"But yes, nuclear weapons are overhyped. They are rather destructive. But Operation Meetinghouse, firebombing of Tokyo, was quite a bit more effective than nuclear weapons. If you gave me the choice, I'd take Hiroshima or Nagasaki during nuclear attack over Tokyo during the firebombing."
Why, yes, they are "rather destructive."
And the choice is not Hiroshima or Tokyo. Those were and remain, to most of us in the West, far-off, foreign places. Not New York, not Chicago, not Los Angeles, not Peoria. Not Rome, Paris, or London, or Vienna.
If you think the West can lose its historic capitols and not be spiritually maimed, perhaps terminally, I think you have played in technocrat land too long. This is not about damage assessment calculations and the weighing of gain versus loss, it's about whether survival will not only matter but make sense. That kind of thinking--we'll get by somehow--is dangerous.
I, for one, do not wish to live in a world that has lost the core of its history.