"From a scientific perspective there is some indication that a nuclear war could deplete the earth's ozone layer or, less likely, could bring on a new Ice Age - but there is no suggestion that either the created order or mankind would be destroyed in the process." Herman Kahn

No matter how many people were destroyed by nuclear war, Kahn knew there would be survivors. He also knew the side with the most of this sort could rightly declare itself the "victor."

Herman Kahn was my hero growing up. I used to read his counter-cliche columns back when he still wrote. I found he was a reasonable, practical man as well as a true intellectual -- rare qualities in a futurist. His book, "On Thermonuclear War, three lectures and several suggestions," offered governments with courage what Kahn called "hard choices." While a government employee at Rand Corp., Kahn was considered one of the original sage-kings of American nuclear war fighting policy. The fact there was no nuclear war during this dark and dangerous time may owe something to the military strategy and systems Kahn had a part in imagining.

The only way to win a nuclear war was to deter a nuclear war. The only way to deter nuclear war was to be genuinely prepared and equipped to wage an Armageddon. If all fail safes failed, once there was an actual exchange of atomic devices, the conflict's winners and losers would be indistinguishable to the layman. Kahn's government job paid him like a specialist to imagine such unimaginable outcomes.

Imagine, for example, a post-apocalyptic future when food is contaminated by radioactive fallout. Kahn wrote that after the bombs finally stopped falling, food for the young survivors would come from least contaminated stocks and food for the elderly from the most toxic. Being as cancers from radiation exposure generally take 20 years to manifest. This seems rational. Though dated by events, Kahn's book gives detailed insight into the early nuclear war gaming and deterrence theory that later evolved into nuclear warfighting strategy know as mutual assured destruction.

In L. Douglas Keeney's book "15 Minutes, General Curtis LeMay and the countdown to nuclear annihilation," nuclear war fighting tactics are presented in detail as are the political and military evolution of nukes. Nuclear war changed over the course of the cold war primarily due to rapidly changing technologies and in reaction to weapons developed and deployed by the Soviet Union.

It is difficult to judge the value of these atomic tactics as there has as yet been only one nuclear war, and that example was one sided. Since then, thoughts on nuclear war evolved with advancements in bombers, nuclear bombs, missiles, submarine launched ballistic missiles, MIRV'ed missiles, nuclear-tipped cruise missiles, and a host of other potentially deadly inventions. With each invention, strategists and elected representatives had to determine if the advancement added to the nuclear deterrent or if it was potentially seen by the enemy as a first strike weapon making preemptive war more likely.

You may find this piece, written during the Cold War about Soviet thinking regards to nuclear war interesting. http://people.reed.edu/~ahm/Courses/Reed-POL-422-2012-S1_NP/Syllabus/EReadings/05.2/05.2.Pipes1977Why-the-Soviet-Union.pdf Basically, the Soviet Union at that time did not fully subscribe to the motion of mutually assured destruction, and assumed as Kahn did that an exchange was 'winnable' where winning roughly meaning that the Soviets could engage in an exchange and come out with a more viable society.

I remember a passage from On Thermonuclear War where Kahn argues that while both sides of a nuclear war would be devastated, one side would still be better off than another and this is a meaningful difference that should be taken into account when making nuclear force or civil defense decisions.

A quarter of your population and half of your industrial base gone is better than half dead and two-thirds of industry destroyed. If you can prepare so that in the event of impending nuclear war your people have the best chance possible, you should make those preparations. ICBMs don't change this part of Kahn's position.

The other major point I remember, also still relevant, is that deterrence requires a credible second-strike capacity and a credible willingness to launch a nuclear strike yourself. For the first point, if you make sure that you keep enough weapons to level an enemy's cities even after they attempt an all-out conterforce strike, they won't have an incentive to launch that first-strike in the first place. For the second point, if an enemy doesn't think you will really retaliate to a particular move (say, taking Berlin) with a nuclear strike, they will go ahead and do it, putting you in a situation where you either launch nuclear weapons without real justification or admit you were bluffing. According to Kahn, any declared red lines have to be real red lines.

So, Kahn's writings are at least partly relevant today. As for the mechanics of how a nuclear war would be fought at the very end of the Cold War, it probably wouldn't look anything like what Kahn pictured.