[Targan]

It doesn't seem to have been mentioned yet, so I will.

In the 1e and 2e timelines, the Soviets nuked China first, right? So when we look at the likelihood or not of either NATO, France or WarPac would be willing to lob nukes at one another and why, we need to look at it through the lens of a world traumatised by the knowledge (and no doubt ample TV footage) of what had occurred as a result of the Soviet nuclear strikes on China. I think that alone goes a long way to explaining why the first nuclear strikes in Europe, and even the first strikes hitting the US mainland, didn't instantly result in a MAD outcome. What had previously been theoretical in terms of a large-scale nuclear conflict was now terribly, terribly real.

It's one thing to use your imagination to describe a nuclear war, it's entirely another to have seen months and months of nightly TV news footage of devastated Chinese cities and the shattered survivors pouring out into the countryside.