"It's funny when you look back how suckered in Americans were vs Russians."
Were they, though? There's a difference between "the bad thing didn't happen" and "the bad thing couldn't happen". Perhaps we were too concerned about it back then, but I sometimes fear we're too casual about it today. History strongly suggests the "total extinction" scenarios are overblown ("nuclear winter" is likely not a viable threat, though things could be cooled for a while, we know because other big particulate events didn't result in anywhere near the scary predictions, the dangers of fallout are generally grossly overstated), but they can still end civilization as we know it in mere minutes. They may "only" be able to wipe out all major cities on Earth rather than actually kill every human, but... that's still a bit of a problem.
Were they, though? There's a difference between "the bad thing didn't happen" and "the bad thing couldn't happen". Perhaps we were too concerned about it back then, but I sometimes fear we're too casual about it today. History strongly suggests the "total extinction" scenarios are overblown ("nuclear winter" is likely not a viable threat, though things could be cooled for a while, we know because other big particulate events didn't result in anywhere near the scary predictions, the dangers of fallout are generally grossly overstated), but they can still end civilization as we know it in mere minutes. They may "only" be able to wipe out all major cities on Earth rather than actually kill every human, but... that's still a bit of a problem.