The Nuclear War Simulator can be controlled entirely by the user and also includes an AI that can control a country to launch nuclear weapons as a response to your actions. Each country has a political leadership figure with an AI that can be enabled and adjusted to respond to detonations on its territory and to missiles detected by early-warning radar and satellites. If several countries are controlled by the AI it will lead to an escalating series of counterattacks that will most likely end in an all-out nuclear war. This can be used to create unpredictable scenarios triggered by minimal input from the user.

Response to attack

The most basic AI response is retaliation to being attacked and to detonations that were detected on its territory. The AI counts the detonations and registers which countries were attacking it.

The AI then launches a proportional counter-attack.

It is also possible to set the balance of military to civilian targets for these attacks and to define a threshold for a disproportional all-out response.

Launch on warning

The AI can launch a response triggered by early-warning satellites or radar, even before the warheads land on its territory to avoid a disarming attack.

You can adjust the performance of the early-warning systems (reaction time, reliability, etc) and the proportionality of the response. It is possible to set a threshold on the initial attack for a launch-on-warning response. This way, the AI may decide to ride out a small attack and wait for confirmed detonations on the ground.

The early-warning response AI can be used to demonstrate some of the modern and historical nuclear response policies. There is a scenario provided with the simulation where a false alarm is simulated triggering an accidental nuclear war.