can turn into a crippling agony. Here we clash in the privacy of the black, empty ocean with no audience, but our conscience; both parties want to keep it that way because the stakes are such that no compromise is possible. If you doubt me, then ask yourself what the United States has left if its DEW and NORAD systems are cracked?" Finlander further underlines the stakes when he says: "We're not here making faces at the Commies over a wall. We're not here in a base area indoctrinating simple-minded peasants into the complex savagery of modern guerrilla tactics; we're not sitting in an air conditioned blockhouse in Florida trying to shoot a bigger hole in the Moon, weather permitting. Here we hunt the Russians. Here we have our enemy and more than accepting his challenge, go after him without any inhibitions of containment policies or technical inferiorities". Maloney argued that the level of technical detail in the novel, together with its picture of American naval officers on a destroyer who must obsess over the location of Soviet submarines for every single minute of their patrol, is the most authentic picture of the Cold War at sea ever portrayed. Likewise, Finlander's final rant after the Bedford sinks the Soviet submarine reflects the frustration that many American naval officers felt with the Cold War, as he says: "The Cold War! How can governments expect their military to guide their actions by such a blatantly sordid euphemism? Is there really such a thing possible as a half-war? Can one half-fight with deadly weapons? Did those Russian submariners half-threaten us? Are they now only half-dead down there? Should I have only half-feared them when the crews of so many American ships and planes are totally dead as a result of Russian actions? Does it not all naturally culminate in the totality of death and destruction?...Look and see what the Cold War really is. The same as any war. Death". When Finlander tries to justify sinking the sub by saying that "war is hell", Commodore Schrepke replies: "a nuclear hell, Erik?", warning that his actions will set off a third World War that will be the end of humanity. Maloney has argued that both the book and film versions of The Bedford Incident were inspired by two actual incidents: the "hold-downs" (forced surfacing) of four Soviet submarines during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962,