February 3, 2000

2:14 PM

Remember the movie "The Day After?" Back in the Cold War days, we were all worried about someday being vaporized by a nuclear blast. Well now, in this post-Cold War era you can relive those wonderful memories with PBS' Nuclear Blast Mapper. I popped in the coordinates for MetaFilter's server location, set the bomb to a 25 megaton blast and this is the result. Think about that the next time you hear a country gets their first nuclear weapons.
posted by mathowie (5 comments total)

So what you're saying is that I should probably not launch that nuclear-tipped titan that I put together from the military salvage sale... What is the average blast-strength of a suitcase nuke? I just want to know if I need to worry about the Anti-Haughey Jihad.
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 2:32 PM on February 3, 2000

I'm surprised that PBS has this on their web site, and even more surprised that they chose to air the film "Race For the Superbomb", considering that the channel gets about 60% of their funding from GE, one of the largest producers of nuclear submarines in the world. Of course, I didn't see the film, so who knows what kind of spin it puts on the issue of nuclear weapons. In fact, from the sound of the title, I suspect that it just concentrates on the collection and creation of nuclear weapons, and steers clear of any anti-weapons dialogue. Of course, i could be wrong.....
posted by Ms Snit at 2:34 PM on February 3, 2000

I was 11 the first time I saw The Day After and I had nightmares for about five years. I watched it again when they re-ran it on cable a few months back, and sure enough, I had nuke-mares aplenty.

Being a kid during the cold war, I didn't understand the politics behind what was happening but I definitely felt the tension. Funny how fast all that anxiety comes back at you when you flippantly put the address of your place of employment into a Nuclear Blast Mapper, and realize that with one slip of the thumb two major cities would be toast.

To me, the blast mapper itself speaks volumes of anti-weapons dialogue.
posted by jennyb at 3:16 PM on February 3, 2000

Wow, that's scary....I'd be roasted....in
fact I'd say a good 5th of the country would suffer something - Dublin would
be totally destroyed - roughly a third of the population of the Republic of
Ireland, and about a fifth of the population of the whole country.
Even scarier - there is a nuclear plant, Sellafield,
in Wales (UK, about 100 miles east of Dublin), and it's rumoured to be more
powerful than a 25 MT blast if it were to explode.
posted by tomcosgrave at 6:17 PM on February 3, 2000

Born in '49, grew up really beliving there was a good chance we would all go boom.
I live on Long Island Sound with heavily industrialized Connecticut and Long Island surrounding it; was told bomb(s) would be targeted to go off IN the water creating radioactive tidal waves destroying all well inland of coastline. Nice stuff huh?

posted by TygerByte at 8:34 AM on February 4, 2000