About NukeSimulator

NukeSimulator is a free, interactive nuclear explosion simulator. It lets you detonate a virtual nuclear weapon over any point on Earth — your home town, a world capital, or the middle of the ocean — and see the estimated consequences drawn directly on the map: the fireball, the blast damage rings, the reach of thermal radiation, the radiation dose zones and the plume of radioactive fallout.

Atomic bomb mushroom cloud over Nagasaki, 1945 — The mushroom cloud over Nagasaki, 9 August 1945 — one of only two nuclear weapons ever used against people.

Why this site exists

Nuclear weapons are abstract for most people. Numbers like «800 kilotons» mean very little until you see what that yield does to a city you actually know. Putting the physics on a familiar map turns statistics into something you can grasp — and that understanding is the whole point of this project. NukeSimulator is an educational tool: it does not glorify nuclear weapons, it shows why they must never be used again.

The idea of visualising nuclear effects on a web map was pioneered by historian of science Alex Wellerstein with his NUKEMAP project, and this site follows in that tradition. The underlying physics comes from openly published, declassified sources — see our methodology page for details.

Diagram of nuclear effect zones — The concentric effect zones the simulator draws: fireball, blast damage, radiation and thermal reach.

How to use the simulator

Pick a target. Choose a preset city, search for any place, or simply drag the marker anywhere on the map.
Pick a weapon. Select a real historical or currently deployed warhead — from the 15-kiloton Hiroshima bomb to the 50-megaton Tsar Bomba — or type in any yield in kilotons.
Detonate. The map shows the effect rings; click «What does that mean?» for a plain-language explanation of every zone. You can switch between airburst and surface burst, enable the fallout plume, stack multiple detonations and share a permanent link to your scenario.

What the results mean — and what they don't

Every number the simulator produces is a scientific estimate based on idealised models. Real explosions are affected by weather, terrain, building density and the exact weapon design, so actual effects would differ. Treat the output as an educated approximation for learning and discussion, not as an emergency-planning tool. The effects of a nuclear explosion page explains each damage mechanism in depth.

Learn more

If you are new to the subject, a good reading order is: how nuclear weapons work, then what an explosion actually does, then Hiroshima and Nagasaki — the only two times these weapons were used against people — and finally who possesses nuclear weapons today.