An educational visualizer with two modes: a map-based blast-effects calculator and a ballistic-missile launch simulation. Built to make the scale of these weapons intuitive.
Each effect ring is computed from the weapon yield Y (in kilotons). The dominant relationships:
R ∝ Y^(1/3). Doubling the radius needs ~8× the yield.R ∝ Y^0.41 (energy spreads over a sphere, then air absorbs some).R ∝ Y^0.4; larger and ground-touching for surface bursts.Overpressure is measured in psi (pounds per square inch above normal air pressure): 20 psi destroys even reinforced concrete buildings; 5 psi collapses ordinary houses and is the radius usually called “total destruction”; 1 psi shatters windows, and flying glass injures people far from ground zero.
| Weapon / event | Year | Yield |
|---|---|---|
| Davy Crockett (smallest US warhead) | 1961 | 0.02 kt |
| “Little Boy” — Hiroshima | 1945 | 15 kt |
| “Fat Man” — Nagasaki | 1945 | 21 kt |
| W76 (Trident SLBM warhead) | 1978 | 100 kt |
| W87 (Minuteman III ICBM) | 1986 | 300 kt |
| B83 (largest active US bomb) | 1983 | 1.2 Mt |
| Castle Bravo (largest US test) | 1954 | 15 Mt |
| Tsar Bomba (largest ever detonated) | 1961 | 50 Mt |
For scale: a single modern 300 kt warhead is about 20× Hiroshima. There are still roughly 12,000 nuclear weapons in the world today.
A missile is just the delivery vehicle — the warhead it carries (conventional or nuclear) is a separate question. Ballistic missiles are grouped by range:
| Class | Typical range | Flight time |
|---|---|---|
| SRBM — short-range | < 1,000 km | ~3–7 min |
| MRBM — medium-range | 1,000–3,000 km | ~8–12 min |
| IRBM — intermediate-range | 3,000–5,500 km | ~12–18 min |
| ICBM — intercontinental | > 5,500 km | ~25–35 min |
A ballistic missile coasts on a high arc through space — an ICBM’s apogee exceeds 1,000 km — then re-enters at over Mach 20. A cruise missile is instead a small jet aircraft that flies low to hide from radar. A hypersonic glide vehicle boosts high then glides and manoeuvres, blurring the line between the two. Explore all of these in the Missiles tab.
The Demolition tab models ordinary chemical explosives at human scale. Their blast is compared to TNT through a relative effectiveness factor — C4 is about 1.34× TNT, ANFO about 0.82×. A charge resting on a floor reflects off it, so its effective energy is taken as roughly 1.8× the bare value.
Peak overpressure falls off with the cube-root scaled distance Z = R / W1/3. Key human thresholds: about 35 kPa ruptures eardrums, ~100 kPa causes fatal lung injury, and as little as 7 kPa shatters glass — which is why flying glass injures people far beyond the lethal radius. Cased devices such as grenades also throw fragments that travel well past the blast itself. These standoff distances are the same kind of figures used in public bomb-safety planning.
Inspired by Alex Wellerstein’s NUKEMAP. Scaling laws from The Effects of Nuclear Weapons (Glasstone & Dolan, 1977). Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors & CARTO. Built as a single self-contained HTML file.