THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

An illustration of just how bloody minded, or maybe crispy minded might be a better way to put it, our military was while we had a numerical nuclear advantage over the Soviets. The targeting list for nuclear bombers in 1959 has been released and surprisingly, despite many targets being in populated areas, a number of targets were simply listed as “Population.”

For the first time, the National Archives and Records Administration has released a detailed list of the United States’ potential targets for atomic bombers in the event of war with the Soviet Union, showing the number and the variety of targets on its territory, as well as in Eastern Europe and China.

It lists many targets for “systematic destruction” in major cities, including 179 in Moscow (like “Agricultural Equipment” and “Transformers, Heavy”), 145 in Leningrad and 91 in East Berlin. The targets are referred to as DGZs or “designated ground zeros.” While many are industrial facilities, government buildings and the like, one for each city is simply designated “Population.”

“It’s disturbing, for sure, to see the population centers targeted,” said William Burr, a senior analyst at the National Security Archive, a research group at George Washington University that obtained the target list in response to a request first made in 2006. Mr. Burr, who specializes in nuclear history, said he believed it was the most detailed target list the Air Force had ever made public...

It was produced at a time before intercontinental or submarine-launched missiles, when piloted bombers were essentially the only means of delivering nuclear weapons. The United States then had a huge advantage over the Soviet Union, with a nuclear arsenal about 10 times as big, said Matthew G. McKinzie, the director of the nuclear program at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

He said that while the document conjured the height of the Cold War, the targeting of urban populations still remained an underlying principle of the use of nuclear weapons to deter attack. “The heart of deterrence is the threat to destroy the adversary’s cities, even today,” Mr. McKinzie said.

The concept of winning in those good old days was simple. If the other side had more 'crispy critters' after all the bombs were dropped, they lost and you won. Life was much easier back then.