Shall I make the question easier for you, Tom? Try this:

Would you want you or your kids to live?

I said the answer to the question was not an easy one. If you break it down to the simple question, the answer is "yes," and with what I know, I can give them the best chance possible. Despite what our culture has hammered into us about all things nuclear, I know I wouldn't give up.

"The living will envy the dead" was the constant mantra. Screw that.

I said I know something about this, and I do. And while I no longer have concerns or preparations for a major nuclear attack, I once did, and I do have preparations now for nuclear terror, in particular "dirty bombs." Many of the precautions are the same. I have a reasonable amount of stored supplies, although certainly nothing like a year's supply. I have radiation detection equipment, surplus. Check e-bay. A geiger counter traveled with me on my car trip to the Midwest over the Fourth of July in 2002. I know how to create shelter on short notice. And I'm not terrified to the point of insanity by the word "radiation."

I'm doing what I can to make sure my family doesn't die stupidly, like the characters in "Testament."

Paraphrased dialog: "Mommy, the plates are all dusty." "Just eat." Her son died in agony from her ignorance of simple precautions on fallout and radiation. So did many others in the movie. I saw the film many years ago, and spent half of it screaming at the screen. Idiots wandering the streets in the fallout, ignoring a nearby solid brick schoolhouse. Idiots who didn't have clue one what fallout was, how to deal with it, and how long the danger would last. Dead idiots. Most of the characters in such "cautionary" movies and books characterized themselves primarily as helpless victims.

My favorite post-nuclear book was not "On the Beach." It was "Alas, Babylon," by Pat Frank. Niven and Pournelle did a pretty good job with "Lucifer's Hammer" too.