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Overpressure

Lethality

Injured

Safe Zone

  
The table on the left indicates the vulnerability of a population subject to various intensities, with respect to distance, to the overpressure due to a nuclear explosion.
The table below shows the overpressure generated by a 1 megaton weapon detonated at an height of 2,500 meters in the atmosphere.
   

More than 12 psi
From 5 to 12 psi
From 2 to 5 psi
From 1 to 2 psi
98%
50%
5%
0%
45%
40%
25%
2%
0%
10%
50%
75%
  
.
After the explosion's effects will have subsided, the view will be apocalyptic. If the detonation took place at ground level, assuming an explosion of 1 megaton, a crater with an internal diameter of 640 meters, deep 3o meters and an external diameter of 1,200 meters will replace any trace of life in the area surrounding ground zero. Within a distance of 15 kilometers, destruction, death and desolation will be everywhere. Fires will be everywhere and the area might even be subject to a firestorm, while the mushroom conformation typical of a nuclear explosion will be raising up in the sky. The zone will be contaminated by radioactivity, the population will be decimated and for the survivors still able to rationalize the first consideration will be that of finding a shelter from the incoming radioactive fallout, a shelter which could offer protection from the eventuality of more nuclear strikes and subsistence means for an indeterminate period of time which, however, will have to exceed two weeks.
  
Distance from
Ground Zero
Maximum
Overpresssure
Wind Speed
Typical Effects
1,300 meters
20 psi
760 km/hr
 Destruction of armored
concrete structures.
4,800 meters
10 psi
470 km/hr
 Part of edifices and factories
are destroyed; buildings in
wood and bricks destroyed and
all debris scattered around
7,000 meters
5 psi
260 km/hr
 Non armored concrete
buildings and residential
buildings destroyed.
Wind speeds strong enough
to kill unsheltered people.
9,550 meters
3 psi
150 km/hr
 Walls with iron infrastructure
blown out; severe damages in
residential quarters; Wind
speeds strong enough to kill
unsheltered people.
18,600 meters
1 psi
55 km/hr
 Structural damages; danger
to people from flying
debris or pieces of glass.
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