Coming in at number 437 in things I shouldn’t be thinking about is:
Would the blast from a nuke in Manhattan reach my house in Brighton Beach Brooklyn?
Bonus Question: I know the fallout would probably reach downtown Brooklyn, so what would be the best way to drive out of the city to avoid the fallout?
Combines Google Earth and a little JavaScript.
Set your address and fire away!
This brilliant website called Ground Zero lets you see for yourself on a Google Maps mashup. Type in New York City, choose which bomb you want to use, and press ‘bomb it!’.
Using that site, the answer depends on what nuclear bomb you’re talking about: if you mean the original Little Boy nuclear bomb, none of its thermal damage would reach Brooklyn if it was dropped on Times Square. Large-ish modern nuclear bombs would extend termal damage well into Brooklyn, and if you’re talking about Tsar Bomba, a Russian hydrogen bomb which produced the largest bomb-explosion in history, it would take out most of Brooklyn.
Beaten to it! 
Pretty much all of Manhattan and most of Queens will have severe traffic problems, and since the prevailing winds will carry fallout east across Long Island, it looks like your only way out is across the Verrazano Narrows to Staten Island and on to Jersey.
Or you may want to take your chances with the fallout.
This would depend upon the size of the nuke and the altitude of the detonation. Since you said ‘in Manhattan’, I’m going to assume a ground-level detonation. The various graphs don’t really allow for the absorption effect of the buildings. It takes energy to blow a building apart and that’s energy - and radiation - that isn’t reaching you. Remember that in Hiroshima, it was stone buildings that survived. A very small nuke will only take down a couple of blocks. And the separation of the buildings will act like layered armour. There’s also geography to consider: if you’re on the far side of a hill from the detonation, you’re also more insulated.
The roads would likely be jammed, so break out your bicycle. If you’ve got a boat, use that instead.
This is awesome. Glad to know I’m not the only one thinking about a backup plan.
Looks like I’ll be safe from everything except an asteroid and the Tsar Bomb.
But which way should I go? It looks like the Verrazano will survive any blast from lower Manhattan (except the Tsar). I could take that to the Staten Island Expressway (which is always jammed even without a nuke) and then head out to Jersey. But then the question is whether I will hit radiation on the Verrazano? If that’s the case then it would be better for me to escape to the other side of Long Island.
Should I just by a Hazmat suit and not worry about it?
What do the different circles mean? It doesn’t seem to say how long it’d take you to die (instantaneous/within days/maybe a few weeks).
Enquiring minds want to know.
It’s the various distances for different degree burns(thermal effects).
Click on the pointer for details.
There’s a decent chance the electromagnetic pulse will fry your car, so don’t count on it. And even if the blast doesn’t hit you, pray you aren’t looking west when it foes off; the flash can blind you and burn your skin well beyond the blast radius, if it’s a reasonably sizable one.
I’d suggest covering your windows and looking up basic decontamination procedures for yourself, water and food, and hunkering down. Travelling will be dangerous at first.
What do you mean, “would likely be jammed”? They’re jammed now!
In any disaster, man-made or otherwise, you can pretty much forget about driving anywhere from NYC or Long Island. Better to invest in a boat or small plane.
wOOt ! If the Chinese send an ICBM at the Eiffel Tower, I won’t be harmed. Now I have yet another weapon in my arsenal of factoids to kill parties.
For the fallout, you probably want to either arrange to be out of town when the attack comes in the first place (if you can anticipate it), or wait out the first wave of fallout at home. Stay inside your house with all the windows and doors closed until you have a decent rainstorm, and then leave while the ground is still wet and the dust still settled. Fallout isn’t radiation itself; it’s radioactive dust and debris, much of which is only harmful if you eat it or breathe it in. So anything that will protect you from dust will protect you from fallout.
There seems to be a new version out. Behold: Ground Zero II.
It shows thermal damage, pressure damage and fallout as spread by a light breeze.
I noticed that the fallout drift direction is different (by 90 or 180 degrees) depending on the weapon strength chosen. Wonder if that is an error or the explosion changes the prevailing winds?
The fallout direction is actually random. Click on it a couple of times with the same weapon and you’ll see.
In the real world, though, you’d see some differences based on how high the debris was blasted. High-atmosphere winds don’t bear much resemblance to surface winds.