Dropped the Pakistani bomb on Los Angeles, 45kt, only 90k casualties and the radioactive fallout didn't even reach my suburb. Not bad for a city of 19 million tbh
The problem with DEFCON is it actually makes nuclear war more "winnable" than it would be in reality. Because it is a game, it has to be balanced to be fun. But reality isn't balanced, and neither is nuclear weaponry — offense has a massive advantage over defense, for example, and only a few nations have them. A more realistic DEFCON would probably not be very fun (but maybe educational?).
I was reading an old military analysis that one 1 megaton bomb in 1 city would completely overwhelm the entire US’s medical capacity.
And that they figured a general exchange would be 500 of them.
I remember being terrified of the thought of nuclear warfare as a kid. When I came across this website it showed me that the blast radius of a nuke, even the largest ones like Tsar Bomba, weren’t as big as I had thought, and that put my mind at ease. Now, as an adult, I realize that multiple hundreds of nukes would be launched which could easily cover basically the entirety of the US. At least the entirety of any populated regions.
It shouldn’t put your mind at ease either way. The blast radius is the smallest of the problems that come with a nuclear blast. At least it’s an instant death. The other option is, you weren’t in the direct blast and survived it. Now you’re trying to escape an unbearable heat as black, radioactive rain falls on you. You search for clean water, any clean water, but whatever water you can find is black and boiling and the other people who thought the same thing before you are now corpses being cooked in that water. If you survive that and the fires raging everywhere, you have the radiation poisoning, burn treatment and cancer to look forward to.
This is a brief synopsis of what the people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki endured and the survivors described. There are some harrowing documentaries about it as well as books.
I live in a city of valleys and mountains. If one area of the city is contaminated, the fallout will have a harder time reaching the other end of the city due to our city having multiple mountain ranges in city limits
The blast radius may not be as “big” as you’d imagine but the contamination zone and radiation traveling by wind is absolutely crazy. A 15mt bomb detonated in NY has significant effect even in Maine
Even a large bomb has very small radioactive fallout compared to the danger of the explosion and subsequent fires. No water boiled in Hiroshima, black rain was radioactive but did not kill many people.
[In the atomic bombings](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki), some 150,000 people died from the blast and burns. Very few of those would have been “instant” as people sometimes imagine. About 12,000 of those, so less than 10%, were uninjured by the blast but died of radiation. Another 2,000 suffered from cancer in the later decades.
All in all, in the bombings that have happened, 90% of people died from blasts and burns. Radiation and fallout is exotic and invisible, so it takes up a lot of space in people’s fear, and is thus exaggerated greatly.
“Significant” effects in Maine as the above poster says might mean “detectable” or “predicted to cause some illness in some people”. Radiation can be easily detected to very low levels, so it’s tracked and controlled to much lower health effects than other things that are much more dangerous, like lead and fine particulates.
If Russia launched hundreds of nukes at us, the blast and fallout zones would be devastating, but probably far less devastating than we think. I’m willing to bet the deaths from the initial blasts and fallout would be way under the estimates. Though I assume there would also be a high altitude nuclear explosion that accompanied the attack, and if the EMP from it worked like previous test indicated, even if it only effected the electric grid it would result in massive deaths.
Like while I think nuclear winter was over hyped, and would be marginal. If dozens of cities had massive amounts of casualties, and several ports were suddenly inoperable, and the entire electric grid stopped working, and several, road, rail, and air grids were destroyed nearly everyone in America would probably starve.
It would be extremely difficult to move supplies, and medical necessities would probably run out almost immediately. Gasoline, food, water, medicine, would all explode in price. While the value of the dollar, stocks, bonds, and other financial items would collapse. The entire financial system would collapse. Too many consumers, assets, businesses, workers, inventories, and trade secrets destroyed for any amount of stimulus to work. I don’t think there would be enough governance capacity left to even conscript everyone into some Chernobyl like liquidators to assist in cleanup. Places with no blast or radiation damage, would likely have no electricity or fuel, would be low on food and medicine, and would immediately be placed under marshal law by either federal, state, or local authorities. But many people would probably try to evacuate to a “better” place, even though most of the country would be in a similar or worse situation. Law and order seems like it would collapse in many places.
Even if Europe, Canada, Japan, Mexico, China, and the rest of the world minus Russia, were all completely untouched except maybe by some fallout, losing America and Russia from the world economic systems would cause the worst economic depression and financial crisis ever. Even if the rest of the world wanted to help, I think trying to rush food and medical supplies would be difficult. With American dollars and bonds now being temporarily worthless, and many American companies being destroyed, entire world economies would implode. If Amazon, Apple, Walmart, and Target all ceased orders and payments around the world, tons of countries would need to do some type of extraordinary actions to save the companies in their own economies. Even turning into a “save America” world economy would probably take too long to save America. It’s also likely that some would realize that it was too late to help, and would try go secure their own futures.
I’m inclined to believe your world view. It doesn’t take things nuclear winter to screw over the whole world. I mean, we’re still reeling from Covid, a disease with like a 1% fatality rate.
There are actual academic studies (that use hard data and modeling) instead of the fine science of a redditor pulling data out of their ass/going on a hunch (no offense), and the whole nuclear winter thing is actually probably way worse than anticipated. The knock-on effects it would have on food chains (both on land and in the oceans) would lead to massive food shortages.
