Technically we can't literally delete all of humanity even in a nuclear winter scenario, but you are correct of course.

I think in more recent times people began to be less afraid of nukes for some reason. Perhaps its just war propaganda clashing against realities, like a constant stream of "look at this terrible thing X country does!" clashing against "no we can't actually start a war with X, they have nukes".

This hatred and moral grandstanding then makes people say unhinged things like "Nukes aren't so bad / we shouldn't be afraid of them / we shouldn't nukes let us stop doing the right thing / they wouldn't actually use nukes if it comes down to it / oh their nukes are not working anyway just look at their tanks / oh we can deflect their nukes anyway / etc.".

This also reminds me a bit of the constant screams for an Iran war like 10 years or so ago, clashing with the reality of what a clusterfuck that would actually be like.

I don't know why war propaganda was so different during the cold war, there was a constant stream of "look at how horrible the soviet union is!" but there was also a constant stream of "nukes suck, like a lot, they are really really really fucking horrific, be scared of them!". And as is very apparent now, the latter was really necessary in hindsight, it might have prevented the cold war from going hot actually.