A useful addition to the many materials and instructions for survival in the event of a possible use of nuclear weapons by Russia will be the NukeMap interactive simulator , which allows you to simulate the use of nuclear weapons in a specific city and assess the scale of destruction. The online service was developed and launched in 2011 by Alex Wellerstein of the American Institute of Physics.
How to use NukeMap
The tool is as simple as possible to use and at the same time thought out to the important details. So, in order to simulate a nuclear strike (so, what times, such and “toys”), you need to indicate on the map a specific place where a nuclear bomb was detonated. There are two ways to do this: enter the name of the settlement in the appropriate field (in the upper right corner) or simply drag the marker on the map to the desired location. The next step is to set the type of ammunition. The list of available options includes the Topol strategic nuclear missile (the estimated charge capacity is 800 kilotons). In this case, you can manually enter the power of the nuclear charge in the corresponding field. The most probable is the use of the so-called tactical nuclear weapons by the Russian Federation – these are low-yield charges of 0.5-50 kilotons (for comparison, the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was 25 kt).
Next, in the simulator, you should specify the option of a nuclear explosion: ground or air. Additionally, you can set the Victims and Fallout options. The tool calculates and shows the radius of the fireball that forms immediately after the explosion and spreads in different directions of the epicenter, as well as the radius of other damaging factors – the blast wave, radiation and thermal radiation, radioactive fallout. The service also calculates the estimated number of victims. Advanced settings are also available, where you can change the warhead burst height and other parameters.
Visualization of the consequences in the event of a hypothetical nuclear strike on the center of Lviv
We used the NukeMap service to simulate the consequences of a hypothetical nuclear attack on the center of Lviv by a Kinzhal missile with a nuclear warhead (estimated explosion yield of 25 kilotons). Such missiles still remain unattainable targets for the air defense systems available in Ukraine.
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The parameters have not changed – the standard values inscribed by the developer have been selected to undermine the charge in the air. The radius of the fireball (bright orange) in this case will reach 220 m (instant death), and a powerful blast wave (red) will destroy everything in its path within a radius of 800 m, including capital concrete buildings (mortality in this area also reaches 100 %). A heat wave (light orange) causing third-degree burns will cover an area with a radius of 2.45 km. The radius of moderate damage (dark gray) with massive destruction of residential buildings and fires is estimated at 1.83 kilometers, and the radius of the zone of weak damage (light gray) with a blast wave that will lead to window panes in houses is 4.92 km.
A zone of severe radiation contamination (bright lime color) will extend 1.36 km from the epicenter of the explosion (ionizing radiation dose of 5,000 mSv; death is likely in about 1 month, and 15% of survivors will eventually die of cancer).