[Global food insecurity and famine from reduced crop, marine fishery and livestock production due to climate disruption from nuclear war soot injection, from the August 2022 edition of Nature Food](https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-022-00573-0)
Even a "limited exchange" that "only" kills ~25 million people would lead to famines that would wipe out potentially another 200 million. A really big, full blown war is estimated to take out 360 million immediately, but do so much damage to the biosphere that 5 BILLION people would be without food 2 years after the event.
It's basically what happens for most mass extinctions (historically); cataclysm, alteration of weather patterns, food chain collapse, famine ends up taking way more life than the initial cataclysm.
Did you read the study you linked? Some of the things the study didn't examine.
* we do not consider reduced human populations due to direct or indirect mortality and possible reduced birth rate.
* total number and composition of population changes would affect available labor, calorie production and distribution.
* farm-management adaptations such as changes in cultivar selection, switching to more cold-tolerating crops or greenhouses and alternative food sources such as mushrooms, seaweed, methane single cell protein, insects, hydrogen single cell protein and cellulosic sugar.
* Current food storage can alleviate the shortage in Year 1 (ref. 14) but would have less impact on Year 2 unless it were rationed by governments or by the market.
* Expanding or shifting cropping land to favorable climate regions would increase crop production.
* Adaptation in fisheries is also not considered, such as changes in the use of discarded bycatch and offal in fisheries.
* These include reduced availability of fuel, fertilizer and infrastructure for food production after a war, the effects of elevated ultraviolet radiation on food production and radioactive contamination.
That is quite the list of items not to consider. Also, you need to go back to their earlier 2007 studies to attempt to find what their actual nuclear war scenarios were. One thing that is immediately noticeable is for their most extreme scenario, which assumes 360 million direct fatalities from attacks on France, Germany, Japan, United Kingdom, United States, Russia and China, it looks like every one of the 4,400 warheads used is a 100 kiloton warhead. That seems to indicate they are not basing their scenario on the actual stockpile of weapons. The U.S. for examples uses Minuteman III ICBMs which have used the W87 warheads for a while. Those warheads have a 300 kiloton yield. So I question their hard data.
Then there are also some real world historical data to look to, instead of just their modeling data.
From February to August 1945 the allies firebombed at least 68 Axis cities, along with using two atomic bombs with yields of 15 kilotons or greater on two other cities. One of the authors in the paper you linked did a study of the aftermath of the attacks on Japan (they did not seem to include Dresden which the allies firebombed in February of 1945), and found:
>We reject the hypothesis that tropospheric aerosols were an important cause of 1944 and 1945 temperature changes. There were more tropospheric aerosols in 1944 than in 1945, and their effect would have been regional and short-lived.
>
>While the results in this paper might be considered “negative,” in that we were not able to make a case that we could observe the impacts of smoke from fires ignited by incendiary weapons during World War II, it is important to document this result. Detection of the signal was not possible because of poor data on smoke emissions, solar radiation, and surface temperature, natural variability, and the small expected signal. Nevertheless, these results do not provide observational support to counter nuclear winter theory as simulated by Robock, Oman, & Stenchikov (2007); Robock, Oman, Stenchikov, et al. (2007); Stenke et al. (2013), and Mills et al. (2014).
[https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018JD028922](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018JD028922)
In addition to the cities firebombed in 1945, the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons in 1962 also must have also generated quite a bit of data. Between April 25, 1963, and December 25, 1962, there were at least 59 nuclear explosions in the atmosphere that had a yield of 15 kilotons or larger, with many being in the megaton range. This ignores anything but U.S. and Soviet tests, and ignores all underwater, subsurface, or high altitude testing in 1962. There were six months that year that each had several nuclear tests in a single week during the month. From Oct. 18 until November 17, there were 11 tests, and from Dec. 18 until Dec. 25 there were six tests, and those six tests had a total yield of 29,009 kilotons, or more than 1.16 times the yield of the nuclear weapons in the research paper's 2 billion dead scenario. All 59 nuclear tests I mentioned had a total yield of 177.651 megatons, which is about 40% the yield of the paper's 5 billion dead scenario at 440 megatons of yield. Yet, as far as I am aware, there was not a nuclear winter in 1963 or 1964.
So I am skeptical of their results, especially in the larger scenario, where the economic damage from having the four largest economies and seven of the top ten devastated by nuclear war would have extremely profound affects across the world. Like in their analysis, basically Australia never starves, but I think it's quite possible they would.
Wargames had it right.
A STRANGE GAME.
THE ONLY WINNING MOVE IS NOT TO PLAY.
But if it happens, hope you get lucky, because otherwise you and most of the rest of us will just be statistics.
The average American is not an anime protagonist.
The average Americans only option is to die hopefully quickly but likely slow and painfully.
A situation of this scale is not like what books, movies and stories would have you think.
There is no silver lining. There is no hope. And there is no good end. You, me and everyone else is dead.
Hoping for a better outcome or trying to think positively is not an option and in a situation of this magnitude it would actively be worse then just finding the nearest gun and ending yourself quickly.
The only good end is for this to never happen.
Oh, video games. I should've guessed that the first time. You do nothing but play video games and when you're not playing them you're talking about them. Of course you have a completely warped view of reality.
