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i | t j ‘ . ‘ Soviet nuclear stockpile grew. It had to be abandoned after 1954, when hydro- gen bombs became available to both East and West. When the U.S.S.R. pro- ceeded to build up a fleet of long-range bombers to deliver its hydrogen bombs, the U.S. became vulnerable to nuclear counterattack. Some form of nuclear stalemate by balance of terror seemed to have arrived. This balance seemed still further strengthened about 1957, when rapid progress in the technology of nuclear weapons and missiles made it possible to carry multimegaton hydrogen bombs in ICBM’s, Because such missiles are most difficult, if not impossible, to de- bee eee ewe PT tee econ enn nnn nen 1 7 i ' H 4 r] 4 | { \ . { lowe, | H al eal ae alent ae i | ® “Seemed \ a a ial \ ° e ‘ *. Ly “se be based on‘an attack on the U.S. population rather than on US. airfields aud missile bases. The colored dote on this mup represent eae stroy in flight, a nuclear aggressor would have to leave no enemy missiles unde- stroyed if it wanted to keep its own major cities from being wiped out by a retaliatory attack. The advent of long- range missiles therefore made the bal- _ ance of terror more stable. wo contrasting systems of military theory evolved in response to this new situation. The first Jed off from the premise that a rather stable kind of mili- tary balance had been reached, in which neither side could make use of its stra- tegic nuclear power without ensuring its own destruction. In other words, the balance of terror was likely to be rather * i nel e * Sepes. a, stable against rational action, even though the actual nuclear strengths of the two sides were markedly different, as indeed they were in the middle 1950's, when the U.S. was already vastly strong- er in over-all deployed nuclear strength. This view rested on the assumption that neither side could hope to knock out the other's nuclear system entirely. Since some power to retaliate would survive attack, a rational government would be nearly as much, if not just as much, de- terred from a first strike by the expecta- tion that it would suffer, say, 10 million deatns as it would be if the expectation were 100 million. This view led to the practical conclu- the 25 largest U.S. cities. In the 1960 census the combined popula- tion of the metropolitan areas of these cities was 60.8 million.