Quote:
Originally Posted by swaghauler
Looks better than Twilight 2013's estimates. I always wondered why they said 20KT as the nominal yield for the nukes in game. I was Special Weapons in the Army Artillery, and the Nominal Yield of our 6" Nuclear Shell was 20KT. Most MIRVs carried warheads with a Nominal Yield of between 50KT and 100KT. The big ICBMs could be fitted with a warhead of 1 MegaTon Nominal Yield. Bursting a 1 MT Nominal Yield warhead in the stratosphere (between 30K feet and 40K feet) could also trigger a major EMP effect. This was tested during the Bikini Atoll testing and the EMP knocked out power 1500 miles away.
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Oh no, no. I'm sorry, I phrased that badly, allow me to explain.
The nuclear weapons used in
Jericho were 20kt theater weapons that had been in storage in ex-Soviet states and were bought up by the CIA to keep them out of the hands of terrorists (ironically). These would've been warheads put in FROG-7 or SCUD missiles, I'm guessing.
T2k mentions that (for example) Tampa was hit with a 1.5mt weapon at MacDill AFB. I think (THINK) in
Howling Wilderness they only list cities hit by 1-megaton-and-up yields and leave smaller strikes to the imagination of the GM or later fleshing out. The module that concerns the Lima Tank Plant in Ohio mentions the city getting hit with something that would have come from an SS20 MIRV spread (4x 250mt).
If we increase the yield of the weapons in
Jericho to 10-50 times the listed amount, the casualties would rise, seriously.
In fact, let's go do that with one target. On our list we see that Chicago suffers the most with 184840 dead and 125580 injured, so conservatively that's 255,000-280,000 dead.
Per nukemap:
Estimated fatalities: 613,970
Estimated injuries: 573,160
...from a 1.5 megaton groundburst, so a four-fold increase. If we roughly apply that across the board we wind up with 9-18 million dead, nationwide. As for Chicago... People in Winnetka suffer 2nd degree burns if they're in direct line without any cover. The power goes out in Milwaukee, and they probably suffer more than a few water main breaks if utilities are shared at all. The detonation is heard (and seen) as far away as Lake Geneva, anyone in Benton Harbor unfortunate enough to be looking West towards the now smoking crater that used to be Chicago is likely permanently blinded. I'm no expert on the subject but there may be a small tsunami since this is a groundburst; depends on how much the land soaks up. Since our hypothetical detonation is to take place as close to the city center as possible (the bombs in
Jericho were trucked in), the explosion rolls out the relatively short distance to the lakeshore, a mere 1km (roughly) away: everything in the .92mi fireball is reduced to constituent atoms and pushed back away at roughly the speed of light before slowing down to a more dignified hypersonic pace. I'd guess that'd move some water via shock effect...