No nukes is good nukes

Nukes : Iran : Israel.

OK, while nukes are topical, I'll return to the theme.

Thesis: in the cold war the main nuclear protagonists must have had the following premise in mind: if we strike first, quickly and with precision, we may be able to win the war without being hit (or with only taking a survivable hit). So, of course, both sides sought to distribute their retaliatory capacity - as well as sitting down and trying to work out how accurate their opponents tech was.

It's no bloody good having a big fucking nuke if you can't aim the bugger - it's still got to land on target. OK, getting the thing to land in the right ten mile radius may well be relatively accurate, but it doesn't mean you'll guarantee you'll get the installation you're aiming for. The obvious answer to that is don't bother aiming - hence the projection in Threads (below) for a massive 3000 megaton exchange - if you can't be accurate be devastating.

Dark-Wraith fairly neatly does the maths on the way nukes can kill, as does Wikipedia. Essentially, if you aren't vaporised by the heat then you get knacked by the overpressure of the blast or the radiation does for you. Joy, joy, joy.

This site gives a blow by blow account of a 150 kiloton bomb ground burst going off in Manhattan. They project 800,000 fatalities and a further 800,000 injuries (and their scenario assumes it's a lone bomb with teh rest of US infrastructure left intact).

OK, so this site allows you to see similar bomb profils for various payloads and types of bomb compared to aerial photos of a selection of US cities.

Now, this is contemporary because of the current state of tension viz Iran's alleged weapons programme. Now, according to the CIA World Factbook Israel has a total area of 20,770 Sq. Km. Using the Maths from Dark Wraith, this means that it would take about two hundred and thirty 150 kiloton bombs to devastate every swaure inch of that country. Fewer, if we go by the second example above, if airburst delivery systems were used.

However, Iran would not need to go that far - although it seems it could have enough uranium to make that many bombs, since it has its own mines. As the Manhattan example shows, the blast could be extraordinarilly devastating is used selectively. The Manhattan projection was for 800,000 killed (from an extraordinarilly dense population). Tel Aviv, according to this site has a population of 371,000. Even if that is less compact, it means a single groundburst 150 kilton bomb could wipe that city off the map.

Imagine if Iran could deliver that strike, Israel could never deliver enough nukes to completely destroy Iran - I can't see it having that many nukes - it's probably working on a targetted nuclear capacity as well.

If the Iranians did just hit Tel Aviv, and no-where else, Israel would be destroyed - adminsitrative capital gone, infrastructure overwhelmed, Arab neighbours necessarilly called in to provide humanitarian assistance.

If Iran did drop one such bomb, what could the world do? Slaughter twice as Many Iranians in retaliation? Invade at the risk of many millions of lives? If its leaders were prepared to engage in an entirely selfless racist atrocity, backed by nukes, we'd be in a world of trouble.

Update: Just checked Cincinnati has a roughly comparable population to Tel Aviv, and is on the list of aerial makes linked to above. 150 kiloton airburst pretty much does for the city.