Kris figured they took down the interactive portion because of
9/11, which makes total sense. Previously, terrorists would only have
had to obtain a nuclear device if they wanted to blow up a city. Now,
they have to obtain a nuclear device and a map and compass! But
what about other methods of horrible destruction, as yet out of human
control? Are there convenient, non-terror-enabling online forms that
show you how dead you will be? I decided to do some searching and find
out.
Plus, since an asteroid strike causes an earthquake, you can work
out a rough correspondence of impact criteria to Richter
scale magnitude and simulate any kind of earthquake that way.
My only complaint: With the right asteroid you can create an impact
crater bigger than the earth. Indeed, you can specify an asteroid much
bigger than the earth and it doesn't, as it should, treat the
collision as a minor inconvenience to the asteroid.
Well, I think that covers most of the SimCity disasters. Maybe the
raw power of a nuclear explosion or an asteroid strike are what let
you make a calculator that doesn't get hung up on the topography of
the landscape or the size of a particular volcano.
(3) Mon Apr 19 2004 19:25 How Dead Will You Be?:
PBS used to have a morbid
web page that would show you the blast radii of various types of
nuclear weapon superimposed over a map of your hometown, provided by the aptly-named
MapBlast. Now it's just a bunch of static HTML with descriptions of
how you really don't want to be anywhere near a nuclear blast. The
sample map image is the only thing thing that proves I wasn't
hallucinating it all.
- Comments:
Posted by Zack at Mon Apr 19 2004 23:02
It says something about me, I'm sure, that I went and calculated the effects of throwing one-meter iron spheres at the earth at substantial fractions of the speed of light.
I suspect it's not taking relativistic effects into account; the damage done by a .9c cannonball is rather more modest than I would expect (even if I adjust the density by the Lorentz factor), and it doesn't register any objection to 10c.
Posted by Brendan at Mon Apr 19 2004 23:47
There has to be a Godzilla damage table somewhere in GURPS. If not, somebody ought to write it. There would be reductions based on the Cute Gamera Kid factor, and bonuses for whether his tail was, in fact, as long as this bus.
Posted by Adam P. at Tue Apr 20 2004 11:40
If you're just interested in the Bay Area, you can see whether or not your house would be destroyed by earthquakes along various faults using ABAG's earthquake shaking maps.