This Nuclear Bomb Map Shows What Would Happen if One Exploded Near You |
Imagine that a 150-kiloton nuclear bomb exploded in the city closest to you. Do you know how the city, surrounding region, and its inhabitants would be affected?
If you can’t think of much more than “a lot of people would die,” you’re not alone.
“We live in a world where nuclear weapons issues are on the front pages of our newspapers on a regular basis, yet most people still have a very bad sense of what an exploding nuclear weapon can actually do,” Alex Wellerstein, a historian of science at Stevens Institute of Technology, wrote on his website NuclearSecrecy.org.
To help the world understand what might happen if a nuclear weapon exploded, Wellerstein created an interactive browser app called Nukemap.
“Some people think [nuclear bombs] destroy everything in the world all [at] once, some people think they are not very different from conventional bombs. The reality is somewhere in between,” he wrote.
To illustrate that reality, Nukemap lets you build a hypothetical nuclear bomb and drop it anywhere on Earth.
The software uses declassified equations and models about nuclear weapons and their effects – fireball size, air-blast radius, radiation zones, and more – to crunch the numbers, then renders the results as graphics inside Google Maps.
Preset options let you pick historic and recent blasts, including the recent North Korean test explosion and Tsar Bomba – the most powerful nuclear device ever detonated.
The tool can even estimate fatalities and injuries for a given weapon yield, altitude, and location.
The first version of Wellerstein’s tool came out in February 2012, but he upgraded it to version 2.5 this month. Users thus far have set off more than 124 million explosions in Nukemap.
Nukemap 2.5’s new features let you see where a cloud of radioactive fallout might drift based on local weather conditions.
Fallout refers to the dirt and debris that get sucked up by a nuclear blast, irradiated to dangerous levels, pushed into the atmosphere, and sprinkled over great distances.
The updated tool also lets you export your scenarios, load them into mapping software like Google Earth, and explore them in 3D.
More at site...IF you want to know!
Imagine that a 150-kiloton nuclear bomb exploded in the city closest to you. Do you know how the city, surrounding region, and its inhabitants would be affected?
If you can’t think of much more than “a lot of people would die,” you’re not alone.
“We live in a world where nuclear weapons issues are on the front pages of our newspapers on a regular basis, yet most people still have a very bad sense of what an exploding nuclear weapon can actually do,” Alex Wellerstein, a historian of science at Stevens Institute of Technology, wrote on his website NuclearSecrecy.org.
To help the world understand what might happen if a nuclear weapon exploded, Wellerstein created an interactive browser app called Nukemap.
“Some people think [nuclear bombs] destroy everything in the world all [at] once, some people think they are not very different from conventional bombs. The reality is somewhere in between,” he wrote.
To illustrate that reality, Nukemap lets you build a hypothetical nuclear bomb and drop it anywhere on Earth.
The software uses declassified equations and models about nuclear weapons and their effects – fireball size, air-blast radius, radiation zones, and more – to crunch the numbers, then renders the results as graphics inside Google Maps.
Preset options let you pick historic and recent blasts, including the recent North Korean test explosion and Tsar Bomba – the most powerful nuclear device ever detonated.
The tool can even estimate fatalities and injuries for a given weapon yield, altitude, and location.
The first version of Wellerstein’s tool came out in February 2012, but he upgraded it to version 2.5 this month. Users thus far have set off more than 124 million explosions in Nukemap.
Nukemap 2.5’s new features let you see where a cloud of radioactive fallout might drift based on local weather conditions.
Fallout refers to the dirt and debris that get sucked up by a nuclear blast, irradiated to dangerous levels, pushed into the atmosphere, and sprinkled over great distances.
The updated tool also lets you export your scenarios, load them into mapping software like Google Earth, and explore them in 3D.
More at site...IF you want to know!
