You have that backward. MAD insured no nation was reckless enough to launch a first strike.
But American civilian casualties are?
Well, their silos are empty now, anyway, since they just launched their nukes at the US, so even that wouldn’t make much difference.
Um, how do you figure that?
Anyway, I voted “don’t nuke.” Russia doesn’t survive eliminating the US. Every other nation on Earth is going to unite to crush them after a unprovoked nuclear holocaust - and Russia isn’t going to be able to do anything about it, because they’ve just exhausted their nuke arsenal murdering North America.
I’m assuming that, in addition to not nuking Russia, boffking would also not nuke America.
Gee, FDR must be roasting in hell for the civilian bombings in WW2 that specifically targeted depopulating cities. And litd not even imagine where Truman is. :eek:
So he does nothing after being nuked? Our NATO allies might not be so reticent to nuke the Russians. Of course, Putin would have also nuked NATO nations too.
Maybe not, but the question was, “What do you do?” not “What do your allies do?”
Nothing in the OP about Russia nuking NATO, just the US.
The OP is flawed.
A more interesting question is “If you had incontrovertible evidence that the Russians were about to launch a nuclear first strike, would you launch first to destroy their ICBM silos”?
I believe we have found a political solution.
If we do nuke Russia, will it bring back the Americans who died?
First of all, I’ll reiterate as I have in many prior threads that the strategic theory of Assured Destruction (the “Mutual” portion was added by critics such as Herman Kahn to make the infamous acronym) requires specific prerequisites that are unlikely to ever exist in the real world (perfect information about opposing capabilities, assurance of early warning systems, effective parity of offensive and defense systems, and most critically, rational actors), and if either party initiates a launch the theory has by definition failed, as it the entire function is deterrence. Practialy speaking, no nation has instituted Assured Destruction, and game theory simulations of AD show that it is an unstable equilibrium in the face of determined challenge as well as prone to failure due to misinformation such as the kind we experienced during the Cuban Missile Crisis (in which nuclear exchange was averted not because of any deterrence theory but because a minor cabinet member who had previously been an ambassador to the Soviet Union advised President Kennedy to ignore the second, more aggressive demands and respond with a conciliatory response). In a true AD scenario, the choices listed by the o.p. simply shouldn’t exist; the response to an attack has to be overwhelming and catastrophic counterattack, period; hence, Kahn’s satirical “Doomsday Device” that was featured as the central plot point in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Love the Bomb.
Second, while submarined-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) are intended to be survivable counterstrike weapons, the fact is that our ferrous-hulled submarines are readily trackable to certain hypothetical satellite systems and are likely not nearly as safe as widely believed. (Whether those systems from the Soviet era did or still exist, and whether Russia can field sufficient attack submarines to preempitvely destroy or disable boomers is another question.).
Third, while responding to an attack with a comprehensive counterstrike may satisfy a desire for vengence, targetted attacks on military and industrial infrastructure while leaving the population as undamaged as possible makes more sense from both a political and humanistic standpoint. Both nations will likely be pariahs on the world stage for employing nuclear weapons in such a fashion and the resulting impact to global economy and environment, but being able to demonstrate that the counterattack was as minimally damaging as possible will at least go some distance to preserving whatever goodwill may still exist after we’ve laid waste to vast swaths of land mass and sent radioactive material into the atmosphere to be deposited wherever it shall fall.
Anyone who selects the “I LOVE BARRY MANILOW” option should be rounded up and put into a re-education camp immediately for the sake of all that is good and holy.
Stranger
That’s the most irrelevant question in this thread.
Great post. Said it much better than I could.
Alas, I must be pedantic a bit…there aren’t 250 million Russians. Russia’s population is a little over half that.
Frasier: I’m Dr. Frasier Crane, and this is my brother, Dr. Niles Crane, the eminent psychiatrist.
Niles: My brother is too kind. He was already eminent when my eminence was merely imminent.
Or the heck with the Geneva Convention ----- let’s Wayne Newton the bastids! 
A comparison between eminent and imminent by a prominent deponent was bound to be prominent.
Till they glow.
Retaliation hasn’t helped the US very often. It just makes things worse.
I’m still waiting for **Chronos **to explain why the fact we are still alive today is proof that MAD does not work. I’m not being sarcastic, I genuinely do not understand how one statement is derived from the other.
Maybe he meant the threat of MAD is the only thing that works. Once it’s a done deal, it’s pointless (and a failure) from the other side.
And sign me up for No Genocide. I can’t imagine whatever resultant fallout would make a damn bit of difference to what’s left.