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In nuclear strategy, a first strike or preemptive strike is a preemptive surprise attack employing overwhelming force. First strike capability is a country's ability to defeat another nuclear power by destroying its arsenal to the point where the attacking country can survive the weakened retaliation while the opposing side is left unable to continue war.
Nuclear winter is a severe and prolonged global climatic cooling effect that is hypothesized [1] [2] to occur after widespread firestorms following a large-scale nuclear war. [3] The hypothesis is based on the fact that such fires can inject soot into the stratosphere, where it can block some direct sunlight from reaching the surface of the Earth.
The first, a limited nuclear war [22] (sometimes attack or exchange), refers to the controlled use of nuclear weapons, whereby the implicit threat exists that a nation can still escalate their use of nuclear weapons. For example, using a small number of nuclear weapons against strictly military targets could be escalated through increasing the ...
In response, Soviet nuclear capable aircraft were fueled and armed ready to launch on the runway, and ICBMs were brought up to alert. Soviet leaders believed the exercise was a ruse to cover NATO preparations for a nuclear first strike and frantically sent a telegram to its residencies seeking information on NATO preparations for an attack.
The codes needed to launch a U.S. nuclear strike are supposed to be kept close to the president at all times. Bill Clinton once lost the nuclear codes for months, and a 'comedy of errors' kept ...
The U.S. nuclear weapons employment policy was modified slightly in 1981, stipulating that the U.S. was henceforth "not to rely on launching our nuclear forces in an irrevocable manner" upon receipt of information that a Soviet missile attack was underway, but that the U.S. "must be prepared to launch our recallable bomber forces upon warning ...
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It makes dramatic long-lasting climate predictions of the effect a nuclear winter would have on the Earth, an event that is suggested by the authors to follow both a city countervalue strike during a nuclear war, and especially following strikes on oil refineries and fuel depots.