California Nuke Target List.

[Dogger]

Hi guys.

Haven't posted in quite some time, but still lurk. Most of my old T2K source books and modules are in storage at the moment, so I could use a hand.

I'm looking for the nuke target hit locations (and payload yields) for California (and southern Nevada) from V.1

I know Richmond in the Bay area was hit, but a can't recall if there were multiple strikes or not.

Any info would be appreciated.

[kato13]

This should be all the California Strikes (sorry about formatting it is from my database) Kiloton size is in the third column from the left. There are no canon Nevada strikes.

33.91901779 -118.4159699 El Segundo CA United States Oil refining and storage facilities 1750 N T2k
37.9348793 -122.3465118 Richmond CA United States Oil refining and storage facilities 1500 N T2k
33.83160019 -118.2817764 Carson CA United States Oil refining and storage facilities 750 N T2k
38.03290176 -122.0756226 Avon CA United States Oil refining and storage facilities 500 N T2k
33.8360672 -118.3400574 Torrance CA United States Oil refining and storage facilities 500 N T2k
33.78120041 -118.2619019 Wilmington CA United States Oil refining and storage facilities 1250 N T2k
38.05051041 -122.1607361 Benicia CA United States Oil refining and storage facilities 500 N T2k
38.01926804 -122.1314697 Martinez CA United States Oil refining and storage facilities 500 N T2k
34.70376968 -120.5610809 Vandenborg AFB CA United States Recon satellite launch facilities 1000 Y T2k
33.89173889 -117.2721405 March AFB CA United States 15th Air Force Headquarters 1000 N T2k


Here is an excel file with all Canon T2k strikes (plus an sheet with the much more devastating strike from Morrow Project)

Attachment 970

[Dogger]

Awesome. Thanks Kato!!

[Webstral]

I'll add a non-canon interpretation of the strikes against oil refineries in the SF Bay Area. Note that 4 refineries in the Bay Area get hit. Three get hit with 500kt weapons, while Richmond gets hit a 1.5Mt device. My explanation is that 4 weapons are deployed against these targets--perhaps from a single MIRV launched by a Soviet boomer. One of the MIRVs fails. Soviet BDA (battle damage assessment) reveals the failure of the strike against Richmond. A follow-on attack is launched from a separate platform.

The three .5Mt strikes against Benicia, Martinez, and Avon are probably overkill for these targets. If one uses Alex Wallerstein's Nukemap, one can see that the strike on Martinez probably would start catastrophic fires at Benicia and Avon. Still, the Soviets like to be thorough. It's just blind luck that the one refinery physically separated from the others was missed while the overlapping attacks all succeeded.

Let us imagine that for whatever reason the Soviets follow up the failed attack on Richmond with an ICBM with a single warhead. The launch vehicle selected is less accurate than more modern platforms. Whoever makes the decision to use the ICBM with a single warhead reasons that the higher yield of the warhead will compensate for the greater CEP.

The warhead, set for ground burst, detonates about 750 meters northwest of the intended ground. The actual ground zero is directly to the east of a long ridge that runs along the western edge of Richmond. This ridge is a set of low, joined hills running from Point Richmond to Point San Pablo over a distance of 8-9km. These hills are nothing impressive, as the highest point is less than 250m above the water line. The Richmond Bridge, which links Richmond with San Rafael in Marin County, makes landfall on the Richmond side at a "pass" in the ridge. The refinery is almost entirely on the eastern side of the ridge, though a few storage tanks are on the ridge itself and even on the western side. Also, some of the loading/offloading facilities are on the western side of the ridge.

Ground zero is in the mouth of Castro Creek, almost in the center of the U-shaped bowl formed where the creek meets San Pablo Bay. Until the moment of detonation, this 1km-wide area is defined on the west by the ridge line as it descends to San Pablo Point, on the east by the low shoreline typical of most of San Pablo Bay, and on the south by the dock and refinery facilities.

The fireball of the 1.5Mt explosion overflows the 1km basin of the mouth of Castro Creek and extends into the Bay and onto dry land. All of the water in the basin vaporizes instantly, along with millions of gallons from the creek itself and the adjacent San Pablo Bay proper. The northern parts of the refinery are caught up in the fireball. Lethal radiation and overpressure of 20 psi reach nearly to I-580 where it emerges from the pass on the south and right into the neighborhoods of North Richmond in the east. Virtually everything is destroyed outright. Overpressure of 5 psi, sufficient to destroy most residential structures, reaches the centers of San Pablo and Richmond, almost 6km from the epicenter.

The thermal pulse travels even further. Moving in a straight line to the southeast, the thermal pulse ignites fires and causes severe burns as far away as Albany and Kensington. Directly to the east, every part of Richmond and San Pablo is affected. To the northeast, Pinole and even Hercules are seared by heat intense enough to cause third degree burns in every person caught out in the open.

