The Effects of a Terrorist Nuclear Bomb on a City

Did you ever wonder what would happen if a nuclear bomb detonated at the heart of a city? This video takes a look at what would happen to the city if a terrorist bomb detonated at the center of the city. It looks at the effects from three different vantage points of varying distances.

Ground Zero II

Have you ever wondered what would happen if a nuclear bomb goes off in your city? With Google's Maps framework and a bit of Javascript, you can see the outcome.

Pick your city..pick your bomb...www.carloslabs.com...

reply to post by RocksFromSpace


nuclearsecrecy.com...
This one is even better, but there is one thing neither take into account, ground vs. airburst.

It's a pretty good assumption that a terrorist style nuke would be ground burst, which is a lot more preferable (to the target city), as destruction will be less. Chances are, such a nuke would be pretty small, likely only taking out a few city blocks, with the secondary effects affecting some surrounding blocks. Not as bad as many would think, but still the worst such tragedy to ever occur.

Nuclear blast simulators seem to wildly vary on how far the effects are. So-called "suitcase" nukes are pretty small in yield. A standard Russian missile is 550kt though, so may want to choose that also, to see the effects. Or, if you're really feeling dismal, try a 3 megaton one. Chances of anything bigger hitting near you are slim (they were mostly made, just to see if they could).....

The psychological and political effects would be more widespread .. IMHO.

The far right people would be pissed off and want immediate major revenge upon someone.
The far left people would be pissed off and they'd claim that America brought this upon ourselves.

The people in the middle would be saddened by the loss; be quick to try to help the victims and the city as much as possible; want an honest investigation into what happened and who did it; and swift justice brought down upon the perps and their cohorts so that we can be safer.

The politicians would probably be shocked and upset .. but then most would try to find a way to turn it to their advantage with a lot of rhetoric.

The overseas psychological and political effects ....

Civilized governments and countries would mourn the loss of life and be angry about the 'hit'. They'd review their own procedures and security measures to help make sure it didn't happen in their country.

Uncivilized or anti-American governments and/or countries would applaud the hit; declare a holiday over it or make it a national party day or something; and blame the USA for the hit instead of the perps who did it.

The religious psychological and political effects ...

People of peaceful faith would either pray more or lose their faith wondering where God was in all this.
People of other faiths would claim it was God's justice upon wicked people or some other such rubbish.

A lot of people across the country would suffer from PTSD.
People don't necessarily have to be at ground zero to suffer from it.