the Russian and US have perfected the art of MAD, there are death man switch in their nuclear arsenal to automatically take revenge when the military and political leadership is wipe out. this death man switch does not increase the chance of nuclear war but decrease it because it let the generals be more calm when making decision during the shot windows when ICBM and bomber is detected and when the bomb hit, since revenge is assured so they can be more calm to decide if this is a false alarm, and not escalated to situation.

well the nuclear winter will be really hard to survive, simulation model show that there will be no food production for several years. even after the smoke clear and temprature return to normal the ozone will be depleted and UV radiation will increase 200% on earth surface.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter

This post has been edited by robertngo: May 25 2010, 11:47 AM

if there is a nuclear winter scenario, the biggest problem will be to restart food production and try not to get cancer from the increased radiation, there are a project to store the world's knowledge under the swiss alps along with all the device required to read those information. but that will not be usefull in the first few years as the need is more to survival.

even more trouble if he kick the bucket and not yet establish a successor, if the country decent into a bloody power struggle it will be even more dangerous to the world.