Tne real threat of a Dr. Strangelovian nuclear apocalypse certainly died with the Soviet Union, which isn't to say that such conditions could never arise again. And of course the risk of a smaller scale nuclear war is still very real.

In each of these cases there seems to be a tendency to think that just because total disaster has not yet occurred, that the risks are nonexistent.

"Tne real threat of a Dr. Strangelovian nuclear apocalypse certainly died with the Soviet Union"

Why? Did the weapons magically disappear? That outcome is much more likely in the 2010s than the 1980s, for example.