The destruction of the world that nuclear detonation would cause prevented the United States and the Soviet Union from fighting each other directly. The cuban middle crisis started In October 1962, an American U-2 spy plane secretly photographed nuclear missile sites being built by the Soviet Union on the island of Cuba. The Cuban missile crisis was a major confrontation in 1962 that brought the United States and the Soviet Union close to war over the presence of Soviet nuclear-armed ballistic missiles in Cuba. The next morning, October 28, Khrushchev issued a public statement that Soviet missiles would be dismantled and removed from Cuba. The crisis was over but the naval quarantine continued until the Soviets agreed to remove their IL–28 bombers from Cuba and, on November 20, 1962, the United States ended its quarantine. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union engaged in a tense, 13-day political and military standoff in October 1962 over the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba, just 90 miles from U.S. shores. Although Kennedy had the option of launching air strikes against the missile construction sites, he decided to come into terms with Khrushchev that would see the Soviets remove the missiles in exchange that the U.S. would not invade the Island. Unmistakably, the U.S. won by giving in to Khrushchev's demands. If either of them launched the nuclear bombs, the whole world could have seen massive damage and destruction or the world could’ve ended