nown to House Steel, which immediately began constructing a stockpile and secreting it throughout the House domains in Russia thereafter over the course of only thirty years, Houses Windsor (Londinium), Abraham (Jerusalem), Zedong (Khitai), De Gaulle (Zurich1*), Ghandi (Indus), and Ul Haq (Karachi) all had built their own House stocks It is interesting to note that, even this early in the development of atomics, the Houses Minor were also stockpiling atomics, even though, then as later, a stockpile of nuclear weapons was an expensive proposition The existence of stockpiles of nuclear weapons caused warfare to adopt a new complex ion in the Empire Before when a pretender's House attempted to seize power, the Imperial House would usually destroy the upstart House (as House Windsor did when the pretender Hitler attempted to seize the throne m the decade immediately before the development of atomics), or else be displaced (as House Windsor displaced House Bourbon three centu ties before) But the advent of atomics made the total defeat of a House with a stockpile an impossible task, since it was malterably in the power of any atomic-armed House to destroy any other House But the Houses soon realized that a House could not use its atomics on an enemy that it could not identify and wars began to be fought with economic power, terrorism, and surrogates From the first use ot atomic weapons m warfare to the second was a span of three hundred years After the Little Diaspora the dispersion of the Houses to different planets caused a fun damental change to occur in the conduct of atomic warfare It was discovered that if one destroyed a House s interstellar fleet, one was immune from that House s atomics, and could thus use atomics against that House with impumtv, in order to conquer the planet or force favorable concessions Even so after this ability was first demonstrated in FAMILY ATOMICS 211 the Slagging of Ecaz, when the Imperial atomics were used to end both a rebellion and all trace of a Major House, the use of atomics once again lapsed-now, a House would surrender to an enemy once that enemy had succeeded in emplacing orbital atomic platforms After the development of the Holtzman Generator and the ability to travel rapidly from one planetary system to another, the strategy of atomics devolved even further, back to the old "massive retaliation" theory, since Houses were then able to keep their atomics not on the surface of their planets, but at a secret location or locations anywhere within several hghtyears of the planet, to be dispatched and used should anyone attack the planet The only tune that atomics were used generally, instead of as isolated spasms indicative of the collapse of decrepit Houses, was dunng the Butienan Jihad, when atomic bombardment was often the only way to force machine cultures to surrender The targets often attempted to retaliate, but in many cases their high commands were nd died with Butlenans, who sabot