Limited nuclear war was the defacto outlook for the entire Cold War. Russia thought it's "tactical nukes" could be used on European & NATO forces without drawing the ICBM arsenals of UK, France & USA. So they planned on using them, along with chemicals too.
The two Japanese cities were rebuilt just as easily as the rest which were destroyed with ordinary bombs of firebombs. They were really small nukes of course.
MAD is based on the USA and USSR lobbing ALL their ICBMs all at once. "Use em or lose em" was the way it was back then. It would have been ugly losing hundreds of cities all at once, the entire world would feel it.
Irony Alert! Peaceniks protested the cruise missile back in the day, claiming it would make war even more dangerous. In fact it is a "second strike" weapon, like ICBMs on submarines: it would easily survive the lobbing of all the ICBMs and be ready for a "second strike" at whatever the first wave missed. That made MAD even better! Preventing war because each side knew it couldn't win with a surprise attack.
Limited nuclear war was the defacto outlook for the entire Cold War. Russia thought it's "tactical nukes" could be used on European & NATO forces without drawing the ICBM arsenals of UK, France & USA. So they planned on using them, along with chemicals too.
The two Japanese cities were rebuilt just as easily as the rest which were destroyed with ordinary bombs of firebombs. They were really small nukes of course.
MAD is based on the USA and USSR lobbing ALL their ICBMs all at once. "Use em or lose em" was the way it was back then. It would have been ugly losing hundreds of cities all at once, the entire world would feel it.
Irony Alert! Peaceniks protested the cruise missile back in the day, claiming it would make war even more dangerous. In fact it is a "second strike" weapon, like ICBMs on submarines: it would easily survive the lobbing of all the ICBMs and be ready for a "second strike" at whatever the first wave missed. That made MAD even better! Preventing war because each side knew it couldn't win with a surprise attack.