What is a "nutter"?  I know of no such diagnosis in the DSM-V.  Since Ted did not pursue an insanity defense and was tried as sane, you can only accept the legal system's position that he was sane.  I think sane is the opposite of nutter, though I am not sure since I am not sure of the definition of nutter.

I already stipulated that he had a low probability for success, but low probability is not no probability.  Perhaps he kept on with it because he couldn't think of anything else to do with a greater probability for success.  Given that since then nobody else has come up with anything successful in changing the trajectory of industrial civilization, he may have been right about this.

Far as his intelligence goes, he was a child prodigy and mathematician, but being smart doesn't always lead to the best outcomes.  After all, Einstein, Feynman, Tesla and Oppenheimer were all real smart, and their thinking led to the development of the Atomic Bomb and the deaths of 100s of 1000s of innocent people.  So were they nutters also?

Anyhow, TK was not your run of the mill serial killer, the whole campaign was qualitatively different so you are missing the point if you can't see the difference between him and your typical postal.  The only thing similar is the outcome, some random dead people.  Otherwise, it is very different and quite a singular event in the history so far written of collapse.

RE