So you're saying if the Russians struck Manhattan it would be relatively little impact. You think of the ten thousand nukes the US and Russia have on average will kill less than a hundred people. Or if just Russia, less than two hundred people per.

I think each nuke is tens of thousands of immediate deaths followed by hundreds of thousands of mid to long term radiation fatalities. If we pretend that 25% of their 5000 or so nukes works, that's still 1250 nukes. If each nuke of that 1250 works and kills 100,000 each, that's 125 million people. I don't think this is so far fetched given that a little over 80% of Americans live in urban areas.

I just don't know how a society can recover if the majority of it's urban centers gets nuked and there is residual radiation there for the foreseeable future. Japan recovered because the nukes were small and there was only two sites, and that still caused about 110,000 casualties.

How many submarines do you think they have in the Atlantic and Pacific with nuclear strike capabilities? How many nukes do you think are in range of major north american cities?