Indeed, my mistake, I thought you meant all of civilization.

Keep in mind there are many remote servers, databases hidden away with the entire Wikipedia library, I don't think people would revert down to the stone-age if a large percentage of the population was destroyed.

How did we become civilized then?

Would a logical nuclear exchange be survivable for humans as a whole? Yes.

How did we become civilized then?

Protheans from Mass Effect, Forerunners from Halo

I'm trying to show you that humans that are alive today, are significantly smarter then we were back a time ago

Let's say 10-5% of ALL OF HUMANITY survive from being in extremely remote areas, remote islands (but more advanced then tribes) fallout shelters, bomb shelters, nuclear shelters, underground self sufficient cities. Places that run fine with out any outside help. They would continue on, and eventually learn of what happened and prepare and live on whilst easily having all knowledge preserved in databases.

Just because infrastructure and government are gone doesn't mean those that did survive go crazy or something

I don't really understand what you're trying to say.

But we're not smarter (not more intelligent)

Ignore the fact that both of those races also became extinct. Just focus on the fact that their knowledge outlived their civilization.

I am trying to say that civilization - by the definition that I outlined several posts ago - would likely not survive unbroken in a post-nuclear world, especially if the theory nuclear winter proves to be correct. It may linger for some time, perhaps decades, but sooner or later the state of human existence will have degraded to below true civilization status, and the world may well resemble a more populous and less hospitable version of itself from 8000 years ago. There will be many groups of people, many of them settled, even in large communities with distinct cultures, but not quite civilized.

They're fictional races from video games

I disagree, see Flynn effect

In my opinion I think any logical nuclear war that would happen (If one would ever even happen) would be short lived, devastating and kill off billions, but we would make it through it, continue, unite and recover.

But maybe I'm just way to optimistic, maybe my brain just subtly cannot take human extinction as a real possibility from nuclear warfare

I just came to the realization that I may be a bit biased in this area, which of course renders any "greater insight" that I might claim to have meaningless. I sort of have a thing for civilizations ending, I like stories about it, I've written stories about it, so I almost romanticize it in a way. But even if I can't say without bias that it would happen for sure, I can say that it is possible, and if nuclear winter really does occur, then it is almost certain.

That hardly makes your statements meaningless

I just came to the realization that I may be a bit biased

I am not arguing that a nuclear war would cause the extinction

If something happens and people cease to follow those patterns of behavior, then the civilization ceases to exist.

I'm talking about is the fall of civilization in the first decades after the war, and the gap between that point and the eventual recovery.

Civilization is a sometimes controversial term

If everyone in the United States stopped going to work and doing what they normally do and just went outside and jumped up and down and pooped in the street the civilization wouldn't disappear, it would simply be changing. The civilization would change.

I just looked up Civilization on wikipedia

No, just slightly pretentious.

fun to talk about other threats civilization may face though

Well how about the upcoming technological singularity?

I like reading about both sides on talks of the singularity

My personal view is the human species as we know it today won't exist, or if it does would be in a much smaller population.

There will always be those types of people that don't want to leave their bodies, and want to stay purely human, it might be a small percentage but I bet there would be those types of people out there.