NukeSimulation.com

City scenario

Mexico City nuclear blast radius

Last updated

Mexico City is a high-altitude, high-density capital. This scenario is a 15 kt airburst over the Zócalo, the old lake-bed core, not a map of the whole Valley of Mexico.

Open Mexico City 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: Zócalo / historic centre · 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 111,026
Estimated injuries 264,050
Residents inside 1 psi 926,555

What the rings cover

Heavy-destruction rings stay in and around the historic centre. 5 psi and thermal reach into neighbouring central colonias. 1 psi remains small compared with the greater metropolitan area that climbs the valley walls.

The preset aims at the historic centre rather than at Santa Fe or the airport. That puts the inner rings on a packed grid of housing, markets, and civic buildings, which is what the WorldPop cells will register.

The metro sprawls across the valley. A Hiroshima-scale 1 psi ring is a small disk on that sprawl. The educational value is seeing how ‘15 kt’ feels in a city that is both vast and locally extremely dense.

Burst height in this default is the tool’s optimum airburst for 5 psi, not a historically Mexican scenario. There is no historic combat burst here; the page exists so the globe has an indexable Mexico City URL.

Related pages

São Paulo · Los Angeles · New York · Cairo

All cities and sites

City index · Historic sites · Weapon yields

Open the simulator · How the numbers work · FAQ · Privacy · Terms · support@nukesimulation.com