"So all indications are that for all this nuclear activity the world in general is no worse off"


unless you take into account the 1000% increase in childhood leukemia and much larger earth effects due to nuclear weapon manufacture, testing and deployment.

I have found that average people are far more likely to consider "nuking it all" when they have lost their homes, their family, their love, their hope.
While canvassing the people in Love Canal NY I heard people say nuke it all fairly often. They had not only suffered the indignity of being poisoned or having loved ones killed, but also being abandonned by the banks who held the mortgage for their unsellable poisoned homes.