Portrayed by the author as taciturn and evangelical, Lt Com. Karlsven, a farm boy who joined the Navy, went on to become a teacher and pastor working with children. The rear admiral, identity unknown to the readers, commanded four months prior to the Cuban missile blockade, the height of the cold war, and a time when the nation's military credibly believed nuclear war was imminent. Kirby's beautifully written accounting of his own internal struggles with identity, faith and authority is a delight to read for its prose. But, still arrogant as he thought he only once was, the author finds fault with everything except himself. Karlsven deserves better than Kirby's depiction ( http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/47643008/ )
That's the best part of the article to me. He had the ethics to ask for a discharge. He said he was close to detonating the heads.
Rationally speaking, if he had detonated a head and thus blown the warehouse (and possibly a part of New Mexico?), he might had weakened the US nuclear inventory and caused the domination of the USSR.
This was the early sixties. The US outclassed the USSR in nuclear arms by literally an order of magnitude. The US had tens of thousands, with thousands of those immediately ready to be delivered, while the USSR had thousands, with hundreds immediately ready.
For example, at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the US had about 170 ICBMs, 100 submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and 450 shorter-range ballistic missiles based close enough to reach the Soviet Union. The USSR had 20-40 ICBMs and no SLBMs, and of course the whole deal with the Crisis was their attempt to base short-range missiles close enough to reach the US, so they just had those few. The USSR had 160 long-range nuclear bombers, while the US had well over 1,000. This doesn't even include the British and French forces, both of which were fairly substantial. (The British V bomber force outnumbered the Soviet strategic bombers all by themselves, and was in position to strike quickly.)
One guy blowing up one weapon in one stockpile wouldn't have altered this significantly.
