What would happen in a nuclear attack? Interactive graphic shows blast zone in Seattle

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What would happen in a nuclear attack? Interactive graphic shows blast
zone in Seattle, other cities

A nuclear detonation by the United States at the Bikini Atoll in the
Marshall Islands on May 21, 1958. It was part of 35 such tests conducted
that year. (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)

Originally published April 7, 2018 at 6:00 am Updated April 7, 2018 at
7:48 pm

Ever wonder what it would look like if a nuke dropped on downtown
Seattle? Now you can visit an interactive graphic to fulfill that dark
desire.

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By Erik Lacitis
Seattle Times staff reporter
It’s almost too spellbinding, too pretty. The interactive graphic begins
with a bright, white ball. It expands into a fiery circle.

What it shows is the devastation accompanying a nuclear-air burst in the
heart of Seattle. Dead: 181,522. Injured: 273,615.


It’s a graphic for our digital times — the message is short, colorful,
with the complicated stuff boiled down.

“The black background makes it look like a night photograph, with the
orange fireball. Dramatic? I think so,” says Don Wall, director of the
Nuclear Science Center at Washington State University.

In recent months, nukes can’t help but be something we think about:

Kim Jong Un, Dec. 31, 2017: “The U.S. should know that the button for
nuclear weapons is on my table. The entire area of the U.S. mainland is
within our nuclear-strike range.”

Donald Trump tweet, Jan. 2: “Will someone from his depleted and
food-starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button,
but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”

Vladimir Putin, March 1: “President Vladimir Putin announced an array of
new nuclear weapons on Thursday, in one of his most bellicose speeches
in years, saying they could hit almost any point in the world and evade
a U.S.-built missile shield.”

The interactive graphic was commissioned by Outrider.org, a Madison,
Wisconsin, nonprofit that decided that if video games are what grabs us,
why not use the same technology to reach people about the issues of
nuclear weapons?

You can type in any city in this state, or, for that matter, anywhere in
the world, and watch the destruction.


For example.

Tacoma: 56,979 dead with a surface detonation; 77,129 dead if it’s an
airburst bomb.

Surface detonations are good for military installations with hardened
structures such as missile silos. (You can toggle between surface and
air burst in the upper right-hand corner of the screen to see the
differences in deaths and casualties.)

Air bursts, which don’t have as concentrated a blast pressure, are for
“soft” targets such as cities. That means a larger area is covered.

You think that living in that pleasantville called Bellingham will save
you? Surface detonation: 43,869, dead. Air burst: 50,772.

Let’s look at some airburst casualties in major world cities.


New York: 1,152,871. London: 523,329 (More casualties in New York than
London because midtown Manhattan is much more dense than London). Tokyo:
472,785. Moscow: 547,777. Beijing: 715,934. Pyongyang, North Korea: 45, 413.

Seattle, Wash.


Redmond, Wash.




Beijing, China


The Outrider interactive is based on work done since 2012 on NUKEMAP. It
is the ongoing work of Alex Wellerstein, an assistant professor of
science and technology studies at the Stevens Institute of Technology in
Hoboken, New Jersey.

It’s fine with him to have Outrider reach for a wider audience, he says.

With the various bombastic quotes from Trump, Putin and Kim Jong Un,
says Wellerstein, “I could easily imagine there to be a series of
misunderstandings, and then you blunder into a situation.”

One of the bombs used in that blunder could be the one shown in the
interactive graphic, the W87 warhead designed for use with the
incongruously named “Peacekeeper” ICBM.


It’s a 300-kiloton nuclear bomb. That translates to the destruction
caused by 300,000 tons of TNT. That translates to a bomb 20 times more
powerful than what was dropped on Hiroshima.

Estimates of the Hiroshima death toll vary, with the
AtomicBombMuseum.org reporting the initial death count at 42,000 to
93,000 based on the disposal of bodies. Later surveys covered body
counts, missing persons and neighborhood surveys during the first months
after the bombing, yielding a more reliable estimate of 130,000 dead as
of November 1945.

In recent years, what to do in case of a nuclear attack isn’t something
we exactly dwell on.

Back during the Cold War years, a 1951 civil-defense manual sponsored by
KVI Radio, then a market leader, showed a mushroom cloud detonating over
downtown Seattle, red flames erupting into the sky.

The leaflet offered lots of advice:

1) “A hole in the ground with cover is remarkably effective.”