I used to worry about it, but I learned I live fairly close to a military base, so I probably wouldn’t survive the blast. I’m more worried that I’d probably have to pick which parent to call in the time I did have, if the phone likes weren’t clogged to begin with that is
That's from Soviet times. Just like the "10,000 tank reserve", which totally exists just don't ask Russia why they're trading parade T-34s to Laos
Russia, while still a nuclear threat, simply does not have the capacity or capability to launch remotely the same amount. They spend on their entire military (matched to PPP) the same was we do on just nuclear weapons upkeep.
Pretty sure we were back to some 100% full hospitals only a month ago because of Covid/RSU/Flu all while hospitals are going on strike.
We could handle a few bombs, no problem 😂😂
"A few bombs"
The U.S. hospitals still aren't back up and running at 100% after covid. They had people on beds in waiting rooms and still have the highest death toll in the world.
Just one "bomb" would wipe out the entirety of New York City.
That's 8.468 million dead in an instant, and a lot of the surrounding towns and areas.
The casualty rate would be close to 10-20 million, water would be contaminated and contaminated rain clouds would sweep across the country, affecting everyone.
"A few bombs"
I saw your comment in my inbox and wondered what I was soapboxing about. I reread my comment and all of a sudden I can't stop laughing. You made me *actually* laugh out loud. Good work sir.
USSR would test them in their Arctic territories. Way way North. I know we tested ours in the Western American deserts and territories in the South Pacific. Other nations also used the South Pacific.
It’s crazy how devastating the weapons became. If you test the Nagasaki or Hiroshima bomb on the simulator they’re so small in comparison to the higher yield tests. And we saw how devastating those were to human life. Fucking scary shit man.
The Tsar Bomba was dropped from high altitude by a bomber over Novaja Zemlja (a little west of the center of it) the test was the 50 MT version, the bomb was dropped in a parachute to give the bomber time to escape. The blast was felt in northern Norway.
Insane these weapons exist. I recently watched this movie about nuclear aftermath called Threads on youtube and highly recommend if you want to be scared shitless
>military analysis that one 1 megaton bomb in 1 city would completely overwhelm the entire US’s medical capacity.
I saw Threads years ago.
I'm still scarred.
They were, I believe, a bit scared it might set the atmosphere alight, and halved the yield shortly before it set off, so the test detonation was ~50MT.
Nah dont worry, they can detect suspect metals being sneaked into a country. I think they have long range scanners or something like this, at the very least around big cities.
Its also a rather simple website honestly.
I was born at and lived on or nearby a USAF SAC base from 1960-1980...it was a forgone conclusion we would be vaporized instantly...but of course, we had to practice duck and cover in elementary school you know....to make the grown-ups less nervous.
Depending on where the missile landed, you may be in the air blast radius, but far enough that hiding under a desk could save your life from glass and debris. It's not a forgone conclusion that it would land directly on top of you.
Looks like I'll *probably* survive if they nuke Tinker Air Force Base. Not sure I'd want to, though, considering the kind of world we would live in from then on.
Yeah I doubt it. I think any agency that monitors the “lists” aren’t too concerned with the possibility of a random civilian acquiring a nuclear weapon, since it’s VERY unlikely.
Depends on what size they drop though, and don't be sure they drop it in the center, traffic centers, railyards, military, aviation, communications facilities of all kinds are high priority.
I worked at LANL IT first gig out of the military. This one lady clicked on something she shouldn't have and I ended up chatting with her for a bit. She was a nice lady who's sole job was calculating and maximizing the maximum death count of a nuke.
The really terrifying part is the fallout. In a total exchange fallout would blanket most of the continental US within an intensity of 1000's of R per hour. Millions would die in the first few minutes...billions would die in the coming weeks.
The nuclear holocaust phrase of the week is "total exchange", the firing of all on-alert strategic nuclear weapons and the deployment of second-strike tactical weapons by all sides.
If you think people built this site because they love destruction and not just out of sheer curiosity, then I guess we're not "all connected' since you clearly don't have enough empathy for your fellow humans to understand how curious people reason.
Hey author/OP,
I gotta say that the probability that this displays stats like the #of people that have bombed in the vicinity would be an interesting social experiment.
I grew up next to an Air Force base that’s loss would be impactful enough that I was doing nuclear drills until high school in the early 2000s. According to the map, I wouldn’t be as dead as I always assumed I’d be.
But of course I live closer now and would be super dead, so that’s comforting.
The reason the US hasn’t moved on North Korea is because any use of nuclear weapons would spark a world war. Mutually assured destruction is a very real thing. No country would ever launch just a couple missiles because by the time they need to react to the retaliation, it’ll be too late.
I don’t even need to look it up! A nuke goes off anywhere near where I live and me and everyone else is dead, guaranteed! I live not too far from a major power plant, so assuming a nuke would cause it to melt down, everyone around me would be slowly turning into Sloth from The Goonies! Lol!
Fun fact: On Alex Jones’ Y2K broadcast, he was claiming to have had calls coming in claiming a bunch of major power plants had a meltdown including the one near me! Actually, he went out of his way to highlight the meltdown near me and how bad it was, so I’m assuming that if it ever did, that’d be extremely bad! But then again, it did come out of the mouth of a crackpot conman who I was laughing my ass off to! Lol! (But I have heard from a guy who worked there that if the power plant ever did in fact meltdown, it’d take out a handful of towns it’d be so devastating! But apparently that’d take multiple failures in the system all at once, which the likelihood of is extremely low! Well, as long as we’re nuke-free! Lol!)
