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There's a documentary on Youtube that covers both countries. IIRC, in Russia it affected wide-area pipelines and phone networks - systems nobody wanted to scre
by redis_mlc 5y ago
There's a documentary on Youtube that covers both countries.
IIRC, in Russia it affected wide-area pipelines and phone networks - systems nobody wanted to screw with.
Anyway, the tests scared both sides shitless and I think they stopped unilaterally. They expected a result of X, and instead got 100X or 1,000X.
The article didn't do justice to the severity of what happened.
- toyg 5y agoa lot is made of MAD, but it has to be remembered that both sides' own people (scientists, soldiers, generals) were largely and painfully aware that thermonuclear war would have likely been excessively disastrous, regardless of whether the other side could shoot back. This was already fairly clear after bombing Japan, to people who had the right information, but over the subsequent 20 years it became widely understood. While politicians saber-rattled, their own subordinate hierarchies often recoiled in horror. When even scientists start going "well, we probably shouldn't learn more about that", you know you're on the edge of existence.
- redis_mlc 5y agoMAD is over-rated, since world leaders refuse to rely on it. Reagan initiated SDI ("Star Wars") because he believed in positive defense, not MAD, and Russia has the only ABM ring around Moscow, and won't give it up. Russia has placed Doomsday devices off US coasts. The CCP is currently doubling their nuclear arsenal from 200 to 400+ to counter the US being a vocal superpower. Xi is a clone of Mao, who killed 80 million of his own people.