Let's get nuclear

If it's a nuclear war, the targets will be military. Nuking huge population areas isn't going to win you a nuclear war because your primary need is to destroy the other side's nuclear arsenal. In the Cold War, East Anglia was a top nuclear target because of the American airbases. Civilian airports would also get hit, so Heathrow and Stansted would be goners. With so much transportation gonig by road, major motorway junctions would be targets - South Mimms service station (M25 A1(M) junction) would be a bad place to be standing, as would Ferrybridge (M62, A1(M)).

Domestic or foreign terrorists might target large cities, but it depends on their motivation. What are they trying to achieve? Are there minorities they'd like to protect or destroy? Muslim extremists might target Gateshead, Jewish ones could target Bradford.

I think you could plausibly have a situation where London has been nuked around the M25 and the airports with tactical nukes, but the city itself remains mainly intact. Possibly the main railway stations could have been taken out. It wouldn't be a pleasant place.

Mind you, London isn't a pleasant place anyway.

Here's something you might want to explore. I suspect all Borough and City Councils will have an emergency procedure in case of nuclear attack. When I worked for a District Council in Berkshire, we had a 'command centre'. On the wall it had a map with possible targets, as well as the radii of possible fall-out and casualties within those zones. It may be worth contacting the council where your story is set and see if they can give you any info.

firedrake said:

Here's something you might want to explore. I suspect all Borough and City Councils will have an emergency procedure in case of nuclear attack. When I worked for a District Council in Berkshire, we had a 'command centre'. On the wall it had a map with possible targets, as well as the radii of possible fall-out and casualties within those zones. It may be worth contacting the council where your story is set and see if they can give you any info.

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I used to work for <Local Council Name Redacted> in the 1980s. They were using the nuclear shelter beneath their headquarters as a document archive. There was a small kitchen at one end with a 1960s. Somebody in the distant past had cooked a joint in a baking tray and left it uncarved and uneaten on a unit. It was still there, surrounded by unopened bottles of very old pop. If <City Name Redacted> had suffered a nuclear incident, their emergency response would have been pathetic.

Priene said:

I used to work for <Local Council Name Redacted> in the 1980s. They were using the nuclear shelter beneath their headquarters as a document archive. There was a small kitchen at one end with a 1960s. Somebody in the distant past had cooked a joint in a baking tray and left it uncarved and uneaten on a unit. It was still there, surrounded by unopened bottles of very old pop. If <City Name Redacted> had suffered a nuclear incident, their emergency response would have been pathetic.

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The shelter our council had was very shiny and impressive (built in the late 1980s). The only thing that really tickled me was that all department heads would have a place down there. Our Town Planning Director was such a useless tit, I was mystified as to what use he'd be in a nuclear crisis.

firedrake said:

The shelter our council had was very shiny and impressive (built in the late 1980s). The only thing that really tickled me was that all department heads would have a place down there.

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Back in the 1980s, local councils had more power than they do now, and my theory was that allowing the nuclear bunker to fall into disrepair was partly political - what's the point in the things when we'd all be doomed anyway?

firedrake said:

Our Town Planning Director was such a useless tit, I was mystified as to what use he'd be in a nuclear crisis.

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He'd be on door duty, warding off the mutants with a cricket bat.

Priene said:

He'd be on door duty, warding off the mutants with a cricket bat.

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Ha! I reckon they'd use him as the radiation canary. Send him outside for a few minutes and see how many festering radiation sores he came back with.

Yes, hiding in an underground bunker with a room full of council officials would be as about as reassuring as taking the doors off their hinges and building a lean-to shelter in the hall.

firedrake said:

Ha! I reckon they'd use him as the radiation canary. Send him outside for a few minutes and see how many festering radiation sores he came back with.

Yes, hiding in an underground bunker with a room full of council officials would be as about as reassuring as taking the doors off their hinges and building a lean-to shelter in the hall.

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Our old Planning Office head was a former member of Mud. Imagine sitting through armageddon with a Tiger Feet singalong.

Priene said:

Our old Planning Office head was a former member of Mud. Imagine sitting through armageddon with a Tiger Feet singalong.

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I think I'd steal a radiation suit and take my chances elsewhere.

seun said:

Just be glad he wasn't in The Sweet.

And the man in the back said everyone attack...

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Even worse, it could have been Gary Glitter.

