Ranks right up there with the lie my parents told me about eating spinach, "you'll get strong like Popeye".
We've all seen what an 80 KT nuke did to Hiroshima. Multiply that by about 15 times with just a 1 MT nuke.
I was stationed at Hahn AB and Spangdahlem AB during my tour in Germany. If the balloon went up, our remaining life span would have been reduced to 15 minutes.