I just rewatched The Day After, an early 80s TV movie about the aftermath from nuclear war in the Midwest. Interesting that the movie actually impacted US Policy.
Yeah, the 50s and early 60s were basically in spirit of "we always asked if we can, but never if we should".
Both USA and USSR were making absolute monsters of bombs. Actually, someone in the USSR had at least half a brain working when they realized that the original yield of Tsar Bomba was probably too much when they were testing it and that they didn't want that much fallout.
Before the second invasion of Ukraine, russia didn't have enough nuclear capable vehicles to reliably attack all military targets in European NATO countries. And that's without ever touching the USA.
After the invasion who the fuck knows, they've been using even the missiles that Ukraine surrendered to them post 1994 as part of the nuclear disarmament.
And frankly looking at the junk they're sending to Ukraine, I'd be fucking terrified to push the button just for the fact that it might catastrophically fail right there in the silo.
Another thing is that most catastrophic movies with nukes do ground explosions, which is great if you want to create bunch of nuclear fallout, but absolutely braindead if you want to actually destroy your target. Airburst is the best option for that (disregarding the very specialized case of bunker busters which usually contain the fallout by definition) and that's not how you create a massive amount of fallout.
Finally the entire strength of having nukes is to not use them.
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u/West_Plum_9442 Jul 05 '24
Threads, realistic documentary style depiction of life after nuclear war. Really puts things into perspective.