Second Variety

Second Variety is a story by Philip K. Dick first published in Space Science Fiction magazine. A nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the West reduced much of the world to a barren wasteland. Even so, the war continues among scattered remains of humanity. The Western forces have recently developed claws, autonomous self-replicating robots, to fight on their side. It is one of Dick's many stories in which nuclear war has rendered the Earth's surface uninhabitable.