Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

blast radius

CSS guru Eric Meyer’s new Google Maps-based application HYDESim, which (if I understand it correctly) simulates the structural damage radius depending on the strength of a given nuclear weapon, doesn’t scare me one bit. Not at all. Not even though my office and apartment would fall within the blast radius.

Yipes.

In an entry on his blog, fittingly titled “Mapping Doomsday,” Meyer explains that the impetus for this self-described act of geekery came from a discussion with a friend about whether a nuclear attack on New York City would wipe out a particular town in Connecticut. Meyer concluded that it would not, and mused about how to make it easier to solve a question like that in the future.

You can pick from a list of cities or input any latitude/longitude coordinates Google Maps covers, set the yield you find most interesting, and see what the effects might be. Each successive ring marks a successive overpressure threshold: 15psi, 5psi, 2psi, 1psi. I included 0.25psi in the list because it’s the point at which even windows wouldn’t be damaged, but left it off the map because it was too huge. (I thought about adding a way to switch psi rings on and off, and in the end didn’t feel like doing the necessary hackery.) 15psi is the point at which reinforced-concrete structures might be able to survive with severe damage; 5psi is where homes might start to survive with severe damage; and 2psi is where home damage drops to light. Roughly speaking.

I didn’t include rings for thermal effects or electromagnetic pulses: this is strictly about blast wave damage. It’s also “idealized”, which means that there’s no effort made to account for terrain changes, urban density, ground type, and so on. The script just uses the formulae and information in the book to calculate maximum-overpressure distances for arbitrary yields, and plops down circles as appropriate.

Good work and all, and certainly fascinating. Just incredibly scary.