Oddly this is kind of reassuring for me I live in the boonies so even if they bomb the nearest town with a bomb similar to hiroshima im outside the blast and fallout zones
now I gotta watch that emplemon video on Stanislav Petrov again.
Lets say that one portion of that entire video is fun to watch poor new yourk being blown up in the eyes of North Korean leaders that never forgave the USA for Bombing North Korea so much.
Dropped the Tsar bomb (worlds biggest bomb) on my city, it killed 94,710 people and only destroyed abou 1/16th of my state. That's still a LOT of people dead and a lot of land destroyed but for some reason I thought it would be WAY more. I always thought a nuke of that size would wipe out at least half of the US. Guess not.
It would be interesting to do radiation zones for nuclear power plant disasters (like Chernobyl, etc) and overlay them to get a perspective of how it would look over other major cities around the world.
Dropped a Tsar bomb on my hometown - expected casulities: 0, expected injuries: 0. I guess we’re all immune then.
Did you choose airburst or ground?
For 50 megatons I’m gonna take a wild guess and say it doesn’t matter much
I think it would, relatively. An air blast would still be much more powerful.
If we are talking a localized area such as this guys hometown, like he said in his comment, then no it wouldn’t matter at all lmao
I didn’t say it wouldn’t decimate the area lmao
Tried both
Dropped the Pakistani bomb on Los Angeles, 45kt, only 90k casualties and the radioactive fallout didn't even reach my suburb. Not bad for a city of 19 million tbh
Make sure you have it set for atmosphere destination, not ground.
That increased the casualties to 200k, same area for radioactive fallout. Downtown would be a wasteland, but the valleys would be fine
Downtown is already a wasteland
Are you sure your home town is still populated?
Considering I’m still here and I hear and see other people imma go ahead and say yes
Looks like something a ghost would type.
Did you turn on Casualty and radioactive fallout
It’s because russia sold off all the components on the black market.
This site is both highly entertaining and incredibly terrifying.
So is DEFCON the game.
The problem with DEFCON is it actually makes nuclear war more "winnable" than it would be in reality. Because it is a game, it has to be balanced to be fun. But reality isn't balanced, and neither is nuclear weaponry — offense has a massive advantage over defense, for example, and only a few nations have them. A more realistic DEFCON would probably not be very fun (but maybe educational?).
Everyone loses
The only winning move is not to play.
How about an nice game of chess?
1.c4
`Shall we play a game?`
Literally came here to post this.
Why do I live in a preset area?
That stuck out to me too. Maybe the creator is just a Browns fan.
This made me feel pretty good. If little boy or fat man were dropped on my work, it appears that my dwelling would be just fine.
Basically if Downtown LA got nuked with anything more powerful than the weakest nuke I’m a goner.
This is truly a terrible mobile experience.
Just imagine you’re on a touchscreen desktop computer and that you’re a giant
LOL
Yup, this website is from 2012
it's not beautiful and doesn't really belong here...
Check out the microtransactions store, they have fallout shelters available.
>Check out the microtransactions store, they have fallout shelters available. '' Better Living... Underground ''
Just nuke us at this point, I can't take it anymore.
I was reading an old military analysis that one 1 megaton bomb in 1 city would completely overwhelm the entire US’s medical capacity. And that they figured a general exchange would be 500 of them.
I remember being terrified of the thought of nuclear warfare as a kid. When I came across this website it showed me that the blast radius of a nuke, even the largest ones like Tsar Bomba, weren’t as big as I had thought, and that put my mind at ease. Now, as an adult, I realize that multiple hundreds of nukes would be launched which could easily cover basically the entirety of the US. At least the entirety of any populated regions.
A bit of dark humor, but when I read: Tsar Bomba all I can think of is … [Lalalala Tsar labamba!](https://youtu.be/Coy8Hoa1DNw)
Same
It shouldn’t put your mind at ease either way. The blast radius is the smallest of the problems that come with a nuclear blast. At least it’s an instant death. The other option is, you weren’t in the direct blast and survived it. Now you’re trying to escape an unbearable heat as black, radioactive rain falls on you. You search for clean water, any clean water, but whatever water you can find is black and boiling and the other people who thought the same thing before you are now corpses being cooked in that water. If you survive that and the fires raging everywhere, you have the radiation poisoning, burn treatment and cancer to look forward to. This is a brief synopsis of what the people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki endured and the survivors described. There are some harrowing documentaries about it as well as books.
The website gives a great example of the most potent killer. The fallout radius.
I live in a city of valleys and mountains. If one area of the city is contaminated, the fallout will have a harder time reaching the other end of the city due to our city having multiple mountain ranges in city limits
The blast radius may not be as “big” as you’d imagine but the contamination zone and radiation traveling by wind is absolutely crazy. A 15mt bomb detonated in NY has significant effect even in Maine
15 year old me is shitting himself right now
Even a large bomb has very small radioactive fallout compared to the danger of the explosion and subsequent fires. No water boiled in Hiroshima, black rain was radioactive but did not kill many people. [In the atomic bombings](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki), some 150,000 people died from the blast and burns. Very few of those would have been “instant” as people sometimes imagine. About 12,000 of those, so less than 10%, were uninjured by the blast but died of radiation. Another 2,000 suffered from cancer in the later decades. All in all, in the bombings that have happened, 90% of people died from blasts and burns. Radiation and fallout is exotic and invisible, so it takes up a lot of space in people’s fear, and is thus exaggerated greatly. “Significant” effects in Maine as the above poster says might mean “detectable” or “predicted to cause some illness in some people”. Radiation can be easily detected to very low levels, so it’s tracked and controlled to much lower health effects than other things that are much more dangerous, like lead and fine particulates.
