MAD, ABMs, MIRVS, and the SALT talks

Today in class we finished the documentary on MAD, or Mutual Assured Destruction. The concept of Mutual assured destruction is that if each side of the Cold war had enough nuclear weapons to destroy 25-50 percent of the population of the other side, no one would attack each other in fear that they would be destroyed as a result. If each country could make other countries believe this, there would be peace. When Soviets designed ABMs, or Anti-Ballistic Missiles, they endangered this concept of MAD because ABMs were a defense against nuclear strikes. This eliminated Assured destruction, which could have caused one side to dare to attack the other. These ABMs cost five times as much to produce as a nuclear bomb, which gave an economic advantage to aggression. In response to ABMs, the United States developed MIRVs, or Multiple Independent Re-entry Vehicles, which allowed for multiple warheads inside a single nuclear missile. This caused, for each nuclear missile, 10 ABMs would have to be sent to defend against it. Eventually both countries grew tired of the amount of money they were spending to uphold their side of the nuclear Arms race and develop new technologies, so they met and engaged in the SALT talks, or Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. The result of these talks was a limitation of ABMs and a temporary freeze on nuclear launcher production, but it did not control MIRVs or arms production, so it did not end the arms race.