All of this is interesting and what not, but Russia can already send America back to the stone age and has been able to for generations. We can do the same. Even China can, and some Western European countries too. The only difference here is the method and creativity involved.
Hypothetically speaking, if 50 nukes hit the continental United States (some population centers, military bases, etc), what do you think the next 5-10 years would be like?
You don't need to blanket the entire country to cause their society to implode.
Better for us than whatever's left of China. We have friends that would help, there would still be 200 million Americans and most of our military (or more of one and less of the other, depending on which one the PRC went after more...I'd assume it would almost be exclusively military/political targets since they have so few nukes), society wouldn't implode.
I'm not saying it would be easy, it wouldn't, but it wouldn't be the end of the USA either (unless we screwed up the rebuild).
