mutually assured destruction

1. (mad) any situation or course of action which ensures the total erradication of all parties involved.

2. often used to describe what would have happened in the cold war era were one side to have attacked the other using nuclear weapons, causing the other side to retaliate, ensuring the nuclear obliteration of most of asia and north america.
1. when phil and bob entered into that gay-suicide-love-pact, they were pursuing a course of mutually -ssured destruction.

2. mutually -ssured destruction never happened in the cold war — look around you people; we’re living in america, not the movie cyborg.
a.k.a. mad, refers to the military stalemate between russia and usa between late 1940 and the present. the basic premise is that each side has so many nuclear weapons in its -rs-nal, that strike/counter strike would destroy both combatants.
of two warring factions, where one group strikes and the other retaliates with the same force, resulting in the obliteration of both.
“speak of mutually -ssured destruction… nice story, tell it to reader’s digest!”
the “lose-lose” scenario in any kind of war, although nuclear war is often -ssociated with this term.
“from my reading of various pr-noucements made by the russian high command over the years, i am convinced that they will never again permit their nation to be threatened… no matter what the cost… that cost itself may actually is mutually -ssured destruction.”

— alan moore, as the voice of professor milton gl-ss, “dr. manhattan: super-powers and the superpowers”, in watchmen (dc comics, 1986)
1. a position whereby the united states and the ussr – union of soviet socialist republics – would in a nuclear war, be able to destroy each other with their -rs-nals of nuclear weapons. each maintaining the possibility to strike the other even if one party fired first. the phrase mutually -ssured destruction thereby implies that both parties -ssumed the ability to strike and destroy the other. a catastrophic eventuality if it ever arose. both parties thus maintained this position, -ssuring each other than nuclear weapons would not be used, even if a conventional war broke out. the downfall of the soviet system and emergence of the russian federation did not make a nuclear war ineffectual, rather it maintains that the two parties still have the capability – and underscores the fact that a nuclear war between these nuclear giants is an inevitability.
2. while this term is specifically used to term the usa and russia, it may also be applied to china as the latter has built an intercontinental ballistic -rs-nal that would be deployable if the usa and china ever faced off.
where two guys face each other, w-nking off, and try to have both -j-c-l-t-s collide in mid-air, thus averting catastrophe.
shall we save the world again tomorrow, bill?

…from mutually -ssured destruction
difficult to define exactly, but it’s not the actual -name- of a situation or doctrine. rather, it describes the outcome of a given action in the circ-mstances:
in the case of the us and ussr, their shared determination to retaliate to an attack by the other – given the size of their nuclear -rs-nals – would’ve -ssured mutual destruction.

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