If you don't live in a target area, you'll probably survive the radiation (general nuclear conflict will probably be waged on cities, with high-altitude air bursts starting lots of fires, but probably not kicking up too much fallout.

But its likely electrical generation, the water supply, fuel, food, communications and energy deliveries will almost immediately shut down, as will civilization as we know it. Medical care and police protection will abruptly stop, and a nation full of firearms will quickly turn to chaos. No, we will not grow our own food, even if we live on a farm. Modern agriculture runs on fertilizers, irrigation, pesticides and fuel powered machinery, and the produce is distributed by a very fragile delivery system. As soon as the supermarkets are emptied, and the wildlife wiped out, there will only be one source of food left: human flesh. More people will perish from cannibalism than radiation. People with guns will harvest the rest of us, or force us to join them, or we will join them willingly. We'll all be dead long before the nuclear winter starts (there may be little fallout, but those air bursts will cause lots of fires and smoke, and the smoke will plunge the world into darkness as the cities burn). At least, we won't have to worry about global warming.

BTW, that essay was a hoot. Its almost 20 years old, end of the cold war stuff, back when Neocon Republicans were terrified the end of the Soviet Union meant we'd have to cut the defense budget.

He does not know what he's talking about. He distracts you with all those "statistics" about what scientists are saying, but he misses the whole point, and keeps you from seeing it too, he fails to mention that in most wars in history, more people died from starvation and disease than from the direct effects of weapons. Even if what he says is true, it is irrelevant. And most of the dead are civilians. In modern war, the killing stops as soon as one nation loses the industrial capacity and organization or the will to continue fighting. But the dying continues. Nuclear war accomplishes that in a matter of hours, there will be no time to print up ration cards, build refugee camps or start your vegetable garden, and the people coming out of those fallout shelters the hawks were so eager to build will have no place to go and plenty of time to get there.

This is why nuclear war is so terrifying, the real dying will start after the missiles stop flying. The last war will destroy civilization, not just the people who are nuked, or are poisoned by radiation. Only countries like India, where the majority of the population lives in villages in the countryside, farming with traditional methods and possessing the skills to manage a low-tech, local rural economy, will be able to survive, unless of course, there actually is a nuclear winter. We won't know that for sure, will we? There's only one way to test that theory.

The man is full of shit, Rob. His job was to reassure his fellow Conservatives that a thermonuclear war was survivable so he could keep his job planning for it. He probably works as an AGW denialist now.

Remember General Buck Turgidson in Doctor Strangelove:

"Im not saying we won't get our hair mussed, Mr President, but we'll only lose 10-20 million, max."