Something furhter, sorry for three replies, but I have to take advantage of being (lucky enough?) the first to reply to you here;

Your old friend, Freeman Dyson, might have identified this to you, but it strikes me, thinking along the lines of his Orion project, a nuclear war, which would undoubtedly be something occurring in a very uneven distribution around Earth, certain areas of Earth would be "pounded", much harder than others.

How much would it take, to knock Earth out of orbit from around the sun?