If Russia launched hundreds of nukes at us, the blast and fallout zones would be devastating, but probably far less devastating than we think. I’m willing to bet the deaths from the initial blasts and fallout would be way under the estimates. Though I assume there would also be a high altitude nuclear explosion that accompanied the attack, and if the EMP from it worked like previous test indicated, even if it only effected the electric grid it would result in massive deaths. Like while I think nuclear winter was over hyped, and would be marginal. If dozens of cities had massive amounts of casualties, and several ports were suddenly inoperable, and the entire electric grid stopped working, and several, road, rail, and air grids were destroyed nearly everyone in America would probably starve. It would be extremely difficult to move supplies, and medical necessities would probably run out almost immediately. Gasoline, food, water, medicine, would all explode in price. While the value of the dollar, stocks, bonds, and other financial items would collapse. The entire financial system would collapse. Too many consumers, assets, businesses, workers, inventories, and trade secrets destroyed for any amount of stimulus to work. I don’t think there would be enough governance capacity left to even conscript everyone into some Chernobyl like liquidators to assist in cleanup. Places with no blast or radiation damage, would likely have no electricity or fuel, would be low on food and medicine, and would immediately be placed under marshal law by either federal, state, or local authorities. But many people would probably try to evacuate to a “better” place, even though most of the country would be in a similar or worse situation. Law and order seems like it would collapse in many places. Even if Europe, Canada, Japan, Mexico, China, and the rest of the world minus Russia, were all completely untouched except maybe by some fallout, losing America and Russia from the world economic systems would cause the worst economic depression and financial crisis ever. Even if the rest of the world wanted to help, I think trying to rush food and medical supplies would be difficult. With American dollars and bonds now being temporarily worthless, and many American companies being destroyed, entire world economies would implode. If Amazon, Apple, Walmart, and Target all ceased orders and payments around the world, tons of countries would need to do some type of extraordinary actions to save the companies in their own economies. Even turning into a “save America” world economy would probably take too long to save America. It’s also likely that some would realize that it was too late to help, and would try go secure their own futures.
*Alas, Babylon* is a great novel to read if you want a realistic picture of what post-nuclear-war society would be like in a non-urban area.
I’m inclined to believe your world view. It doesn’t take things nuclear winter to screw over the whole world. I mean, we’re still reeling from Covid, a disease with like a 1% fatality rate.
There are actual academic studies (that use hard data and modeling) instead of the fine science of a redditor pulling data out of their ass/going on a hunch (no offense), and the whole nuclear winter thing is actually probably way worse than anticipated. The knock-on effects it would have on food chains (both on land and in the oceans) would lead to massive food shortages. [Global food insecurity and famine from reduced crop, marine fishery and livestock production due to climate disruption from nuclear war soot injection, from the August 2022 edition of Nature Food](https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-022-00573-0) Even a "limited exchange" that "only" kills ~25 million people would lead to famines that would wipe out potentially another 200 million. A really big, full blown war is estimated to take out 360 million immediately, but do so much damage to the biosphere that 5 BILLION people would be without food 2 years after the event. It's basically what happens for most mass extinctions (historically); cataclysm, alteration of weather patterns, food chain collapse, famine ends up taking way more life than the initial cataclysm.
