Oh sorry! I meant that the people to whom you referred above focus on the "one true catastrophe" (whatever that is) without truly thinking what it would mean to have a few dozen nuclear weapons used. It's not just the immediate effect of the explosions. It's also the destruction of power distribution, industrial capacity, food and medicine production, and other things that millions of people depend on.
No worries, but I think we're still dancing around the same point. I think those people would say that they agree that nuclear war is very bad, and that it has many nth-order consequences which are all clearly catastrophic, but that (for example) while disrupted supply of medicine causes a great deal of human suffering and unnecessary deaths, it remains difficult to imagine how it might result in literal human extinction.