2) “Your first indication of an atomic bomb burst will be an awesome
glare in the sky hundreds of times brighter than the sun. DON’T LOOK AT
THIS GLARE.”

published 11/22/1961
This illustration shows the effect of radiation on humans.

The most serious radiation is gamma rays, or hard X-rays which can carry
great distances in the air, and also go through solid material. This
radiation must be avoided by all means, and the fallout dust removed as
soon as possible if it does fall on you.

beta rays
gamma rays
radiation
civil defense (The Seattle Times archive / =)
published 11/22/1961 This illustration shows the effect of radiation on
humans. The most serious radiation is gamma rays, or hard X-rays which
can carry great distances in the air, and also go through solid
material. This radiation must be avoided by all means, and the fallout
dust removed as soon as possible if it does fall on you. beta rays gamma
rays radiation civil defense (The Seattle Times archive / =)
In November 1961, The Seattle Times ran a 15-part series titled,
“Nuclear survival.” It was written by Willard Libby, the 1960 Nobel
Prize winner in chemistry.

It tried hard to show how we could get past a doomsday scenario,
although graphics like the one in Part 13 didn’t help. It showed a mom,
dad and son bombarded by radiation, staring with “1,000 Roentgens ALL
KILLED.”

Part 14 went on to explain that you had better get ready to do a lot of
washing off of radiation “from rooftops, from window ledges, from tree
leaves, from grass, pavements, buildings …”

But by 1982, then-Seattle Mayor Charles Royer announced that the city
would not participate in federal planning to evacuate cities in case of
a nuclear attack.

He said, “I have concluded that such an event would be so devastating
that emergency plans of the type FEMA is devising would be virtually
useless.”


Thirty-six years later, Royer, now 78, took a look at the Outrider
interactive.

“You know, I wish there had been some improvement,” he says. “Everybody
has big buttons on their desk. With this president, it’s just kind of
frightening. There’s no surviving this stuff.”

In 1983, the state Legislature banned nuclear-war preparations from
emergency-planning procedures. Lawmakers were concerned such
preparations would get Russian leaders riled up.

This January, state Rep. Dick Muri, a Steilacoom Republican, and a
retired Air Force navigator on C-141 planes, sponsored a bill that would
remove the prohibition from preparing for a nuclear attack.

The bill didn’t go anywhere.

“I don’t see any big urgency to do this,” says Muri about his proposal.


Tara Drozdenko, Outrider’s managing director for nuclear policy, who has
a doctorate in physics from UCLA and has worked for the State Department
in counterterrorism, hopes you don’t get too enthralled by the graphics.
It’s hard not to.

There is the bright, white fireball. It reaches from the waterfront to
Ninth Avenue, from Pike to South King streets.

Cover of Seattle Civil Defense Manual, circa 1955. ( / Seattle
Municipal Archives)
Cover of Seattle Civil Defense Manual, circa 1955. ( / Seattle Municipal
Archives)
It burns 10,000 times hotter than the surface of the sun and vaporizes
everything inside it.

Then the graphic expands into a light tan — to South Lake Union, Capitol
Hill, the International District and the stadiums.

That’s the burst of radiation that within a few hours to a few weeks
will cause 50 to 90 percent of those exposed to die a painful death.

Then it keeps expanding in a light orange to Madrona, Leschi, Eastlake
and Beacon Hill.


That’s the shock wave that would destroy most buildings and injure or
kill anybody near them when the structures collapse.

The explosion produces heat that causes catastrophic damage. Anyone
within this radius would have severe or fatal third-degree burns.

Then the outer circle turns red as it reaches Queen Anne, Magnolia, West
Seattle and Rainier Valley.

That’s the intense heat in which wood, clothing, paper and plastics
would catch fire.

So interact away.

You can Google “The beauty of a nuclear explosion” and thousands of
results pop up, including an art site called “The Beautiful Nuclear
Explosion Thread.”

Drozdenko also has seen the footage declassified by the Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory in California of films taken during 210
atmospheric nuclear tests between 1945 and 1962.


The 58-second color footage from “Operation Hardtack-1 — Nutmeg 51538”
in 1958, in the Marshall Islands and other Pacific Ocean sites, is
particularly breathtaking as it begins with a flash that fills the
screen, then to the expanding mushroom cloud and the appearance of the
black stem.

For Drozdenko, the striking images don’t convey any kind of artistic
splendor.

“I don’t see beauty in this,” she says. “I think of destruction.”

Erik Lacitis: 206-464-2237 or elac...@seattletimes.com Twitter @ErikLacitis
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