so WHAT IF Putin launches the nukes? are we all finished, really?
In theory, no. Any of us who lived near military installations would be toast. Like north-west Ft. Worth (a joint Air Force/Navy base), or perhaps Belle Chasse south of New Orleans (a Navy Air base with training for ALL service branches except USCG), and just about anyone near any Air Force base like Andrews outside of Washington DC. Not to mention network centers would be fried by the massive electromagnetic pulse. All the major cities that have communications hubs would take at least one air burst to assure maximum dispersion of the EMP. The shock wave would level buildings or gut them. Look at old newsreel footage of Nagasaki, which was also an air burst.
However, even considering that most of us would not be at ground zero, a LOT of us would still be finished but it would take longer. Anyone who depends on some life-saving drug will suddenly find it in incredibly short supply or totally unobtainable, because our distribution system will be compromised for years. Roads will be blocked by deep craters. Major rail bridges will be potential targets, so getting across the Mississippi River south of, say, Minnesota, will be an amphibious operation. Anyone whose immune system is touchy will suddenly be overcome by opportunistic diseases due to radiation suppressing those immune systems. Cancer rates will rise. Heavy-metal poisoning will attack our livers. (And by "heavy metal" I do NOT mean Steppenwolf, Kiss, or GWAR music.) Power distribution will be non-existent to spotty at best, so anyone dependent on respirators is also not going to make it.
About the only thing
relatively good that could possibly come out of a nuclear war (and it would be marginal at best) would be a nuclear winter that would cleanse the atmosphere with the cold-weather extremes causing wet storms that would sweep radioactives out of the atmosphere. We wouldn't have to worry about global warming for a while. But the down-side of THAT would be that river estuaries would be forever poisoned and various fish spawning grounds would be compromised, thus killing off seafood - which sustains LOTS of countries. Coastal China, Coastal Viet Nam, Japan, and many of the tropical island nations would find rations quite short. And the food that they COULD find by fishing might glow back at them at night.
Stay with me here even though my suggestion will perhaps make you pause to consider my sanity after talking about such a horrific subject: If you want to see what it would look like after the missiles fell, play the game
Fallout 3, which is a great game in its own right, but its depiction of the aftermath of "the big war" is chilling. The ambience of a ruined city mostly depopulated by nuclear war, with desperate people scavenging for one more day of food, one little place of shelter, one more day of survival... it is an incredibly grim image. I love the game and HATE the images. The mutants and ghouls in the game are fanciful, but gaunt, sick, desperate people would be real enough.