The great sleight-of-hand of the 20th century is that it never went away, we all just collectively decided to stop thinking about the fact that at every given moment for the rest of human history we'll never be more than thirty minutes away from total nuclear annihilation.
replyThe fall of the USSR chopped the legs out from under these stories. Nobody is worried about Iraq, Iran, or Afghanistan unleashing global thermonuclear war. That scare tactic just doesn't work. Even back in the 60s a lot of that paranoia was the result of internal propaganda.
replyThe world doesn't have enough nuclear weapons for "total nuclear annihilation".
replyTo end all humans with the weapons directly? Indeed not.
replyTo break all logistics chains, ending most industrial output, reducing carrying capacity back to the pre-industrial age? That I think is still doable.
Perhaps not, but there's no functional difference to the millions (hundreds of millions even) of victims if you start hitting major population centres.
replyThere's plenty enough to make the second-worst war in human history look like an enjoyable beach vacation by comparison.
replyYou're not kidding. I read this in the late 70s, and it's a bit of a gut punch to revisit it now, on the very day of the story, in a world where smart homes are somewhat there and nuclear saber-rattling is once again the theme of the day.
replyOf course, writing about the future means you won't get everything right - especially once specific dates or years enter the picture and technologies are in use that haven't been invented (or invented and discarded) yet. Nobody predicted that World War III would last as long as it has, or be so full of utter stupidity. On the technological front, film projectors are relics in this era, and film-based storage never really caught on. On the other hand, videotape wasn't around in 1950, and even audio tape was a fairly new technology.