I went through the whole denial bargaining thing a while back. Now I’m training my children in wasteland survival, nomadic travel, and trades useful in the aftermath, should they be fortunate enough to find a viable community. They’ve each chosen a specialty.
A good read for this is Kunstler’s Witch of Hebron series. He thought it through fairly well, but he didn’t take into account that a significant amount of the country east of the Mississippi will be uninhabitable due to plumes from random nuclear fuel storage failures. Not all will fail; many will be successfully dealt with via heroic measures (if you knew the people that manned those facilities you’d agree), but a significant number will fail, and there’s no telling which ones. Basically, you can’t count on being able to settle on land east of the Mississippi until the dead zones are identified.
Here’s a map of US nuclear facilities.