Driving by ground zeros near you....

[TrailerParkJawa]

Yesterday, I drove up from San Jose to hang out in Sausalito. As I was driving on 580 I passed through Richmond. This place gets nuked in T2K. As I crossed the Richmond brigdge I couldnt help but think about a blinding flash of white followed but either being vaporized or possibly blown off the bridge only to crash into the bay and drown trapped in my car. Or at least that this place is totally gone in the world of T2K.

Do any of you live near or regularly drive by the ground zeros?
If so , do you ever think about the game world or just go about your business?

[Targan]

Many times I've looked to the South-West from where I live and ponder the very flat terrain and how far the blast wave and resulting fires would travel from Kwinana and the HMAS Stirling Naval Base.

I wouldn't be in danger of being incinerated but I'd have a very clear view (until my retinas burned out) of the flash and the mushroom cloud. Grim ponderings.

[Panther Al]

*hehs*

I'm living half a mile from Ft. Detrick. I won't even see the flash.

[WallShadow]

Crossing the Delaware River on the Walt Whitman Bridge, you can just imagine the wide glassy parking lots where buildings, refineries, shipyards, and people used to be, as far as the eye can see.

[WallShadow]

Originally Posted by Panther Al

*hehs*

I'm living half a mile from Ft. Detrick. I won't even see the flash.

If you're out of town for the holiday, you could always come back to the breached class-4 labs at the "Cancer Research Center" Assuming you weren't in Catoctin Mtn park instead. Odd that Raven Rock, just a few miles up the road, wasn't hit.

[pmulcahy11b]

I can see Lackland and Kelly from my back porch. I might escape a lot of the rads if I'm in my house, but then the shock wave winds would probably blow my house (and most of Heritage Northwest, my housing development) and scatter it to the winds.

You know, sometimes, like this sort of thing, I get rudely reminded about how TX DPS won't allow me to own a firearm...

[Targan]

Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b

You know, sometimes, like this sort of thing, I get rudely reminded about how TX DPS won't allow me to own a firearm...

Some planning, knowledge of trap setting, a strong arm, a strong will and something solid you can swing with a bit of reach, you can have yourself a firearm once the fertiliser hits the ventilation. You just have to be committed and have no regard for the health of the firearm's previous owner

[Raellus]

I live about two miles from an old Titan missile silo. It's not on the T2K target list, but I wonder if during one of the myriad Cold War retaskings, maybe the Russians overlooked somehow it and it's still got an ICBM aimed at it...

[stg58fal]

Guess I'm one of the lucky ones. The nearest target to me is Malstom AFB, at 200+ miles I think. And on the other side of several mountain ranges.

[Webstral]

I drive by the Richmond petroleum facilities on a regular basis. I drive by the other ones on the list periodically. I think about the radiation, heat, and shock wave crossing the Bay and hitting southern Marin. Mill Valley is shielded by Tiburon and Belvedere, provided the blast epicenter is suitably low for hitting the Richmond site.

[Rainbow Six]

I live in the centre of Aberdeen so I'm royally stuffed. In the autumn of 97 I was living in Edinburgh so probably stuffed there as well. Growing up I lived about three miles from the Royal Navy base at Rosyth and RAF Pitreavie Castle (HQ for NATO North Atlantic air and naval forces during the Cold War) so probably stuffed there as well if anything had kicked off during the seventies or eighties.

Lucky white heather...

[dragoon500ly]

Spend waaaay too much time at target one...Washington DC and the Pentagon.

I think I can safely say that I will be part of that glassey plain!

[raketenjagdpanzer]

I guess it depends on the point of view of the TDM strike map as to whether or not the "above 1mt only" means only the 1mt+ targets were hit, or they're only bothering to show 1mt+ targets.

'cause honestly I can't see the Soviets letting Orlando get off without pasting MCO a couple of times. In T2k, if you take it as canon that there was no ODS/Gulf War, and the Cold War was still in full swing, the BRAC probably would've left the US Navy Nuclear Power School at the NTC open, which means a huge Navy base in downtown Orlando.

Plus, again, MCO* which was a B52 base during the Vietnam war.

That being said with where I lived in 1997, assuming a pair of 500kt, one aimed at downtown (airburst) and a ground-burst aimed at the airport runways...let's see...

Ground burst at MCO

and

Ground burst at NTC Orlando

Both "miss" the neighborhood I lived in in Altamonte Springs, but it hardly matters. Nuclear explosion dangers such as shockwaves, thermal pulse etc. don't stop at cookie-cutter lines...so...yeah, I'd be dead. If not I'd seriously consider taking my own life at that juncture.

