What if Russia nuked Britain? We model a Russian nuclear strike on the UK, 22 warheads on real targets, and count every casualty: the dead, the injured, and the fallout in the weeks after.

If you have ever searched whether your town is a nuclear target, you have probably seen the old map. It comes from a British government list drawn up in 1972. Today's list, if there is one, is not public. So we counted instead.

We start with one 100 kiloton warhead on Faslane, home of Britain's nuclear submarines, and walk outward ring by ring, from Garelochhead to Helensburgh. Then the map fills: air bases like Mildenhall, Lakenheath and Waddington, the Fylingdales radar, GCHQ in Cheltenham, the warhead factories at Aldermaston and Burghfield, Devonport in Plymouth, the reactor works in Derby, the headquarters at High Wycombe and Northwood, and finally Whitehall.

Twenty-two warheads, half of one per cent of Russia's arsenal. The blast alone kills about 350,000 people and injures about a million. Then we follow the fallout drifting north-east over Watford, Hatfield and Luton, and the injured who die with roughly one spare hospital bed for every 110 of them. By the end of the second month, nearly one person in a hundred in Britain is dead. And even the kindest version of the count still kills about 150,000.

Every dot on our map is 10,000 people. Somewhere on that map is your town.

CHAPTERS

0:00 Is your town a target?

1:08 One warhead

4:57 Twenty-two warheads

6:33 The map fills

9:57 The weeks after

12:07 Every strike

METHOD

Assumptions: one 100 kiloton warhead per target, a night strike, and the blast casualty rates used by the US Congress Office of Technology Assessment in 1979. Population counts include everyone who lives in the UK. Four ground bursts produce fallout with a south-westerly wind and two days of sheltering at home. Fire is left out of the main count and discussed separately using Theodore Postol's 1986 work. The targets are our choice, since no Russian target list for Britain is public; 18 of the 22 appear on British government target lists from 1972 or 1982.

SOURCES

Full sources, data and calculations: https://rentry.co/russia-nuclear-strike-britain

ABOUT TOLL

Toll makes cinematic data documentaries on the human cost of wars, bombs, plagues and disasters. We count the dead and the injured, show our working, and say where the numbers stop. Subscribe if you want the full count.

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