M.A.D.: Mutual Assured Destruction (Modern Plays)

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Steelhooves: In a world where not everyone is sane, it is the height of insanity to believe you could create a weapon so devastating, so horrible, that no one would dare use it. And when one country gets [nukes], all its neighbours want them,” Ryan says. “It’s why Japan, Australia and others are so keen to keep America in our region. If we don’t have America, potentially some countries will go nuclear, which would mean a breakout of nuclear weapons across Asia, and no one wants that.” Later that same year, the Soviets were spooked by variations to a routine NATO exercise that made it seem more realistic. The drill, called Able Archer, convinced the Soviets that the West was about to launch a pre-emptive strike against them. Only decades later, when Soviet archives were opened, did the West learn how close Russia came to starting a war based on the sig

The Cold War ended in 1991 following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall. But years earlier, in 1987, the United States and the Soviet Union had signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) to limit the scope and reach of all types of missiles.

The prisoner’s dilemma is a classic philosophical thought experiment that shows why acting in one’s own self-interest often results in worse consequences than working together with others. It provides evidence that mutually assured destruction should be considered when making decisions, as it can benefit both competing parties. A detonation of that magnitude would not only destroy and irradiate a massive area, its positioning under water would result in a radioactive tsunami that would reach far further inland than the blast itself. In no uncertain terms, the Status-6 is intended to serve as a doomsday weapon. It’s the sort of weapon you build not to win wars, but to end them.

Proud Prophet was a series of war games played out by various American military officials. The simulation revealed MAD made the use of nuclear weapons virtually impossible without total nuclear annihilation, regardless of how nuclear weapons were implemented in war plans. These results essentially ruled out the possibility of a limited nuclear strike, as every time this was attempted, it resulted in a complete expenditure of nuclear weapons by both the United States and USSR. Proud Prophet marked a shift in American strategy; following Proud Prophet, American rhetoric of strategies that involved the use of nuclear weapons dissipated and American war plans were changed to emphasize the use of conventional forces. [37] TTAPS Study [ edit ]Somewhere within the nuclear arms race, nations seemed to forget one fundamental truth: we are all human and we are all in this together. If one country dropped a nuclear bomb, others would retaliate, and before long, all of humanity would perish. 1 This is where nuclear deterrence was developed – since both the Soviet Union and the U.S. had nuclear bombs, they dissuaded one another from using them with the threat of retaliation. One nuclear bomb would become a catalyst for dozens more and no nation would emerge victorious – in other words, a lose-lose situation. 4 We often find ourselves in competitive environments, especially when it comes to the workplace. While our desire to ‘win’, or succeed, is often at the forefront of our justification for making particular decisions, the mutually assured destruction phenomenon asks us to what end and at what cost we are willing to participate in those behaviors. If we behave in a particular way to advance our own careers – such as exposing a coworker for dropping the ball on a project, for example – we are likely to meet retaliation – that coworker might respond by informing the boss, for instance. A level of trust must therefore be maintained between us and our competitors, to avoid a snowball of everyone’s suffering. Lloyd, Marion (13 October 2002). "Soviets Close to Using A-Bomb in 1962 Crisis, Forum is Told". Boston Globe. pp.A20 . Retrieved 7 August 2012. Encyclopedia Britannica. (2017, June 12). Deterrence. https://www.britannica.com/topic/deterrence-political-and-military-strategy America is amid an arguably overdue effort to modernize its ICBM arsenal in Northrop Grumman’s Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) platform expected to enter service later this decade. Although the weapon’s W87 Mod 0 thermonuclear warhead’s destructive capacity has not been revealed just yet, it stands to reason that these new missiles will still offer significantly less firepower than Russia’s mighty Sarmat, let alone the terrifying 100 megaton capacity claimed by the Status-6.

The Cold War, born out of the aftermath of World War II, was characterized by a state of political and military tension between primarily the United States and the Soviet Union, breaking the former alliance between two superpowers strongly divided over economic and political ideologies. While the two nations never clashed directly on the battlefield throughout this time, their competition for nuclear supremacy resulted in the ever-present threat of an all-out nuclear war between the two nations and their allies. Wilkie Collins and Mutually Assured Destruction". The Wilkie Collins Society. Spring 2009 . Retrieved 17 September 2014. So, are nuclear weapons likely to come into play? How would the West respond? And does nuclear deterrence still work today?

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Finch, James P.; Steene, Shawn (2011). "Finding Space in Deterrence: Toward a General Framework for "Space Deterrence" ". Strategic Studies Quarterly. 5 (4): 10–17. ISSN 1936-1815. JSTOR 26270535.

Future work should explore whether Green’s theory can shed light on the Cold War competition before and after the 1970s. My informed hunch tells me that there is much that Green’s argument can explain about the periods of history that preceded and followed that decade . For example, the Reagan administration seemed far more ruthless in its pursuit of American qualitative superiority when it began negotiations with the Soviets on the Strategic Arms Reductions Talks (START) than the Nixon and Ford administrations did during the SALT process. Washington’s desire to reach an agreement that reduced Moscow’s superiority in land-based ICBMs matches the expectation of Green’s theory .

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But if a missile dubbed the “Satan II” and marketed as a way to remove Texas from the map isn’t massive enough, Russia also boasts another doomsday nuke–one said to match or even double the nuclear yield of the Sarmat, while bolstering its destructive capacity by creating an unnatural, natural disaster. All leaders with launch capability seem to care about the survival of their citizens. Winston Churchill is quoted as saying that any strategy will not "cover the case of lunatics or dictators in the mood of Hitler when he found himself in his final dugout." [62] Years Later, '2001: A Space Odyssey' Is Still an Unparalleled Marvel on the Big Screen". TVOvermind. 2018-08-31 . Retrieved 2018-09-15. The major nuclear powers have long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles (IBMs) designed to carry these warheads thousands of kilometres in minutes, as well as anti-missile defence systems to detect and shoot them down. In March, with the world’s eyes on Ukraine, North Korea broke its moratorium on testing IBMs and fired its most powerful missile yet, although the trial may not have been as big a success as it claimed.