Well, duh.
Nuclear war would have been (would be) Hell. Thankfully, it has not happened yet and hopefully it never will.
Would have been hell for the Soviets and Europe but just really bad for the US. Everything I’ve read about a war in the 50’s postulated that maybe a dozen nukes would have hit America. The soviet ICBM force was small until the late 60’s, that’s why Cuba was so important to them. Their bombers would have been the real issue and getting through Canada would have been very hard for them.