I had never considered this and something else about it makes perfect sense to me. It also explains the "white flight" of the time. What we now call the "inner

I had never considered this and something else about it makes perfect sense to me. It also explains the "white flight" of the time. What we now call the "inner city" was allowed to remain black and brown with the expectation that the country would be alright if they were incinerated while the more -valuable- people had been relocated to the suburbs. The Soviets would be able to get their retaliatory body count while eliminating people that the US didn't really value in the first place.