How to Survive a Nuclear Attack

Fireball: Whether the nuke is detonated in the air or on the ground, the initial threat is the fireball, which can reach tens of millions of degrees. “If you’re within that, you’re dead,” Schlegel­milch says. According to an online simulation created by Alex Wellerstein at the Stevens Institute of Technology (it’s interactive, scary, and fun), a 10-kiloton bomb would produce a fireball with a radius of 500 to 650 feet.