Map shows what your city would look like after a nuclear bomb

We live in very bizarre times. Nuclear weapons are commonplace,at least insofar as lots of countries have access to them but neveractually use them, but tensions between superpowers never seem togo away. The US is in an open war of words with Russia, while NorthKorea, despite being on its best behavior lately, is stillseemingly a threat to just about everyone. The Middle East is inconstant unrest, and nobody knows who, if anyone, they can actuallytrust. With all that in mind, let』s pretend someone launched a nukeat your house.

Outrider.org is an activist group made up of scientists andexperts who hope to curb the worldwide nuclear threat through aninformation campaign. To that end, they』ve created a freelyaccessible tool to simulate what would happen if a nuclear weaponwere dropped on any particular spot on the globe. The result isboth fascinating and frightening.

Using the map-based tool, you can type in any location you canthink of and watch as the website demonstrates how a nuclearwarhead would affect it. You』ll see how far the different aspectsof the detonation would reach, including the fireball, radiation,shock wave, and heat. It even provides a tally of the fatalitiesand injuries likely to result based on how many people live in thearea.

You can tweak the settings of the blast and choose one of fourbombs ranging from the original 「Little Boy」 nuke to Russia』s TsarBomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated. Depending onwhere you decide to 「drop」 it, the amount of damage the explosioncauses can be downright absurd. By default, the bomb blast is setto New York City, which would endure over 7.5 million fatalitiesand another 4.2 million injuries as a result.

Needless to say, it can be a pretty scary thing to simulate anuclear bomb dropping on your hometown, but that』s kind of the ideahere. The group wants to bring the conversation regarding nuclearweapons to the forefront, with the ultimate goal of disarmament.We』re now just two minutes to midnight on the Doomsday Clock, thesymbolic countdown to worldwide nuclear catastrophe, and the fateof humanity might rest on our ability to come up with asolution.