I'm pretty sure the worst case of your nuclear war scenario is actually the worst case of the climate change one.
Chunks of the world suddenly becoming unlivable and resources getting more scarce sounds like a recipe for escalation into war to me.
Chunks of the world suddenly becoming unlivable and resources getting more scarce sounds like a recipe for escalation into war to me.
The principals in a nuclear conflict do not appear to even have a method to launch just a few nukes in response to a nuclear attacks: they will launch thousands of warheads at hundreds of cities.
climate change will happen, and it will do that, left unchecked
Daniel Ellsberg, the top nuclear war planner at RAND during the Cold War, claims that the Joint Chiefs gave an estimate to Kennedy in 1961 that they'd expect 600,000,000 deaths from the US's war plan alone.
That's 600 million people:
1. At 1960s levels of urban populations (especially in China, things have changed quite a lot -- and yes the plan was to attack China... every moderately large city in China, in fact!)
2. Using 1960s nuclear weapons
3. Not including deaths from the Russian response (and now Chinese), at the time estimated to be 50 - 90 million Americans
4. Before the global nuclear winter