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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, ne

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.

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.