Simulation, day 2: Why we didn't blow ourselves up

We didn't blow ourselves up because the Soviets knew next to nothing about the Americans and the Americans knew next to nothing about the Soviets.  The paranoia that grew out of poor intelligence (on both sides, but especially the American side) led to such scare tactics as Kennedy's missile gap.  In our simulation, however, it was brutally obvious to us (the Soviets) what the nuclear capabilities of our rivals were, and we also knew that they would not learn of our order to bomb them.  We weren't as isolated and afraid as our real-life Soviet counterparts.

Simulation, day 1

I thought I'd mention one problem with our simulation.  In the simulation, each side could acquire accurate information about the opposition by putting points into spying.  In real life, however, the Soviets severely outmatched the Americans in this regard.  Throughout much of the fifties and sixties, the CIA was focusing more on failed "covert operations" than on gathering intelligence.  In fact, according, at least, to Tim Weiner, the CIA was outmanned and outgunned from the beginning, and its earliest exploits were foiled because Soviet intelligence had infiltrated it at every level.  The question arises:  how did we win?  And why didn't we blow ourselves up?  (Stay tuned, I guess.)