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I suggest you look into the decay rate of fallout and the relative amount of nuclear material in bombs vs power plants.

There’s just not that much nuclear material in a given bomb (and the whole point is to release as much energy as possible as quickly as possible), whereas Chernobyl is dangerous because the elephants foot is gigantic and still uranium.

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Modern crisis research [1] shows that a sudden loss of just 10% of a population (that is, essentially over night) would have devastating consequences. Basically, breakdown of society as we know it.

Now combine that with nuclear winter and resulting consequences for crops and lifestock. We don't all need to die directly from bombs. Just a minor disruption in stability and hunger and civil unrest do the rest.

[1] It's pretty fascinating how vulnerable our societies are. Other results are things like .. 3 days power outage and you'd also be on the verge of civil war if government doesn't immediately pour in enormous resources in crisis management.

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