What would 'nuclear Armageddon' look like in your city? This simulator shows you

A new interactive nuclear bomb simulator shows how many people would die and how far the radiation would travel if a nuke was dropped on your hometown.

Let's just say what you already know — it's scary.

The Bomb Blast tool from the Outrider Foundation — a nonprofit in Madison, Wisc., that educates about nuclear weapons and climate change — lets you simulate a nuclear blast in any city around the world.

You push the button, so to speak, and instantly see the fireball, heat blast, shock wave and radioactive ring.

Type in a ZIP code or name of city and choose one of four nukes.

A North Korean Hwasong-14? The Tsar Bomba, the largest Soviet nuclear weapon ever detonated?

Do you want it to explode in the air or hit the ground?

Boom.

If one of those Russian nukes burst in the sky over Kansas City, 818,000 people would die, another 590,000 would be injured.

The heat would be felt for 4,362 square miles and the radiation would affect nearly 12 square miles.

(See how prepared Kansas City is for a nuclear detonation.)

If the Tsar Bomba were detonated over New York City, the air burst would kill 7.6 million people and the shock wave would travel 522 square miles.

The tool isn't meant to simply scare people but to raise awareness about the real threats of nuclear war facing the world right now, says the simulator's creators.

“We believe ordinary people can make a difference if we have the right tools to inspire them,” Tara Drozdenko, the managing director of the Outrider Foundation, told Fast Company magazine. “We use really good visualizations so people can truly understand the threat.”

The tool is similar to an older nuke map created by researcher Alex Wellerstein at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., who consulted on this new project, notes Gizmodo.

"Ground Zero is another tool that does something similar using Google Maps," writes Matthew Gault for Motherboard.

"Each of the tools is useful, but Outrider’s is the most graphically impressive and most enjoyable to use. Which is a twisted way to look at nuclear blast planning programs, I know, but when it comes to nuclear Armageddon, you take your jollies where you can."

The new simulator "might raise awareness," writes Gizmodo's Matt Novak, "but it might be too beautiful for its own good.

"As I was playing with the simulator, my wife, who was sitting on the couch across the room said, 'that’s a pretty flower.'

"When I explained that it was actually a simulation of roughly 3.4 million people dying in a nuclear explosion in Los Angeles, she thought it was slightly less pretty."

Katharine Schwab at Fast Company was terrified when she used the tool to blow up her city.

"When I typed in my apartment, I watched in horror as the visualization showed my entire neighborhood being vaporized," she writes.

"The circle of radiation poisoning reaches for nearly six square miles around my house — many of the people within that area will perish from radiation poisoning within the next few weeks. A shock wave has an even bigger reach of more than 11 square miles, and the invisible force will demolish most buildings in its path."

Outrider hopes that by showing people in a very graphic way the devastation of a nuclear bomb, people are inspired to do something, such as contacting their Congressional representatives, Drozdenko told Fast Company.

“It’s not just to scare people, but to show them that they can make a difference on this,” she said. “The next step is to actually do something about it.”

This story was originally published March 30, 2018 at 11:16 AM with the headline "What would 'nuclear Armageddon' look like in your city? This simulator shows you."