Did the US Plan a Nuclear First Strike Against Russia in the Early 1960s?
unz.com
unz.com
Consider: If you're, say, the Secretary of Defense, at any meeting, the President might tell you "Country X just went nuts! We have to deal with this now! What can we do?". You don't wanna tell the President "Umm, I dunno, let us look into it". You wanna be able to say something more like "We could go with a nuclear strike, using units A, B, and C. Expected casualties in country X are Y military and Z civilian, and we estimate a possible retaliatory nuclear strike against at least 10 US cities, with casualty estimates as described. Or we could launch a conventional strike with Carrier Group D, attacking these government and infrastructure targets, optionally following up with a land invasion with these units or special forces attacks, with enemy and friendly casualty estimates."
Clearly, we want to have plans for every possible way of attacking every country we would be capable of attacking, all continuously updated to reflect our forces and their readiness, as well as estimated enemy forces and their readiness. We also want to be able to talk intelligently about possible force level changes. If the President wants to, say, dissolve one or more Army divisions, raise another one, buy or sell aircraft, retire nukes or build more, etc, we want to be able to describe how that would affect our ability to attack and defend against attacks from various countries.
This was a serious proposal, probably made by a sociopath like Gen. LeMay, to execute a specific attack in 1963, before Soviet capability caught up.
Per LeMay:
> Native annalists may look sadly back from the future on that period when we had the atomic bomb and the Russians didn't. Or when the Russians had aquired (through connivance and treachery of Westerns with warped minds) the atomic bomb - and yet still didn't have any stockpile of the weapons. That was the era when we might have destroyed Russia completely and not even skinned our elbows doing it.
It's also not the first discussion of a nuclear first strike. That would be with President Truman once prior the their use on Japan and again at the dawn of fusion weapons when deciding not to annihilate the Soviet Union.
High numbers for the casualties in Nagasaki are 150000, ie ten times fewer.
Sometimes your choices in life are not white and black, but black and black. This is one of the times, Marcoperaza may advocate a viewpoint you strongly disagree with, but that has never been an acceptable reason for downvoting on HN.
Also, try making a list of the biggest mass murders in history. Hitler and Stalin would be on the list. Also Mao Tse-Tsung. Possibly a few leaders of Communist regimes in SE Asia, depending on whether you look at the proportion of population killed instead of raw deaths. Do you want to see America at the top of that list? Based on a vague theory that the world would be better off somehow?
I don't really want to address this suggestion on its merits - there's too much moral hazard. It reminds me of the Mitchell and Webb sketch "Kill the poor". But apparently simply expressing incredulous horror that one would even suggest such a thing isn't done around here. So, with difficulty, here I go:
So you make these "calculations" (though they couldn't have at the time) and pay the moral cost - you "nuke Moscow". Population at the time, about 6 million. Congratulations, America is now regarded as the most evil country that ever existed, its reputation eclipsing even Nazi Germany. The heinous act can't even be blamed on a demagogue, or economic strife after losing a world war - it's a cold institutional decision. And then what? World peace? Really? America is the only country with nukes, and doesn't abuse them because you know, apart from nuking a few cities unprovoked it's basically good-hearted, hah, and everyone lives happily ever after? Fat chance! Probably Russia will get nukes anyway and instantly use them on America - it's not like you've destroyed the whole country. Or perhaps you do somehow manage that, with more than just nuking the capital. Now you're an incalculably bigger mass-murderer, and the entire Eurasian continent is flooded with starving and bitterly angry refugees. Everyone in the entire world is angry at America. World peace? Hah. I won't go on.
Violence begets violence.
I'd say what we have now is much closer to world peace than what you propose. All of the big industrial countries have lots of nuclear weapons, and nobody uses them, so they're all too terrified to attack each other. The only wars we have are major powers occasionally invading small, weak countries, rightly or wrongly, and either dominating them or being chased out by insurgents. Even if every one of those invasions was horribly, horribly wrong, it beats the hell out of having another WWII every generation, or everyone constantly nuking each other.
I used to think that too - then I started listening to the Martyr made podcast (which is epic) - and in one of the stories he talks about the Arab revolt in British mandated Palestine, and how the British dealt with that. They didn't give a hoot about civilian casualties, on the contrary they went in as hard as possible in creating them.
