Geist suggests that both the United States and Soviet Union regarded their civil-defense programs as failures, since "[n]either U.S. nor Soviet civil defense ever concluded that it had achieved a substantial operational capability to protect its people from the effects of nuclear war" (p. 5). Furthermore, continuity-of-government (COG) programs in the United States and Soviet Union were elaborate, expensive, and significantly more capable than civilian civil-defense efforts.[5] Geist allows that not all civil defense is the same, since "[t]he technical viability of civil defense depends on the nature of the nuclear threats it is designed to defend against" (p. 7). Geist lists "economic arguments", "strategic arguments", and "technical-viability" arguments as the potential "rational" reasons that the United States and Soviet Union could have rejected expansive civil-defense programs, but didn't (pp. 5-8). [Extracted from the article]