4 ms·

I'm not sure if I agree on the superpowers being as restrained as they were. The US and the USSR had over 70,000 nuclear warheads in the 80's... If they showed

• mikeash 12y ago
  That's what I mean by restraint. They built up a vast arsenal, but never used it. Imagine the alternate version of something like the Korean War in a world where WWII ended without the use of nuclear weapons. Are the Americans going to refrain from using nuclear weapons on their enemies when the going gets tough in that scenario? My money is on "no", and I'd also wager that the nuclear bombing campaign would last a lot longer, since it would be initiated against countries with a much greater capacity to fight. For example, Mao really didn't seem to care about the potential devastation of nuclear war: "Let us imagine how many people would die if war breaks out. There are 2.7 billion people in the world, and a third could be lost. If it is a little higher it could be half ... I say that if the worst came to the worst and one-half dies, there will still be one-half left, but imperialism would be razed to the ground and the whole world would become socialist. After a few years there would be 2.7 billion people again."