Lots of talk in Great Debates about North Korea and their nuclear capabilities. What is a safe distance to be away from the last zone if they set one off in an attack?
I’m in Salem, Oregon. If they hit Seattle, would we survive?
I don’t even know how to look up something like that for a reliable answer.
Try it with 250kt blast in Seattle, WA (250kt is the highest possible nuke NK can wield right now).
Oregon is way out of any effect radius.
Holy hell. I just checked out the site. Don’t want lunch anymore that’s for sure. I don’t understand nuclear weapons very much. If one went off there would the area be uninhabitable due to radiation levels?
Yes.
After a week or so, the radiation would be low enough that you could live there without suffering acute health effects, but it would be a really bad idea - the likelihood of you getting cancer or debilitating radiation poisoning over the long term would be very high.
Keep in mind that Hiroshima and Nagasaki are both busy, living cities nowadays.
The Hiroshima bomb was about 15KT and the Nagasaki one about 20. Pretty small potatoes compared to 250KT.
It’s also worth noting that parts of the Nevada Test site are still contaminated enough that lingering is not recommended.
The Nevada Test Site also undertook over a hundred (aboveground) tests, including multiple tower and cratering shots.
The Sedan test, for example, which was a 104 kiloton shallow underground test, producing a 1800 foot across, 330 foot deep crater. And according to tests in 1990 (the most recent year I could find data on), has residual radiation levels at the west side of the crater of about…4.087 millisieverts per year.
Natural background radiation varies by location, but also from what I’m seeing online, this is above the US average, but would seem to be about the equivalent of the radiation exposure you’d get living in…Winnipeg.
On the other hand, there is no way they are going to launch just the one…
I would worry about Mother Russia and Aunty China if I was the OP.
The nuclear test site also hasn’t had much effort devoted to its cleanup, since after all, it’s a nuclear test site.
Why, how many do you think they have?
Just to be clear, if you knew that the U. S. would be the target of an ICBM over the next five years, you guess it was launched from Russia or China before NK?
Yes. Russia and China are Great Power adversaries. North Korea a jumped up Emirate who wants to be let alone.
I’d put NK on the top of the list. While I think that NK is more rational than they are given credit for, both Russia and China have much, much more to lose. I think that would/will continue to keep the peace, as it has for all these many years.
Also, the USA is much more likely to start a war with North Korea than with China or Russia. You don’t see stuff like this about China or Russia.
Are we talking about being targeted by a nuke, or being successfully hit by a nuke? The two are different things, especially when we’re talking about tech as unreliable as what North Korea is using.
But Russia and China are generally competently run countries, as opposed to North Korea, whose unquestioned leader is almost certainly a speed junkie who wouldn’t be allowed to drive a forklift in this country.
…the country which elected Donald Trump?
Yeah…what you said…
Hurr hurr hurr – none of the three countries we were talking about.