Basic Communist propaganda.
Don't fight, give up. We have already won. Better red than dead.
All the same message.
No, it’s actually a reality between nuclear powers. If you do a nuclear attack, even by surprise, even first, you are guaranteed a nasty response from what you don’t get. And even if say only one Russian sub survived and we got hit with 20 to 50 warheads... that would be an unparalleled disaster for our nation.
To everyone except Buck Turgidson.
The “do not play” message was also from us to them. There is pretty much no realistic scenario where you can wage a nuclear war and emerge anywhere near a condition close to how you started it.
Basic Communist propaganda.
Don't fight, give up. We have already won. Better red than dead.
All the same message.
The intent is to demoralize and encourage capitulation. This was the underlying hidden message from the novel "On the Beach" - futility and inevitability; it dawned on me when I watched the movie a second time.
From Wikipedia:
"The novel does not realistically describe the effects of a global nuclear war, which were poorly understood at the time. Notably, the novel does not portray any form of nuclear winter. In the survival manual Nuclear War Survival Skills, Cresson Kearney describes the novel as "pseudoscientific" and "demoralising", arguing that it and similar works perpetuate the myth that any large-scale nuclear war would inevitably wipe out all human life. This myth, argues Kearney, is dangerous as it discourages people from taking precautionary measures that could save lives in the event of a nuclear attack, in the mistaken belief that any precaution is futile."