Politics

What an atomic bomb detonation in New York’s financial district would look like: detailed simulation

A chilling simulation models the destruction an atomic bomb would cause if it detonated in Lower Manhattan.

Sports-lover turned journalist, born and bred in Scotland, with a passion for football (soccer). He’s also a keen follower of NFL, NBA, golf and tennis, among others, and always has an eye on the latest in science, tech and current affairs. As Managing Editor at AS USA, uses background in operations and marketing to drive improvements for reader satisfaction.

Update: Mar 7th, 2025 11:53 EST

You’ve probably wondered – even just fleetingly – what would happen if a nuclear bomb hit New York City. It’s a question that’s haunted scientists, governments, and anyone who’s ever watched a disaster movie set in Manhattan. Now, a detailed simulation offers a rather precise look at how an atomic bomb detonation would unfold in the financial district, and the scale of destruction it maps out is staggering.

The simulation by Outrider, designed to model a large-scale atomic explosion, doesn’t waste time with vague guesses or dramatic flair. It’s a cold, calculated breakdown of what you would actually see, feel, and suffer if such a bomb detonated at street level in Lower Manhattan. From the initial blinding fireball to the toxic rain of radioactive fallout, the simulation tracks the physical and human toll across New York City and beyond.

If you’ve lived in or visited Manhattan, the landmarks at the epicenter would be familiar – One World Trade, Wall Street, the Brooklyn Bridge. This is rightly strong in the emotional stakes.

What would you see right after an atomic bomb detonation in New York?

The first thing you’d register – assuming you were close enough to see it but somehow far enough to survive the initial blast – would be a flash. Not just any flash. This flash would burn brighter than the midday sun and cover much of the sky. It wouldn’t give you time to blink.

That’s the fireball from the huge 50,000 KT Tsar Bomba, spanning 44 square miles, stretching from downtown into parts of Brooklyn, Jersey City, and uptown. Inside this fireball, the temperature would climb to levels 10,000 times hotter than the sun’s surface.Every building, every vehicle, and every living thing caught inside this inferno would vaporize instantly. There’s no survival scenario. Not even a hint of one.

How far would the heat reach and what would it do?

The heat from the explosion wouldn’t politely stop at the fireball’s edge. It would radiate across 3,200 square miles - engulfing all five boroughs, parts of New Jersey, and Long Island in searing thermal waves. At this range, third-degree burns would be widespread, even for people several miles from Ground Zero.

Paper, wood, clothing, even plastic would spontaneously ignite. Fires would break out across the city faster than emergency services could even register what was happening. In reality, those services would likely cease to exist.

How the shock wave would rip apart Manhattan

If the heat didn’t kill you, the shock wave probably would. The expanding fireball forces air outward in a violent blast, flattening everything in its path.

Over 345 square miles, from Midtown to Newark, buildings would collapse like cardboard under the weight of hurricane-force winds and brutal pressure changes. Even reinforced structures would suffer heavy damage.

People outside might survive the heat, but the shock wave would hurl debris at lethal speeds. Windows would explode inward. Cars would flip through the air like paper cups. Anyone caught in the open could face a blizzard of deadly shrapnel.

The invisible killer: radiation poisoning across New York

Close to the epicenter, you wouldn’t have to worry about radiation – it wouldn’t have time to kill you before the other factors already discussed. Further out, though, it would. Within a 31-square-mile radius, lethal doses of gamma rays and neutrons would flood the area.

You wouldn’t see it, hear it, or feel it right away. But within hours, symptoms would begin – nausea, vomiting, fatigue. Your hair would fall out. Your immune system would shut down. 50% to 90% of people exposed to this level of radiation would die, some within days, others lingering for weeks.

Fallout: radioactive rain far beyond the blast zone

If the bomb detonated at or near ground level, a towering mushroom cloud would form, sucking up soil, steel, concrete, and whatever remains of the people and buildings below. That cloud wouldn’t just hang there. Winds would carry the irradiated debris hundreds of miles in every direction.

The radioactive dust would settle in places you likely wouldn’t expect – upstate New York, New England, even parts of Canada. For decades, that’s right, decades, particles would work their way into crops, milk, meat, and eventually your body.

Strontium-90, one of the nastier radioactive byproducts, would build up in the bones of children born long after the blast. Iodine-131 would flood the thyroid glands of anyone exposed, raising cancer rates for generations.

How many people would die if an atomic bomb hit New York?

By the time the fireball cooled, the shock wave ended, and the first radioactive dust began to fall, the death toll would already exceed anything in human history.

The initial blast, fire, and radiation would kill millions outright. Millions more would face severe burns, injuries from collapsing buildings, and fatal doses of radiation. New York’s population density ensures there would be no meaningful evacuation.

Even if you lived in the outer boroughs or nearby states, you’d face long-term radiation exposure through contaminated food and water. The city itself would be uninhabitable for years, if not decades. Cleanup would be nearly impossible in a site as complex as Lower Manhattan. The final total is estimated to be around six million dead, and nearly four million more injured.

What would happen to New York?

The simulation’s findings aren’t subtle, hopeful, or open to interpretation. A single atomic bomb, detonated at the right location in Lower Manhattan, would effectively end New York City as a functional place.

Survivors in the outer edges might cling to life, but the infrastructure, economy, and human fabric of the city would collapse in ways no disaster in history has matched. Other locations, in the US and across the globe, can also be simulated.

And while it’s tempting to think of such scenarios as relics of the Cold War, the technology, the targeting capabilities, and the political realities that make them possible are all still very much in play. If the current conversations between the likes of Trump, Putin, Zelenskyy and European leaders weren’t so tense, I’d not have bothered even writing this piece. But we all hope that the alternative spelling of that last word is what we end up with.