8 ms·
Nukemap
- ipsin 5y agoA 0.0000000000001 kiloton (milligram-ish) explosion has a comically large blast radius.
- crooked-v 5y agoIt says "Fireball radius: 0 m" for me. Did you click the 'Detonate' button? It's not one of those things that updates as you type.
- ipsin 5y agoYeah, all the radius read 0 m, but the map overlay of the blast still covers several miles.
- stordoff 5y agoIt just draws a very small circle for me. The only part that seems suspect is the casualties estimate: > Estimated fatalities: 6,010 > Estimated injuries: 8,060 > In any given 24-hour period, there are on average 28,743 people in the light (1 psi) blast range of the simulated detonation. vs. a Davy Crockett in the same location: > Estimated fatalities: 4,130 > Estimated injuries: 2,790 > In any given 24-hour period, there are on average 12,248 people in the light (1 psi) blast range of the simulated detonation.
- smoldesu 5y agoI remember playing with this on my laptop in middle school. That was one of the weirdest trips to the principal's office I ever took.
- ravenstine 5y agoIf it's any consolation, I got dragged into the principal's office for playing a Shockwave knockoff of Missile Command, not because I was goofing off but because the teacher thought I was disturbed for playing a game with weapons in it. In retrospect, this didn't happen more than a year or so after Columbine so I kind of get the concern but the teacher was still being pretty ridiculous. I can only imagine what she would have thought if I used the Nuke Map back then!
- chiph 5y agoTimes have changed. My high school science class took a field trip to the local Civil Defense office where we received training as radiological monitors. A monitor's job was to advise the shelter manager what the radiation levels were and when it'd be safe to leave. We had CD V-717 high-range meters for this, as they had a detachable ion chamber you could place outside. People inside the shelter would wear dosimeters (they looked like yellow cigar tubes) and we would record doses the wearer had been exposed to. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_defense_Geiger_counters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_defense_Geiger_counters
- retrac 5y agoI suppose with my schooling in the 90s, I come somewhere between the two of you. Nuclear war was taken seriously. Came up many times. It could happen, it was a real threat, the history is important, and you ought to know why and how. But it was also extremely abstract. My teachers talked about their memories in the 50s and 60s. Works about the bombings in Japan were in literature. Nothing tangible. It was pretty fatalistic too. It probably wasn't going to happen, and seems less likely to happpen. But if it did happen there wouldn't be much after. I do remember my science teacher wondering, as if aloud to himself, if the windows in the classroom would offer meaningful UV shielding before they melted. It felt like it was in the immediate past, most of the time. In hindsight more of a cliffhanger than a resolution.
- chiph 5y agoThe stockpiles got reduced, post-Soviet Union but not eliminated. The bombs didn't go away. China is building at least 2 new ICBM fields. They are a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty, but not any of the SALT treaties. https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2021-09/news/new-chinese-missile-silo-fields-discovered https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2021-09/news/new-chinese-mis...
- scrumper 5y agoThis is perennial, and no less terrifying for it. There was briefly a 3D version integrated with Google Earth that was even more depressing. Also check out (by the same developer, Alex Wallerstein) MissileMap, where you can plant a launch platform on a map (sub, silo etc.), assign it a missile and a warhead, and see which parts of the earth you can turn to glass. Stiff drink helps; all a bit close to home for this cold war kid.
- hunterb123 5y agoI find it assuring. There's so many it's such a large deterrent to escalating war. Noone would win.
- Waterluvian 5y agoIt’s also a deterrent for actually getting involved and doing the right thing. World powers can’t directly fight anymore so Russia takes chunks of Europe every so often. China does the same. Ukraine and Taiwan, for example, lose out. We pretend there is peace.
- kzrdude 5y agoDomination/Hegemony has been the only sense of peace historically. In that sense, I think that the continued stability of the United States as a prosperous and well-run democracy is very important for the world. It looks shaky though, and it's partly outside my control. What do I know, I'm in Europe. Europe is certainly not projecting any hegemony around.
- Waterluvian 5y agoYeah that resonates with me. There’s rarely peace, just quiet, created forcibly by a dominant actor.
