5 times we almost nuked ourselves by accident

[Anomalocaris]

I always have been and still am a big believer in MAD. Any rational agent will not attack or invade you if it means his/her/its own self destruction.

Any rational agent that finds himself in MAD must also ostentatiously ensure that if he is ever led to believe that you are attacking him, even if by false information, he must destroy you, lest the information be true.

In case you wonder how slippery the slope of rationality is, consider the Perimeter system. This is a system the Soviets implemented in late 1980s to ensure completely autonomous, human-decision-free, nuclear retaliation decision. When the septuagenarian Konstantine Cherneanko succeeded to the position of General Secretary and Chairman of Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, he assumed the final authority for use of Soviet Nuclear arsenal. But so frail already was his health that he could not finish sentences in his public speech without grasping his podium for support and pausing for up to 30 seconds to catch his breath. The Soviet military, fearing that Cherneanko's health and power of decision will fail under the stress of a potential US nuclear attack, developed an unique system that, once activated, would automatically monitor radiation, seismic, accoustic sensors and radars, and automatically launch the entire soviet nuclear arsenal at the US if it thinks it detects any unexpected nuclear explosions in Soviet territory. The system works without any human operator. Once the system decides it was under attack and issues its completely automatic electronic launch commands to all Soviet strategic missiles, no human operator can comprehensively countermand the launch. The whole system was intended to ensure that United States will not survive even if it were to successfully pull off a decapitation strike that kills the entire Soviet leadership. There may be deterrence value in this system if the US was made aware of it. But the Soviets kept it secret, so this system literally contributed nothing to deterrence and stability before any nuclear war. It's only role to was to ensure the world would not survive what the computer might think was an attack on the Soviet Union.

Think about it, for a couple of years after you were born, the human civilization did not perish only because pieces of Soviet electronics, not renowned for its sophistication, reliability or quality of system integration, did not fail. The destruction part of muturally assured destruction was somewhat more assured than you realized, I think.