During the 1980s the Soviet Union initiated a program to create a system that would act as a retaliation should it fall subject to a 1st strike from the US. Even if it successfully knocked out the Kremlin leadership and command structure, this system could launch a full-scale nuclear attack, thus ensuring the doctrine of MAD, Mutual Assured Destruction. In this video we look at how this system came about and how, even though it was not directly known about, just the inferences of this system being real was enough to affect how the US war gamed 1st strike scenarios and may well have helped stop an nuclear attack during the 1980s.