Nuclear Blast Simulator
Pick a real nuclear weapon — from a B61 gravity bomb to the 50-megaton Tsar Bomba — set ground zero anywhere on Earth, and map the fireball, blast, thermal and radiation rings. Every yield comes from the GlobalMilitary.net missile and bomb database.
Pick a weapon, then click the map to place ground zero.
Educational approximation based on the declassified scaling relationships in Glasstone & Dolan, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons (1977), assuming flat terrain and clear weather. Actual effects vary with terrain, weather, burst altitude and weapon design. Fallout is not modeled.
The Nine Nuclear Arsenals
| Country | Warheads | Deployed | Delivery |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🇷🇺 Russia | 5,459 | 1,718 | Air, Sea, Land |
| 🇺🇸 United States | 5,042 | 1,770 | Air, Sea, Land |
| 🇨🇳 China | 600 | 24 | Air, Sea, Land |
| 🇫🇷 France | 370 | 280 | Air, Sea |
| 🇬🇧 United Kingdom | 225 | 120 | Sea |
| 🇮🇳 India | 180 | — | Air, Sea, Land |
| 🇵🇰 Pakistan | 170 | — | Air, Land |
| 🇮🇱 Israel | 90 | — | Air, Sea, Land |
| 🇰🇵 North Korea | 50 | — | Sea, Land |
Weapons in the Simulator
Each ring is computed from the weapon's yield using the scaling relationships published in Glasstone & Dolan's The Effects of Nuclear Weapons (1977), the declassified reference on blast physics. Blast overpressure distances grow with the cube root of yield: doubling the yield does not double the destruction radius, which is why a 50 Mt Tsar Bomba does not flatten fifty times more ground than a 1 Mt warhead. Thermal radiation reaches further as yields climb, while the lethal prompt-radiation ring barely grows — for tactical weapons radiation is the dominant killer, for strategic weapons it is blast and fire.
The airburst setting assumes a detonation altitude chosen to maximize blast damage, which is how nuclear weapons are typically targeted against soft targets. A surface burst shortens every blast ring but grounds the fireball and would produce heavy local fallout, which this tool does not model. Yields come from the specification pages of the missile and bomb database; where a state publishes no figures — India, North Korea — widely cited estimates are used and marked as such.
Frequently Asked Questions
How accurate is this nuclear blast simulator?
The rings are educational approximations built on the declassified scaling relationships in Glasstone & Dolan, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons (1977) — the same physics behind most academic blast calculators. They assume flat terrain, clear weather and, for airbursts, a detonation altitude chosen to maximize blast damage. Real effects vary with terrain, weather, weapon design and burst height, so treat every radius as an order-of-magnitude guide, not a prediction.
What do the blast radius rings mean?
From the center out: the fireball vaporizes everything it touches; inside the 20 psi ring even reinforced concrete buildings are demolished; the 500 rem ring marks a likely-fatal radiation dose; at 5 psi most residential buildings collapse; the thermal ring marks third-degree burns to exposed skin; and at 1 psi windows shatter, causing widespread glass injuries.
What is the difference between an airburst and a surface burst?
An airburst detonates high enough that the fireball never touches the ground: the shockwave reflects and merges, spreading destruction over the widest possible area — how most weapons would actually be used against cities. A surface burst digs a crater and shrinks the blast rings, but throws irradiated debris into the atmosphere, producing far more radioactive fallout.
What was the biggest nuclear bomb ever detonated?
The Soviet Tsar Bomba, detonated over Novaya Zemlya on 30 October 1961, yielded about 50 megatons — more than 3,000 times the Hiroshima bomb. Its fireball was visible 1,000 km away and its shockwave circled the Earth three times. You can simulate it here.
How many nuclear weapons are there in the world today?
The nine nuclear-armed states hold roughly 12,186 warheads. Russia maintains the largest arsenal with about 5,459 warheads. This simulator lets you pick 78 real delivery systems from those arsenals and map their effects.
How powerful are modern nuclear weapons compared to Hiroshima?
Little Boy yielded about 15 kilotons. A single warhead on a modern US Trident II missile yields 475 kt — over thirty Hiroshimas — and one missile carries several. Strategic weapons in the megaton class, like China's DF-5, are hundreds of times more powerful than the bombs of 1945.