Nuclear Weapon Simulator

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Call me weird but I just found a fascinating site where you can plot the effects of a nuclear weapon detonated anywhere in the world using a detailed map. You choose the yield and the location and you get blast rings showing various PSI and the likely effects. So if you have always wondered what would happened if an SS-18 with a 25 MT warhead landed on your house, go to:

http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/gmap/hydesim.html#

Steve

[TrueZuluwiz]

If an SS-18 with a 25-megaton warhead landed on my house, it wouldn't even have to detonate to destroy it completely. If it did detonate, no one close by would be asking questions about the effects.

[Kurt]

This is another example of how much the world has changed.  When I grew up, we knew that nuclear war was a distinct possibility, maybe even a likelihood.  

We always knew that our city was doomed in any nuclear exchange with the Sov's.  Two large airbases, one of which had a B-52 squadron, meant we were going to get plastered.  Worse, the other base was the logistics hub for the Pacific, and we are the state capital.  

I wasn't worried much about living through the war   .

Kurt

[Shinanygnz]

Same here, not that I'd particularly have liked to survive it anyway.  Give me quick immolation any day over a lingering (or not) radation sickness death, or trying to find food, water and shelter.
Birmingham was used as a target by the Sovs in the Third World War book by General Sir John Hackett with some detail.  Seeing as we have a major rail hub, a major motorway intersection, an airport and in the 80s still some arms manufacturing plus an army base, we were toast.  But then most of England would have been radioactive slag in a major exchange.  The Ruskies might not have been able to sink us, but we could be scoured clean.

[Unco]

Wow, this takes me back. I remember finding a couple basic programs in the 1980's that showed Soviet missile targets and blast radius' for the San Francisco Bay Area and the Los Angeles basin. I lived a couple miles a way from a reserve air force base in the Bay Area that could handle B-52's and so it was a secondary target. Even though the graphics were extremely crude and on a amber monitor, I still can remember what they looked like.

I wonder why you can't zoom out using this application. I guess it's because the window is fixed and the projected distances can't be adjusted?

[Father Tim]

I wonder why you can't zoom out using this application. I guess it's because the window is fixed and the projected distances can't be adjusted?

Ease of programming.  Otherwise they'd have to link the overpressure footprints to the scaling factor of Google maps, and driving two separate programs off the same mouse click is a nightmare.

In my civil engineering class at Uni we played around with a similar program, but it took construction materials and building shapes into account.  It was fun seeing which parts of Manhattan wouldn't fall down in a direct hit on the Wall Street bull & bear statue.  Also fun, figuring just how big a nuke it needed to take out the Eiffel Tower (hint REALLY big without a direct hit).

[ShadoCat]

We live in an area that had three marine bases, a naval air station and numerous defense contractors within a 50 mile radius.

We considered the duck and cover drills to be highly amusing (and useless).

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Here are links to a couple of civil defence leaflets used by the UK government in the 1980s. The fact it seems so unreal now makes you realise just how much has changed.

Protect and Survive
http://www.cybertrn.demon.co.uk/atomic/main.htm

Domestic Nuclear Shelters
http://www.cybertrn.demon.co.uk/atomic/ ... s/main.htm

Steve

[Þórgrímr]

I just thought I would post some information I am creating to use in a post apoc series of stories I am writing. Call me a sucker for details so I began to create a detonation and a lingering radiation map.  

I have no idea where the major military targets outside the US reside, so the detonations you see in the UK are for cities 50,000 and over, or in a strategic area. The preliminary east coast map, so far, only has the population sites and still needs the military targets.




Cheers, ??rgr?mr

[MWadwell]

(SNIP)

I wonder why you can't zoom out using this application. I guess it's because the window is fixed and the projected distances can't be adjusted?

I was able to zoom out and in, using the "+" and "-" buttons in the top left.

However, I found that I then had to select "move detonation point to your point of view" to get the screen to refresh.