True with rational actors. Massive nation states in the 20th century tended towards a certain degree of rationality by their ponderous nature. Cold war dogma will have to be updated in an era when you can not count on rationality from the actors possessing nuclear weapons, where small sets of individuals or potentially even individuals can control when and where they detonate.

Emphasizing the unsurvivability of a nuclear war encourages terrorists and marginal, rogue nation states and feeds into their ideation of "Once I have a nuke, they'll have to take me seriously!", a dynamic we can already see in the world. If you want to consider the effects of propaganda on world behavior (severed from the question of the truth of the propaganda), a good case can be made that now is the time to understate the dangers of nuclear weapons, that they are in the end just fairly large bombs, etc. Or perhaps just tell the truth, which is that they are dangerous and devastating, yes, but their effects have historically been overstated for the reasons discussed above.

Also, remember, part of what makes these nation states marginal is their lack of solid leadership and control. Iran right now thinks that a nuke is their meal ticket, but based on my reading of their own internal turmoil I would consider it a nontrivial possibility that if a nuke does show up there very significant internecine conflicts would begin and it's impossible to know who would actually end up with it; even if the current leadership retained control of the country the nuke may end up with somebody else. (Actually, the probability of the Iranian nuke actually ending up going off in Iran due to internal conflicts I would consider nontrivial, though certainly low odds relatively speaking.)

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were relatively tiny nuclear bombs. The results were absolute devastation of the sort that most nations rightly don't want to endure.

It isn't world-ending apocalyptic if North Korea launched its entire arsenal, but it would be incredibly devastating, which is exactly why the world treats it with such kid gloves. No one is overstating the concern regarding that, and a nuclear attack on Tokyo or, less likely, the West Coast of the US, would be horrifying.

Just to go back to Japan for a moment, note that in most world conflicts the decision to be aggressive or not is a very selfish one from the perspective of leadership: Leaders and peoples who feel that they and their family are impervious, or at least reasonably impervious, are far more likely to engage in and prolong conflict. To talk terrorism for a moment, as that has come up, NY city residents, as a general rule, tend to be against US oversea actions, whereas people in rural states -- where the risk of so-called "blowback" is dramatically reduced -- are far more emboldened.

The world faces incredible peril if the people with their finger on the button, so to speak, can do so with any comfort that they themselves will ultimately be okay.

No, the world faces incredible peril because the people who will sooner or later have their finger on the button don't care whether they (or at least their physical bodies) are ultimately OK.

Mutually assured destruction is not a problem for terrorists or suicide bombers who feel that their own martyrdom would be of benefit to them.

Terrorists aren't as inhuman and single-minded as you've been essentially brainwashed into thinking. They have the same motivations as most other human beings. In many cases the "harem of virgins" is a Western ruse, and really they are looking out for their family that often benefits from significant "bereavement" payments.

It's interesting how many Western movies include the heroes essentially committing suicidal acts. That's commendable. Terrorists...well they're just irrationally crazy!

Further, to carry out a terrorist plot the actors usually need substantial support by people who aren't as...committed (see: Osama himself). Syria, for instance, was often considered a major sponsor, or at least facilitator, of terror, but since the Afghanistan war they've been one of the most committed to making sure terrorism is stopped. There are a lot of such middlemen who have selfish reasons to ensure that terrorism does not occur.

I find the concept, though, that nuclear weapons are only sought because of some sort of incorrect illusion of their effectiveness to be simply shocking. Does anyone really believe that? Does anyone really believe that even at the most "pessimistic", a nuclear weapon would be at least a thousand times more effective than anything any terrorist could dream up?

"Terrorists aren't as inhuman and single-minded as you've been essentially brainwashed into thinking. They have the same motivations as most other human beings."

As a whole, this is true of the leadership. This is virtually true by definition because being that inhuman and single-minded is incompatible with leadership and anybody who tries fails as a leader. Unfortunately, the way they lead is to fire very very potent memetic weaponry around with relatively wild abandon and they do unfortunately end up producing True Believers in quantity. We know this, because a suicide bomber almost by definition has to be a True Believer, and suicide bombers definitely exist. I would tend to agree that most terrorist leadership would rather use the nuke as a stick to beat people with rather than fire it but I am uncomfortable with the scenario in which one or more True Believers come to believe that their leadership are actually traitors and in their True Belief fire the weapon anyhow. Terrorists build their structures around some very toxic and volatile belief structures and we are justified in being very concerned about the combination of that and nuclear weaponry. Perhaps not "terrified" but certainly a matter of justifiable international concern. (I would reserve terrified for 5-15 years in the future when biological warfare becomes easy enough for them.)

It only takes one True Believer.

You are right.You always have the puppets (the ones that are brainwashed and usually die in their own actions) and then the puppet masters , the ones that organize and send the other to die and they keep for themselves the talk and the ideology they usually don't follow. Well like all the politicians in the world they tell you to do things they usually don't. i have not seen many politician in the first line of nothing except parties and restaurants.