How quickly could the "quarantine" on the cuban have turned into ww3?

The Soviet Union was bringing missiles to Cuba which America wanted to stop because Cuba is very close to Florida. America put a lot of ships around Cuba to stop the Soviet Union from bringing them the missiles. The Soviet and American ships met and had a standoff. If one of them would have fired, it would have started a war. To avoid this, the Soviet Union agreed to remove the missiles from Cuba if the United States removed their missiles from Europe. During this time the military was at the highest level of defcom as possible. It has never been as alert since then. The highest it has been since then was on 9/11.

The Soviet Union was bringing missiles to Cuba which America wanted to stop because Cuba is very close to Florida. America put a lot of ships around Cuba to stop the Soviet Union from bringing them the missiles. The Soviet and American ships met and had a standoff. If one of them would have fired, it would have started a war. To avoid this, the Soviet Union agreed to remove the missiles from Cuba if the United States removed their missiles from Europe. During this time the military was at the highest level of defcom as possible. It has never been as alert since then. The highest it has been since then was on 9/11