From Douglas Brinkley, ed. (2007), The Reagan Diaries (New York: Harper Collins: 9780060876005):

Thur Dec 3 1981: NSC meeting--I approved starting a Civil Defense buildup. Right now in a nuclear war we'd lose 150 million people. The Soviets could hold their losses down to less than were killed in WWII.

I don't know which is sadder: that he was so easily bamboozled, that he was surrounded by people so eager to bamboozle him, or that nobody found that they had either a material or a moral interest in unbamboozling him.