If you’ve been thinking (as who of us hasn’t?) about what a nuclear detonation would do in your hometown, this post at BigThink explains how to figure it out in simple, graphical terms.
After tinkering with it a bit it was clear to me that nuclear weapons with a yield below 3 MT wouldn’t actually touch me where I’m sitting as I post this.
Of course nobody knows what the yields of the weapon in the present Russian arsenal are.
Have a nice day.
I live about 25 miles from Cheyenne Mountain and a similar distance from Peterson AFB. Both are likely the targets of multiple high-yield weapons. We’re far enough to not be in the blast zone but we’d still feel immediate effects.
Unless you’re on the Upper Peninsula, you’re screwed, too.
The square law applies to nuclear detonations, too. Rather than one 1 Mt (SI convention is lower case “t” for “tonne.”), you are better off dispersing 10 100 kt warheads. I believe most US warheads are designed to produce 100 kt or less. Dispersal of smaller warheads produces a very much larger zone of destruction.
Cheyenne Mountain might be worth several multi-megatonne warheads. Sorry Andy, you and yours are dead.
If they hit Columbus, Ohio, with anything bigger than Hiroshima, I and mine are dead from fallout, too.
About 50 1 Mt bombs would shut down the US permanently. If they are used against the 50 biggest cities, the results are the destruction of ALL the major nodes of our highway, rail, airline transportation networks, and ALL our communications and power networks. I suppose you might kill 50 million people outright, but lacking power, food, medicine, communications, transport… you would probably have a 90 to 95% die off in the first year afterwards.
For an unjustifiably optimistic scenario read, “One Second After” William R. Forstchen.
You’re not going to need your iodide pills.
The dinosaurs thought it would last forever too.
You can search online, underground facilities for survival of the elite or connected are already constructed.
Whether useful or not is a subject for science fiction writers.
Brinksmanship has lately become the norm and that is strange to me, but it is probably a natural and logical extension of Mutually Assured Destruction.
At some point, someone calls your hand. And there you are.
Weapons recently deployed by Russia and China have dramatically shortened the decision time window.
We desperately need diplomacy.
Is that dead?
Nuclear winter may also result on a global scale if enough bombs are dropped. That gets about everyone who missed out on the explosion and fall out.There is an interactive map on this also.
There is a saying that applies if it gets that far… “the living will envy the deadâ€
“Unless you’re on the Upper Peninsula, you’re screwed, too.”
We can’t provide baby formula these days. Much less contemplate the disruption to basic societal needs in a real nuclear exchange. Yes, the UP, lot’s of guns and ammo, dry goods, and a new found appreciation for wild game.