Couple thoughts on the game setting and how it interacts with the real world.
1) Twilight 2000 is predicated on the idea that the Soviets/Warsaw Pact were every bit as bad a threat as we believed they were in the depths of the Reagan-era Cold War.
So on issues like whether or not the real world Soviet Navy ever tracked an Ohio class boomer -- irrelevant. Apparently in the T2K universe they could, just like USN intelligence and planners were terrified that they could if the balloon went up.
2) Same sort of thing with New America -- ultra-Right Wing politics and nuke war survivalism were both on the map, in terms of public perception, in the 1980s. "New America" is just GDW repackaging William Pierce (aka author of the Turner Diaries) and his National Alliance political party, with a lot more money and success appealing to people than it enjoyed in real life.
Plausible? In a universe where Mexico can pull of the logistics of power projection outside its own borders and the Soviets can somehow drive armor/mech units from Nome to Fairbanks in Alaska -- we're way through the looking glass.
Of course, for campaign play, it's all down to what appeals/makes sense to the gaming group.
The GDW Drought is another one of them -- honestly it works for me on the (pseudo) scientific side of things that popping a bunch of nukes could result in unexpected climate outcomes. On the other hand, I think it dramatically has some problems -- basically I think it has some unsatisfying storytelling elements to follow the narrative arc from being dumped in the middle of Europe post-WWIII nuke, struggling all the way back to the US of A, only to find out that things aren't just bad, but they're about to get annihilated to a whole new degree.
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