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City scenario
New York nuclear blast radius
Last updated
This page holds a 15 kt airburst — the Little Boy yield — over Times Square so you can read the rings against streets you already know. It is the same simplified physics as the live globe, not a forecast for any real weapon or target.
Open New York 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.
| 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 |
Casualty estimate at this pin
| Estimated deaths | 120,707 |
|---|---|
| Estimated injuries | 277,199 |
| Residents inside 1 psi | 981,437 |
What the rings cover
Fireball and 20 psi stay in the theater district and the blocks around Times Square. 5 psi and the thermal ring reach across Midtown toward the Hudson and the East River. 1 psi covers a long stretch of Manhattan’s core and can clip nearby waterfront in Queens and New Jersey — still a fraction of the metro area.
New York is the city people type first into a nuke simulator, usually because they want a sense of scale rather than a map of the whole metro. Manhattan is narrow. A Hiroshima-scale burst is large compared with a few blocks and small compared with the five boroughs, New Jersey, and Long Island together.
The preset pin sits in Midtown, not at City Hall or a geographic centroid. That choice matches how this globe treats other dense downtowns: it aims at a crowded core so the WorldPop grid inside the inner rings is actually populated.
Switch to a modern strategic yield in the simulator and the 1 psi ring leaves Manhattan entirely. Stay on 15 kt and most of the city is outside even window-breakage in this model. That contrast is the point of putting Little Boy on New York.
Related pages
Los Angeles · London · Tokyo · Hiroshima
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