What happens to Honolulu if hit by NK 150 KT nuclear missile? Detonation map here:

[Fred Sanders]

http://www.nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=150&lat=21.3069444&lng=-157.8583333&airburst=0&hob_ft=0&casualties=1&fallout=1&ff=50&fatalities=116412&injuries=103998&psi_1=362523&zm=11

[left-of-center2012]

1. OK, bad enough, especially if you're there

But I'm surprised it's not worse.

I wonder if it hit here in Albuquerque if it would detonate the nukes stored at the local air base?

[Igel]

3. No, it wouldn't cause them to detonate.

The fissile material has to be brought together without anything that would dampen the reaction. The detonation procedure removes the damping material and brings the masses together in the right way to produce critical mass and trigger the explosion. It's not an explosion that sets off the uranium, it's putting enough of the stuff together for neutrons of the right momentum to trigger the release of more neutrons which trigger the release of more neutrons. And every release of a neutron adds a bit more energy to the process. Get enough going at once in a chain reaction and Boom!

A nuclear explosion near the bombs would send some neutrons heading towards the concentrated uranium, but it wouldn't be enough to produce a problem unless the explosion happened really, really close. Neutron dispersal follows an inverse square law so even a small distance leads to a large decline in neutron exposure. And the neutron's would probably arrive before the blast wave, so the damping material would squelch the effect of even a large surge of neutrons.

A nuclear explosion would most likely destroy the means of removing the damping material; if extreme, it would scatter the fissile material. That would constitute a radiologic bomb, which means radioactive material would be spread around. But no big boom. And given the fall out from the bomb that did go boom, nobody would much care about that heavily radioactive site for a while, unless it got into the water supply.

We have some idea about how to deal with radiologic disasters. We have the experiences of Chernobyl and the 1950s Urals disaster (which was almost duplicated at Hanford, but the different hydrology saved our collective butt).

[msongs]

2. from where I live the drop on pearl harbor would be just a massive light show and

usually prevailing winds would blow fallout away from my area.