There must also have been accidents that were never reported because individuals did not want to admit error, or wanted to keep up the good reputation of their military unit. My calculation depends upon the pure guess that the average risk may have been 1 in 100, and upon the probable under-estimate of only twenty events on each side. Some of those events must have been worse, particularly the computer tape debacle. Suppose that some of them were as bad as a 1 in 10 risk of disaster. My conclusion is that, although most of the time great prudence was exercised by military commanders at all operational levels, the risks of the Cold War were by no means justified.
Nuclear deterrence is far too dangerous, and has to be abandoned.
During the Cold War we ought to have been more scared than we were. The danger has not gone away. The Russians still have something like half of the original Soviet arsenal of ballistic missiles, with nuclear warheads in place. Similarly, in U.S.A. about half the maximum arsenal is still deployed. On both sides the alert status is not much lower than it was during the Cold War.