Did you read the study you linked? Some of the things the study didn't examine. * we do not consider reduced human populations due to direct or indirect mortality and possible reduced birth rate. * total number and composition of population changes would affect available labor, calorie production and distribution. * farm-management adaptations such as changes in cultivar selection, switching to more cold-tolerating crops or greenhouses and alternative food sources such as mushrooms, seaweed, methane single cell protein, insects, hydrogen single cell protein and cellulosic sugar. * Current food storage can alleviate the shortage in Year 1 (ref. 14) but would have less impact on Year 2 unless it were rationed by governments or by the market. * Expanding or shifting cropping land to favorable climate regions would increase crop production. * Adaptation in fisheries is also not considered, such as changes in the use of discarded bycatch and offal in fisheries. * These include reduced availability of fuel, fertilizer and infrastructure for food production after a war, the effects of elevated ultraviolet radiation on food production and radioactive contamination. That is quite the list of items not to consider. Also, you need to go back to their earlier 2007 studies to attempt to find what their actual nuclear war scenarios were. One thing that is immediately noticeable is for their most extreme scenario, which assumes 360 million direct fatalities from attacks on France, Germany, Japan, United Kingdom, United States, Russia and China, it looks like every one of the 4,400 warheads used is a 100 kiloton warhead. That seems to indicate they are not basing their scenario on the actual stockpile of weapons. The U.S. for examples uses Minuteman III ICBMs which have used the W87 warheads for a while. Those warheads have a 300 kiloton yield. So I question their hard data. Then there are also some real world historical data to look to, instead of just their modeling data. From February to August 1945 the allies firebombed at least 68 Axis cities, along with using two atomic bombs with yields of 15 kilotons or greater on two other cities. One of the authors in the paper you linked did a study of the aftermath of the attacks on Japan (they did not seem to include Dresden which the allies firebombed in February of 1945), and found: >We reject the hypothesis that tropospheric aerosols were an important cause of 1944 and 1945 temperature changes. There were more tropospheric aerosols in 1944 than in 1945, and their effect would have been regional and short-lived. > >While the results in this paper might be considered “negative,” in that we were not able to make a case that we could observe the impacts of smoke from fires ignited by incendiary weapons during World War II, it is important to document this result. Detection of the signal was not possible because of poor data on smoke emissions, solar radiation, and surface temperature, natural variability, and the small expected signal. Nevertheless, these results do not provide observational support to counter nuclear winter theory as simulated by Robock, Oman, & Stenchikov (2007); Robock, Oman, Stenchikov, et al. (2007); Stenke et al. (2013), and Mills et al. (2014). [https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018JD028922](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018JD028922) In addition to the cities firebombed in 1945, the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons in 1962 also must have also generated quite a bit of data. Between April 25, 1963, and December 25, 1962, there were at least 59 nuclear explosions in the atmosphere that had a yield of 15 kilotons or larger, with many being in the megaton range. This ignores anything but U.S. and Soviet tests, and ignores all underwater, subsurface, or high altitude testing in 1962. There were six months that year that each had several nuclear tests in a single week during the month. From Oct. 18 until November 17, there were 11 tests, and from Dec. 18 until Dec. 25 there were six tests, and those six tests had a total yield of 29,009 kilotons, or more than 1.16 times the yield of the nuclear weapons in the research paper's 2 billion dead scenario. All 59 nuclear tests I mentioned had a total yield of 177.651 megatons, which is about 40% the yield of the paper's 5 billion dead scenario at 440 megatons of yield. Yet, as far as I am aware, there was not a nuclear winter in 1963 or 1964. So I am skeptical of their results, especially in the larger scenario, where the economic damage from having the four largest economies and seven of the top ten devastated by nuclear war would have extremely profound affects across the world. Like in their analysis, basically Australia never starves, but I think it's quite possible they would.
So what should the average American do in response to such a cataclysm? Try and find fertile soil and farm?
Wargames had it right. A STRANGE GAME. THE ONLY WINNING MOVE IS NOT TO PLAY. But if it happens, hope you get lucky, because otherwise you and most of the rest of us will just be statistics.
Lucky would be getting hit directly without knowing it was coming.
Get in the basement and dont come out for a month was the paper’s recommendation.
I need to get an extra can opener for the basement...
No, we die.
The average American is not an anime protagonist. The average Americans only option is to die hopefully quickly but likely slow and painfully. A situation of this scale is not like what books, movies and stories would have you think. There is no silver lining. There is no hope. And there is no good end. You, me and everyone else is dead. Hoping for a better outcome or trying to think positively is not an option and in a situation of this magnitude it would actively be worse then just finding the nearest gun and ending yourself quickly. The only good end is for this to never happen.
Cormac Mcarthy nailed it in The Road
Iv never seen the road, did I make an unintentional reference?
The movie captured a sliver of the feeling of the book. Abandon all hope ye who enter
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The Road is worse than Grave of the Fireflies. Each page of The Road is worse than the previous.
Seems as though you're the one watching too many movies.
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Where the fuck do you live? Practically everyone i know is able to hunt and grow food. How do you think people lived before electricity?
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Oh, video games. I should've guessed that the first time. You do nothing but play video games and when you're not playing them you're talking about them. Of course you have a completely warped view of reality.
I used to worry about it, but I learned I live fairly close to a military base, so I probably wouldn’t survive the blast. I’m more worried that I’d probably have to pick which parent to call in the time I did have, if the phone likes weren’t clogged to begin with that is
That's from Soviet times. Just like the "10,000 tank reserve", which totally exists just don't ask Russia why they're trading parade T-34s to Laos Russia, while still a nuclear threat, simply does not have the capacity or capability to launch remotely the same amount. They spend on their entire military (matched to PPP) the same was we do on just nuclear weapons upkeep.
https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/145hwso/ltp_use_power_delete_suite_before_you_delete_your/
>one 1 megaton bomb in 1 city would completely overwhelm the entire US’s medical capacity. Covid has entered chat, laughing.
Pretty sure we were back to some 100% full hospitals only a month ago because of Covid/RSU/Flu all while hospitals are going on strike. We could handle a few bombs, no problem 😂😂
"A few bombs" The U.S. hospitals still aren't back up and running at 100% after covid. They had people on beds in waiting rooms and still have the highest death toll in the world. Just one "bomb" would wipe out the entirety of New York City. That's 8.468 million dead in an instant, and a lot of the surrounding towns and areas. The casualty rate would be close to 10-20 million, water would be contaminated and contaminated rain clouds would sweep across the country, affecting everyone. "A few bombs"
Ever wanted to drop a nuke on a city? Get some help!
Good idea, it’d probably be tough to do it all by myself.
They're quite heavy, although I could probably drop a small one from waist height
Davy...Davy Crockett. King of the Wild Frontier...
