The description of this reminds me a lot of a book that I read as a child; The Last Children of Schevenborn. I think, like one would with watching this film, I only read it once, but that's all it took to impart its horror. It described witnessing the blast, finding somewhere to survive, watching money become meaningless. Watching friends and family getting sick from lack of food, or from the radiation. Children stillborn from birth defects. There was no hope in it at all, beyond "we've survived, for today. We'll see about tomorrow."