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

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Onboard this submersible drone is an absolutely massive warhead–with some claims saying it carries the same nuclear yield as the RS-28, and others claiming twice that. According to some Russian officials, the Status-6 can be equipped with a 100 megaton weapon… which is two times more powerful than the largest nuclear weapon ever even tested. Less than a month later, the United States dropped two nuclear bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to force the country’s surrender and end World War II, killing hundreds of thousands of people. It remains the only use of nuclear weapons in war. 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. A major Princeton University simulation war-gaming a nuclear escalation between Russia and the US predicted 90 million people could be killed in tit-for-tat strikes within the first few hours of such a conflict. Past simulations have offered similarly sobering results – even when just a warning shot is fired, it often ends in nuclear strikes on cities. Alexander Vershbow, a former deputy secretary-general of NATO, told The New York Times that Western leaders had concluded Russia was sincere in its plans to use nuclear weapons in a major crisis, meaning any misstep that the Kremlin mistakes for war could escalate fast.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation emerged as a sovereign entity encompassing most of the territory of the former USSR. Relations between the United States and Russia were, at least for a time, less tense than they had been with the Soviet Union. 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. 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. Tesla, Nikola, The New Art of Projecting Concentrated Non-dispersive Energy through the Natural Media, System of Particle Acceleration for Use in National Defense, circa 16 May 1935.Treaties designed to disarm and stop the spread of nuclear weapons (such as the Non-Proliferation Treaty) mean the world’s arsenal has shrunk significantly since the end of the Cold War, down from a peak of about 70,000 weapons in 1986 to an estimated 12,700 today, according to the American Federation of Scientists, although this is often due to the retirement of older missiles. Countries such as Libya and Iran, which have attempted to create their own nuclear weapons since (or, in the case of Iraq, were thought to be trying), have often faced harsh sanctions and even war from the US and its NATO allies.

People often talk about nuclear weapons in a cavalier fashion, he says, but such weapons “enable aggression”. “We should avoid normalising [them] and pretend that they somehow may have a plausible military mission.” Shermer, M. (2014, June 1). Will Mutual Assured Destruction Continue to Deter Nuclear War? Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/will-mutual-assured-destruction-continue-to-deter-nuclear-war/ 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.

On July 16, 1945, just before dawn, the age of nuclear terror began. A fireball brighter than the sun lit up the New Mexico desert. The watching scientists cheered and shook hands. This was the world’s first test of a nuclear weapon, and, contrary to fears that it could ignite an unstoppable chain reaction setting the whole world on fire, it had worked. In Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, we have Farewell , which gives you the choice of what to exile: creatures, artifacts, enchantments, graveyards, or any combination of the above. To some maintaining the Cold War’s mindset of matching capability to deter war, this may seem like an egregious failure on the part of America’s defense infrastructure. After all, how do you hope to deter a 100 megaton weapon if your own most powerful weapons are tiny by comparison? Well, the truth is, you simply don’t have to. Although mutually assured destruction is likely only a term familiar to military strategists, the phenomenon has important implications for regular people’s lives. Most simply, it helps keep us alive. Unfortunately, nations don’t seem to trust one another enough to live peacefully without the threat of weapons, which makes mutually assured destruction necessary. It is a unique brand of trust based on knowing the other nation will not do anything because they too will suffer in the end. When disagreements occur between political leaders, nuclear deterrence means that hopefully, no nation will choose to unleash the devastation weapon.