Thanks for the input. I'm not sure 40 miles makes a difference....the bigger Russian hydrogen bombs have a total destruction blast radius of 40 miles, and Strontnium 90 has an airborne half life of 40,000 years.
Texas oilfields and Pennsylvania gas fields would be primary targets.
That doesn't include cruise missiles, air dropped stealth bombers, hypersonic missiles, submarine launched ICBMS, or the crazy long range self guided nuclear torpedoes that explode underwater and create coastal tsunamis.
And, all that doesn't include "Nuclear Winter".
I'm with all the 1940's guys working on the US nuclear weapons programs: "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
They will most likely save those enormous ones for the giant metropolises and hardened military targets like Cheyanne mountain and large military instillations is my line of thinking. The under 1 million population cities will likely be hit with several of their small mirvs which should be survivable if you are 40 miles out. heat blast wave less than 12 cal/cm2 and under 1 bar of pressure blast wave. It'll be fucked for sure going back to horse and buggies and burning wood for quite some time if you survive. Im not so sure about nuclear winter. These guys suck at predicting human effects on weather. It will be more about getting out of the way of fallout clouds for the first year or so until the stuff settles out of the atmosphere first few months and washes out to sea from natural weather events probably within 1st year for non directly targeted areas.
(post is archived)