I didn’t want to hijack the Could “civilzation” have survived a global nuclear war?" thread so I’m asking here. The mid 60s and the mid 80s are generally considered two of the most worrisome periods of the Cold War. I was wondering if a nuclear war in one or the other would be significantly worse.
In the 1980s, the sheer number of nukes was much larger, and most of them were missile warheads that for all practical purposes were unstoppable. In 1963 the number of missile warheads was smaller and the missiles themselves were cryogenically fueled (and thus took longer to launch). Much of the nuclear arsenals were still bomber delivered, presumably offering some hope of interception, not only by attack aircraft but also by the still operational Nike defense system. Civil defense was still strong enough that bomb shelters and evacuation plans might have saved many at least in the short run.
On the other hand, by the 1980s warhead accuracy had advanced to the point that “counterforce” was considered a viable scenerio: try to knock out your enemy’s retalitory capacity and hold his cities and population hostage against further reprisals. The warheads themselves had smaller yields because they were more accurate. By contrast, in the 1960s a nuclear exchange would have targeted cities from the start with multi-megaton gravity bombs, especially using the fission-fusion-fission configuration that offers the greatest “bang for the buck” and yielding the most fallout. In fact the war plans of the time expressly counted on fallout as a weapon, with the deliberate intent of exterminating as much of the enemy population as possible and leaving much of the countryside uninhabitable for decades.
In other words, in 1963 both sides would have tried as hard as they could to exterminate the other. By 1983, their capacity to do so was so certain that paradoxically they might not need to. So decade would probably have been worse?