Without wanting to do any speculation how the current situation will ever end, but I always assumed that the first stage of nuclear escalation would be weapons

Without wanting to do any speculation how the current situation will ever end, but I always assumed that the first stage of nuclear escalation would be weapons tests - to exactly call this kind of bluff of the other side and to signal that the own side would be actually capable of performing a nuclear strike. From what I know this was also what happened in the cold war - the nuclear threat back then was a lot more "palpable" than it is now, possibly because both blocks were already constantly launching nukes - they just weren't launching nukes at each other: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_nuclear_weapons_stockpiles_and_nuclear_tests_by_country https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_nuclear_weapons_s...