Quote:
Originally Posted by castlebravo92
GDW's canon target list for North America only has ~24 ground bursts (25 if you count the Seattle atomic demolition munition in the Northwest Sourcebook).
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I wouldn't count that, honestly.
The Pacific Northwest is not canon, and the canon nuclear target list is generally restricted to 500kt or higher yields (
Howling Wilderness, p. 10).
(I'm comfortable with GDW's reasoning on that latter item. It left the door open for future authors and GMs to write in smaller-yield strikes on sourcebook-level targets without the need for retcon. The same consideration also applies to tactical nuclear strikes, which are so undocumented that they can be treated as a random encounter.)
Your point about reduction in actual radiation hazard over time (in most cases) is well-taken. I think the affected areas would still be significantly underpopulated in 2000, though, due to what I'll term "psychological contamination." In my own sometimes-CBRNE-adjacent day job, I see significant public misunderstanding about chemical, biological, and radiation hazards, and I would expect most survivors of the general public to be very wary of an area that was once contaminated (or believed to be so). Absent a well-trusted official source (and how many of those are still extant by 2000?), I think few citizens would be comfortable resettling areas formerly subjected to significant fallout. Communities on the fringe of such areas might go so far as to screen, forcibly decontaminate, or outright ostracize anyone seen exiting such areas... which would make for some interesting encounters, and possibly a reason for the party's 54B to actually use his MOS for a change!
- C.