When Charlottesville Was Nuked

Thirty-seven years ago, the United States Congress commissioned and published a work of fiction, an account of what life in Charlottesville, Virginia, might be like during a nuclear war. It's contained in a longer report called The Effects of Nuclear War which came out in May of 1979. It's widely available online.

I take an interest for 15 pretty solid reasons:

I live in Charlottesville.
The world still has enough nuclear weapons with which to destroy itself many times over.
We pay a lot less attention to preventing such a disaster now than we did 37 years ago.
More nations have nukes now and many more are close to having them.
We know more now about the numerous nuclear accidents and misunderstandings that have nearly killed us all over the decades.
India and Pakistan are actually at war.
The United States and Russia are as close to war as they've been in 98 years.
The United States is investing in newer and smaller, "more usable" nukes.
This Congressional best case scenario for a U.S. city during a nuclear war is deeply disturbing.
We now know that even a limited nuclear war would produce a nuclear winter, preventing the production of crops depicted in this tale.
It's not so clear to me that Charlottesville would still rank last on a list of targets for nuclear missiles. It is, after all, home to the Army JAG school, the National Ground Intelligence Center, various weapon makers, a heavily militarized university, and the CIA's underground hideout.
The United Nations has just set up negotiations for the coming year of a global treaty to ban nuclear weapons, and it's worth trying to understand why.
If we survive our possession of nuclear knowledge, we still have climate catastrophe to quickly and miraculously evade or prepare for.
The Republican candidate for U.S. president.
The Democratic candidate for U.S. president.

So, here are a few excerpts that I encourage you to consider:

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