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Dhaka nuclear blast radius

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Dhaka is one of the densest large cities on Earth. A 15 kt airburst over the core produces high counts on a 1 km population grid even though the rings themselves are only a few kilometres across.

Open Dhaka in the 3D simulator

Educational estimate only. Blast and heat rings use simplified yield scaling. They ignore terrain, weather, shielding, and weapon design. Casualty counts use WorldPop 2020 residents on an approximately 1 km grid and ignore time of day, commuting, shelter, and evacuation. This is not a targeting or civil-defense tool. About the model.

Aim point: Dhaka downtown core · Weapon: Little Boy (15 kt, 543 m (1,780 ft) optimum airburst)

Ground ranges for Little Boy (15 kt, 543 m (1,780 ft) optimum airburst) in this simulator.
Effect Ground range What the model means
Fireball 266 m (872 ft) Maximum luminous radius
20 psi 839 m (2,751 ft) Heavy destruction
5 psi 1.8 km (1.1 mi) Most buildings collapse
Thermal 2.0 km (1.3 mi) 3rd-degree burns
1 psi 4.2 km (2.6 mi) Windows shatter
Rings scaled to 1 psi. Yellow fireball, red 20 psi, orange 5 psi, gold thermal, blue 1 psi. Not a map of buildings.

Casualty estimate at this pin

People on the WorldPop 2020 grid inside this scenario’s 1 psi ring. Rounded educational estimate, not a forecast.
Estimated deaths 180,808
Estimated injuries 542,489
Residents inside 1 psi 1,897,420

What the rings cover

All of the inner rings sit inside a continuously built-up core. 5 psi covers a large share of central Dhaka relative to the city’s footprint. 1 psi still does not reach the full metro, but it covers far more of the lived city than the same ring does in Los Angeles.

This is why a casualty line can look shocking next to the same yield on a test site in the Pacific. The physics rings are almost the same; the people on the grid are not.

The model does not know informal housing quality, monsoon flooding, or commuting. It counts WorldPop 2020 residents in overlapping blast and thermal disks. Treat the number as an order of magnitude for literacy, not a planning figure.

Compare Dhaka with Lagos and Manila in this set: other high-density cores where a ‘small’ yield is still a local catastrophe in the model and still not a whole-country event.

Related pages

Mumbai · Manila · Lagos · Delhi

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City index · Historic sites · Weapon yields

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