To: Yaelle
15 Posted on 09/28/2001 00:53:15 PDT by Dan DayAnd how much damage (radius in miles) could a suitcase nuke deliver?
Max yield of a "suitcase nuke" is about 1 kiloton That's 1/15th the yield of the (relatively small) a-bomb we dropped on Hiroshima.
The smallest US nukes ever made had yields on the order of 0.02 kilotons:
That's about 5 times the power of the OKC bomb, so you could pretty much wipe out any single building or close-spaced cluster of buildings, but you couldn't wipe out all of DC with it. Total damage wouldn't be any greater than that already achieved in lower Manhattan right now.
Something up into the 1 kiloton range would destroy a few city blocks and wreak havoc a lot farther, but still wouldn't wipe out the whole city. You could probably set one on the steps of the Capitol and the White House would be somewhat worse for wear, but easily still standing
It would cause third-degree burns from the direct thermal effects out to about .40 miles, cause a 5psi overpressure out to about .43 miles, and give a 500 rem radiation dose out to about .84 miles. Each of those amounts (third-degree burns / 5psi / 500 rem) represent the "you're screwed" threshhold, basically. So beyond about 1 mile for a 1kt blast, things start looking up considerably.
The "little" nukes are less powerful than most people assume.
