Actually, part of what made the Cuban Missile Crisis so dangerous was the lack of communications, a direct line between the Kremlin and D.C. didn't exist yet, so any messages between them took hours at the minimum, that's not even mentioning the Soviet submarine that thought it was being depth charged and hadn't heard anything from Russia in days due to radio silence being enacted, so the two officers required to launch a nuclear warhead voted to launch a nuclear torpedo at a US fleet, but by sheer stroke of luck the submarine in question had the submarine's fleet chief of staff on board, so it needed his approval as well, which he obviously said no to.