by Mac Slavo, SHTF Plan:

This article was originally published by Patrick Barron at The Mises Institute. 

The Soviet Empire started to crumble around 1989. The time period between the forming of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the late 1940s and the retreat of Russia from Eastern Europe with the eventual collapse of communism in Russia is known as the Cold War. There was a great power confrontation in Europe that did not result in war.