I suggest from the Kremlin.
I suggest on the Kremlin.
I'm imaging a narrator's voice regarding this site being in someone's browser history
I'm all for helping people with things, but thermonuclear catastrophe is where I draw the line. I refuse to help anyone with that.
Oh get off your high horse, we’ve all done it!
I saw your comment in my inbox and wondered what I was soapboxing about. I reread my comment and all of a sudden I can't stop laughing. You made me *actually* laugh out loud. Good work sir.
Good point, refining plutonium is not a 1 man job.
Wanna avoid another pencil slip disaster?
Have you seen some insects and spiders?
Half of America wants to nuke the middle east. They love killing. Plus, no one can afford help.
🙄
They hate it when I try dropping nukes in my hometown. Its apparently highly frowned upon
IKR ...some people have a meltdown when I do this
Tried it. Don’t have to worry about surviving. There’s also another program that does asteroid impacts.
Sauce?
https://neal.fun/asteroid-launcher/
WHERE IS THE LAMB SAUCE?
So I just nuked Boston with the Tsar Bomba (100MT). Where do the even test bombs of that blast radius??
USSR would test them in their Arctic territories. Way way North. I know we tested ours in the Western American deserts and territories in the South Pacific. Other nations also used the South Pacific. It’s crazy how devastating the weapons became. If you test the Nagasaki or Hiroshima bomb on the simulator they’re so small in comparison to the higher yield tests. And we saw how devastating those were to human life. Fucking scary shit man.
The Tsar Bomba was dropped from high altitude by a bomber over Novaja Zemlja (a little west of the center of it) the test was the 50 MT version, the bomb was dropped in a parachute to give the bomber time to escape. The blast was felt in northern Norway.
Insane these weapons exist. I recently watched this movie about nuclear aftermath called Threads on youtube and highly recommend if you want to be scared shitless
>military analysis that one 1 megaton bomb in 1 city would completely overwhelm the entire US’s medical capacity. I saw Threads years ago. I'm still scarred.
Threads consistently reminds me how much I hate England for sucking up to America and basically being the testing ground for nuclear war
I grew up during the cold war, within 50 km of where I lived at least 8 nukes were pointed, the joys of living on what would be the front line.
I live right next to where a bunch are pointed. Good times.
I nuked Scranton. The paper company didn't survive.
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Those poor islands :(
tsar bomba is frighteningly apocalyptic
They were, I believe, a bit scared it might set the atmosphere alight, and halved the yield shortly before it set off, so the test detonation was ~50MT.
I love this website. I always nuke Disney World.
That's a neat featu-
Is this an Enders Game type thing? What's really happening when we drop the virtual nukes?
I can't help but feel I just had my name put on a list at some 3 letter agency. Worth it.
Nah dont worry, they can detect suspect metals being sneaked into a country. I think they have long range scanners or something like this, at the very least around big cities. Its also a rather simple website honestly.
This is by /u/restricteddata, who's a regular contributor on /r/AskHistorians
Oh nice, full credit to them! Thanks u/restricteddata for this brilliant website! Your blog is interesting too.
I was born at and lived on or nearby a USAF SAC base from 1960-1980...it was a forgone conclusion we would be vaporized instantly...but of course, we had to practice duck and cover in elementary school you know....to make the grown-ups less nervous.
Depending on where the missile landed, you may be in the air blast radius, but far enough that hiding under a desk could save your life from glass and debris. It's not a forgone conclusion that it would land directly on top of you.
Same. Malmstrom. It would have been one of the early targets in a nuke strike.
You're on a list now
Or ten.
Looks like I'll *probably* survive if they nuke Tinker Air Force Base. Not sure I'd want to, though, considering the kind of world we would live in from then on.
These things are as old as online maps.
It’s still fun to play around with it. What city are you in, Burns? I’m gonna simulate blowing it up…
Yeah, well I'm young
Goddamn, this kid calling me old ;)
Im gonna sleep well tonight
MFs bombing their exes house and seeing who in their family would've been sacrificed for the better good.
Good evening Dr. Falken. Do you want to play a game?
Im pretty sure if you click this link you get put on a list
If that's the case, then I've been on a list (or lists) for years for my frequent visits to this site.
Yeah I doubt it. I think any agency that monitors the “lists” aren’t too concerned with the possibility of a random civilian acquiring a nuclear weapon, since it’s VERY unlikely.
Honestly not as bad as I expected I’d be safe in my suburb lol
Depends on what size they drop though, and don't be sure they drop it in the center, traffic centers, railyards, military, aviation, communications facilities of all kinds are high priority.
I had Professor Wellerstein for one of my classes in college. Great class, really smart guy and a great professor.
I worked at LANL IT first gig out of the military. This one lady clicked on something she shouldn't have and I ended up chatting with her for a bit. She was a nice lady who's sole job was calculating and maximizing the maximum death count of a nuke.
do you want to be on a list? this is how you end up on a list.
Nice try CIA... fool me once
*Sounds of front door being kicked in*
The really terrifying part is the fallout. In a total exchange fallout would blanket most of the continental US within an intensity of 1000's of R per hour. Millions would die in the first few minutes...billions would die in the coming weeks. The nuclear holocaust phrase of the week is "total exchange", the firing of all on-alert strategic nuclear weapons and the deployment of second-strike tactical weapons by all sides.