...

*=it is NOT "OIA" it will never be OIA, that is a frustrating mistake people continue to make...it is M. C. O.

[Adm.Lee]

Depends which one of several secondary or tertiary targets in Columbus the Soviets might want to erase, none of which are on the T2k target list. I live in the northern suburbs, so if the most immediate target was the ANG tankers and A-7s south of the city, I'd be in flash & fallout zones, 15+ miles out.

[mikeo80]

I work on Fort Bragg. I know that per "canon" the 82nd, 18th airborn corps, SF and Rangers are already in the field when the nukes start to fly. Also the C-130's at Pope are probably long gone.

However...

I can imagine a "small" nuke being depostied in the T2K universe. Say 250 KT.

In the Morrow Project Universe, Fort Bragg catches a SS-N-8 from a Russian Boomer. That is a 2 MT wake up call. Per TM 1-1, the light damage radius from such an "event" is 9.6 KM. Or about 6 Miles. I live 8 miles from Fort Bragg.

So......

IF I am at work, I will transition from here to what ever happens next without even knowing what happened.

IF I am home, there is at least the possibility of survival.

Lucky me?

My $0.02

Mike

[ArmySGT.]

I have a nice view of Cheyenne Mountain from my backyard.

I would be toast.

[Cdnwolf]

Detroit and Sarnia on one side... Toronto and Hamilton on the other.... but both over 70 miles away... I should survive... unless they think the General Dynamics plant is worth targeting...

[Matt Wiser]

Count me as someone who's similar to stg58fals' situation: I'm an hour's drive from Castle AFB (Not on the canon target list, though it was a SAC base, home of the 93rd Bomb Wing and all B-52/KC-135 training in a continued Cold War). Fresno's not on the list, and neither is NAS Lemoore. I'm in the Sierra Nevada foothills, and we wouldn't even get the blast wave from a Fresno detonation. The fireballs would be visible, though....

[Grimace]

Originally Posted by stg58fal

Guess I'm one of the lucky ones. The nearest target to me is Malstom AFB, at 200+ miles I think. And on the other side of several mountain ranges.

I'm a bit closer to the same target. About 95 miles for me. Granted there's a fair bit hilly terrain between me and the blast zone. As long as it wasn't nuked in winter, I'd be okay from fallout. The winds prevail from the south and west most of the year (except winter, when they come from the north and east...the direction of Malmstrom).

[TrailerParkJawa]

I'm glad I'm not the only person who has a grim thought or two!

[Snake Eyes]

Originally Posted by Webstral

I drive by the Richmond petroleum facilities on a regular basis. I drive by the other ones on the list periodically. I think about the radiation, heat, and shock wave crossing the Bay and hitting southern Marin. Mill Valley is shielded by Tiburon and Belvedere, provided the blast epicenter is suitably low for hitting the Richmond site.

After the watching the aftermath of the Chevron explosion last month, it is not much of a stretch to extrapolate mushroom clouds over Richmond, Rodeo, Crockett and Martinez. I'm well over the hills to the east, but any sufficient destruction in that area would make life plenty miserable here for quite some time.

[Tombot]

I recently made a map of the T2k-Netherlands and the Zone Morte, in which i would have died (if the game-history would be gruesome reality)... cause i live in the german part of the zone (cologne).

I would stick up my burned middlefinger to the west (for every french helicopter which could possibly pass over the flattened landscape around my corpse).


PS: When i visitied Krakow a while ago, none of my T2k-gaming-buddys was around. Sad.
My other pals did´nt quite get my enthusiasm (i guess i behaved like a 6 year old on his way to f...ng disneyworld!).

[TrailerParkJawa]

Originally Posted by Snake Eyes

After the watching the aftermath of the Chevron explosion last month, it is not much of a stretch to extrapolate mushroom clouds over Richmond, Rodeo, Crockett and Martinez. I'm well over the hills to the east, but any sufficient destruction in that area would make life plenty miserable here for quite some time.

I'm not certain if I would be able to see the clouds from SJ. I think so, especially where I live now, but in 1997 I lived in a different part of SJ and think my view would have been blocked by Mission Peak.

I most certainly would not want to be in Walnut Creek. Or anywhere else in Contra Costa county.

On a side note, I visited Mill Valley for the very first time on Sunday. Pretty nice, lots of old buildings.