Cold War Armageddon

For four decades, two global superpowers face off, threatening to annihilate one another with the push of a button. It is an arms race, a propaganda battle and, at times, a deadly game. It is the Cold War.

As the propaganda war and the arms race rage on, the 1950s becomes the decade of paranoia. The stalemate between democracy and communism reaches a fever pitch as the world descends further in chaos.

The bitter rivalry between capitalism and communism rages from Berlin to Havana and all the way to outer space. The Russians seal themselves behind an Iron Curtain -- a move that spawns revolutions across East Europe and beyond.

In the '60s, the USSR places nuclear warheads in Cuba, the first US troops arrive in Vietnam and the world witnesses one giant leap for mankind. The game is Nuclear Poker, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.

By the mid-1970s, the Cold War has remained a fact of life for decades. 30 years into the war, however, the doctrine of mutually assured destruction doesn't feel like a roadmap to peace.

By the end of the '70s, war between East and West has been raging for decades. Countless proxy wars have proven how destructive this so-called Cold War can be.

In the early 1980s, the next battlefield in the struggle between communism and democracy emerges, and it's in the United States' own backyard.

In 1989, the USSR pulls out of Afghanistan, and the last remaining proxy conflict of the Cold War ends. A peaceful transition is what the watching world prays for, but it is by no means a sure thing.