enter a stage of such intensity that nuclear incredulity would not merely be weakened but would vanish. The intense-crisis category brings people into the "neither-war-nor-peace" region so characteristic of discussion. There are many situations that allow "legal" or extralegal local counterforce attacks in peacetime. The chapter suggests that a provocative withdrawal of diplomatic relations would be the nuclear-incredulity threshold.
