4 ms·
M.A.D. only works if all of those involved are rational actors with high levels of control and clear geographic definitions. If every country had nukes then yo
by ktizo 15y ago
M.A.D. only works if all of those involved are rational actors with high levels of control and clear geographic definitions.
If every country had nukes then you only need one country to have a civil war and things could get rather messy.
Imagine what would happen in the US, for example, if Washington went bankrupt. Something like that could lead to civil war, which raises the thought of what a nuclear civil war might look like, could you have an independent theologically-apocalyptic nuclear armed Texas spitting bible verses and megaton warheads at any heathens, for instance?
- excuse-me 15y agoAlthough interestingly it works best if the other side believes you are an insane fundamentalist psychopath. So the US assumed that Russians, being Godless commie atheists were itching to nuke the good old USA if they could. Rather than their generals being a generation that had fought in the ruins of Stalingrad and didn't want to see that happen again. Fortunately the Russians assumed that US were a bunch of bible-thumping God bothering spoiled children who would nuke them rather than have to face the horrors of fighting a Stalingrad type battle. So everything worked out ok! There is still a debate in the global-thermonuclear-war business about whether Curtis LeMay actually was the insane trigger-happy character from Dr Strangelove he appeared - or if that was a deliberate image projected to convince the Russians that the USA was crazy enough to use the bomb.