How do you get them over the Pacific Ocean without being bombed and drowned though? Yes, China has a significant chunk of the world's population (mostly thanks to China, population-wise the USSR doesn't amount to much) but the USA is the third largest population-wise and third largest in land area (according to the CIA World Factbook and the UN statistics division, but Wikipedia in their all-knowing idiocy disagrees). That's a big country to occupy even for China and the USSR; especially when your Red China (backwards and using 1940s technology in 1980; and no way to send anyone to Taiwan let alone to Hawai'i or mainland USA) or the USSR where you realize most of those nuclear weapons are "permanently" aimed at YOU.