The fires of Hiroshima and Los Angeles: Apocalypse redux

Flashing red-orange flames pulsating against billowing black smoke. A landscape of homes reduced to ash and twisted rubble. Vehicles transfigured into grotesque sculptures scattered across streets. These scenes could have come from Hiroshima or Nagasaki after the atomic bombings in World War II. Instead, they are images recorded in the neighborhoods of Los Angeles affected by a recent wave of wildfires. We have suddenly become more keenly aware of the rising threat of wildfires to society, while at the same time having largely forgotten about the atomic firestorms in the last millennium.

The predicted existential threats posed by climate change have arrived in the form of intensified hurricanes, wildfires, droughts, and rising seas (e.g., Hansen et al., 2025). The recent conflagrations in Pacific Palisades and Altadena—two residential areas in Los Angeles—destroyed around 16,250 structures and damaged about 2,100 more. And there have been other recent disastrous wildfire events: The November 2018 Camp fire in Butte County, California destroyed over 18,000 structures, and the December 2021 Marshall fire outside Denver, Colorado wiped out nearly 1,000 homes. The total burn areas and deaths associated with these extreme occurrences were significant: In Pacific Palisades, some 23,450 acres or about 95 square kilometers burned and 12 people died; the Altadena (Eaton) fire consumed about 14,000 acres or 57 square kilometers, with 17 fatalities; the Camp fire covered about 150,000 acres (600 square kilometers) and caused 85 deaths; while the Marshall fire extended to 6,000 acres (24 km²), with two deaths.

But as catastrophic as these recent fires have been, they were far less lethal than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in August 1945, when some 66,000 people died and 56,000 were severely injured within an area of roughly 20 square kilometers (Glasstone and Dolan, 1977), as a firestorm engulfed 13 square kilometers of the central city, reducing it to ashes and char in a matter of hours (Ishikawa and Swain, 1981).

Where are we headed? Perhaps understandably overlooked at this fraught moment—when the fiery impacts of climate change have dominated national and even international news—is another daunting fact: The world has been living for almost 80 years with the fiery existential threat of nuclear weapons. Thousands of these devices are mounted on delivery systems, some ready to be launched within minutes, all able to reach their targets in fractions of an hour. For at least the past 60 years, the principal nuclear states have been capable of destroying most of human civilization in a few hours.

According to recent assessments by the Federation of American Scientists’ Hans Kristensen and coworkers (2024, 2025), the United States and Russia have between them about 8,000 nuclear warheads (deployed and in reserve, not counting another 2,600 or so “awaiting dismantlement” under current treaty agreements). The explosive power of an individual strategic warhead ranges approximately from a lower yield of about 100 kilotons of TNT to a potential detonation strength of 500 kilotons to 800 kilotons. If even a fraction of the deployed weapons were used in a global war, the deaths and serious injuries could number in the hundreds of millions (for example, refer to the recent work by Toon et al. 2007, 2019 and Xia et al. 2022).

And although the blast and ionizing radiation impacts of nuclear weapons would be catastrophic, the thermal radiation and fire effects could be truly existential if enough smoke were injected into the stratosphere to bring on a “nuclear winter” that suppresses agriculture in much of the world.

National and world population has grown dramatically over the past four decades. Compared to the year 1982, when nuclear winter was first discussed, the world population has grown from about 4.6 billion to about 8.1 billion individuals. That is 3.5 billion additional potential victims of a nuclear war. Importantly, an increasing fraction of the world population is now living in cities. In 1982, the urbanized share of humanity amounted to about 40 percent; in 2022, it was 57 percent.^[1]

In addition to population growth, urban housing has become denser on average, as building space has grown tighter and more expensive. In the Los Angeles regional urban agglomeration, as among many other overbuilt areas, the tentacles of development are reaching deeper into the foothills and valleys of surrounding mountains and outward across vast dry grass and brush lands. Everywhere, people are pushing the wildland-urban interface further from the core city, creating sprawling megacities and new fire dangers, as emphasized in a recent National Academy of Sciences report (NAS, 2022). Today, it is not unusual for cities to have 20 million or more residents. Some 45 urban zones worldwide house populations exceeding 10 million, including the Los Angeles five-county metropolitan area, at around 18 million (US Census Bureau, 2023; Demographia, 2023).

The world has witnessed the devastating consequences of a climate-driven wildfire in and around Los Angeles. But we do not need to devise a detailed conflict scenario, or specify strategic targets, to quickly realize that a nuclear explosion anywhere in the city would amount to a holocaust. While US cities in general are less densely populated than in many other developed countries, census data show that Los Angeles is home to around 3,000 people per square kilometer. A Hiroshima-sized bomb—calibrated at around 15 kilotons—could be estimated to kill or seriously injure at least 50,000 to 60,000 people. Current strategic weapons, however, are far more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.

As we describe in detail below, a 500-kiloton warhead detonated in the atmosphere over Los Angeles would likely devastate several hundred square kilometers of the city immediately, and within a few hours burn roughly that same area, in all causing more than 600,000 casualties (fatalities and serious injuries). If the weapon were detonated at ground-level, radioactive fallout would dangerously contaminate hundreds of additional square kilometers in the wider urban area. At the end of one day, Los Angeles would have been essentially destroyed as a keystone American social, cultural, financial, technological, industrial, and educational center.