No point in tracing down the insurgents who just attacked you, just go to the nearest village, rape, pillage, loot, rape and castrate, then force the inhabitants to blow up their own houses, charge them for the cost of the explosives and the soldiers time. Do so consistently after every attack, and pretty soon the Arabs were blaming themselves for their fate, and hating the insurgents - and that is how you win a counter insurgency.
What you will have trouble doing is winning a counter insurgency while being _nice_. Even then the US army did get a lot of territories from the muj during the battle of Faluja.
I know it's tough to swallow, but I think this would have been infinitely better than the world we have now, where war between nuclear states is still a very real possibility, and where the long-term dominance of liberal democracies is not guaranteed.
My family has invested for years in electrical research. We use electricity for many purposes, and we've created machinery that can deliver it where we need it, when we need it - as much as we need at any time or place.
We only use this for good purposes, mind you. But never forget: electricity is a powerful thing.
I daresay we are ahead of every other family in our electrical inventions. You'll never catch up! Well, maybe in a year or two.
You've been good neighbors, and those blueberries you grow are great! I hope you've enjoyed our figs too.
But now we have a problem.
Like I said, you've been pretty good neighbors. But we can't count on that. We hear you're experimenting with electricity now. If that goes on, and you develop technology like ours, you could wipe us out!
So we have no choice, our former friends. We don't really enjoy this.
But we must destroy you, now! Before you have a chance to strike against us.
This bit of eternal wisdom in the Melian Dialogue captures reality well:
Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.
It's not a moral statement, but a statement of fact. If you want your moral code to mean anything, you'd better be strong enough to establish and defend it.
In any case, they lacked the materials at the time to make enough bombs.
I propose that even in the context of a civil discussion, there's a time for expressing moral outrage. Failing to do so compromises an important signalling mechanism. If something I say flabbergasts people to the extent that words fail them, I take note.
I'm sure the 'dogs of war' tried.
In '60 Eisenhower green-lit an invasion plan by the CIA (Dulles) in response to the nationalisation of Esso, Standard Oil and Shell in Cuba. Does this sound familiar? (https://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-in-History/The-Bay-of-Pig...)
It's election year. Kennedy was elected in '60 and a key part of that was equalising the 'missile-gap'. There was no missile gap. US had 100 times the capability of USSR. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis#Balance_o...)
In '61 Kennedy didn't provide ^air support^ for Operation Mongoose organised by Lansdale. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Project) Dulles is fired as head of the CIA.
In October '62, the US B team of Generals (Joint Chiefs of Staff) LeMay, Lansdale, Anderson, Anderson, Shoup and Wheeler were being pushed for implementing the first strike over Russian (LeMay) and invading Cuba again (Lansdale). (https://govbooktalk.gpo.gov/2012/10/18/hawks-vs-doves-the-jo... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Project) The time clock of the missile crisis, shows the operational nature of the CIA. (http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/bayofpigs/chron.html)
Cooler heads prevailed. Khrushchev and Kennedy negotiated secretly, while the military of both sides maintained their cool. Just as well. It's now known that Cuba was in the possession of ^tactical^ nuclear weapons. So without any control from the USSR, field commanders ^could^ have deployed them if Cuba was invaded. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis#Post-cris...)
In '63, JFK was assassinated. A year after that Khrushchev was rolled. The change of US political direction allowed the war footing to escalate, ever since.
Lansdale, LeMay, Dulles, Nixon, the CIA and US arms and resource companies all had great careers in the post '63 era. [0]
[0] The inference here is you can find potential conspirators that lead to 22 November 1963. The same names appear again and again in the "Assassination Records Review Board: Files of Douglas P. Horne" (http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/review-board/horne-file...)
Military plans are not statements of intent on their own.
But what gives the Unz interpretation a bit of weight is the element of "if you ever want to first strike, it's now or never" that was clearly present. This can easily turn a purely theoretical game-plan into a purely theoretical game-plan with a zealous PR department.
Although they won't know of all your resources and capabilities, they will have some idea of many. And it's valuable to know what they may worry about. As well, how well their concern does or doesn't match reality.
In such planning, you need to explore the whole space of thought and possibilities -- from both sides -- and not just the more palatable ones you wish to follow.
His quote was "I want them to think I am nuts".
