That was on Civ2. The point is nukes were so much better then. Of course, the AIs had a tendency to use them on you if you let them.
He's referring to this, I think, although it was apparently just a random coincidence that you had exactly 42, which winds up being used as a joking non-answer a lot of times by Douglas Adams fans (sort of like answering "Mu" ('without') in Zen Buddhist koans).
I don't think I've ever built a single nuke, even in Civ2. I hadn't played a whole lot of Civ2 though, and it was exclusively MP IIRC with games ending before that, but I've never been inclined to build one in Civ4.