Towns in southern Marin which are technically within the thermal pulse radius are spared by the effects of topography on the blast. The epicenter is right at the surface of the Bay. The fireball in the mouth of Castro Creek is partially contained by the ridge line on the western boundary of the Richmond refinery. Although huge amounts of soil and rock are vaporized by the fireball, the sheer volume of rock in the low hills repels the air blasts and redirects the pressure wave upwards. Consequently, the effects of the blast on the Richmond Bridge, which is south and west of the ridge, are very much reduced. The mass of the low hills completely blocks the thermal pulse radiating west, southwest, and south below the level of the ridge. Thus San Rafael--and in particular those parts of the city along San Rafael Bay--is spared almost all of the effects of the nuclear blast which might otherwise be expected to cross the San Pablo Bay, make landfall at San Quentin state prison, and continue up the valley to the center of San Rafael. Similarly, Corte Madera and Larkspur, which otherwise would be completely exposed to the pressure wave and thermal pulse, are almost completely spared the effects of the blast. Those parts of Tiburon on the northeast face of the Tiburon Peninsula likewise suffer little ill effect, while those portions of Tiburon on the side of the peninsula and towns further west that are even more sheltered by low peaks in the coastal range are virtually unaffected though theoretically within the overpressure and thermal radiation radii of the 1.5Mt detonation at the Richmond refinery.

The first strikes at Benicia, Martinez, and Avon cause tremendous damage throughout central Contra Contra County and southwestern Solano County. Highly accurate strikes by the first three reentry vehicles wipe out the refineries and associated facilities at these three locations. Firestorms quickly engulf Concord and Walnut Creek to the south, Port Chicago to the east, Port Costa and Crockett to the west, and Vellejo to the northwest. Topography and the very wet El Nino winter of ’97-’98 serve to limit the damage compared to the devastation that reduces greater Los Angeles to ashes and rubble. While towns nearest the strikes suffer tremendous damage, the hills and marshes separating clusters of towns in Contra Costa and Solano Counties serve as effective fire breaks.

The strike at Richmond is particularly devastating due to the high population density of western Contra Costa County. Firestorms rage throughout Richmond, San Pablo, and the adjoining municipalities. By the time they have run their course, everything north of University Avenue in Berkeley has been consumed by fire. A virtually unbroken heap of smoldering ruin characterizes the Contra County shoreline from the western edge of Pittsburg, west through Martinez and inland to include almost the entire urban area in the valleys occupied by Concord, Walnut Creek, and Clayton; through the smaller towns lining the Carquinez Strait, along the southeastern shore of San Pablo Bay, and throughout the entire flat and densely developed area between the hills and the shore of greater San Francisco Bay south to Berkeley. On the Solano side of the Bay, Benicia has been annihilated, while Vallejo has been burned to the ground.

Seen in a larger context, these strikes virtually paralyze the San Francisco Bay Area and its 8.5 million inhabitants. Direct loss of life is significant but not overwhelming—less than 1 million. Loss of fuel for transportation, damage to the electrical grid, and the breakdown of order cause far more casualties over the next 2 years. Interstate 80, linking Sacramento with Oakland and San Francisco, is impassible through sections of Vallejo and virtually all of San Pablo, Richmond, El Cerrito, Albany, and much of Berkeley. By April 2001, the population of the 10 Bay Area counties has dropped to 3 million.

[Dogger]

Great reply and BDA write-up Web thanks.

Funny that you mention it, but the very first thing I did was use NukeMap to chart the California strikes. http://www.nuclearsecrecy.com/nukema...52cd2f186516a5

I agree that the multiple strikes on the Carquinez Strait locations is mass overkill. i suppose the same can more or less be said for the Torrance/Carson/Wilmington strikes in the south as well.

What are your thoughts on damage to San Fransisco itself? While the thermal blast effects (on the map) only get about as far as Treasure Island...there is nothing save nice flat open water between much of Richmond and The City...I'm thinking shock-wave damage would have been profound. Enough to cause major damage and start fires that would have ravaged a city without power. (At least the North Beach area, perhaps as far west as Columbus Ave?)

Also, given the weather patterns at that time of year, I'm thinking the Fairfield - Sacramento corridor would have been devastated by hard fallout from the Bay hits.

In my scenario, Hunters Point Shipyard has become a viable alternate naval base, however, movement inland to Stockton via the Carquinez Strait is a gauntlet to run due to it still being somewhat of a 'hotzone' to pass thru. Tho, in my game it is into 2003...so perhaps the strait would not be near as dangerous now.

