Glossed completely over the 'nuclear catastrophe' genre. All driven by "the Left"? I wonder if Ray Bradbury would consider himself a leftist (cf. "There Will Come Soft Rains").

You also neglected the strong thread of post-catastrophic survivalism -- nuclear or otherwise -- evident in stories from that period, as well as earlier and later. The first I ever ran across, which made me a fan of the whole sub-genre, is Earth Abides (George R. Stewart, 1949 and still in print!). There are others, for good or ill, up to and including Lucifer's Hammer (Niven & Pournelle, 1987), War Day (Strieber and Kunetka, 1984 ... yes, that Strieber...) and Brin's The Postman (1985).

I'm about to begin reading The Protector's War, the second book of the alternate-timeline post-catastrophe series by S.M. Stirling. The first one, Dies the Fire, had me turning pages way past my bedtime. Not great literature, but an engaging story nonetheless -- and, in an odd way resembling Fallen Angels (Niven/Pournelle/Flynn, 1991), in that you just never know what might be a survival skill.