Try to compare it with the entire New York area, or the entire United States. It's a minor event. It won't destroy a country. Having one nuke doesn't make you a danger on a geopolitical scale.
That said, such attack would obviously be a horrible thing, and reasonable preventive efforts are justified. The key word being reasonable.
Minor in comparison to the scale of a country. Especially if you consider that the yield you can expect from anyone who is not Russia or the US will level at most a district of a large western city.
In no way I want to imply that such an event would not be absolutely horrible and an act of evil. But considering the actual damage that nukes do is what finally cured me of being scared shitless of nuke-wielding terrorists. And yes, I used to be really scared of that.
The Russians, the terrorists, and NK - oh my. Everyone must hand over a very large chunk of your paycheck to the defense industry or they bad guys going to come get all of us in our sleep!
Well, the Russians are a convenient threat, but they are compatible with us (in terms of views), reasonable, and educated people. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey are the real enemies of the Western civilization and I can't believe we allow them to be our allies! I personally don't know much abut North Korea, and although it's definitely a threat, I feel that all this is just a show.
Ish. How much do you know about the Russian cultural psyche?
I'm not disagreeing that the paranoia around American<->Russian relations isn't massively overblown, but I think you underestimate the aspirations of the Russian ruling class, and the degree to which the working class would bend to those aspirations if called upon (forced to).
I'm Bulgarian, I know a lot of Russians, I've been raised with the Russian culture during communism, and I've been living 16 years in California. Russia is a powerful country, but I think China is a much bigger threat to the US than Russia!
Yeah, we should really up the level of fear and tension over the terrorists.