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You grossly overestimate the relevance of your own experience to the discussion of modern nuclear weapons. Those explosions were all either airbursts, purposefully designed to avoid fallout, or very low yield weapons when compared to modern weaponry.

All of which is of very little relevance to discussing modern nukes intended to cause fallout.

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An airburst not only minimizes fallout, it also maximizes the damage done by a nuclear weapon. I would expect a nuclear exchange to be primarily airbust weapons, considering the intent is to destroy the enemy's infrastructure and fighting capability.

Mutually Assured Destruction refers to the combatant countries, after all, not to the human species.

One would hope so, but tactical ground bursts could irradiate entire agricultural regions in ways that airbursts couldn't.

I'd expect any MAD plan to include airbursts for big cities and ground bursts for breadbaskets.

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