Is there any point to a retaliatory strike in the event of nuclear war?

If you desire peace, prepare for war.

Often misquoted, but it does encapsulate the basic theory behind MAD.

Depends what you call a "functioning nation". I think that overall, living standards and overall population would be reduced to the late 19th century. But both the U.S. and Russia were viable nations in the late 19th century. And the technology would still be a known quantity so recovery would probably be faster.

Ironically, more people in Africa and Asia would probably die from a nuclear war than died in the U.S., western Europe and the Soviet Union from a nuclear war even if not a single nuclear weapon was detonated there.

Because huge swaths of nations depended heavily on food assistance and general economic assistance from the west and would be SOL in the aftermath of a war.

The difference is that a highly ordered, interwoven modern society does not smoothly collapse back to an earlier state. As just one example, you didn't need electricity and petroleum in the 1880's. In the 1980's, you did. Your entire lifestyle assumes that you have electricity and petroleum, and those who supply you have electricity and petroleum.

The Soviets essentially conceded that neither Communism nor a Russian-identity state where the USSR was were likely to survive WWIII. Their primary goal was to ensure the survival of enough people to rebuild something on an even playing field (hence nuke the hell out of China in addition to US). The United States, beyond some efforts to protect leadership, had no organized civil defense at all. Fallout shelters were inadequate by orders of magnitude, not really staffed, almost never stocked, and usually way too close to areas that would receive nuclear hits.

And it's debatable how useful the government nuclear bunkers actually were. Evacuating Congress never seemed logistically feasible, and the most essential parts of the government (the Cabinet Agencies) were being left on their own in D.C. You'd try to save the political appointees because they are in the line of succession, but they aren't the people you need. Your odds of survival if you were in metro D.C. bordered on mathematical zero. And outside of D.C., all major cities, military bases and state capitols are being targeted. That's where most of your national government field offices are.

I don't see how a functional national economy or government is salvageable after the scale of attack we are talking about here.

Eh, civil defense is really pretty pointless. Less than a thousand warheads (and that's with backups) and you've taken out every refinery and port capable of importing fuel. At which point, it doesn't matter how many survived the initial strike, everyone is going to die anyhow.

Bit of an exaggeration.

And you don't need big refineries to refine petroleum. The ones in Chechyna often amount to little more than the equivalent of backwoods stills. And in the aftermath of a nuclear war, we wouldn't need to import oil anyway.

No oil means no large-scale food production and distribution. No large-scale food production and distribution, well...

If you are not living in a naturally fertile region that avoids massive fallout, your odds of surviving are quite poor.

Nope. You need oil to run all of the mechanical farm equipment, you need oil to get food from farms to mills and/or markets, etc.

You cannot get useful amounts out of that.

Keep in mind, as well, that oil isn't necessarily transferrable across the country either. The West Coast, for instance, may be an untouched paradise: But the oil produced and refined there is only transferrable by rail car and it's fairly easy to shut down the Transcons when you're tossing nukes around (ignoring, of course, that you likely don't have enough rail cars to begin with).

If you have no refineries, you need to import refined fuels from elsewhere.

ensuring the world isn't ruled by the people who fired those weapons.

Pretty much boils down to this: If you have the option NOT to launch the retaliatory strike someone fucked up royally. It's likely that this is what the other side perceived as it's only chance for a successful first strike, so this fuck-up pretty much is what caused the situation to happen.

Because if you don't seriously plan to do this if they do, there's no reason for them not to?

The whole point of MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction, and the emphasis upon that philosophy through every diplomatic, military and economic action that can possibly be taken to mean 'Yes, we're not kidding' is to ultimately Prevent The Button from ever being pressed.

If somehow it comes to pass that The Button did get pressed, that's it, game over, the end is nigh, the Godzilla Threshold has been breached and there is no turning back. At that point it doesn't matter who did what first or what their intentions were, and being expected to sympathize with the enemy nation's civilians is no longer reasonable.

If MAD has failed, you do no good by pointlessly slaughtering their civilians. Once the balloon goes up, the only proper course of action is to end the war as soon as possible, by surrender if need be.

Unfortunately this is a predictable response which will cause MAD to fail. MAD can only work if you can believably pre-commit to pushing the button when they push the button.

This leads to fun things like wanting their spies to succeed in getting information about your nuclear submarines. Because they are more likely to believe the spies than what you tell them.

Incorrect. The whole point of MAD is to make them believe you're going to retaliate. The decision on whether or not to respond will have been made months beforehand, rather than during the strike itself; if the other side does not genuinely believe you're going to respond, this encourages them to attempt a first strike.

Furthermore, as has been pointed out above, a government which has launched a genocidal nuclear first strike is a government that must fall at any cost. There are other considerations as well, such as preventing the other side's armies from invading your treaty-bound allies, and discouraging the next government which finds itself in a MAD situation.

