Oh, for sure, and I have no idea what’s happening on the top levels at NSA, NATO, etc. Those are the agencies game-planning the global power structure questions and scenarios. But in this case specifically, Russia deploying tactical nukes, it was very much in the realm of reality to the degree that Lavrov explicitly threatened their use.
As far as “silly” scenarios, assuming we mean highly improbable, but not impossible like your Antigua scenario (Ok, maybe that’s in the realm of impossible, but I know where you’re going), they are definitely running through scenarios by the moment, especially in the midst of an emerging conflict. The one that immediately came to mind was trump’s extrajudicial assassination of Iran’s Qasem Soleimani in 2020. Before that action was even authorized, they certainly had detailed contingencies for every conceivable response scenario… and then the inconceivable happened and Iran mistakenly shot down a passenger aircraft. I’m sure there was a generalized “international incident” or “mass civilian casualty” set of scenarios, but I’m sure they also had to adapt them in real-time to confront the emerging reality.
So, with the caveat that I was just a dumb soldier with no deep insight beyond seeing dozens of scenarios played out, there are groups within every branch of government that is concerned with national security actively playing out and reassessing scenarios constantly. And if they failed to overlook a high-probability scenario like this, it would be a complete failure on the part of numerous agencies akin to 9/11 where you saw a complete strategic collapse at the local, state and federal levels.
And I think you nailed the best-case-scenario planning with:
