More mapping fun

[castlebravo92]

Leveraging Nuclear War Simulator Hysplit fallout + the T2K target list for the Houston area to generate old school style blast/fallout maps.

Fallout contours = 3000/1000/300 rem.

Blast PSI contours = 5 / 2 / 1 PSI.

[chico20854]

Very impressive!!!!

[castlebravo92]

(Almost) full North America* map with fallout contours and targets (3000/1000/300 rem cutoff):



* Not counting Alaska and part of Mexico and Hawaii.

[Tegyrius]

Welp, so much for any plans anyone might've had for a Gulf Coast Sourcebook.

- C.

[castlebravo92]

Or an Ottawa sourcebook.



Ottawa, which was hit hard enough as it is, is directly downwind from the Chalk River Nuclear Power Plant, which was targeted in the Canada hit list.

Incidentally, the fallout in these maps is grossly exaggerated. In most cases (except for specific rainouts where the stabilized nuclear cloud is *under* a rainstorm), airbursts create very little acutely dangerous fallout. But GDW generally went with the "airbursts don't create as much fallout as ground bursts".

Assuming the same attack pattern, in reality there would be a lot fewer 3000/1000 rem contours, and the >0 and <10 rem contours would be much more widespread, but I tried to make it "canon consistent". Also, after 3 years, even the 3000 rem radiation zone would be largely 1 rem/hour exposure risk. Except for Ottawa. The radionucleotides from a nuclear meltdown tend to be longer lived gamma ray emitters than what's produced from a nuclear detonation.

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).

[Tegyrius]

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).

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.