- _-david-_ 5y agoThis seems reasonable and we even have phrases for it. Pax Romana, Pax Britannica and now Pax Americana.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- aaron695 5y agoYep, even if someone bombed downtown (which they won't, people don't bomb cities) nothing would happen to me. Meh. Nukes are pretty boring. It's like volcano lava, as a kid you think it's sooooo hot it's god like. But again meh, when you grow up you get a sense of proportion. Volcano lava is not that hot and is way less scary than a forest or house fire or termites. Now if they attacked supply chains, that would be scary. Or if Covid mutates and kills 10% of all the population, again scary.
- dang 5y agoPast related threads: Why Nukemap Isn't on Google Maps Anymore - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21782101 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21782101 - Dec 2019 (289 comments) Nuke Map: Interactive Nuclear Bomb Map - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14975863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14975863 - Aug 2017 (87 comments) Nuclear detonation visualizer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14243187 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14243187 - May 2017 (2 comments) Mapping the US nuclear war plan for 1956 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11704241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11704241 - May 2016 (45 comments) Nuclear Effects Calculator - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3624714 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3624714 - Feb 2012 (34 comments)
- lordofgibbons 5y agoAnyone else feel like they're going to be put on a list for playing around on this site?
- GoodbyeMrChips 5y agoYour sir, have just described the Chilling Effect. It's a very powerful reason to oppose monitoring of legitimate communications. The Rational Wiki has a good write up. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Chilling_effect https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Chilling_effect
- totalforge 5y agoThe classic Mac/Windows game DEFCON is still available on Steam. Its combination of vector graphics and an eerie soundtrack are still a good but sobering experience.
- 29athrowaway 5y agoI was going to recommend this game as well. I think the vector graphics are inspired on the WOPR computer from the film WarGames. btw, that movie has a sequel which is probably the worst sequel of any film ever made. Now... nuclear war strategies will change now that there are hypersonic missiles and scramjet vehicles.
- mattowen_uk 5y agoIn a completely different vein, there's also Nuclear War for the Amiga: https://youtu.be/_SFq7q3Yueo https://youtu.be/_SFq7q3Yueo (Not my video; first one that popped up on a search)
- xwdv 5y agoWhat I would like to see is a version of this combined with Google Earth VR, where you can stand in the street and watch as a bomb detonates at some distance and see what it would be like.
- tigerlily 5y agoI'd also like to see some sort of fallout simulator resembling a layer on windy.com, to see where nuclear materials might land.
- smoldesu 5y agoI believe it actually has that, it's just hidden under a number of menus. It's not exactly like Windy, as it doesn't have hour-by-hour feedback or fancy arrows, but it will show you a heatmap for nuclear fallout.
- sodality2 5y agoSeems to be down :c
- deehouie 5y agoI wonder if the site is down because of the interest from folks on HN?!
- drumttocs8 5y agoSo the lesson learned is live at least an hour from all major cities- got it!
- short12 5y agoDepends on what you want as an outcome. Instant death or slow and painful
- teeray 5y agoI read once that near the hypocenter, the death is so instant that you are vaporized faster than the sensation that you are being vaporized can travel to your brain. It is literally the most painless death possible.
- BoxOfRain 5y agoI'm planning to move onto a sailing yacht next year and I do vaugely wonder what my odds would be in the event of a nuclear war. I think if you weren't near a major city and could get away in time they might be quite good - provided the fish aren't too contaminated and you can eventually evacuate somewhere in the southern hemisphere that's less affected. Modern yachts kitted out for offshore cruising with things like water makers and long range HF radios (presumably satellites will be lost in the war) sound fairly suitable for this task. The greatest issue I can see is the wind, you want to optimise for speed but also not getting caught up in the fallout so you'd have to figure out your course very carefully. I suppose there'd be the issue of potentially being caught up in a naval war where nuclear weapons are used but even so the sea is a big place.
- wlll 5y agoYou’ll want to buy paper charts and learn how to use a sextant! You should be doing both of those things anyway as you can have your electronics knocked out by lightning, but if you’re running from nuclear war specifically you may not have access to GPS.
- karaterobot 5y agoI wonder if the author could publish the monthly trends in traffic to this app as a heuristic for worldwide anxiety about nuclear war.
- oriori 5y agoThis is really cool, but what worries me more is smaller bombs, the kind that get lost on transit... I expect an explosive nuclear terrorist attack in my life time.
- BoxOfRain 5y agoI read The Sum of All Fears as a teenager which did absolutely nothing to calm that fear!
- t8e56vd4ih 5y agoevery year ...