It's weird how you say that like it was wise instead of horrifically insane, though.
The scary thing about the Cold War was that the participants generally had the best of intentions (aside from a few people like Curtis LeMay, and they never really got presented with the opportunity to express their evil side) but disaster could have easily happened anyway, purely by accident.
And I really shouldn't put this in the past tense. All of this stuff is still there. We all seem to have just decided to collectively pretend that MAD went away when the USSR dissolved, even though there are still thousands of missiles and nuclear warheads ready to wreck civilization at a moment's notice.
This was one school of thought within the command and control structure, but was, from my understanding both a minority opinion and one held more by political oversight members than by the actual generals holding the keys.
Leslie Groves specifically felt that a nuclear exchange was inevitable, and that the US was in a position to win.
In that case, they shouldn't have been fussed about an extremely small chance of failure. The Soviets would never dare bank on such a chance, therefore it wouldn't change the effectiveness of the deterrent.
The only reason to act as they did is that they were worried about not being able to get revenge if the Soviets launched first.
I vaguely recall a short story in which the Soviets launch their missiles, for whatever reason, and the U.S. President refuses to give the launch order. MAD has failed and America is doomed anyway; there is no value in adding hundreds of millions to the death toll simply to follow through on a threat.
Fully agreed. There seems to be this weird mode of thinking for most people 'I choose to ignore the bad stuff so that I am happier'. But the end result here might be exactly the opposite, the worst case.
For example, it is scary how lightheartedly people talk about 'war with Russia' in context of the current Ukraine crisis. Regardless on what political side one is, avoiding direct confrontation of nuclear powers should be the main concern.
Rather than all the talk and fuss and whatnot about more-or-less meaningful social justice causes, I would rather like to see a movement to put nuclear weapons into 'cold storage' and a verified international protocol to continuously check that they are there.
Seeing that it is unrealistic to have full disarmament, this would at least greatly reduce the risk.