From collateral data, MC355 constructed a probable scenario: The U.S. chose to stand fast. It launched no warheads.
The USSR observed its own attack and was dismayed to find that the U.S. orbital defense system worked more than twice as well as the Soviet experts had anticipated. It ceased its attack on U.S. satellites. These had proved equally ineffective, apparently due to unexpected American defenses of its surveillance satellites-retractable sensors, multiband shielding, advanced hardening.
Neither superpower struck against the inhabited space colonies. They were unimportant in the larger context of a nuclear war.
Communications between Washington and Moscow continued. Each side thought the other had attacked first.
But over a hundred megatons had exploded on U.S. soil, and no matter how the superpowers acted thereafter, some form of nuclear winter was inevitable.
And by a fluke of the defenses, most of the warheads that leaked through fell in a broad strip across Texas to the tip of Florida.
MC355 lay buried in the middle of this belt.