@jsalvati "Consider that the US used nuclear bombs immediately after it got them."

Well, not because the inventors wanted it. To be fair, Einstein wrote Roosevelt only out of fear the Nazis would build it first. And of course at the test site, Oppenheimer, Rabi, and Bainbridge all immediately expressed their moral dismay; Oppenheimer most eloquently with the famous quote from the Gita. Indeed, after the test results were seen, several of the Project team wrote a petition begging the bomb never be used.

But from a Cold War game-theory perspective, wasn't MAD considered necessary for safety? With that logic in mind, the US would use the bomb, right, with no counterbalance in place for the Nash equilibrium?