Pretty much.

I mean, were you expecting the PTB to give it to them square:

1) Upon getting launch code expedite the launching of missiles.
2) Launch missiles at designated targets.
3) Spread legs, bend over sharply, kiss ass goodbye. A Cuban cigar, a small flask of Tennessee sipping whiskey and a tape of Handel's Messiah have been provided for your entertainment while you wait.

That would be very thoughtful. And so very unlike how the military thinks. To the end the military engages in cognitive dissonance and makes believe some of these situations are survivable.

On the other hand. A guy who operated one of the Nike Hercules bases told me a long time ago told me that one of the saving graces in any war, even a nuclear war, is that if you think the US military is screwed up you don't know jack about other nations.

One estimate was that somewhere between 2% and 7% of US warheads in the 70s were expected to fail to operate for various reasons. Talking to defectors out of the USSR, Russian union for the youngsters, some estimates were about 10 of the Russian missiles would fail to launch, 30% of their warheads launched would fail to detonate correctly. And almost half of their warheads would fail to meet targeting specifications.

Forget those hopeful fallout maps. Come full scale war nobody knows where the warheads will fall and how many will go off. Particularly seeing as that Russia has had to cut military expenditures. they claim their strategic forces are unaffected but there are reports that maintenance and upkeep are not being done.

Of course warheads not reliably going off where they are aimed is a mixed blessing. Gross inaccuracies mean your retreat in that mountain valley safely upwind of all the targets might have a 100kt warhead fall on it. Aiming for the military base 300 miles away they might still get you, which would really suck.

Also warhead errors tend to be delays. Which mean that those highly efficient air bursts that don't drop much fallout could become ground bursts that are less effective as strike weapons but much more efficient at creating huge plumes of fallout. Even a warhead that fails to detonate isn't necessarily a good thing. The warheads come in a several times the speed of sound. If they hit the ground their extremely long-lived radioactive contents splatter. Creating a permanent dead zone several times as large as a football field.

It would be my luck to build a super-duper bomb shelter and have a warhead, off track and defective, land directly on top without exploding. Fallout degrades rapidly. That stuff, not so much. It might be a very well equipped shelter but I think it is going to come up short of the years I need to wait to get out. This would also suck.

In fact a lot of aspects of nuclear war suck. Which might be why the DoD optimistically tells the missilemen to report to chain of command after a nuclear attack on their base. One way of dealing with the mega-suck is to ignore it.

But I still thing the Cuban, libation and tunes are a good idea. If you have to go. Go out with style.