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Hong Kong nuclear blast radius

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Hong Kong’s built core is a thin coastal strip under steep slopes. A 15 kt airburst over Central is a harbour-city lesson: short horizontal distances, vertical streets, water on one side.

Open Hong Kong 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: Central / northern Hong Kong Island · 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 131,206
Estimated injuries 302,847
Residents inside 1 psi 1,109,288

What the rings cover

Inner rings sit on Central and the adjacent harbour front. 5 psi covers a slice of northern Hong Kong Island. 1 psi can reach Kowloon waterfront in this model and still miss most of the New Territories.

The pin sits in Central rather than in the New Territories. Towers and the harbour make 3D more informative than a circle on a flat map, even though the physics still ignore terrain shielding.

Much of the population lives in Kowloon and the New Territories. These rings can cross the harbour in the model and still leave most residents outside 1 psi.

Compare Hong Kong with Singapore: another dense, high-rise harbour city where a Hiroshima-scale yield is locally severe and regionally small.

Related pages

Singapore · Shanghai · Tokyo · Manila

All cities and sites

City index · Historic sites · Weapon yields

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