The ability for nuclear forces to survive a full-scale nuclear attack and be able to launch a devastating counter-attack. In practice, involves [=SSBNs=] and back-up command centres, as well as having very large stockpiles of nuclear weapons.  Standard thinking was that in a worst-case out-of-left-field all-out nuclear first-strike 90% of one's stockpile might be lost.  If your 10% that survive was numericaly big enough to annihilate your would-be attacker, he would not countenance the thought of surviving a counterattack with "acceptable" losses because the complete destruction of one's own side would presumably never be considered acceptable.  If your total stockpile is large enough, you can [[MutuallyAssuredDestruction guarantee whoever attacked you that he would also be annihilated]].

This is the basis of why American and Soviet nuclear stockpiles were as large as they were during the Cold War.  On the American side, war planners in the 1960's estimated that there were about 300 potential targets in the Soviet Union (this number was arrived at by adding up all the industrial centers, military targets, and cities with at least 10,000 residents).  Nuclear strikes at the time weren't guaranteed to be accurate - missiles may land twenty miles off-target, or bombers might miss because of navigation errors/nighttime conditions/being chased by enemy anti-air - so planners stacked three nukes per potential target to compensate for that possibility.  Now taking into account the previous worst-case 90%-stockpile-loss-on-first-strike, the total number needed now goes up tenfold.

Doing the math, that comes out to 300 targets * 3 nukes per target * 10 to cover the worst-case-scenario = 9000 nukes needed for MutuallyAssuredDestruction.  Of course, this is a rough calculation - actual American and Soviet stockpiles reached higher levels at their peaks (around 32,000 and 45,000, respectively).

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18th Apr '13 8:38:15 AM megarockman

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15th Apr '13 12:30:13 PM Lawyerdude

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Israel is a nuclear power, and has been since the late 1960s. It's quite a respectable one; at this point, they have something like several hundred deliverable nuclear devices, which are by all accounts quite sophisticated. To put them on target, they have their air force, a number of [=IRBMs=] (and they may have some kind of ICBM capability, too...) and even some submarine-launched cruise missiles. Anyway, Israel developed its nuclear program on the basis of both a good deal of French aid (which may have been mutual, with engineering assistance going back the other way) and a large quantity of fissile material which, depending upon whom you ask, was either stolen from the United States, or provided by them under the table; in any case, by 1967-1968, Israel had several warheads. That nation maintains a policy of ambiguity on the subject to this day, officially neither confirming nor denying its ownership of nuclear weapons, although at this late date no one really doubts either their existence or their owners' willingness to use them should the situation grow sufficiently dire.

to:

Israel is a nuclear power, and has been since the late 1960s. It's quite a respectable one; at this point, they have something like several hundred deliverable nuclear devices, which are by all accounts quite sophisticated. To put them on target, they have their air force, a number of [=IRBMs=] (and they may have some kind of ICBM capability, too...) and even some submarine-launched cruise missiles. Anyway, Israel developed its nuclear program on the basis of both a good deal of French aid (which may have been mutual, with engineering assistance going back the other way) and a large quantity of fissile material which, depending upon whom you ask, was either stolen from the United States, provided by them under the table, or provided by South Africa (this was during the Apartheid era when many nations were imposing sanctions on them) in exchange for help enriching the raw uranium into weapons-grade material; in any case, by 1967-1968, Israel had several warheads. That nation maintains a policy of ambiguity on the subject to this day, officially neither confirming nor denying its ownership of nuclear weapons, although at this late date no one really doubts either their existence or their owners' willingness to use them should the situation grow sufficiently dire.

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