nukesimulation.com
NukeSimulation.com is an educational 3D nuclear detonation simulator that shows simplified blast, heat, and casualty effects on real-world maps.
What can you do on NukeSimulation.com?
The site lets you search for a city or place and view a simulated nuclear explosion over that location.
The main view uses an interactive globe that you can rotate, move, and zoom.
A simulation can show a fireball, shockwave, blast zones, thermal effects, and estimated deaths and injuries.
The result feels more visual than a normal map because the explosion develops as a 3D scene instead of appearing only as flat circles.
This approach helped the site attract attention soon after launch, with Boing Boing covering Nuke Simulation on September 4, 2026.
How does the nuclear simulation work?
You first choose a place, position the simulated burst, and select one of the available weapon or yield options.
The website then calculates simplified effect areas and displays them around the selected point.
The free version includes the map globe, named weapons, surface bursts, optimum airbursts, and casualty estimates, according to the site's current terms of use.
A paid Pro pass adds photorealistic 3D map tiles, custom burst height, and support for typed yields above 100 kilotons.
The terms listed Pro at $5 for about 30 days when they were updated on September 4, 2026, although the site says its features and prices can change.
Where do the casualty numbers come from?
NukeSimulation.com estimates casualties with population information from the WorldPop project.
The site says it uses WorldPop 2020 population data on a grid of roughly one kilometer.
This means the figures are estimates of people living inside affected areas rather than a prediction of exactly who would be hurt.
The model does not know where people are at a specific hour of the day.
It also does not fully account for commuting, evacuation, shelter, building protection, terrain, weather, or many other factors that can change a real outcome.
This limitation is important because a dramatic number on the screen can look much more exact than the data behind it really is.
Is NukeSimulation.com scientifically accurate?
The better description is that it is an educational visualization built from simplified models rather than an official damage prediction system.
The website itself warns visitors that blast radii, thermal effects, casualty numbers, and 3D images are illustrations.
Real nuclear effects depend on weapon design, burst conditions, terrain, shielding, weather, buildings, and many other details that a browser tool cannot fully reproduce.
The simulator is therefore useful for understanding scale, but it should not be treated as military, emergency, scientific, or civil-defense advice.
Its strongest lesson may be visual rather than numerical because seeing several effects spread across familiar streets makes the size of nuclear destruction easier to understand.
Why does the 3D presentation matter?
Older nuclear-effect tools often focus on circles drawn over a normal map, while NukeSimulation.com puts much more attention on the visual experience.
The developer publicly described the project as a 3D nuclear simulator and tagged it with Three.js and WebGL, technologies commonly used for rich browser graphics.
The result gives users a clearer sense of height, distance, and scale as they move the camera around the simulated scene.
That visual impact also creates a responsibility to remember that a convincing animation is not the same thing as a complete physical model.
What information does the website collect?
The free simulator does not require visitors to create a named account, according to the site's privacy policy.
Its infrastructure can still process normal connection information such as an IP address, browser details, requested pages, and an approximate location derived from the IP.
Place searches are sent to Komoot Photon, which uses OpenStreetMap data, while casualty requests send coordinates and simplified effect radii to the site's server.
The site also says its analytics can record a detonation event with information such as the city, country, selected weapon, and coordinates rounded to two decimal degrees.
Pro users provide additional information because payment, access restoration, and session management require an email address and transaction records.
Is NukeSimulation.com meant for real nuclear planning?
No, the website repeatedly says that its purpose is education and that it must not be used for targeting, threats, attack planning, emergency decisions, or other actions that could affect people or property.
That boundary is central to understanding the site because NukeSimulation.com is most useful as a visual lesson about the enormous human scale of nuclear weapons, not as a tool for predicting a real attack.