(100 divided by 10) Still not healthy, but that’s a significant drop.Ĥ9 hours after detonation (7 x 7), you’re down to 1 rad. If you start off with 100 rads of radiation per hour, seven hours later, you’re down to 10 rads/hour. ![]() That means that after seven hours, fallout has lost 90% of its energy, or is 90% less radioactive. The Seven/Ten Rule states that for every factor of seven-fold increase in hours, the amount of radiation is reduced by a factor of ten. Get ready for a little math, but we’ll make it easy. There is a rule called the Seven/Ten Rule when it comes to fallout. Meaning the worse of it doesn’t last very long. Radiation from fallout also expends a great deal of its energy very quickly. The world will not be covered knee-deep in fallout. But we’re also not talking movies like On The Beach where the world was soaked in radiation, either. This doesn’t mean you can go out and play after a nuclear attack. Times change.Īny country under full scale nuclear attack is going to get a whole lot of air bursts and some surface bursts, limiting the amount of fallout. They are outdated and presume an attack that won’t happen the way they think it will. Surface bursts produce a ton of radioactive fallout. Surface bursts are reserved for dug-in targets: NATO, hardened missile silos, airports with long runways, etc. Surface bursts are extremely powerful, but have a smaller footprint, which is why city-killer missiles are exploded high in the sky. (To a point, of course.) There is some nice math that works in there where there is an optimum height you want to explode your device.įortunately, that optimum point for cities is pretty high and yields little fallout. The higher a nuclear weapon is detonated, the larger the area of devastation you get. And that is good for us…if the word “good” can be used in context of nuclear war. That isn’t the end of nuclear weapon efficiency, however. You will destroy more of an area that way. This is why the bad guy is going to hit a city with two or three low-yield weapons rather than one large one. That is less than half the power but only a quarter less destruction. The 350 kt nuclear warhead will devastate and area 4.95 km (just above 3 miles). That’s less than half of the weapon we calculated previously. Now let’s look at a W-78 Minuteman III, which clocks in 350 kilotons of destruction. An 800 kt weapon air burst over a target produces significant damage over 6.53 kilometres. And you get a larger area of effect with an air burst rather than a surface burst.Ĭonsider the scenario we just ran. That is the practicality of nuclear weapons.Īs said above, you get more bang for your buck with smaller weapons. These attack maps were made during the deep Cold War when it was assumed the entire country would suffer 20 megaton bomb surface bursts all over the place. ![]() That makes for cool video games but isn’t real life. If you look at nuclear planning maps put out by the United States, you’d think the entire country would be a radioactive wasteland. The next argument is radiation and fallout. Bombs used on cities will be much smaller. So, discounting the Light Damage radius, if you’re seven miles away from the centre of the blast, you survived the attack! And remember, this was a pretty large bomb we looked at. Windows will break and there will be some structure damage in less-sound buildings, but otherwise eminently survivable (unless the Universe has it out for you and something falls on you). Lastly, there is the Light Damage radius, coming in at 18.4 km (or less than 11 ½ miles). If you’re in a building, around a corner, or otherwise protected (even light-coloured clothing will protect you), your chances of coming out of it increase dramatically. (Just short of 6.9 miles.) If you’re unlucky enough to be directly exposed to the blast, you’re looking at third degree burns. You’d be lucky to survive unless you are in a basement or reinforced building. (Just above 4 miles.) Anything to that point will suffer severe damage and injury. Moderate blast damage radius is 6.53 kilometres. (That’s slightly more than half a mile for you Americans who can’t seem to adapt to the metric system.) If you’re further out than that, you survived the fireball. So, picking on the SS-25 (because why not? Someone has to be the bad guy here) air burst over a city (because city attacks will always be air bursts), we have the following data: But we’ll use the larger weapon so we get a bigger area of devastation with a single hit. You actually get more bang for your buck with smaller weapons. More likely they’ll use the 300KT variant. Now, it’s highly improbable that large of a weapon will be used against a city. The largest weapon of choice against a city will likely be the 800 kiloton Topol SS-25 (or near equivalent) for Russia or the maybe the 1 megaton Minuteman I for the United States. ![]() But nuclear weapons don’t have the devastating range people think.
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