So this is also part of the research agenda! (If the surveys had come back in a very different result--look, tripwires work!--it might not have been.) The ways by which a nonofficial academic assessment eventually becamed enshrined/accepted is a real puzzle here, because (as we understand this era right now) tripwire doctrine was never at all overwhelmingly popular.

I do find it interesting that in the nuclear war novels of the exact era (Alas Babylon, Fail Safe, etc), the wars are accidental but in a very different way than the "accidental" escalation that Schelling envisioned--rather than controlled risk, it's a case of genuine uncertainty (in Fail Safe's case, literal bugs in the system).