Five cascading technical effects flow from the nuclear revolution. Nuclear weapons pack tremendous explosive power in devices that are cheap, light, and easily hidden, protected, and delivered. Both can destroy the other's society even after absorbing an all-out counterforce attack by the other. In the Cold War, both the U.S. and USSR sought to avert MAD, preferring instead to deny the other a second-strike countervalue capability, but they could not escape it. Technology overrode their desires.
Capabilities are absolute.
The efficiency with which one side must strike the other's forces in order to leave the other unable to inflict unacceptable damage in retaliation increases sharply as the arsenals on both sides grow. Back to the Nuclear Weapons Teaching Seminar page.