During this period of his presidency, Nixon was known to become so drunk that Kissinger effectively took over many of his duties in private
To reinforce the idea that he was "nuts", Nixon ordered at least one bomber-wing approach of Soviet airspace. I don't recall if the planes actually carried nuclear weapons, but IIRC, it was Nixon's intent that they should.
Not sure if this qualifies as a "plan", but it was rehearsed.
A neighbor who was once was stationed in a Titan ICBM silo also recounted a story that seemed extremely scary: during the Arab/Israeli war there was apparently a report by US intelligence of a Russian missile launch, and in his silo he claims they had their hands on the keys ready to turn (weapon was armed, fueled, they were literally waiting for the launch order)...although they were later informed to stand down when the missile was confirmed as a test. I asked him if he would have turned the key, and he said absolutely.
Uh, fallout is only deadly for a few weeks or so even after thousands of nuclear weapons are used on a country.
The radioactive elements produced in a nuclear explosion are very different from those produced in a nuclear power plant: the latter can stay deadly for years.
The reason fallout shelters were so popular during the Cold War is that they're a cost effective way of avoiding a major cause of death during a nuclear war.
Also a ground bursting weapon could interact with other elements present at ground zero so it seems more complex than just "wait a few weeks and it's safe".
Fallout can be even higher IIRC within a few miles of the explosion, but implicit in the concept of the fallout shelter (as opposed to the much more expensive blast shelter) is the assumption that the shelter will be outside of the range in which the explosion is immediately deadly to humans (through blast, through heat / infrared radiation and through "prompt" radiation).
Note that even before the START treaties, the Soviets only ever had enough weapons to cause immediate death to humans over approximately 5% of the area of the United States. Consequently, many suburban and rural American could and can realistically expect to survive the immediate effects of the explosions with fallout being the main danger in the weeks immediately after the attack. After a few weeks, starvation starts to become the main danger although note that as of a 1985 survey, the US had enough food stored (mainly on farms, mostly wheat, corn, grain sorghums, and soybeans) to keep 200 million Americans from starving for 6 years.
This information comes from Cresson Kearny's Nuclear War Survival Skills, revised 1986 or 1987, which is available for free in PDF form on the internet. Kearny was employed by the American civil-defense establishment.
I'm not sure how much faith to put into that despite the source you just cited. From what I heard, a lot of the nuclear war survival measures (like city evacuation plans) were just methods to calm the population down. I.e. they weren't really meant to work at all, but as long as people believed they will, they carried on with their lives.
For example, it's a common assumption that global thermonuclear war would wipe out humanity, or even all life on Earth. That's not even close to true. Billions would die and civilization would be wrecked, but the human race would continue.
For an example specific to civil defense, the old "duck and cover" routine is widely ridiculed. Which is bizarre, because it's great advice which would have saved many lives in the event of nuclear war. But people don't understand how this stuff works, and just think that nuclear war is a moment where all die, O the embarrassment.
With sufficient warning, evacuating cities would have saved many lives. Such warning wouldn't have been available for ICBM strikes, but in the 50s and 60s the threat was bombers, which would have provided hours of warning.
Also, you would have to deal with the fallout from the nuclear power plants that have just been mixed into those hurrican force winds.
Humanity may survive but the effects could be felt far beyond the blast radius of the bombs.
From Command and Control by Eric Schlosser:
"Strontium-90 is a soft metal, much like lead, with a radioactive half-life of 29.1 years. It is usually present in the fallout released by thermonuclear explosions. When strontium-90 enters the soil, it's absorbed by plants grown in that soil--and by the animals that eat those plants. Once inside the human body, strontium-90 mimics calcium, accumulates in bone, and continues to emit radiation, often causing leukemia or bone cancer.... Along with cesium-137, a radioactive isotope with a half-life of 30 years, it may contaminate agricultural land for generations."
Is that incorrect?
Yes. The Sr-90 from a nuclear explosion will immediately oxidize in the atmosphere, so it is not a soft metal much like lead, but a brittle ceramic much like lime. It also has a half life of 28.8 years, not 29.1.
Not that these details matter, but I'd still like to draw attention to Schlosser's tactics: By dumping these irrelevant facts that are only approximately right on you he seems a lot more knowledgeable than he really is.
Back to the matter at hand...
> Is that incorrect?
