How a Small Suitcase Nuke Could Devastate Kansas City, Missouri

Ever think about the unthinkable? I decided to take a trip down that road and see what even a small suitcase nuclear weapon would do if detonated in the middle of Kansas City, Missouri. The result is devastating.

I've seen many share what would happen if Russia and America would unleash an unlimited nuclear war, but that doesn't interest me. That's an unrealistic end of days scenario like the one presented in the made-for-TV movie The Day After back in 1983. What's more realistic and terrifying is the proposition that a terrorist could sneak an improvised dirty bomb nuke into a Midwestern city like Kansas City and create chaos.

Nuke Map is a tool that allows you to see the results of an suitcase nuclear detonation. While the blast radius is not large, the results would be catastrophic for years. The innermost circle is the fireball. The orange path to the northeast is the expected fallout.

The estimate from Nuke Map is that 20,000 in Kansas City would be killed immediately by the initial blast. That means 1 in ever 3 people that would be in that area would lose their lives shortly after the device is detonated. That's not even accounting for the radioactive fallout effect on those that survive for years to come.

Why have suitcase nukes become a topic again?

If you've been following the mysterious drones over New Jersey and, yes, some even spotted over Missouri, there are theories that they are US military drones looking for missing nuclear materials. The government is denying this, but the theory isn't going away.

I'd like to think that our military in America is so sophisticated that even a hint of radioactive material would be detected before it could ever be detonated in a major city like Kansas City, but many thought an event like 9/11 would have been impossible, too. Let's hope in this case that the experts are right and this is only a topic for made-for-TV movies.