Educational nuclear effects map
Nuke Simulator
Nuke Simulator shows how far the effects of a single nuclear explosion would reach, drawn to scale over a real city. It is built on the public reference work The Effects of Nuclear Weapons by Samuel Glasstone and Philip Dolan (1977) and is meant to make distances and scale easier to understand.
Numbers on a page are hard to picture. A ring drawn across streets you know is not. This nuke simulator lets you place a detonation anywhere on the globe, choose a yield from historical examples or your own value, and see the estimated reach of blast, heat, and initial radiation. All figures are rough estimates for education, and the simulator is not a planning or civil-defense tool.
How to use the simulator
- Pick a city. Type a city name into the search box, tap one of the city buttons, or click anywhere on the globe. The camera flies down to street level. Once you arrive you can click the map to move ground zero, or choose Pick another city to go back to the globe.
- Choose a weapon. The weapon bar lists historical yields, from the 15 kt Hiroshima bomb up to the 50 Mt Tsar Bomba test, plus a Custom option for any yield from 0.01 kilotons to 100 megatons. Then pick Airburst or Surface.
- Detonate. Press the red button to play a slow-motion sequence of about ten seconds: the flash, the fireball, and the blast wave spreading outward. Click anywhere or press Esc to skip to the end. If your device is set to reduce motion, the simulator goes straight to the final view.
When the sequence ends, the results panel lists the radius of each effect. You can switch between kilometers and miles, open the accuracy notes when a scenario goes beyond the range of the source charts, and copy a share link.
What each ring means
Each colored ring marks the distance from ground zero at which one kind of effect reaches a stated level. The rings are listed from the outside in, the way they usually appear on the map.
- 1 psi overpressure. The blast wave is strong enough to shatter windows. Flying glass and debris are the main hazards here, and buildings take light damage.
- Third-degree burns. The flash of heat is strong enough to give a 50% chance of third-degree burns to bare skin facing the explosion on a clear day. Clothing, shade, haze, or cloud reduce it.
- 5 psi overpressure. Most houses and other residential buildings collapse or are badly damaged. This is a common reference level for widespread damage in a city.
- 500 rem initial radiation. The dose of neutron and gamma radiation received in the first minute by an unshielded person. Glasstone and Dolan (chapter XI) describe doses in this range as causing severe radiation sickness that is often fatal without medical care.
- 20 psi overpressure. Even heavily built concrete structures are severely damaged or destroyed.
- Fireball. The ball of extremely hot gas at its largest size. At the simulator's fixed airburst height it stays above the ground for every preset weapon; in a surface burst it touches the ground.
For smaller yields the camera stays close enough to show 3D buildings. Buildings inside the 5 psi ring turn red, and buildings between the 5 psi and 1 psi rings turn amber. For larger yields the rings are drawn on their own, because individual buildings become too small to read.
Why a bigger bomb is not proportionally bigger
Blast distances grow much more slowly than yield. With the simulator's settings, a Little Boy airburst (15 kt) has a 5 psi radius of about 1.6 km (0.98 mi). A B83 airburst (1.2 Mt) has about 80 times the yield, yet its 5 psi radius is about 6.8 km (4.2 mi), roughly 4.3 times as far. This follows the cube-root scaling of blast described by Glasstone and Dolan: to double a blast distance you need about eight times the yield. Heat and radiation follow their own rules, which is why the order of the rings can change from one yield to another.
Where the numbers come from
Every radius is calculated in your browser from published sources. Blast uses a curve fit by H. L. Brode (1986) as implemented in the open-source glasstone library. Heat and initial radiation are read from charts in Glasstone and Dolan. Each effect uses its own relationship rather than one formula for everything. The How It Works page lists every source, how the numbers are checked, and the known limitations.
Explore more
- Nuclear blast radius
What each ring means in detail, with a yield-to-radius table for every weapon in the nuke simulator. - Nuclear bomb map
How to explore cities, read the building colors, and share a scenario from the nuke simulator map. - Nuclear fallout map
What fallout is, why wind and weather decide where it goes, and why it is not drawn yet. - How the nuke simulator works
Sources, methods, the fixed airburst height, and limitations.
Frequently asked questions
What is Nuke Simulator?
Nuke Simulator is a free, browser-based educational tool that draws the estimated reach of a nuclear explosion on a 3D map. You pick a place and a weapon yield, and it shows the fireball, three blast overpressure rings, a burn ring, and an initial radiation ring, using methods from the public reference book The Effects of Nuclear Weapons (Glasstone and Dolan, 1977).
Is Nuke Simulator accurate?
The numbers are rough, idealized estimates meant to show scale, not predictions of any real event. They assume flat, open ground, clear weather, and a standard atmosphere, and the source charts themselves carry uncertainty. The model is checked against about thirty values printed in Glasstone and Dolan; the How It Works page lists the tolerances and the few cases that fall outside them.
What is the difference between an airburst and a surface burst?
An airburst explodes high above the ground, so the fireball does not touch the surface. A surface burst explodes at ground level. In the simulator, airbursts spread moderate blast damage and heat over a wider area, while surface bursts concentrate the strongest blast closer to ground zero and are the kind of explosion that produces heavy local fallout.
Why are the numbers different from NUKEMAP?
Nuke Simulator is an independent implementation built from the published literature, not a copy of NUKEMAP. The biggest difference is heat: our burn distances follow Glasstone and Dolan Fig. 7.42, which assumes 12 miles of visibility, a typical clear day over a city. Clearer air would carry heat farther, so tools that assume clearer air report larger burn rings.
Does the simulator show fallout?
Not yet. Fallout depends heavily on wind and weather, and the simplified fallout model we considered could not be traced to a fully citable source, so we left it out rather than show numbers we cannot back up. The Nuclear Fallout Map page explains what fallout is and why it is hard to predict.
Do I need an account, and does it cost anything?
No account is needed and the simulator is free to use. It runs in your browser; the map tiles are loaded from OpenFreeMap, and your scenario is only put into a link if you choose to share it.
Can I share a scenario?
Yes. After a detonation, the Share button copies a link that contains the location, yield, and burst type. Anyone who opens the link sees the same scenario play out on their own screen.
Is Nuke Simulator affiliated with NUKEMAP or any government?
No. Nuke Simulator is an independent educational project. It is not affiliated with NUKEMAP, its author, or any government agency.