The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War

by Fred Kaplan

By the time Nixon entered the White House, the SIOP had been modified, a little bit, to allow for three “attack options”: Alpha, which would fire a portion of the arsenal at Soviet and Chinese nuclear weapons sites; Bravo, which covered other military facilities and political-control centers located outside of cities; and Charlie, which would destroy all other military sites, regardless of their location, as well as 70 percent of the industrial floor space inside Soviet and Chinese cities. There was also a sub-option to exclude Moscow and Beijing from Alpha and Bravo strikes. Otherwise, the nuclear war plan offered the president no other choices, and the smallest of those choices—Alpha with the Moscow-Beijing exemption—would fire 1,750 nuclear weapons: hardly a “limited” attack.