I suppose with my schooling in the 90s, I come somewhere between the two of you. Nuclear war was taken seriously. Came up many times. It could happen, it was a real threat, the history is important, and you ought to know why and how.

But it was also extremely abstract. My teachers talked about their memories in the 50s and 60s. Works about the bombings in Japan were in literature. Nothing tangible. It was pretty fatalistic too. It probably wasn't going to happen, and seems less likely to happpen. But if it did happen there wouldn't be much after. I do remember my science teacher wondering, as if aloud to himself, if the windows in the classroom would offer meaningful UV shielding before they melted.

It felt like it was in the immediate past, most of the time. In hindsight more of a cliffhanger than a resolution.