One thing I've been surprised to learn more about in recent years is that the MAD doctrine of the cold war really was _assured_. Specifically because of the _submarine fleets_. Because you can't know where they are, so you can't knock them out, so they can always deliver a second strike. So it makes no difference how fast, secretive, sneaky or decisive your first strike is. Doesn't matter if you hit the enemy with 100:1 missile superiority or use stealth weapons or whatever. The second strike still gets you.

Like the whole game is no-win, structurally. MAD wasn't like a complex inference from the results of WOPR playing millions of scenarios and machine-learning the rules of tic-tac-toe. It didn't require the assumption of the whole world being incinerated. It's a simple _fact about the submarines_, even in small wars, with any opponent who has them. The "you can't find them so you can't really win" rule of the game is like .. right there on page one.

It's interesting to review all the nightmare fuel "instant total death of the world at any moment" stories we all lived with at the time (not to mention the fictional content of cold war military thrillers or whatever). A lot of it seems to only have had any plausibility at all (or dramatic tension) if you _forget about the assured second strike_, or assume the participants forgot it, or something. Whereas .. I am pretty sure neither side's military actually ever forgot it, once the SLBMs were hidden in the water? Like everyone spoke darkly about MAD being "crazy" but it seemed to me the public never really got the full story about the "assured" part. It seems it was actually .. fairly strategically stable, even in theory?

Like, ok, aside from technical screwups and political posturing. Which, granted, do seem to have approached the brink several times. But that is kinda amazing! Because everyone totally knew it wouldn't work to strike first, not at all.