What Was the Reaction to the USSR Crisis?

I don't know just how nervous the Soviet populace became. We don't have public opinion polling carried out during this crisis. The American population was mighty scared. I heard later from American diplomats in Moscow that they suddenly began receiving telephone calls from their Soviet counterparts who had never called them before. But it was more of a pachonkin village gas mask show, so to speak. A Soviet diplomat in the corridor of the foreign ministry wearing a World War II gas mask. If you push us too far, we will go nuclear.