"Duck and cover" dates from a time when an all-out nuclear war would have resembled General Turgidson's description of an outcome where we "get our hair mussed.

"Duck and cover" dates from a time when an all-out nuclear war would have resembled General Turgidson's description of an outcome where we "get our hair mussed." It still would have been devastating beyond anything in human history (except for what would have happened to Europe and the USSR) but it the country would have been left largely intact. Most of what you describe is what would have been the aftermath of a war some decades later, when the USSR's ability to strike the US had increased by orders of magnitude. Fallout is the one thing that would have been a major danger, but it tends to be directional depending on winds. Lots of people would have been close enough to an explosion to benefit from "duck and cover" without being subjected to lethal amounts of fallout.