Honestly, that is the biggest wisdom any country can take for diplomacy, when used in moderation. War will always happen, but it is the wise leader that prepares for it as best as can be done without sacrificing other key areas.

Those who take this wisdom and use it to an extreme so that they build far beyond the needs of their defense and abroad commitments to their allies... then it starts becoming a problem.

Like any threat made by sovereign nations, a nation must be willing to actually carry the threat out in order for it to be credible.

The 'take over the world' thing is well taken here as well. If during the Cold War it had come to complete throwdown between the US and the USSR, at least with a full counterstrike there's a chance other countries would survive and not have to suffer under the menace of a super power that has already demonstrated its intent to conquer the entire world.

I can think of quite a few counties in the Western United states that would survive a nuclear war with only moderate disruption.. you know the counties that nobody except those who live in the state have ever heard of? I don't think even at the end the Soviets would have spared a nuke for Okanogan County in Washtington State for example..

Living in a rural environment, I can tell you this, there is enough animal power and basic equipment to maintain local level food production, but there is not going to be anywhere near the surplus needed to feed anything more then local communities. Bright side is that many counties law & Order apparatuses will be intact, since most western counties also still maintain a posse structure (even though its now oriented for search and rescue purposes) Its not going to be that hard for the sheriff in my county to tell his posse to show up, bring their horses AND their guns.

If the nukes are flying then surrender is irrelevant.

That depends on the specific warheads involved if your going off their total stockpile or the smaller number of the warheads they actually could launch much less the yield make up of said warheads. Saying someone has "2,000 rounds" of ammunition sounds impressive and scary for example...until you take a look and realize the bulk of thats stored in sealed ammunition tins and maybe only 30 rounds are actually ready to use at a moments notice on top of 20 of those being low powered pistol rounds. Using total arsenal quantities is at best naive and at worse deliberately misleading in these sort of threads and one mistake that's commonly repeated in these sorts of threads.

I know its a few decades old now, last updated in 1987,but Nuclear Survival Skills suggests that while a nuclear war would kill lots of people, it wouldn't be the end of the United States if people bothered preparing (one of the things he bemoans is that while Russia and China have dedicated civil defense plans that would greatly minimize casualties, the US doesn't). He mentions that in any sane strategy military installations will be the main targets, which means that unless you live near something of military importance (most big cities are included under that unfortunately) you won't need a full on blast shelter. A simpler fallout shelter would work fine.

Do you engage in a subsistence farm with it's own water supply and are amply upwind of any major industrial or military targets? If not, you're fucked. End of story.

SAC being a bunch of fuckwits, of course, they put all the "You need to create massive fallout in the process of killing this" targets upwind of our major food and water supplies.

I wouldn't be so sure. Just looking at a map of Okanogan County and the surrounding area I can see that you'll probably recieve fallout from Seattle, Vancouver, Omak[1], and/or Spokane[2] (depending on the prevailing wind patterns at the time) and Okanogan Legion Airport might recieve a warhead or two...

And even if you don't, there will probably be swarms of desperate refugees who would be willing and able to tangle with the sheriff and his posse if it means getting food and water.

[1]Possible target, given Omak airport.
[2]Fairchild Air Force Base means this one is definately going to be targetted.

Attacks on cities won't produce much in the way of fallout as they will be attacked by airbursts.

At any rate, a full Soviet nuclear attack would not "spread the nukes" around as someone seemed to suggest. The Soviets would massively concentrate on U.S. nuclear forces and other military sites, such as at least 300 warheads focused on Minutemen missile fields with 150 missiles in them. And I don't remember where, but I've heard that the Soviets had massive overkill concentrated on major cities. Something like DOZENS of warheads on cities like New York.

I would bet that at least half a dozen state capitols would survive because they would be low priority targets.

Are there any good "realistic post-nuclear-apocalypse" works of fiction, that don't have the "massive global fallout / nuclear winter" or "EVERYTHING EVER is destroyed. EVERYWHERE." tropes?

That is entirely dependent on what is being targetted within the city. A soft target, like an oil refinery or communications building, would be hit with an air burst. Harder targets, like airbases, would get ground bursts. Both Vancouver and Seattle would likely recieve a mix of ground and surface bursts. Because the prime target in Spokane is a military air base, it is almost garunteed to get at least one or two ground bursts.

Actually, they would too a degree. In times of crisis, SAC planned to disperse its bomber fleets from its main airbases to secondary facilities, both military and civilian. The Soviets are aware with this and hence included facilities which heavy bombers could base out of on their target list. If Okanogan Legion Airport's runway(s) are able to take B-52s and/or B1s, then it probably is going to get targetted with a warhead or two fused for a ground burst.

If it is a state capitol, then in a full exchange it will get hit, garunteed. If not by balilistic missiles, then by gravity bombs or cruise missiles delivered by Soviet long-range aviation.