MAD

MAD stands for mutual assured destruction, which sounds pretty terrifying. This was a strategy used by both the Americans and the Soviets during the Cold War. The strategy was to be able to ensure that if the other nation did a first strike wiping out all of your major cities and military bases, that you would still be able to launch a very high amount of nuclear weapons back at the enemy, killing tens of millions of people. The reality was that both sides wanted enough nukes to scare the other side into not attacking, because there would always be a huge retaliation, that was designed to kill 25-50% of the enemies' civilian population. This could be equal to or larger than the entire amount of people killed in all of WWII.