Mutual assured destruction facts for kids

Mutual assured destruction (MAD) is a military strategy in which two opposing military forces are powerful enough to completely destroy each other. It should help to avoid a nuclear war. This usually happens when both forces have nuclear weapons. If a state attacks another with nuclear weapons, the state attacked will potentially be able to attack back. The attacker must think that he will be destroyed with his victim if he attacks. The theory is that no state would start an attack if attacking its enemy means its own destruction.

The concept was discussed by Herman Kahn. It was part of the background to the film Dr. Strangelove.

Images for kids

• 

  Aftermath of the atomic bomb explosion over Hiroshima, August 6, 1945

• 

  Atomic bomb explosions over Hiroshima, Japan, 6 August 1945 (left) and over Nagasaki, Japan, 9 August 1945 (right).

• 

  Robert McNamara

• 

  The USS George Washington (SSBN-598), the lead ship of the US Navy's first class of Fleet Ballistic Missile Submarines, Nuclear (SSBN)

• 

  A time exposure of seven MIRVs from Peacekeeper missile passing through clouds

• 

  A payload launch vehicle carrying a prototype exoatmospheric kill vehicle is launched from Meck Island at the Kwajalein Missile Range on December 3, 2001, for an intercept of a ballistic missile target over the central Pacific Ocean.

See also

In Spanish: Destrucción mutua asegurada para niños