Maybe, maybe not, but it surely is irrelevant. The radioactivity of fallout is dominated by very short lived fission products and by activation products that form when neutrons interact with vaporized soil. Most of these have half lives of hours to days. The radiation from something that short lived is intense and will kill humans quickly. A fallout shelter is intended to prevent exposure to that kind of radiation.
By comparison, long lived fission products like Sr-90 don't matter. In a nuclear war, you worry about surviving the next few weeks. You don't worry about dying from leukemia 30 years later. (It also appears the link between Sr-90 and bone cancer or leukemia is merely a plausible assumption, not an actual observation.)
The amount of fallout and types of products generated in a nuclear blast are mostly determined by the altitude the bomb detonates at.
If you let it blast a few thousand feet in the air, before it hits the ground, then you are correct. This is typical strategy because it doesn't destroy the ground and the air blast has an absolutely devastating effect on man made structures.
However, if you let the bomb get all the way down to the dirt or even slightly below it before you detonate, then much of that radiation is absorbed by all that matter and spread out over a large distance. You can also design the bomb case so that it transmits this radiation rather than absorbing it further increasing the fallout and it's intensity.
Yes, ground bursts produce a lot more fallout than air bursts, but that has been taken into account when calculating that most Americans would need to stay in their fallout shelters for 2 or 3 weeks at the most.
The science behind fallout is well-understood.
I mean, I'd usually assume you're correct - government agencies and scientists tend to have stuff like that figured out pretty well. But in this case, I've heard numerous claims before that a lot of that was "security theatre" for the people - making them feel like they're being protected, even if nobody expected any of that to actually work.
In the bizarro-event of an invasion, Canada could just go scorched-Earth and dump nuclear waste into the Great Lakes and obliterate the habitability of the northeast. Or just create a Chernobyl-like disaster at a nuclear plant to coincide with weather patterns blowing southward. If the US retaliated with nuclear weapons, it would just blanket itself with more fallout.
Protip: a nuclear neighbor is not a good invasion target.
Any normal country would surrender in order to prevent further casualties and likely a complete destruction of its civilian infrastructure. The most dangerous thing one can do is force the enemy to a position in which they cannot surrender, one of the main reasons the US did not want to invade Japan is that it knew that an invasion regardless of how devastating it was would make surrender impossible, for this same reason it did not nuke Tokyo, this is also why you do not usually go after the government during a war you need some one to be able to surrender or negotiate a truce.
P.S. Dumping nuclear waste is effectively worse than getting nuked, Canada is probably better off with getting every major city nuked than dumping nuclear waste anywhere. Nuclear weapons, especially modern ones are not as "dirty" as people think, yes there will be some lasting effects due to fallout and radiation but it's not that bad, most of the isotopes created by a nuclear bomb are pretty unstable and decay fairly quickly which is bad because it releases a lot more secondary radiation but it's not as bad as dumping nuclear waste which will not decay for millenniums to come.
The Northeast US also buys a lot of power from Canada, so you'll be drinking radioactive water in the dark while the fallout drifts over. Having fun yet?
Oh by the way since the lights are out, you might have to deal with riots in cities like Baltimore...lots of Americans in the 99% who will use unrest to their advantage
Anywho, this is all sci-fi...most of Canada is barren and not worth invading. It's not clear what invading it would even get you.
All joking aside (and I love Canada and think it's fantastic) it simply would not be a contest at all for the US military. That's not a slight against Canada, it's just a fact.
The Iraqi army and government fared terribly against the US when they invaded.
It would be foolish to describe what came next as success or winning for the United States.
Any attempt to actually occupy Canada by the United States would be absolutely brutal.
This is a literate, technologically advanced and socially cohesive group of people.
Furthermore the geographic setting would mean that the United States would have to spread itself extremely thin or allow resistance to crop up in areas outside their narrow sliver of occupation.
If you thought Operation Desert Storm was quick, don't even think how fast the USAF could dismantle a smaller military when operating from their own home bases.
But what's the point? The US doesn't need tundra and tarsands... or a French Canadian resistance. It would also probably through the UK into play in a really awkward position.
Tell that to Russia - they've invaded Ukraine recently.
PS: It's also not clear how serious this stuff is. The DoD does a lot of stuff simply because it's budget and manpower is insane. And nothing says people are not simply taking the plan written in 1983 changing the name of the aircraft and dating it 2016.
Also, I would be amazed if, for example, Russia wasn't doing exactly the same thing.
https://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Soviet-San-...
