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Nukemap

nukemap.org

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Re: Nukemap

#11

Post by holtkam2 »

tablespoon wrote: post #3

I was looking at this the other day, and was wondering how nuclear weapons would actually be targeted against the US. Would they be aimed at city centers or nearby infrastructure? Would each city be targeted with one warhead, or blanketed with several over a large area? Because if there's a full-scale nuclear war, if the Russians only target the center of my city, I probably have a chance of surviving. However if the…

Well Russia has about 6000 nukes so they could definitely afford to hit every major metro area in the west potentially dozens of times. Unless you live hundreds of miles from the nearest town I’d think it’s safe to assume you’d be dead, if not from a detonation from the onset radiation and / or climate catastrophe following the nuclear fallout

Re: Nukemap

#12

Post by outworlder »

holtkam2 wrote: post #11
tablespoon wrote: post #3

I was looking at this the other day, and was wondering how nuclear weapons would actually be targeted against the US. Would they be aimed at city centers or nearby infrastructure? Would each city be targeted with one warhead, or blanketed with several over a large area? Because if there's a full-scale nuclear war, if the Russians only target the center of my city, I probably have a chance of surviving. However if the…

Well Russia has about 6000 nukes so they could definitely afford to hit every major metro area in the west potentially dozens of times. Unless you live hundreds of miles from the nearest town I’d think it’s safe to assume you’d be dead, if not from a detonation from the onset radiation and / or climate catastrophe following the nuclear fallout

How many of those are MIRVs?

Re: Nukemap

#13

Post by Ecco »

ScaleneTriangle wrote: post #8
DantesKite wrote: post #4

Interesting. I didn't expect the thermal radiation to be farther away than the blast radius. I would've thought they overlapped. Almost makes it sound like you're most likely to survive a nuclear bomb if you're closer to it than farther away, up to a certain point.

I don't know about nukes, but large conventional bombs have an unintuitive survival distance profile. Something like 30 units away you survive.

Why?

Re: Nukemap

#14

Post by cammikebrown »

ScaleneTriangle wrote: post #8
DantesKite wrote: post #4

Interesting. I didn't expect the thermal radiation to be farther away than the blast radius. I would've thought they overlapped. Almost makes it sound like you're most likely to survive a nuclear bomb if you're closer to it than farther away, up to a certain point.

I don't know about nukes, but large conventional bombs have an unintuitive survival distance profile. Something like 30 units away you survive.

Why is that?

Re: Nukemap

#15

Post by gnulinux »

holtkam2 wrote: post #11
tablespoon wrote: post #3

I was looking at this the other day, and was wondering how nuclear weapons would actually be targeted against the US. Would they be aimed at city centers or nearby infrastructure? Would each city be targeted with one warhead, or blanketed with several over a large area? Because if there's a full-scale nuclear war, if the Russians only target the center of my city, I probably have a chance of surviving. However if the…

Well Russia has about 6000 nukes so they could definitely afford to hit every major metro area in the west potentially dozens of times. Unless you live hundreds of miles from the nearest town I’d think it’s safe to assume you’d be dead, if not from a detonation from the onset radiation and / or climate catastrophe following the nuclear fallout

This is assuming Russia is only targeting US. Note that in an all-out nuclear warfare scenario, Europe will be inevitably involved too. I doubt Russia would want to spend all their arsenal on a single combatant, that'd essentially ensure other nuclear states such as France/UK to attack them

Re: Nukemap

#16

Post by thereddaikon »

outworlder wrote: post #12
holtkam2 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well Russia has about 6000 nukes so they could definitely afford to hit every major metro area in the west potentially dozens of times. Unless you live hundreds of miles from the nearest town I’d think it’s safe to assume you’d be dead, if not from a detonation from the onset radiation and / or climate catastrophe following the nuclear fallout

How many of those are MIRVs?

technically none because the count of 6000 nukes is the number of warheads not delivery vehicles.

Re: Nukemap

#17

Post by javajosh »

excalibur wrote: post #7
tablespoon wrote: post #3

I was looking at this the other day, and was wondering how nuclear weapons would actually be targeted against the US. Would they be aimed at city centers or nearby infrastructure? Would each city be targeted with one warhead, or blanketed with several over a large area? Because if there's a full-scale nuclear war, if the Russians only target the center of my city, I probably have a chance of surviving. However if the…

Guessing there would be several aimed at each city of any size, and the targeted locations would be spread out a bit to maximize impact. If you're conducting an all-out nuclear assault you're probably not pulling any punches.

I was going to say there aren't enough warheads to target every city because:

>[The] United States and Russia have the vast majority of nuclear weaps, with 4,804 and 4,480 warheads stockpiled respectively. There are approximately 1,861 nukes spread over the rest of the world, between China, Israel, the U.K, Pakistan, and India. France has the largest number of nukes after the U.S. and Russia. [0]

However, there are only 326 cities with over 100k population in the US. [1]

It would not be hard to list out the most valuable US locations to destroy, government, business, and military, for either the goal of preventing C&C and/or for ending the civilization.

[0]https://www.fastcompany.com/3043219/how-many-nukes-are-there...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

Re: Nukemap

#18

Post by ehsankia »

Common pet peeve with this site: Most people trying to share a scary screenshot will choose the largest one (Tsar Bomba 100t), of which 1 operation one was ever created, and that one has already been detonated. It's also not at all a practical bomb that would be used in practice.

Re: Nukemap

#19

Post by kmonsen »

tablespoon wrote: post #3

I was looking at this the other day, and was wondering how nuclear weapons would actually be targeted against the US. Would they be aimed at city centers or nearby infrastructure? Would each city be targeted with one warhead, or blanketed with several over a large area? Because if there's a full-scale nuclear war, if the Russians only target the center of my city, I probably have a chance of surviving. However if the…

It really doesn't matter, and honestly you probably want to die in the first blast.

If there is full scale nuclear war there seems to be consensus that there will most likely be full breakdown of normal society and probably a nuclear winter. Either one of those would mean your job is probably long gone if you are an HN reader, food is going to be scarce and there is no police to protect you anymore. Basically fallout on steroids, but with less mutants and also less food.

Personally I don't think the human race will go extinct, but the ones that do survive are not going to live in comfy modern societies anymore. And if you are living somewhat close to a nuclear strike you are going to miss that hospital when radiation sickness sets in.

Re: Nukemap

#20

Post by gnulinux »

ScaleneTriangle wrote: post #8
DantesKite wrote: post #4

Interesting. I didn't expect the thermal radiation to be farther away than the blast radius. I would've thought they overlapped. Almost makes it sound like you're most likely to survive a nuclear bomb if you're closer to it than farther away, up to a certain point.

I don't know about nukes, but large conventional bombs have an unintuitive survival distance profile. Something like 30 units away you survive.

Is this due to shrapnel?
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