
Nukemap - rolph
https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
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winrid
I was actually surprised how "small" a lot of the bombs we've used are.
Combining SF w/ the largest Nuke designed in the USSR is maddening though -
the entire bay area essentially gets flattened - hard to imagine that.

~~~
saboot
The only upper limit on the destructive power of a nuclear weapons is the
carrying capacity of the delivery mechanism.

The explosive yield of the Tsar Bomba was purposefully reduced considerably,
the fallout from a full yield test was too much even for the Soviets.

There's always the option of putting the energy released into a radiation
pulse as opposed to explosion. A bomb which takes out a few blocks, but whose
radiation kills for miles and miles.

~~~
sillysaurusx
_There 's always the option of putting the energy released into a radiation
pulse as opposed to explosion. A bomb which takes out a few blocks, but whose
radiation kills for miles and miles._

Really? I've never heard of that. Fascinating. Can you go into more detail?

Kind of strange. I've done a lot of digging into nukes (as an amateur) and no
one mentioned the radiation pulse tradeoff.

~~~
alexeldeib
Probably something like
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_bomb)

~~~
amphibian87
This is a terrifying weapon to me, because it's specifically designed to
destroy only the people and organic life so the infrastructure can be reused.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
I've always wondered: reused- by whom? Assuming these things would be droppped
during a nuclear war (otherwise, dropping one would start the nuclear war)
there wouldn't be many people left to reuse the buildings. Or any other living
things for that matter.

~~~
a3n
> I've always wondered: reused- by whom?

Future archeologists.

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bpodgursky
I found this site super cool, and last year tried to extend this idea out, to
actually map the areas that may be plausible targets (I'm not a researcher or
anything, I just was curious to see how close a given location was to military
bases, power plants, etc). Wrote up my general approach here:
[https://bpodgursky.com/2019/07/25/bunker-land-the-best-
and-w...](https://bpodgursky.com/2019/07/25/bunker-land-the-best-and-worst-
places-to-wait-out-a-nuclear-war/)

Tried to make the map exploreable, although the UI could use a bit of polish:
[https://bunker.land/](https://bunker.land/) (have some other stuff in there
too, like natural disaster risk).

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LeoPanthera
Related, and from the title I actually thought it was going to be this:

"A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion"
[https://youtu.be/LLCF7vPanrY](https://youtu.be/LLCF7vPanrY)

~~~
LargoLasskhyfv
I've seen this before, and after the first time seeing it I wondered why is
everybody talking about the _Cold War_ , when 516 (+1 unknown) of them were
atmospheric tests? And IIRC every single one of them stronger than Hiroshima
and Nagasaki.

Seems rather _HOT_ to me.

~~~
corty
The deaths by those tests were negligible, compared to the expected deaths in
a hot war. Just compare the millions of fatalities in Korea, Afghanistan or
Vietnam. Those wars were only stand-ins for the real big one that thankfully
never came.

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tammer
A friend of mine recently pointed out that until this point, we didn’t
generally or commonly understand pandemic as a real possibility (even if we
did historically & scientifically). The same is true for nuclear weapons.

~~~
LiquidSky
It's not true at all. The entire Cold War was spent by all sides thinking and
preparing for nuclear war.

