Well, what are we trying to say?

Me, I'm saying I live in the country, the closest city to me has less than two hundred thousand people in it- not a "real" city (sorry Matt). I'm not immediately downwind of anything worth wasting a nuke on any more. I'm not part of a response organization, I won't be going into significant fall out. So I'm not personally worried about the effects of a nuclear detonation other than the social ones, and that is pretty much the same as a large natural disaster combined with some extra paranoia. Isolate and decontaminate people bugging out, wait to see who gets sick- same as with plague or bird flu.

If there is a large scale exchange, that is different, but I honestly do not believe that any state (national, corporate or other) will lob that many nukes at the United States. Talk about it, sure, but I don't think is any more likely to happen than under whatshisname just before Gorby, it just isn't good for business to have us retaliate. That type of stupidity is largely confined to the Middle East, and India-Pakistan; real nuclear-nuts can't get a device to CONUS unless they ship it as freight.

Simply saying there is an X% probability of something happening, without mentioning the timeframe, sounds really cool in front of a television camera. But there isn't really anything there. There is a 100% probability that unless humanity figures out how to actually destroy the planet or we get run over by a baby black hole, the sun's death will reduce North America to a parking lot and blast the air and water away. But the time scale is too large to contemplate. There is a 100% probability that we will be hit with a very large comet or meteor that will radically alter the biosphere between now and then- probably several times. But again, the scale is too large to worry about. I'll go better than 30%, I'll say there is probably a 90%+ chance NYC or LA or some other major city will eventually have a nuke detonated in it. Maybe not in my life time, or our grandkids', it might happen after nukes are so obsolete that the most technical parts of the plans are in high school text books and some torqued off emo-kid builds one becuase he's annoyed that he can't buy matches to make a pipe bomb. *shrugs* Is there a real threat, sure, but the odds of the fault under the Hudson slipping are just as great and would do just as much damage as a small nuke would to NYC. But if I lived there, I wouldn't worry so much about it, just like if I was in California, I wouldn't worry about hurricanes too much.

So what are you trying to say? I'd invite you contribute your wisdom, if you have any. Or do you just have a beef?