[Webstral]

I think damage to San Francisco from the Richmond strike depends entirely on the altitude of the epicenter of the explosion. An airburst of almost any elevation over Richmond will break a lot of glass in North Beach, the Marina, and downtown. With a surface detonation, though, the shockwave and thermal pulse will run into the low hills on the western edge of Richmond I mentioned above. There will be plenty of turbulence in the air, to be sure. But damage from overpressure should be slight given the distance of northern San Francisco from the epicenter and the deflection of the pressure wave by the hills.

Deflection by the low hills at Point Richmond will not completely eliminate the effects of overpressure on North Beach or adjacent areas. However, we should bear in mind that the pressure drops from 20psi at 2.5km from the epicenter to 5 psi at somewhat less than 6km from the epicenter. It’s another 12km from the edge of that ring to North Beach. Pressure will drop as a function of the expansion of a hemisphere. If the overpressure at 6km (just keeping the math simple) is 5 psi, then the same force will be acting on a much larger surface area when the hemisphere expands to a radius of 18km. The surface area of a hemisphere with a radius of 6000m is slightly less than 118,000m2. The surface area of a hemisphere with a radius of 18,000m is 355,000m2. Keeping the math simple, this should mean a force 1/3 as great as when the hemisphere has a radius of 6km. These are all rounded figures, just for the sake of getting a decent approximation.

Another way of looking at the math (admittedly without my having a really good grasp of the geometry and physics involved) is to observe that the overpressure drops from 20 psi at 2km to 5 psi at 6km. The pressure decreases fourfold as the radius increases by a factor of 3. The radius of the hemisphere increases by just about a factor of 3 from the edge of the 5 psi ring to North Beach. While someone with real subject matter expertise could give precise figures, my back-of-the-envelope sketch shows that pressure drops to about 1.25 psi. This jibes tolerably with the above example, in which pressure drops from 5 psi to about 1.66 psi.

Since this pressure is applied very abruptly to glass facing towards the water in North Beach, one can expect a fair amount of broken glass—especially among the big picture windows facing in exactly the wrong direction.

Accounting for the impact of the Point Richmond hills on the pressure reaching North Beach is tougher. The pressure wave will be distorted as it goes over the hills and at least partially deflected. Once over open water, though, we might expect that portion of the shockwave that went over the hills to descend towards the water. This question addresses fluid mechanics, about which I know very, very little. I can’t say for certain that a ridge 100m high in Richmond would completely block the overpressure from the blast from striking 2 story houses in North Beach. Neither can I say that the pressure would be unaffected as a result of the pressure wave “spreading out”, as it were, to fill the gap below the 100m line and the surface of the water as the pressure wave moves southwest across San Francisco Bay. My guess is that there would be some reduction. I can’t say how much. Even a 50% reduction would very favorably affect survivability of residential structures in North Beach.

The thermal radiation, on the other hand, is much more straightforward. Infrared light moves in a straight line. There is a significant mass between the epicenter of the explosion in Castro Creek and North Beach. The effect of thermal radiation on North Beach should be zero to negligible.

I certainly agree that there would be troublesome fallout from the strikes. How much depends a good deal on how many airbursts versus ground bursts we’re talking about. My interpretation is that the three .5Mt strikes are airbursts, while the 1.5Mt strike is a ground burst. That last strike would put up a lot more irradiated dust than the other three combined. The water at the point of impact is only a couple of feet deep. The surface underneath the water is wet mud. I don’t know how deep that mud goes before one reaches bedrock. In any event, I think one could expect fallout in an arc from Modesto to Sacramento. This is unfortunate, given that there’s a lot of productive farmland everywhere in that arc. How widely dispersed the fallout is and how far inland it reaches depends on the weather, obviously. If everyone was very, very lucky the places most affected by fallout would be those places already burned to a cinder by the first round of strikes or basically uninhabited along the north shore of Suisun Bay. What really sucks is that some very productive and potentially defensible farmland on the islands of the Delta lies directly east of Richmond. The best case scenarios would be either heavy rain such that the fallout from the Richmond strike is knocked out of the air almost immediately and falls in central Contra Costa or high winds scatter the fallout across such a wide area that the agricultural areas of the Central Valley get a light dusting.

I put the major functional military bases on the islands for security purposes. I chose Alameda because the facilities already were there in 1997. The island would be comparatively easy to secure, freeing military manpower for other tasks. People useful to Milgov could be packed onto the island, where they would be manageable and relatively secure.

The hotness of Carquinez Strait is something I haven’t really thought about before. It certainly could be a real problem when it comes to exploiting the inland waterways. I’d be curious to see some numbers on how hot the shoreline would be after 500kt airbursts at the given locations. The lynchpin of Blue Two and of Sixth US Army operations in central California is free movement all along the inland waterways, from Alviso in the South Bay to the Golden Gate to the Petaluma and Napa Rivers, throughout the Delta, and upriver to Sacramento and Stockton. If Carquinez Strait is too hot to move through in 1998, a very serious dent is going to be put in my scheme.