Remember the effects of a nuke explosion: blast, thermal, prompt radiation, and residual radiation (fallout)

The four main factors you can manipulate are size of the device, location of the device, height of device above ground at detonation, weather at detonation.

Size and location are obvious. Height above ground (along with device size) determines how much fallout there is, as well as how far the thermal and prompt radiation effects propagate. Put a small sub kiloton nuke in the Tube, and the fireball might not break the surface. Put it in the tallest building around, and you can light everyone on fire for a mile or so around.

Weather encompases both wind speed and direction (surface and aloft), as well as the effects of cloud and fog on the thermal and flash effects. Where does the mushroom cloud go? Downwind. If you want to make London uninhabitable, then a shallow-buried nuke upwind of the city is your best bet. Fog and low hanging clouds will diffuse the brilliant flash of detonation.

The EMP effects are actually a part of the prompt radiation effects, and they are affected in a similar manner. A deep charge will diffuse them, an airborne shot will enhance them.

The 'poisoning' you speak of comes mainly from radioactive iodine, cesium, and strontium. There is also neutron-activated elements (artificially induced radioactivity) in the area close to ground zero. These effects fade somewhat quickly with time, depending on precipitation patterns. The fishermen are kinda pissed, though - they'll have to cut off twice the number of heads per fish for a few decades.

There really are a lot of factors to consider when you're developing your world. The most important really is: what is the aim of the terrorists? YOU have to know that, even if your POV character doesn't.

It seems unlikely that nuclear terrorists would have the same priorities for targets or the same capabilities for weapon delivery as a state.

Although terrorists do attack military targets on occasion, their main targets tend to be the civilian population. An attack on London, the most populous city in the UK, therefore makes sense from that point of view.

I think the OP needs to think about what weapon(s) the terrorists have and how they intend to deliver them to their target(s). There was a lot of speculation here in the UK some years ago about dirty bombs, ie using a radioactive source like those used in treatments for cancer, combined with a conventional explosive like Semtex, in order to make a wide area radioactive and scare anyone within the contaminated area. Is that the sort of weapon we're talking about, or are we talking about stolen nuclear weapons, or about appropriating another country's nuclear capability and exploiting it in the attack?

The answers to the OP's questions could be very different, depending.

Okay. But it's one thing to steal the weapon. It's another to deliver it to the target.

Riots? Hmm, not sure. Potential for a power vacuum, definitely.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQo0BQM3OlQ

Watch that movie. It is an '80s TV show, dramatized situation similar to what you're talking about, but done in a very realistic way.

Oh and this is a good film showing the destructive power of a single nuke detonated over St Paul's.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Lun5UVZOG4

2. The majority of the action takes place in a city which isn't a direct target but which is close enough to an explosion for the shockwave to cause substantial damage (windows blown out, power lines downed, people injured). How far away would this city need to be from the explosion to be damaged but not destroyed?

3. Roughly speaking, what percentage of a city's population would be killed outright if the city is far away enough from the explosion to be damaged, not destroyed?

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There are nuclear blast effect simulators on the web.

Here's one with detailed descriptions, but it's not interactive.
Here's an interactive one (although it crashed on me).

There may be others out there, if you search for them.

The short answer is that everything within 2 miles of ground zero is dead and there isn't any shielding likely to help. Severe death and injury continues out to about 5 miles. This changes with the size of the bomb, of course.

Nuclear weapons are HEAVILY guarded in the USA and UK. Plus they are incredibly hard to hide.

But take a look at an American made-for-TV movie called Special Bulletin

I think the ending is very relevant to what you're seeking with London, although it was set in Charleston, SC.

There have been lots of films of varying length about the effect of a nuclear attack. Just for nostalgia purposes, here's one from the '60s about Austin, Texas, narrated by the late Cactus Pryor.

Target Austin

There's a brief glimpse of the State Operations Command. The SOC is still in use, though hurricanes and terrorist attacks are much more the focus than nuclear combat with the Russkies (gotta imagine that as Slim Pickens would say it). You can still eat at Matt's El Rancho for that matter.

When I was a kid the local paper ran articles showing just how much of Jacksonville, Florida would get blown away from a warhead dropped on NAS Jax. A lot depends on the actually mega-tonnage yield of the weapon, but suffice to say my mom & I were goners, she worked on the base and our home was only five miles away.