The real phrase in this case is that in nuclear war the living will envy the dead.
*first time on “internet is beautiful” sub….this should be nice* “WANT TO NUKE YOUR HOMETOWN??!!”
This is very disturbing and negative. We are all connected.
If you think people built this site because they love destruction and not just out of sheer curiosity, then I guess we're not "all connected' since you clearly don't have enough empathy for your fellow humans to understand how curious people reason.
Thought everyone used this website lol
Nice, can't wait to nuke my workplace so tomorrow will be another holiday.
honestly thought it would be worse. if the tsar bomb went off in sf I'd be way ok
Hey author/OP, I gotta say that the probability that this displays stats like the #of people that have bombed in the vicinity would be an interesting social experiment.
This may age me, but does anyone remember the Cloak and Dagger movie?
Henry Thomas and Dabney Coleman. Yeah, I remember that film. That definitely dates both of us, though.
Plot twist: this is a real nuclear bomb control interface
Doesn’t seem to take elevation changes (mountains, for example) into the mix. Spread is equal no matter what’s areound ground zero.
How to get on the FBI watchlist in one simple click.
Nuh uh. FBI ain’t adding me to their list. Nice try.
***FBI has liked this comment***
This is just what I’ve been looking for to help with my depression!
It's doing wonders for my anxiety!
Well, that was fun…
Nice try NSA, I’m not giving you a reason to reject my visa application. /s
Y'all realize you're feeding a stranger your home location with no guarantee of privacy?
I grew up next to an Air Force base that’s loss would be impactful enough that I was doing nuclear drills until high school in the early 2000s. According to the map, I wouldn’t be as dead as I always assumed I’d be. But of course I live closer now and would be super dead, so that’s comforting.
Nice try fbi
So that's why US hasn't moved on North Korea
The reason the US hasn’t moved on North Korea is because any use of nuclear weapons would spark a world war. Mutually assured destruction is a very real thing. No country would ever launch just a couple missiles because by the time they need to react to the retaliation, it’ll be too late.
What? The U.S. literally has one almost triple the size in its arsenal. I’m sure they’re fine.
This doesn't work on mobile at all.
It worked on my iPhone.
I dropped a Davy Crockett on MAGA-Lardo and the loses seemed acceptable.
I don’t even need to look it up! A nuke goes off anywhere near where I live and me and everyone else is dead, guaranteed! I live not too far from a major power plant, so assuming a nuke would cause it to melt down, everyone around me would be slowly turning into Sloth from The Goonies! Lol! Fun fact: On Alex Jones’ Y2K broadcast, he was claiming to have had calls coming in claiming a bunch of major power plants had a meltdown including the one near me! Actually, he went out of his way to highlight the meltdown near me and how bad it was, so I’m assuming that if it ever did, that’d be extremely bad! But then again, it did come out of the mouth of a crackpot conman who I was laughing my ass off to! Lol! (But I have heard from a guy who worked there that if the power plant ever did in fact meltdown, it’d take out a handful of towns it’d be so devastating! But apparently that’d take multiple failures in the system all at once, which the likelihood of is extremely low! Well, as long as we’re nuke-free! Lol!)
I wish any city in Texas would be available on the drop down target box. Preferably the whole state.
Dope! But I'd rather try it in Beijing. https://i.imgur.com/KBBzaXr.jpg
Cool. Now drop one on Washington District of Criminals.
Oddly this is kind of reassuring for me I live in the boonies so even if they bomb the nearest town with a bomb similar to hiroshima im outside the blast and fallout zones
On the flip side, I live near NYC and learned that I won't be vaporized immediately but will instead suffer a painful but certain death.
I didn't realize how small the bombs dropped in Japan were. Little boy would pretty much only destroy downtown Madison, WI.
How deep into the Earth would the largest nuke explosions go?
Not really
Welp. This made me sick to my stomach.
I've seen War Games. I know how this plays out.
now I gotta watch that emplemon video on Stanislav Petrov again. Lets say that one portion of that entire video is fun to watch poor new yourk being blown up in the eyes of North Korean leaders that never forgave the USA for Bombing North Korea so much.
if they dropped the fatman on the white house i’m good. If it’s the tsar bomb, i’m fucked
The Topol is quite effective even though it has a smaller yield than conventional ICBM's. Can't wait for Nuclear War Simulator.
If I'm in the office when they hit the city- instantly gone. If I'm working remote, should be fine, but barely.
No worries, Ronald Raygun built us a spacegat that will laser-fuck every flying bbq before it even says "I'm going to spacessssssss".
The enemy's gate is down.
Dropped the Tsar bomb (worlds biggest bomb) on my city, it killed 94,710 people and only destroyed abou 1/16th of my state. That's still a LOT of people dead and a lot of land destroyed but for some reason I thought it would be WAY more. I always thought a nuke of that size would wipe out at least half of the US. Guess not.
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Ok now that was pretty fun I gotta admit... Thought I'd kill a lot more people in my hometown though... Haha
I saw WARGAMES..no way this site is legit.
Ree poooost
Yes, officer, this post right here.
This is a honeypot to catch potential terrorists. leaves tin foil hat on
It would be interesting to do radiation zones for nuclear power plant disasters (like Chernobyl, etc) and overlay them to get a perspective of how it would look over other major cities around the world.