I'm not sure where some of these other responses are coming from, but the cold war was very much front and center for my generation, growing up in the 70's and

I'm not sure where some of these other responses are coming from, but the cold war was very much front and center for my generation, growing up in the 70's and early 80's. If you want to get a good feel for the grinding fear that the possibility of nuclear war instilled in people, just watch the movie "Testament" or read the book "Alas, Babylon" and you'll get a good idea of what that fear was based upon. As another poster indicated, there was nothing "binary" about nuclear war unless you were lucky and were within the blast radius and it killed you instantly.