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Originally Posted by jwright25
Also - assuming the bombs were radioactive from the mushroom clouds and all the radiation sickness - wouldn't the fallout / nuclear winter be much worse than it is? I seriously don't know anything about nuclear physics, so I'm clueless as to the reality of nuclear bombs going off in the US like that.
Plus - did we ever figure out where the electromagnetic pulse came from that threw off all the electricity, etc? I may have missed that somewhere.
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There is a brief scene in an earlier episode depicting some ICBMs launching before the EMP hits. (Though in reality there are no ICBM fields anywhere close to Kansas - you'd hafta go to NE Colorado and the Nebraska panhandle to find 'em, cause those are part of 'Frankie's Rocket Ranch' (aka F.E. Warren AFB, home to the 90th Space Wing.)
All it would take is a nuke of sufficient power detonated high up in the atmosphere to produce an EMP effect that covers the USA.
The nukes were probably small, but enough to do some serious damage and disrupt the US infrastructure. The days of city-busting nukes (such as the 10 megaton behemoth once carried on the Titan II missile) are history. Most missile-launched and bomber-borne nukes are less than 1 megaton (around 200-500 kilotons, as the 'yield' (read: destructive power) can be adjusted.