In what senses was the world a dangerous place in the 1960s and 1970s? One reason was war. There was the Cold War, which was an ongoing political rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies that developed after World War II. The Cold War also helped influence the Vietnam War, which was a “conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam”, according to Wikipedia. There was also the assassination of J. F. Kennedy which caused an uproar in the U. S. After the vice president took over, president Johnson, he implicated what was known as the Welfare State. Even though this decade was a very stressful time for the west, it was not overall dangerous.