I’ve been seeing a lot of talk on these boards about Nukemap recently, and have been playing around with it myself. It seems a little fishy to me that the blast radii are always perfect circles.
How big of an effect would terrain or urban density have on the damage radius of a nuclear blast?
I can’t imagine that the blast radius if a bomb went off at the bottom of a valley would be identical to the same type of bomb being detonated over open ocean.
It does not factor in terrain features i do not think.
Doing so would require a lot more math and physics and programming.
It is not meant to be a full fledged total realism doomsday planner.
Still does a good job of what it does
Normally you would not detonate down in a valley though, aerial burst to get more bang for your buck
Nuclear bombs are usually detonated at altitude, so unless the valley is very deep, it’s probably not much of an issue. Out West, in the Rockies, etc., there might be some impact on the blast radius.
As an approximation, it’s pretty good. There are some assumptions, but they’re pretty good about stating them. Part of the problem is that there’s a lack of experimental data - most nuclear weapons have been detonated in rather open, flat areas. No one has tried (that I’m aware) to set one off in a mountainous area, in a valley, or around significant terrain features.
The exception to that would be the two dropped on Japan, and even then the target areas were relatively flat, and the air-bursts were higher than any structures or terrain features, so were in effect detonated over a flat plane.
Edit:
Discounting the submarine and subterranian tests.