Would Milwaukee Survive A Nuclear Bomb? There's An App For That

MILWAUKEE COUNTY, WI — North Korea’s announcement this week that its military might attack the U.S. territory of Guam, met by President Trump’s pledge to unleash “fire and fury like the world has never seen,” has again raised the specter of nuclear war. But what would happen if a medium- or long-range missile with a nuclear bomb inside reached your house?

Straddling the line between entertainment, fantasy and terrifying reality is NUKEMAP, a Google Maps mashup tool for visualizing the real-world impact of a nuclear explosion on specific locations.

If a weapon similar to one North Korea tested in 2013 was detonated in Downtown Racine, for example, about 12,830 people would perish, according to NUKEMAP, created five years ago by historian Alex Wellerstein, who specializes in the history of nuclear weapons and secrecy. Another 8,110 would be injured. The rest of the scenario is pretty ugly, too.

Here’s how it works:

Users choose their preferred weapon of mass destruction and their target. Which bomb they choose depends on how much damage they want to do — are you aiming for total annihilation, or do you just want to create a little chaos? Your choices start with the American-made “Davy Crockett,” which is relatively benign when compared to the “Tsar Bomba,” a Russian-made bomb that means business.

Once the bomb is detonated, ringed circles appear around the targeted cities, showing the radius of the fireball, the radius of thermal radiation and an outer radius where buildings would likely survive the blast. It graphically displays the extent of injuries and damage to buildings from firestorms.

In five years, the website has hosted more than 99 million virtual detonations, Wellerstein wrote on his nuclearsecrecy.com blog. He said he typically sees viral spikes in site visits around the anniversaries of the bombings of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945.

Written by Beth Dalbey, Patch National Staff, with additional reporting by Scott Anderson.

Photo by South Korean Defense Ministry via Getty Images/Getty Images News