Quote:
Originally Posted by GeoffW1
Wouldn't WE stay away?
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Hi Geoff,
You raise a good point.
If one were delivering pizza, got to the front door of a stranger's house and heard
the sounds of breaking glass, screaming and live gunfire inside, you would
undoubtedly be reticent to knock on the door and call out "Pizza!".
What is possibly even more poignant is when you consider the video only
depicts weapons that were tested, not those were/are ready to deploy or
were/are in stockpiles at any one point in time.
As Richard Rhodes writes in his 2007 book, "
Arsenals of Folley - The Making of the
Nuclear Arms Race", by 1960 the U.S. arsenal had increased to 18,638 bombs
and warheads yielding 20,500 megatons (1.4 million Hiroshimas)".
The first
Single Integrated Operational Plan, designated SIOP-62, "was designed
to work either preemptively or in retaliation for a Soviet nuclear strike on the
United States". "It targeted not only the Soviet Union but also the People's Republic
of China and allies of the two countries in Eastern Europe and elsewhere". [Rhodes p 87]
The plan called for some 3,200 nuclear weapons to be delivered to 1,060 enemy
designated ground zeros (DGZ's) in the event of a preemptive strike.
Throwing everything they had into an initial strike was what SAC commander
Curtis LeMay called his "Sunday punch". [Rhodes p 84]
General David Shoup, the Marine Corps commandant, reportedly asked
Thomas Power, commander in chief at
SAC, at a SIOP briefing in 1960
"if the United States had any options to avoid bombing China if the country
happened not to be involved in the conflict that had lead to nuclear war."
Power replied, "Yeah, we
could do that. But I hope nobody thinks of it because
it would really screw up the plan." [Rhodes, p 87].