
Nuclear Effects Calculator - caf
http://nuclearsecrecy.com/blog/2012/02/03/presenting-nukemap/
======
simonsarris
Very sobering.

This reminds me of a story back from 2003 called "Villages in Germany are
three kilotons apart." It puts an even more sobering perspective on the bombs.

[http://everything2.com/title/Villages+in+Germany+are+three+k...](http://everything2.com/title/Villages+in+Germany+are+three+kilotons+apart)

~~~
okamiueru
Nice read, but I must say: Having every second word be a link is really
distracting. Ended up pasting it in a text editor.

------
kenrikm
It's really interesting that the "Davy Crockett" (smallest bomb) will only
level three city blocks and spread radiation for six. Not sure why you would
not just use conventional weapons if you need a blast that small?

On the opposite end, it's really scary to see the effects of a Tsar Bomba
100mt Bomb. It basically takes out the entire New York metropolitan area :(

~~~
ThaddeusQuay2
The 100 megaton version of Tsar Bomba was only a design. The biggest one
tested was 50 megatons, because anything more powerful would have been too
large and/or too heavy to carry, and the pilots would not have had enough time
to get to a safe distance before detonation.

"The bomb, weighing 27 tonnes, was so large (8 metres (26 ft) long by 2 metres
(6.6 ft) in diameter) that the Tu-95V had to have its bomb bay doors and
fuselage fuel tanks removed. The bomb was attached to an 800 kilogram
parachute, which gave the release and observer planes time to fly about 45
kilometres (28 mi) away from ground zero. The fireball reached nearly as high
as the altitude of the release plane and was seen almost 1,000 kilometres (620
mi) from ground zero. The subsequent mushroom cloud was about 64 kilometres
(40 mi) high (nearly eight times the height of Mount Everest). The base of the
cloud was 40 kilometres (25 mi) wide. All buildings in the village of Severny
(both wooden and brick), located 55 kilometres (34 mi) from ground zero within
the Sukhoy Nos test range, were completely destroyed."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba>

~~~
th0ma5
Just to add a little on to what you wrote, seems like there's also a part
where anything much over 50 MT just blows the rest of the energy out into
space, so there seems to be a cap on how big one can be?

~~~
InclinedPlane
Big bombs are extremely inefficient at directing damage at targets. Their main
benefit is that they don't have to be aimed accurately. If you lob a 10 MT
bomb at a capital city, metropolis, or military base and you miss by a mile
you will still almost certainly destroy it.

The advent of accurately targeted MIRVed weapons makes big bombs obsolete.
Instead of lobbing one 10 MT bomb near a target you attack a lot of smaller
targets with smaller bombs.

------
mrleinad
It'd be really cool to add some "equivalences" to compare what an asteroid
hitting Earth would do, in terms of Mt.

~~~
uvdiv
E.g.

* Annual impact -- 5-20 kt (~Hiroshima)

* Indonesia superbolide (2009) -- 50 kt

* Tunguska (Siberia 1908) -- 10-15 Mt (~large hydrogen bomb)

* K-T extinction (65 MYA) -- 10^14 t = 100,000,000 Mt (complete detonation of ~2 million tons fusion fuel)

I'm not sure how far you can compare these figures -- issues like (i) how much
energy is released as an atmospheric shock wave vs. infrared radiation vs.
heat; (ii) what altitude the explosion is at.

[http://www.nature.com/news/2002/021121/full/news021118-7.htm...](http://www.nature.com/news/2002/021121/full/news021118-7.html)

[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v420/n6913/full/nature0...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v420/n6913/full/nature01238.html)

<http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news165.html>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event>

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Tertiary_ext...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Tertiary_extinction_event#Impact_event)

------
tomjen3
When I first found one of these it changed nukes for me, properly permanently.
Before that I had always assume that if terrorists gets their hands on nukes
then it was goodbye world, maybe a few people survive the slaughter but you
can kiss the city goodbye.

But the kind of yields they would get are so low that they wouldn't do much
damage unless you were within a few blocks.

~~~
derrida
That's 2/3rd's the kilo tonnage of Hiroshima. I wouldn't call that 'low
yield'. See: Hiroshima.

~~~
angersock
They're doing fine these days!

(we got Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they got Detroit and Pittsburgh... fair trade)

------
leoedin
This article introduced me to the term "Megadeath". I've never really thought
of that in terms of SI units. The scale of destruction that we have the
potential to cause is simply horrifying. When you see pictures of
Hiroshima/Nagasaki and then scale up to an H bomb and realise that those were
simply _tiny_ in comparison it's really rather sobering.

------
Revisor
How is this sobering? I find it fearmongering. Or is there any meaning behind
this other than "The humankind has powerful weapons to destroy itself and you
are not safe"?

~~~
derrida
....perhaps we shouldn't have these weapons...

~~~
jff
You're right. Please put the cat back in the bag, and refill Pandora's box on
your way out.

