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"Mutual assured destruction or mutually assured destruction (MAD) is a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy in which a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by two or more opposing sides would cause the complete annihilation of both the attacker and the defender (see pre-emptive nuclear strike and second strike).[1] It is based on the theory of deterrence, which holds that the threat of using strong weapons against the enemy prevents the enemy's use of those same weapons. The strategy is a form of Nash equilibrium in which, once armed, neither side has any incentive to initiate a conflict or to disarm."
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The strategy of MAD was fully declared in the early 1960s, primarily by United States Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. The Cold War brought the Cuban Missile Crisis, people building bunkers to protect their families from nuclear attack and Khrushchev removing his shoe while attending a meeting of the UN General Assembly in September 1960 and then banging it on the podium to emphasize his belief in the eventual, and inevitable, victory of world communism.
Violence is relevant. In my experience, the threat of violence is almost as intolerable as the actual thing.