Why do you think during the Cold War we made these nice high-detail maps of US cities? To promote Soviet-American tourism?
Wired article on these: http://www.wired.com/2015/07/secret-cold-war-maps/
It was the geopolitical result that was disasterous. Blame that on the administrations that ordered the occupations, especially, the state department and intelligence agencies.
The occupation of Iraq was a stupid move, but the military could have sustained it indefinitely.
Edit: The option was not nuclear, though.
There was a fairly lengthy period (a decade or so) where the USSR was threatened with complete annihilation and the only thing holding it back was the fear of losing European allies, and the general unwillingness of American leadership to kill tens or hundreds of millions of civilians. And we wonder why they were so paranoid about us....
We hadn't even begun to seriously research nuclear winter at that point, so we assumed we'd just wait for the fallout to clear and pick up the pieces. Recent research suggests that even a limited nuclear conflict would lead to a multi-year famine caused by ice-age temperatures and ozone depletion.
Just recently, Obama dismissed Russia as a 3rd-rate military power. You have to believe that was based on intelligence briefings. That tune changed quickly when Russia started flexing muscle in Syria.
If so, I haven't heard of it. The Syrian war is a minor skirmish. If significant strategic interests were actually at risk, the great powers would just invade and ignore the resulting loss of life. Instead, we standby and generally still ignore the loss of life.
Listen to what Obama said after calling Russia a regional power:
“Obviously a bunch of rebels are not going to be able to compete with the hardware of the second-most powerful military in the world.”
And if "significant strategic interests" were not at risk in Syria, we won't be using terrorists in an attempt to topple the countries legitimate govt.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/10/09/world/middleeast/russia...
If nothing else, the Russians can't assume that the US strike is not nuclear, so the Russian response would be. And the US can't assume that the Russian response is not nuclear, so the next US strike would be. And there we go...
"Is that missile that's going to hit in 10 minutes carrying a nuclear warhead?" is a different category of question than "Is this shooting war on the line of control going to cause the other side to use the nuclear weapons that they have, but which are not anywhere near where the fighting is, and are clearly not yet being fired at us?"
The differences are :
- USA has an asymmetric conventional dominance that would prevent a non nuclear outcome that could provide a strategically acceptable outcome for Russia.
- The USA's continental territory is 1000's of km from Russia; a Russian retaliation would not be short range strikes but intercontinental - this would look pretty much like a nuclear escalation even if it wasn't
- The outcome of a conventional strike by Russia on the continental territory of the USA - for example one conventional cruise missile striking Portsmouth Navel Base in Maine - would be politically catastrophic for the sitting president. I cannot imagine the likely outcomes for said president or their likely next move, and I invite you to contemplate the possibility that neither you or the Russians are able to do that either.
A conventional confrontation between Russia and the USA could remain rational so long as neither national territory is involved. If either national territory is involved the retaliation would lead to an irrational situation immediately - after that all bets are off. Even a clear accident would be extremely likely to trigger a nuclear war.
If anything the first use of nuclear weapons was a corner case.
Here is a quote from Wikipedia: "In 1950, the first mathematical discussion of the prisoner's dilemma appeared, and an experiment was undertaken by notable mathematicians Merrill M. Flood and Melvin Dresher, as part of the RAND Corporation's investigations into game theory. RAND pursued the studies because of possible applications to global nuclear strategy."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory
And another on RAND corp: "Its most visible contribution may be the doctrine of nuclear deterrence by mutually assured destruction (MAD), developed under the guidance of then-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and based upon their work with game theory."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAND_Corporation
A great fun and entertaining book on the subject: https://www.amazon.com/Prisoners-Dilemma-William-Poundstone/...
It's called 'preparation'. It's their job to prepare for any circumstances that they can possibly foresee.
Example: every bridge in Europe is 'pre-prepared' for demolition. Normally, a combat engineering team has to scout the bridge, plan, then figure out how to disable it. In the event of ww3 - the plans are already done. A combat engineer need only draw the plan for the database and execute one of the options.
It goes much further than that.
You would think. But in reality, these one-off type preparations probably have a actual low chance of going as planned or being executed in a timely manner. The only exceptions being contingencies that are actively, regularly simulated by computer or otherwise. I don't think it'd be surprising to find that, bureaucracy & budgets working the way they do, no one there is simulating demolitions like that (at least not since the 50s or 60s).
