nukesimulation.com
NukeSimulation.com is a free browser-based 3D nuclear-blast simulator that lets you place an educational detonation over a real location and view simplified blast, heat, fallout, and casualty effects.
What can you do on NukeSimulation.com?
You can search for a city or historic site, choose a nuclear weapon or yield, select an airburst or surface burst, and watch the simulated explosion appear on an interactive 3D globe.
The visualization can display the fireball, shockwave, blast zones, thermal effects, mushroom cloud, fallout, and estimated deaths and injuries.
The site's weapon index currently lists 12 examples ranging from the 8-kiloton W76-2 to the 50-megaton Tsar Bomba.
It also includes Little Boy at 15 kilotons, Fat Man at 21 kilotons, Castle Bravo at 15 megatons, and several modern or Cold War weapon yields.
The city index currently provides 20 preset city scenarios, including New York, Tokyo, Mumbai, London, Singapore, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.
Why does the 3D presentation matter?
Traditional nuclear-effect maps often show flat circles, while NukeSimulation.com uses height, camera movement, terrain, and a globe to make distances easier to understand visually.
The site's own explanation says this approach is designed to make concepts such as kilotons, burst height, and mushroom-cloud scale easier to grasp.
This visual style also separates it from the well-known NUKEMAP, which mainly presents nuclear effects through a conventional two-dimensional map interface.
Boing Boing covered NukeSimulation.com on September 4, 2026, highlighting its animated 3D approach and its ability to show shockwaves, thermal effects, and casualty estimates.
How accurate are its nuclear-effect estimates?
NukeSimulation.com describes its calculations as educational estimates based on simplified nuclear-effects scaling rather than precise predictions.
Its blast and thermal ranges use yield scaling while leaving out important variables such as terrain, weather, shielding, building construction, and detailed weapon design.
The fallout display is a simplified 48-hour unsheltered dose model that assumes one uniform wind direction rather than changing real-world weather conditions.
These limits matter because two places at the same distance from an explosion could experience very different effects because of hills, buildings, weather, and shelter.
Where do the casualty numbers come from?
The simulator estimates casualties using residents recorded in the WorldPop 2020 population dataset on a grid of roughly one kilometer.
WorldPop's 1-kilometer service contains annual population-density estimates from 2000 through 2020 and identifies DOI 10.5258/SOTON/WP00674 as its underlying dataset.
NukeSimulation.com then counts population inside simplified effect areas, so the casualty number should be read as an illustration of scale rather than an expected death toll.
The model does not know where people travel during the day, who is underground, who evacuates, or which buildings provide protection.
Is NukeSimulation.com free?
The main simulator is free and does not require visitors to create a named account.
Free users can access the globe, named weapons, airburst and surface-burst options, and casualty estimates.
According to the site's current terms, Pro adds photorealistic Google 3D tiles, custom burst heights, typed yields above 100 kilotons, and an ad-free experience.
As of September 2026, its listed one-time Pro prices are $5 for about seven days, $10 for about 30 days, and $20 for about 90 days, before applicable tax.
What data does the website collect?
The privacy policy says the free simulator does not ask for your name, but normal connection information such as your IP address, browser, requested pages, and approximate IP-based location can be processed through Cloudflare.
Place searches are sent to Komoot Photon using OpenStreetMap data, while Pro users request photorealistic map tiles from Google.
Payment information for Pro is handled through Polar and its payment processor rather than directly by NukeSimulation.com.
Who is NukeSimulation.com really useful for?
The strongest use of NukeSimulation.com is education because it turns abstract weapon yields into visible distances across places people already understand.
Its numbers should not be used for targeting, emergency planning, civil defense, or predictions of what would happen in an actual nuclear attack.
The site's most useful lesson is therefore not an exact casualty number but a clearer visual understanding of how quickly nuclear effects can extend across a populated area.