Each to their own but I have never understood this way of thinking. I have kids, I would want them to survive and to have a chance at life even if its not the shiny modern one. I would also want them to have kids and so on. Life would obviously be hard but it would still be life. Death comes soon enough for everyone anyway. Obviously the best outcome is no nukes at all.

I think the difference is I don’t have kids. I would like to think I want kids but there is no way I can afford having kids especially given I’m not sure if I can even afford to retire.

I don’t understand the way of thinking of people millennials and later who aren’t at least millionaires who choose to (not counting accidental pregnancies) have children.

You could choose to live somewhere where you don't have to be a millionaire to have children. Lots of people move out of San Francisco around the time they are starting a family, for example.

Incidentally, these areas might also be less likely to be hit by nuclear bombs.

I'm a millennial with kids. I've been predicting that the world ends in nuclear holocaust for the last 15-20 years or so, since I was a teenager. My wife and I had the "If the future is going to be as bad as you predict, why bring someone new into this world?" conversation before we chose to have kids.

The simple reason is that if we don't, we lose by default. Survival is the Great Game, the one that has been going on throughout history and will continue to go on for as long as life continues to exist. In the U.S. we've been lucky enough to not need to play the game for the last 3 generations or so, with survival basically assured, and so a lot of people have forgotten how to play. In its absence, we've made up a lot of other games, like "Will I get more karma on Hacker News?" or "Will I get promoted at work?" or "Will I get rich by picking the right cryptocurrency?" But it's worth remembering that these are games, on some level their results don't matter (certainly not if there's a nuclear holocaust), and we may be once again called on to play the Great Game again.

So I just try to be grateful that I don't have to play the survival game right now, while keeping perspective and remembering that that can change in an eyeblink, and trying to keep my wits and skills sharp enough that I could pick it up again if needed.

I'm a millennial and have also chosen to not have kids (vasectomy) for similar reasons - it's expensive, the world feels unstable, and mental illness is pretty bad for both me and wife. However I don't fault people who highly value having kids, and I think it's an extremely human trait to want them with a higher priority than anything else.

Unstable is the default state of the world. Throughout history there have only been a few brief periods of relative stability. Now we are living through a reversion to the mean.

Yes, but also have the means to reliably not have kids for the first time in history too.

If I didn't have kids I think I would still want to live. In this scenario worst case I could voluntarily check out. You don't need to be rich to have kids friend. Don't get me wrong they are definitely a cost of living increase but all they really need is attention and to feel loved. Everything else takes care of itself. Of course they need food and shelter but housing is affordable away from major urban areas.

This is not to underplay the difficulty raising kids on a below average wage job.

In many parts of the country the people have voted in a government that doesn't let you starve even if you have children.

Survival instincts are strong tho, suicide would be a lot more prevalent in war zones and heavily impoverished regions if the will to live didn't most often prevail on terrible living situations. As horrifying as the thought of a nuclear collapse of civilization would be, I'm sure there would be something worth living for on the other side - assuming you're somewhere that remains remotely livable and don't die a week later from body melting radiation poisoning or from famine within two months... which I guess is likely in most places, maybe it's my non-urban Canadian bias and irrational optimism (I'm doubtful this scenario equates a carpet-atomic-bombing of Earth's surface) speaking.