You assume that you're not retaliated against. This is the essence of MAD, a kind of bizarre gentleman's agreement. The general opinion was that as soon as the

You assume that you're not retaliated against. This is the essence of MAD, a kind of bizarre gentleman's agreement. The general opinion was that as soon as the nukes start flying, you can pretty much assume that your country is going to get decimated as well. When you nuke someone, there's a good chance they'll do exactly the same to you. Both sides planned for automatic counter strikes even in the event that the command chain was broken, though whether the capability was actually there is uncertain. Not to mention that you will probably have allies. There is a good chance that if Russia had bombed the US, most of NATO would have turned on Russia. The Cold War wasn't exactly peacetime, but it wasn't open war either. An act of such extreme aggression as a nuclear strike would have had far-reaching consequences. You wouldn't have been able to sit on your hands, waiting for the person you bombed to set up the field hospitals before bombing them again. On the other hand if you'd just nuked a superpower, you'd have started a world war. Odds are you're going to go back and bomb them some more anyway, and they're going to try and bomb you back. It's true though, these reports tend to assume that a nuclear strike is the end of the conflict rather than the start of a protracted war. Although maybe they tend to focus on the civilian side and assume that the military is going to be off doing its thing.