The nuclear bombers were intercepted worldwide
at the time, so “ready” is a little undercalling
on the sitrep.
There’s not much we can do about ICBMs though, or SLBMs either. And those things are MIRV, a.k.a. cluster nukes. The best try is to either hit the missile shortly after launch, or detonate another nuke and hope that the nuclear explosion destroys the other missile en route.
Anyone remember the old arcade game called missile command?
The point is we were not flying our nuclear bombers. And Russia has probably a 10 to 1 advantage in tactical nukes and neutron devices.