You should read up on what this quote from the article is referring to
> From the Air Force intelligence estimates I was newly privy to, and the dark view of the Soviets, which my colleagues shared with the whole national security community, I couldn't believe that the world would long escape nuclear holocaust.
The "dark view" that the Soviets had of a nuclear war was essentially that
1. A limited nuclear exchange was impossible due to not being able to ascertain or trust the enemy's intentions and so all parties would use all of their nuclear arsenal to avoid losing the ability to counter attack to any subsequent attacks.
2. Even though they didn't see a nuclear war as being able to cause human extinction they concluded that no nation involved in one or near enough to suffer the second order effects of one would survive.
3. A full nuclear exchange would likely destroy >80% of each nation's industrial capacity resulting in the total collapse of industrial society making any reconstruction efforts impossible and leading to the death of the majority of the population dependent on industrial production for survival. The survivors would be on their own attempting to start over with subsistence agriculture made all the more difficult by however many years of nuclear winter resulted from the burning of cities and industry and suffering high cancer rates from exposure to fallout and toxic soot.
It doesn't really matter how many nuclear weapons you have beyond a certain number. Just imagine if you only hit all of the oil refineries in the US or you only destroyed all the major ports, it would still result in mass starvation and cripple the nation while creating a gigantic ecological disaster from burning huge quantities of oil and material. Multiply that across several nations and it's the end of the world as you know it.
> From the Air Force intelligence estimates I was newly privy to, and the dark view of the Soviets, which my colleagues shared with the whole national security community, I couldn't believe that the world would long escape nuclear holocaust.
The "dark view" that the Soviets had of a nuclear war was essentially that
1. A limited nuclear exchange was impossible due to not being able to ascertain or trust the enemy's intentions and so all parties would use all of their nuclear arsenal to avoid losing the ability to counter attack to any subsequent attacks.
2. Even though they didn't see a nuclear war as being able to cause human extinction they concluded that no nation involved in one or near enough to suffer the second order effects of one would survive.
3. A full nuclear exchange would likely destroy >80% of each nation's industrial capacity resulting in the total collapse of industrial society making any reconstruction efforts impossible and leading to the death of the majority of the population dependent on industrial production for survival. The survivors would be on their own attempting to start over with subsistence agriculture made all the more difficult by however many years of nuclear winter resulted from the burning of cities and industry and suffering high cancer rates from exposure to fallout and toxic soot.
It doesn't really matter how many nuclear weapons you have beyond a certain number. Just imagine if you only hit all of the oil refineries in the US or you only destroyed all the major ports, it would still result in mass starvation and cripple the nation while creating a gigantic ecological disaster from burning huge quantities of oil and material. Multiply that across several nations and it's the end of the world as you know it.