The US in fact did have a serious problem with nuclear warplan targeting during the Cold War - there was essentially never a reason you could give to take a target off the list, so the plan for a good deal of time was essentially something like "hit every single conceivable target several times" (to account for failed bombs or losses en route).

It was actually one of Dick Cheney's initiatives to create a process which would remove targets from the nuclear warplan's to get the number of weapons used down to a manageable number - and end the feedback of "oh no we've assigned all the weapons - we need more weapons in case there's more targets".

EDIT: A critical element with nuclear warplan's is that you don't have one bomb per target - you generally have several bombs per target via different delivery systems with different priorities, because the key element of MAD is survivability - there has to always be a guarantee in your adversary's mind that they cannot destroy enough capability to create a winning scenario for them.

Of course they would be. Nuking the USSR would involve resigning yourself to the murder of hundreds of millions. It also means accepting that the USSR will do whatever they can to retaliate with nukes.

In that context, you are already so resigned at killing others over your own safety, that hitting a few other countries is a no-brainer.

And the USSR was willing to nuke everything from Turkey to South Korea (going the long way).

Yes, that was the stated objective.