Hollywood has destroyed Washington — or New York or Los Angeles — lots of times with nuclear bombs detonated by terrorists. It turns out to be harder in real life than in the movies.
A US government study analyzed the likely effects from terrorists setting off a 10 kilotonne nuclear device a few blocks north of the White House. It predicted terrible devastation for about 800m in every direction, with buildings reduced to rubble the way that World War II bombing raids destroyed parts of Berlin. However, outside that blast zone, the study concluded, even such a nuclear explosion would be pretty survivable.
“It’s not the end of the world,” said Randy Larsen, a retired US Air Force colonel and founding director of the Institute for Homeland Security. “It’s not a Cold War scenario.”
The little-noticed, 120-page study by the US Federal Emergency Management Agency was hardly a summer blockbuster. The study, Key Response Planning Factors for the Aftermath of Nuclear Terrorism, was produced in November last year by the US Department of Homeland Security and the National Nuclear Security Administration.
Even though the government considers it “for official use only” and never published it online, the study circulated months later on scientific and government watchdog Web sites.
The report estimated the blast zone would extend just past the south lawn of the White House and as far east as the FBI headquarters.
“Few, if any, above ground buildings are expected to remain structurally sound or even standing, and few people would survive,” it predicted.
It described the blast area as a “no-go zone” for days afterward because of radiation. However, the US Capitol, Supreme Court, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials and the Pentagon across the Potomac River were all in areas described as “light damage,” with some broken windows and mostly minor injuries.
The government study predicted 323,000 injuries, with more than 45,000 dead. A 10 kilotonne nuclear explosion would be roughly 5,000 times more powerful than the truck bomb that destroyed a US federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.
The flash from the explosion would be seen for hundreds of kilometers, but the mushroom cloud — up to 8km tall — would only keep its shape for a few minutes. The flash would be so bright it could temporarily blind people up to 19km away, including drivers on Washington’s Beltway. At least four area hospitals would be heavily damaged or couldn’t function and four others would experience dangerous radiation fallout. The government said it expects to send warnings afterward by television, radio, e-mail, text message and social media services like Twitter and Facebook.
It predicted the seriousness of radioactive fallout, which would drift with prevailing winds that vary depending on the season and expose victims closest to the explosion to between 300 and 800 roentgens in the first two hours, or enough to kill nearly all of them. In the spring, fallout would drift mostly to the north and west of downtown Washington. However, in the summer, it would drift mostly southeast. After two hours, the radioactive cloud would move over Baltimore with far less exposure.
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