| According to the US and USSR doctrines a nuclear war could best be prevented if neither side could not expect to survive as a state of full function; in other words a full nuclear exchange would take place.
If the USSR pushed the button first the US would quickly respond. All major cities, ports, military installations and oil fields etc would be removed from planet earth in a matter of minutes causing hundreds of millions of deaths, devastating damage to the enviroment and the ozone layer causing nuclear winter and nuclear summer hurting the entire planet.
Those whose so fortunate to survive would face so large problems with radiation and nuclear waste polluting water, crops, buildings and so on making life so hard that only a handfull would survive in the most remote areas of the continents.
Who would have won? Won what...?
Edit: Worst case scenario - ie total nuclear war.
On the other hand - damages will be less severe if a limited amount of nuclear weapons were used for a limted period of time - but the way I see this scenario would be the desire for removal of either USA or USSR from the planet.
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