Decisions about how much to prioritize nuclear risk reduction and how best to reduce nuclear risk should be guided in part by our best guesses about:

• how many deaths would occur given a large-scale nuclear exchange

• what proportion of those deaths would occur fairly soon after the detonations (e.g., from the initial blast and fires) rather than later on (e.g., from fallout or nuclear winter effects)

For example, this is relevant to the existential risk posed by nuclear weapons and the value of investing in research and development on "resilient food".

See here, and the sources linked to from there, for previous discussion of these sorts of questions and why they matter.

Potentially useful resources

• List of Metaculus questions related to nuclear winter

• [Mistakes to avoid]: Ignoring the possibility of major climate and famine effects following nuclear conflict—or overstating the likelihood/severity of those effects

• [rough notes] How much would agricultural production decline, given various possible effects of nuclear conflict?

• Our World in Data's charts of cereal yields from 1961 to 2018 for various countries and the world as a whole