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See the move "Command and Control' on Netflix this week. They point out that the Nuke in the video, if it had exploded in DC would have killed everyone up to Ph

by daly 9y ago

See the move "Command and Control' on Netflix this week. They point out that the Nuke in the video, if it had exploded in DC would have killed everyone up to Philadelpha, half of NYC, and some people in Boston. That was a U.S. Nuke on U.S. soil, part of one of over 1000 Nuke-related accidents so far... If you survive a Nuke explosion you can see then you can assume you will starve. Nobody is going to truck food in any quantity anywhere near you anytime soon. A single modern Nuke explosion in any populated center anywhere on the earth is going to change EVERYTHING about how you live.

apsec112 9y ago
That is not even remotely true. A 5 megaton nuke in DC - about the upper limit of modern active-duty warheads - wouldn't directly injure anyone in Baltimore, never mind Philadelphia. If the wind was blowing the wrong way, Philadelphia might get some fallout. But that would take many hours to arrive, there'd be plenty of time to evacuate or take shelter. And even a lot of fallout wouldn't come close to killing everyone in the city. Alex Wellerstein made an awesome map, where you can "nuke" any city with any size bomb and see all the effects: http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
- daly 9y ago
  Did you watch the movie? I'm simply quoting the analysis. They modeled their results by taking the actual plume from a test blast of similar size and overlaying it on the U.S. mainland. So they are working from recorded data, not a model. Wellerstein does not model a lot of the effects in Nukemap, as he admits. The fallout issue depends on the height of the blast, the material attacked, etc. A ground blast lofts huge amounts of radioactive material into the upper atmosphere. Depending on the firestorm to follow there is yet another source of uplift. Low background steel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel) is highly valued because it is not contaminated by nuclear tests which affect all post-war, pre-1963 manufacture. Chernoble affected Europe in detectable amounts and it wasn't even a warhead. Just yesterday I read an article (http://investmentwatchblog.com/a-nuclear-spent-fuel-fire-at-peach-bottom-in-pennsylvania-could-force-18-million-people-to-evacuate/ http://investmentwatchblog.com/a-nuclear-spent-fuel-fire-at-...) pointing out that a fire in the spent fuel storage in Pennsylvania would affect millions (http://scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/sgs24vonhippel.pdf http://scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/sgs24vonhippel.p...). And that's just a fire, not a Nuke. If the Nuke hit a spent fuel pool things would get ugly fast. I admit it might not kill everyone. But it would certainly ruin their morning coffee.
chiefalchemist 9y ago
NYC? Boston? Likely hyperbole. That said, and you address this indirectly, it's a sad state of affairs when the threat of random nuclear discharge (?) is normalized and as a matter of fact-ly consider inevidible. "What did you do this weekend Bob?" "Well, painted the kid's bedroom, and took the car to the car wash to clean off the fallout from last week's blast. Thankful, it wasn't as bad as the Blast of 2019..." Things happen for a reason. And sometimes that reason is because of a lack of imagination otherwise.

by daly 9y ago

apsec112 9y ago

That is not even remotely true. A 5 megaton nuke in DC - about the upper limit of modern active-duty warheads - wouldn't directly injure anyone in Baltimore, never mind Philadelphia. If the wind was blowing the wrong way, Philadelphia might get some fallout. But that would take many hours to arrive, there'd be plenty of time to evacuate or take shelter. And even a lot of fallout wouldn't come close to killing everyone in the city. Alex Wellerstein made an awesome map, where you can "nuke" any city with any size bomb and see all the effects: http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/

daly 9y ago
Did you watch the movie? I'm simply quoting the analysis. They modeled their results by taking the actual plume from a test blast of similar size and overlaying it on the U.S. mainland. So they are working from recorded data, not a model. Wellerstein does not model a lot of the effects in Nukemap, as he admits. The fallout issue depends on the height of the blast, the material attacked, etc. A ground blast lofts huge amounts of radioactive material into the upper atmosphere. Depending on the firestorm to follow there is yet another source of uplift. Low background steel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel) is highly valued because it is not contaminated by nuclear tests which affect all post-war, pre-1963 manufacture. Chernoble affected Europe in detectable amounts and it wasn't even a warhead. Just yesterday I read an article (http://investmentwatchblog.com/a-nuclear-spent-fuel-fire-at-peach-bottom-in-pennsylvania-could-force-18-million-people-to-evacuate/ http://investmentwatchblog.com/a-nuclear-spent-fuel-fire-at-...) pointing out that a fire in the spent fuel storage in Pennsylvania would affect millions (http://scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/sgs24vonhippel.pdf http://scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/sgs24vonhippel.p...). And that's just a fire, not a Nuke. If the Nuke hit a spent fuel pool things would get ugly fast. I admit it might not kill everyone. But it would certainly ruin their morning coffee.

chiefalchemist 9y ago

NYC? Boston? Likely hyperbole. That said, and you address this indirectly, it's a sad state of affairs when the threat of random nuclear discharge (?) is normalized and as a matter of fact-ly consider inevidible. "What did you do this weekend Bob?" "Well, painted the kid's bedroom, and took the car to the car wash to clean off the fallout from last week's blast. Thankful, it wasn't as bad as the Blast of 2019..." Things happen for a reason. And sometimes that reason is because of a lack of imagination otherwise.