Mutual Assured Destruction

I recently ran across this word in an essay written for the New York Times called "Elevating Science, Elevating Democracy". the definition of mutual assured destruction, or MAD, according to Wikipedia.com is "...doctrine of military strategy in which a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by two opposing sides would effectively result in the destruction of both the attacker and the defender." Could you imagine that? With weapons like the Russian Tsar Bomba out there we could virtually end our species overnight.

This is not the first time I've come across this word in my lifetime, however. While reading "When You Ride Alone You Ride With Bin Laden: What the Government Should Be Telling Us to Help Fight the War on Terrorism" which is a great book BTW. In it he mentions as follows ," Mutual assured destruction, keyword assured. Rest assured if you kill a lot of us we'll kill all of you." I couldn't help but chuckle at that.