According to the IMDB page, the TV show is slated to air in 2013 and will be about a pandemic, rather than a nuclear war.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2402207/
I guess it was to be expected that they'd not use a nuclear war as a backstory. In the original book, radiation sickness played a huge part in the plot, so I guess a pandemic shouldn't be too much of a deviation from the source material.