Nuclear weapons made deliberate superpower war close to unthinkable and simultaneously made accidental war a live possibility — and the two risks respond to opposite settings. Move the dials that strategists actually argued about, or load a real year, and watch which choices bought stability and which quietly spent it.
Load a real year
The dials
60%
Hardened silos, bombers on airborne alert and above all missile submarines at sea. This is the whole ballgame: can you be hit first and still answer?
Everything is destroyableNothing can be disarmed
15 min
How long a leader has between detection and detonation — set by geography and missile type, not by intentions.
3 min — on the doorstep30 min+ — ocean crossing
0% intercepted
Sounds defensive. Works out otherwise — watch what it does to the top bar and read why.
4,000
The number everybody protested about. Notice how little it moves the top bar once both sides can already answer a first strike.
Crisis machinery
Risk of a deliberate first strike0
Risk of an accidental or inadvertent war0
Mutually assured destruction is the condition in the middle: both sides survive a first strike and can still annihilate the other, so attacking on purpose stops being rational. Most strategists concluded that this was grotesque and stabilising at the same time — and that everything dangerous had moved into the second bar.