[ArmySGT.]

Five years after the Big Bang, how many of that 5% are still alive?

The major agricultural areas of the US are either nuked or down wind of the nukes.

Southern California, Montana, Wyoming, N. Dakota, S. Dakota, Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Illinois, Iowa, Ohio.

Especially across the northern States.

However farmers rely on seed dealers to sell them stocks of hybrid seeds, yearly. Small boutique, specialty, and organic farms do produce from heirloom seeds though in much smaller quantities.

Throw in Agriculture depends on the tractor, animal farming is a quaint hobby these days. It would take a long time to breed livestock for pulling a plow or thresher if any survived.. Subsistance farming by hand might keep a small group alive, they would not have time for anything else. One failed harvest, especially two may doom a whole group.

Radiation is going to induce a lot of miscarriages and non viable offspring, in people and live stock. Probably the first 50 years until the more exotic particle break down, carried away by weathering, or the people leave.

Plagues. Not just our friends like the Black Death, but the Biowar varieties that may linger through carriers. Typhoid Marys.

Pharmaceuticals are gone, as are the producers. One could make penicillin. Where do you get the mold? The petri dishes? The incubation Chambers?

The Big Bang isn't going to spare people because they were smart or have useful skills. Dumb luck is going to save janitors, ditch diggers, and career thugs. So it may take decades of hard won knowledge for a few generations to grow enough food for every one.

Malnutrition curbs growth and intelligence, for example.

I think that the first two or even four generations is going to be very iffy, with may groups dieing out as numbers get to low, or they migrate South.

Then it will start to increase by the fifth generation as deaths decrease, and tech is restored. The Rich Five and the Frozen Chosen may even be the catalyst for the restoration as they bring into the world engineers, doctors, chemists, and others with pre-war knowledge.

Like a flame that is gently restored just before going out.