How big is a 20 kiloton nuclear blast?

[Darren Dirt]

http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/gmap/hydesim.html?ll=-113.49835,53.53&yd=20&z=12

Interesting, how little of our fair city would receive direct damage from a bomb the size of the ones in the fictional "Jericho" universe...

And here's NYC, for comparison, same size...
http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/gmap/hydesim.html?ll=-73.9971,40.7223&yd=20&z=12
...I guess that also gives you an idea how (comparably) big the Big Apple really is.

btw, Hiroshimoa was 15 kilotons.

[Ustauk]

Interesting, how little of our fair city would receive direct damage from a bomb the size of the ones in the fictional "Jericho" universe...

HYDESim maps overpressure radii generated by a ground-level detonation; these radii are an indicator of structural damage to buildings. No other effects, such as thermal damage or fallout levels, are included in this tool

The indirect damage would be quite extensive.   Thermal effects will usually cause a firestorm that will sleep beyond the primary blast zone.  Radiation would reach well beyond the overpressure wave.  And fallout from a ground level blast would extensively contaminate sectors of the city, most likely the east side of Edmonton considering the prevailing winds.

[Lazybones]

It isn't not the Physical damage that everyone worries about.

[Darren Dirt]

Agreed... Just all those scenes from "The Day After" or "Threads" that haunt many of us who were so damn impressionable when they aired on network TV in the 80s... The bright glow as families are vaporized, it's good to know that only a few dozen blocks in each direction would receive that kind of instant death -- the rest of us would slowly vomit away our life force

Here's hoping president Baralary Obinton or whoever continues this streak of non-usage of the most obvious* kind of nukes...

* as opposed to DU, which is really a less obvious (to the sheeple, anyway) kind of "nuclear warfare"

[Thorin]

Here's hoping president Baralary Obinton or whoever continues this streak of non-usage of the most obvious* kind of nukes...

Yeah.  Also Putin + Fradkov, Blair, Chirac + de Villepin, Jintao + Jiabao, Kalam + Singh, Musharraf + Aziz, Jong-il + Pong-ju, and Katsav + Olmert.  It's not like the US is the only country with nukes.  Hell, we had them until 1984 (13 years after Trudeau said he wanted them out).

If you think about it, there's quite a few countries that could probably have usable nuclear armaments within a year, including Canada, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Japan, Australia, South Africa, and Brazil.  They all have access to the materials and knowledge required.

[Mr. Analog]

List of states with nuclear weapons
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_powers