A bridge reconnaissance does not change once it's done unless the bridge changes materially.
The hard part of a bridge recon plain is taking measurements of the abutments, the deck, types of materials etc..
The attack plan is easy once you have that.
Also - there is nothing to simulate based on computers in this case.
The only variable that changes is demolition technology and the availability of air support to do demolitions which forgoes the requirement to have Engineers do it.
Ugh, come on, enough, Internet, enough with the over-sensationalization of everything. Is the author really that naive? Of course we planned a nuclear first strike against Russia. And China. And likely the entire Eastern Bloc. It would have been irresponsible for our war planners to do otherwise, as it's one of many contingencies that may ultimately arise.
The United States is not a "no first use" country. So it absolutely, 100% stands to reason we would have planned out first strikes against many countries.
There are only five comments here, but I'm relieved to see that they all more or less come to the same conclusion you do. The press (especially the national security press) would have known the same thing, so they're highly unlikely to have considered the existence of these plans to be particularly revelatory. I think that explains away UNZ's fears about the press's possible complicity with whitewashing history (in this case, anyway).
http://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/the-cuban-miss...
It does a great job of illustrating just how uneven the two sides were at the time, and how unpleasant the potential consequences were.
To my mind, though, the big differentiater was Strategic Air Command. The US had an enormous amount of bombers regularly patrolling outside of Soviet airspace. Had SAC been ordered in there would have been plenty of warning, but it provided massive second strike capability. The Soviet Union had no answer for that and never would, which is why they did opt to go heavy on the ICBMs whereas the US spread out its weaponry across the nuclear triad.
[1]: http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/05/13/exclusive-the-pentagon-h...
and Allies, since before the cold war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red
Basically, it appears the American's have had a plan to attack everybody from the moment they thought they were big enough to do so.
A more relevant (non-fiction) example might be the CDC zombie outbreak exercise.
Do you really think that America is any different from any other large nation in the world in this respect? Do you really think that the Russian military doesn't spend just as much time (if not more) planning for every eventuality? If they don't, they're failing at their jobs, and while I have issues with Russia's political direction, I don't think of them as suffering from an underfunded or incompetent military.
I'm curious what a US first strike would look like. Would we assume any strike would devolve into nuclear terror bombing? If so, maybe we'd hit their cities in a first strike. But there is a possibility that a first strike purely against Russian nuclear weapons wouldn't cause the Russians to bomb US cities. In that scenarios Russia might retaliate against US military targets but not civilian targets. I wonder where we came down on that.
I seem to remember 600 or so.
Obviously no one has any idea what that would do because it's never been tested. But I'd guess it would remove absolutely all trace of the city and leave only a glassy layer of bedrock, which might take a few centuries to cool.
US and Russian cities have significant missile defence systems, so I guess the rationale is to make sure that at least some warheads get through.
If that's the plan for the biggest capital cities on both sides, details become academic.
From Command & Control by Eric Schlosser
Other Russian cities don't have such things, nor do any American cities. At least as far as is known.
Only one of the Borei submarines would be on patrol, it's reasonable for there to be some failures, but even with a 50% fail of missiles and warheads 30+ nukes would be hitting the USA.
I imagine that the targeting for Russian SLBM's is calculated to cause maximum loss to the USA - maximum loss of life and economic damage. I imagine this because if I were Russian that would be the message I would want a US president to have when calculating this, but it is just possible that there is a military targets only war plan, and this is the scenario you are exploring here.
In this scenario the minimal retaliation would be 30 ~200 kt warheads striking military bases - like San Deigo, Puget Sound and so on. Each strike would probably result in ~5k dead and 100k other casualties. So, minimum, 30 craters, 3 million casualties and 150k dead.
That's three Vietnams in an afternoon. Now, discount the stain of murdering many more Russians (because the successful first strike would involve many strikes that would result in large scale civilian deaths), I find it really hard to think that any rational human could contemplate causing the death of ~150k fellow citizens for "the greater good".
The world can be an unpredictable place, it's better to plan for the worst but hope for the best.
Well, at least for a few more months: http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-08-16/say-no-to-...
Just yesterday we had this UNCONFIRMED article appear in all Russian news outlets
https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/4ybaud/us_moves_nuc...
Its almost as if there is an organised disinformation campaign /s