> > These tests are meant to find a better version of the Trident Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, a weapon of mass destruction - what do they need to know? How big a bang it makes? How many people it will kill?
>
> Last night, there was a show on the Hitler channel about submarines, including a large segment on nuclear ballistic submarines. At one point, the program gave a statistic claiming that the 18 such US vessels have a combined firepower roughly equivalent to 23,000 Hiroshima explosions. Several other countries also have considerable fleets of these weapons. Each ship has over a dozen missiles each of which can independently target warheads to hit a number of different sites over about a 6000 mile range. Overall, it was a very impressive program, showing the many strengths, weaknesses, and achievements that went into the great subs.
>
> But still, for someone who is not a military strategist, the stats seem absurd. What possible reasons could there be so that we would want or need to destroy thousands of cities at a time? It sounds very literally like overkill.
>
> Another item that seemed almost silly was the race to build bigger bombs. So our bombs were 50 kiloton and the enemy's were 100 kiloton. Whoopee. Nothing's going to survive anyway; the targeting systems were already accurate to within a few dozen feet.
>
> gab"Maybe they just thought bigger bombs were cooler"by

Here's a theory:

If you have the power to destroy your opponent's country thirty times over, and your opponent can destroy your country forty times over, There might not seem to be much point to having any more weapons. However, whenever ballistic missile defense becomes a viable protective measure you might not have enough warheads to overload your foe's defense screen, leaving your country at their mercy.

Here's another:

The main deterrent to nuclear war is the high likelihood that the nation that recieves a nuclear attack will be able to launch a counterstrike at the attacker before the first wave of warheads annihilates them. If ever a country was taken by surprise by a nuclear strike, and was unable to counterattack before they were turned to radioactive dust, then the whole mutally-assured-destruction scenario goes out the window, showing nuclear war to be a usable form of international politics. The more missiles one country has spead accross the globe decreases the chance that such a surprise attack could succeed against them, their foes know that, and the warheads don't get launched in the first place.

10"brainstorming"Kan