So I've been watching this TV serie, Jericho. It's quite good even if it was not popular enough to go beyond 1.5 seasons (other pearls buried by an inattentive-and-too-idiotic-to appreciate-good-stuff-public include sci-fi Firefly).

The premise is to record the going-ons in a small American midwest town after nearly 25 20kg tons termo-nuclear bombs wipe out the major US cities (ground explosions).

Some people were saying that an area remaining relatively unaffected by radiation poisoning was unlikely. A friend pointed out that Marie Curie's journal is still radioactive. And some previous books about a nuclear war do describe the remaining humanity slowly dying off. Yet, while Chernobyl has had to be cordoned off, beyond the zone, life carries on without much impact, as far as I can tell.

So what would be the scientific truth? How far would you have to be from a blast to suffer no negative consequences and how would a fall-out play out?

Wiki has some related articles but it's really not clear...

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Good question. Seems like it didn't really have any long term effect on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but there are places where the Russians tested their bombs that are basically uninhabitable (not that that stops them).

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Originally Posted by Zichao

There are places where the Russians tested their bombs that are basically uninhabitable (not that that stops them).

... quite conveniently forgetting the Bikini Atoll where the Americans tested their bombs that are still sufficiently radioactive today to prevent any blonds in bikinis from bathing there.

Originally Posted by Gilles de Rais

So what would be the scientific truth? How far would you have to be from a blast to suffer no negative consequences and how would a fall-out play out?

I don't think that this question is answerable. There are different types of radiation with different decay periods. It would also depend on whether the bombs are exploded on the ground or in the air above the ground.

The radius of total destruction (from the pressure wave and the heat more than the radiation itself) is well-defined for each size of bomb. However, how far the radiation travels depends on many conditions.

Radiation from Chernobyl was found in veggies grown as far away as Ireland, albeit not in large quantities. Yet, this was not a bomb. It was highly radiated air that escaped at high velocity from one of the domes and was carried away by wind.

An atomic bomb exploded in the air at an altitude of several hundreds of meters would be just as destructive on the ground as one exploded right at ground level, but the radiation would be carried further because the radiation would be absorbed by humidity in the air and carried away by wind. The radiation could then produce radioactive rain hundreds of kilometers away.

The radioactivity would then be absorbed by the ground and get into the food chain, where it might produce (not necessarily lethal) damage to the population for a long time.

From what I've read a ground or near ground burst is the worst for long term radiation damage. In addition to the nuclear material from the bomb itself there is also the dust and materials dragged up into the mushroom cloud and irradiated there, which is then spread over very large areas. A large number of bomb explosions will result in very large areas of fallout that could mean there is the possibility of very few areas escaping contamination.

You can nuke your own town and see the results (for fun and education of course) here: http://megat0n.com/NukeIt.htm

F

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In Jericho, the bombs are brought in by 'terrorists' (the overall plot of whodunnit is actually weak) - i.e. they are relatively small (20kgtons) but detonated at ground level. I can't remember whether they are meant to be thermonuclear or just atomic.

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Excellent link, Fred, btw. But it does seem to indicate a relatively small impact for even rather large bombs. The fallout really doesn't seem like much...

I mean, yeah, my parents live in the Southern French Alps. We had alerts then about the "Chernobyl Cloud" and we were given the advice to give up on local mushrooms for a year or two. But, although I don't doubt that some of it fell on us then, I've never heard anyone even talking about a possible increase in local cancer rates due to Chernobyl.

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Oh and for Zichao:In the Jericho TV serie, contractors play a central role. It's till a crap stoy arc but it meches with your remarks about the emergence of contractors as an essential additive to the military.

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I wrote a response and then accidentally closed the browser before it posted. Bah. Not-very-long story shorter:

There were effects from Chernobyl, but for most of the ~5 million people exposed the dose was not much greater than the anual ambient exposure. In the immediate area there are about 2000 cases of thyroid cancer attributed to Chernobyl. In Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there are a bunch of effects, but they come out to an increase of risk of about 1.5 times; so the incidence of leukemia in the general population is about 7/1000 and for survivors its about 10/1000.

So you're saying that a fall out needn't be that bad.

How come, given that radiation doesn't die out for millenias? What's different between a nuke fall-out and, say, a civilian nuclear plant's refuse?

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