[ZanyProgrammer]

Where do you get 10K nukes (Russia now? Soviet Union circa 1984?) Do you mean warheads or delivery vehicles? Do you assume that every one of those 10K will be delivered to the lower 48? Or that every one of those 10K will be successfully launched and reach its target? That there won't be any out of commission for maintenance or second strikes? Or that a western pre-emptive strike won't hit any? Or that there might be BMD systems that will make an incoming strike suffer attrition? Are you factoring in that some targets will get much more than a single warhead?

[Retric]

That was just a nice round number. According to Wikipedia from ~1970 - 2000 Russia had 10,000+ nukes with a peak of ~40,000 in ~1985. No idea what the actual numbers where though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_arms_race

Mostly, I was just pointing out that fairly soon they could branch out and target just about any population center. I don't think they ever actually targeted death valley for example.

Anyway, the important thing to remember is by the mid 1970's many of these bomb shelters had been unused for 20+ years. It's very natural to look at something like that and say spending more on this is probably pointless.