Since the end of the Cold War, people have been focused on the possibility of a terrorist nuclear attack or an accident or some rogue nation using nuclear weapons. They are not focused and worried about the possibility of an all-out nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia. With the end of the Cold War, people really haven’t thought about that very much.
Those who do follow it, they know it would be catastrophic, that the chance of an all-out war, the use of most of our missiles, strategic bombers, on both sides, is possible. It is not zero possibility, and it’s not near-zero possibility. We have 400 missiles on 10-minute alert. From getting an authenticated command to the time that the missiles are actually launched from their silos, it’s a matter of minutes. Those missiles, of course, cannot be recalled. In about 30 minutes, they would land at their targets, largely in Russia
— source democracynow.org | Dec 14, 2022