The vast majority of nukes are "counterforce" - they're targeted against military targets, primarily the enemy's own nuclear arsenal. Strategic reasoning for this is pretty simple: only by destroying the enemy's weapons can you prevent the destruction of your own citizens, and destroying the enemy's citizens is pretty cold comfort if all of yours are dead. I've heard that each Minuteman 3 silo in the U.S. has
multiple nukes targeted on it, because they want to be really sure that they destroy that missile if it hasn't left yet. Many of these warheads are SLBMs, where flight times are only a couple minutes, so that they can hit as soon as it looks like a launch is imminent.
After ICBM silos, primary targets are (roughly in order):
1) Runways longer than 7000 feet, long enough for a B-52 to take off and land.
2) Naval bases, primarily those involved in the basing and maintenance of ballistic missile subs.
3) Command and control facilities of the U.S. military and government. This includes much of Washington D.C, the Pentagon, major government institutions like the CIA and NSA, and secondary military bases where leadership might relocate to.
4) Port facilities, which may become naval bases in a war.
5) Refineries and oil fields.
6) Concentration of heavy industry where military equipment might be made. Think of metro Detroit auto factories, or Caterpillar's factory, or Hendy Ironworks in Sunnyvale.
7) Office parks where significant brain trusts are located. You can bet that Livermore, Apple's headquarters, and the Googleplex are on a target list. (The Googleplex is actually in the blast radius for Moffett Field, so it may not need to be a separate target.) Also major universities.
8) Major city centers.
If you live in a suburban bedroom community, there is a very high chance of you surviving an initial attack unscathed. Nuke blast radiuses are often surprisingly small, relative to metro areas, and there is no reason for Russia to target a lightly-populated bedroom community 10 miles outside of the city.