Oh, there's absolutely at least one or two fringe movement where a tiny human error could have led to a nuclear catastrophe. The only potential threat of nuclear war was from incompetence, not the Soviet leadership. I'll give you that.

But this isn't the narrative people were/are still being fed. The story: The Soviet Union is evil. They want to spread communism. They have nuclear weapons and might use them at any moment. The government made the average American think this and that fear made Cold War policy easier. So if you questioned it, you were often called a communist, even by centrists.

There's no excuse to sell false narratives anymore. Look at how people turned on Iraq. We aren't going to spread the Bush government's "WMD" narrative to our kids so why should older people?