This sort of attitude is a very post-Cold War one. I also share it too,
because the Cold War ended when I was a child so the threat of nuclear weapons
always felt like something from the past to me. But if you read about people
who were older during that period, you'll see that many people genuinely did
live in fear that the bombs could start falling any day. For instance, I
remember an Alan Moore interview from right before Watchmen came out where he
said he felt there would be a nuclear war within the next few years. It's hard
to imagine what living your life in that environment was like.

~~~
elihu
One of the most emotionally unsettling things I've seen is a fake BBC
broadcast that was posted on youtube shortly after Trump was elected. Is was
clearly labelled as fictional, but still.

It was about an hour long, and started off with a news report about some kind
of stand-off in the Black sea, with footage of jets taking off from aircraft
carriers and so on. The reporters say they're not really sure what's going on,
and military officials aren't taking their calls. They switch back and forth
between footage of non-specific military activity, and the exterior of some
building as cars stop and this or that important government or military
official gets out with a serious look on their face and enters the building.
Then it cuts over to some people on a roof in Poland, talking about flashes of
light on the horizon and how the phone lines are down and they can't reach
anyone in the neighboring town where the flashes of light came from. Things go
downhill from there, and the reporters eventually say they've been told that
helicopters are evacuating the U.S. embassy in London and the Queen and her
family are also evacuating to some unspecified safe location. The video ends
shortly thereafter with the BBC going off the air and being replaced by their
equivalent of the emergency broadcast system, announcing a list of cities town
and neighborhoods where residents are advised to seek shelter immediately. The
list goes on and on until eventually the video cuts out.

I haven't been able to find the video again, I'd guess it was either taken
down by youtube or by the original poster. The message I took from it was that
in the event of nuclear war, it'll be over before most ordinary people have
got any idea of what's even happening, much less why. The fake broadcast was
disturbing in part because it didn't have any sort of coherent story or plot.

By now I think most people's anxiety about Trump getting us into a nuclear war
has gone down a bit simply because it's been over three years and it hasn't
happened yet, and because we have other things to worry about. I don't think
it has been quite front-of-mind like it was in the 80's or thereabout, but I
also wasn't old enough to remember the cold war much.

~~~
willyt
Is this the one you
mean?[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VWqWAi_H_9o](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VWqWAi_H_9o)

~~~
elihu
Yep, I think that's it.

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mhh__
The thing that I've always wanted to read about with nukes is what it's like
to work with them i.e. being a nuclear bomb mechanic - in a philosophical
sense rather than practical advice.

~~~
rolph
have a look here re demon core and Slotin tickling the dragons tail

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core#Second_incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core#Second_incident)

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pinkfoot
The map underestimates the actual damage that would occur by many multiples.

Its both American and Russian doctrine to rain down many (often > 10) warheads
on each target.

~~~
082349872349872
Somehow that makes (yes, this is woefully out of context)

    
    
       Ты лети за ясным солнцем вслед.
       И бойцу на дальнем пограничье
       От Катюши передай привет.
    

sound a bit more sinister. on the other hand, I'd hope in

    
    
       He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored
       He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword
    

those grapes of wrath are neither chemical nor biological.

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runawaybottle
How did we get the definition of a crude terrorist nuke? Has it ever been done
before, or have we found organizations with that amount of capability?

~~~
NathanKP
Basically its super hard to get a nuclear bomb to detonate all of its
material, because the force of the explosion tends to just blow the nuclear
material away before it can become part of the runaway chain reaction. From
what I have read you need extreme precision and carefully placed essentially
"counter explosions" around the core to keep the material close enough
together in the chain reaction long enough to get high rate of conversion of
the material into as much energy as possible

The "crude terrorist nuke" assumes that terrorists aren't going to be able to
get that precision and technique and will only get a very small yield because
the bomb will blow itself apart before the chain reaction can consume all the
material. After all nation states took many, many tries to get it right

~~~
davros
A 'failed' nuclear detonation known as a 'fizzle' can yield relatively small
blast but still be very deadly due to radiation emitted.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fizzle_(nuclear_explosion)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fizzle_\(nuclear_explosion\))

~~~
Symmetry
Generally the smaller a nuclear explosion is the greater the danger of
radiation relative to the blast. The bombs at Hiroshim and Nagasaki killed
many people via radiation sickness. For modern strategic weapons if you're
close enough to worry about that you'll have already died from the blast.

Of course fallout, especially from explosions on the ground to destroy
hardened bunkers, silos, and sub pens can generate terrifying levels of
fallout. It's just the prompt radiation from the explosion itself that usually
isn't a concern.

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7ewis
Amazing seeing how far the effects can go with a surface burst and radioactive
fallout with the W-87.

Probably on some list now though.

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Symmetry
Make sure to try ground bursts with some larger weapons like the W-87 and turn
on fallout.

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Dahoon
DC is gone. Nice!