Consequences of a nuclear burst over Los Angeles. When a nuclear weapon is detonated in the lower atmosphere, there are three dominant destructive effects: air blast, thermal irradiance, and initial nuclear radiation. Blast is the primary effect that nuclear weapons are designed to produce—as with a conventional bomb, only much more powerful. One kiloton, after all, is nominally as potent as 1,000 tons of conventional explosives (TNT). But using nuclear reactions to generate blast leads to other side effects. One is thermal “pulse.” As a rule of thumb, about one-third of the total energy of a nuclear weapon detonation is released as an intense burst of visible and infrared radiation—the thermal pulse—that occurs within seconds. This radiated heat can incinerate matter and ignite fires. Exposure to thermal radiation was responsible for a substantial fraction of the casualties at Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Ishikawa and Swain 1981).

The initial nuclear ionizing radiation consists mainly of gamma rays and energetic neutrons that penetrate the body and cause acute cellular damage, leading to death over hours to weeks. Such effects are most severe close to ground zero and are largely overshadowed by exposure to the blast and thermal radiation.

The intensity of the direct thermal radiation from a nuclear explosion decreases inversely with the square of the distance from the fireball (slant path). Accordingly, the direct thermal pulse irradiance received at the ground depends on the weapon height of burst and the range from ground zero. There are other factors that determine the potential exposure to and effect of this radiation, including atmospheric transmissivity, reflection and scattering processes, shadowing configurations, and the absorptivity and other physical properties of the receptors.[2]

A nuclear explosion causes injuries by a number of mechanisms, including burns from thermal radiation and fires, flying debris, and collapsing structures, not to mention exposure to initial nuclear radiation, and later, radioactive fallout. Glasstone and Dolan (1977) and Ishikawa and Swain (1981) document casualties in the blast and fire zone at Hiroshima; within the heavily damaged area, the casualty rate was roughly 95 percent, mostly fatalities, and in the surrounding less damaged sector, 65 percent casualties.

Attempting to apply these statistics to Los Angeles requires substantial adjustments. For example, the population density of central Hiroshima—documented as about 10,000 per square kilometer—was greater than the average in L.A., which has roughly 3,000 people per square kilometer, according to census data. On the other hand, the area of destruction caused by a modern nuclear weapon would be much larger. A 500-kiloton warhead detonated in the atmosphere over Los Angeles could destroy an area of about 40 square kilometers and create serious blast and fire damage over an additional zone of roughly 160 to 290 square kilometers. Applying the same probabilistic outcomes as seen in Hiroshima, we estimate overall casualties up to 680,000 people, based on the average population density. A large uncertainty is associated with the location of the explosion. If the city center were targeted, for example, the number of victims could be much greater; and if the detonation occurred over the outskirts, much lower. In any case, however, casualties in the hundreds of thousands should be expected.

In the present context of the recent fires in Los Angeles, the potential for fire following a nuclear weapon burst becomes clear. There is convincing empirical evidence that mass conflagrations would occur following a nuclear explosion in Los Angeles, or any other major city. Through the 1980s, Hal Brode and colleagues studied the probability of fire ignition and spread in urban target areas using extensive nuclear test data, physical theory, and wartime observations (Brode, 1963, 1988; Brode and Small, 1984, 1986). Brode and Small concluded that fires ignited by nuclear weapons should be considered a destructive mechanism comparable to nuclear blast. Although that position was never adopted by the US military, the technical evidence assembled by Brode et al. is compelling. And while the threat of fire to human built environments has been understood for centuries, the “natural” destructive fire events occurring throughout California, and elsewhere, have raised new alarms.

In the case of a nuclear weapon detonation, however, there are factors that significantly exacerbate the hazard (e.g., Postol, 1986). For example: Thermal irradiation could ignite many hundreds of thousands of nascent fires essentially instantaneously over hundreds of square kilometers, as opposed to a single or handful of ignition points typical of a natural wildfire. The winds created by air blast and fireball rise would fan the persistent fires and spread embers and brands, and although blast would extinguish many of the initial fires, it would also cause secondary fires by a variety of processes and breach fire breaks and structural barriers to fire spread.

Meanwhile, a nuclear burst would destroy power sources, break water lines, block roads, incapacitate personnel, and broadly impede efforts to fight citywide conflagrations (unlike the massive response in manpower and equipment possible with the recent wildfires). The widespread panic and chaos, and overwhelming burden of trapped and wounded people following a nuclear attack would complicate any attempt at an organized response. The strong winds generated by a large area fire would accelerate the spread of flames, which might then coalesce into a firestorm. Such hellish visions of fire and death had already been seen in Hiroshima, Hamburg, and other cities during World War II.

Urban development at the wildland interface—as in Los Angeles—may be particularly susceptible to mass fires. If embedded wildlands were exposed to intense thermal bomb radiation it is likely that finer fuels would be heated, desiccated, and ignited, while larger materials would be shredded into kindling by the blast. Under dry weather conditions, which occur frequently in many regions of the Southwestern United States, explosive fire behavior would be the likely result.

Radioactive fallout. If a 500-kiloton nuclear weapon were detonated at the surface instead of well above the ground, lethal radioactive fallout would also be produced, extending the death and misery far from the blast and burn zones and contaminating the landscape for years. A gaping crater would be left at ground zero. For a 500-kiloton warhead, the crater would be roughly 120 meters in radius, and perhaps 60 meters deep (Glasstone and Dolan, 1977). A continuous field of ejecta would cover the ground for another 140 meters beyond the crater edge. Total blast devastation (up to the 10 pounds-per-square-inch level) would then stretch out for more than 2,500 meters from ground zero (covering an area of about 20 square kilometers).^[3] Note that, while the blast and thermal ignition ranges and areas are smaller than for an airburst of the same yield, they are still absolutely devastating.

Gamma rays are primarily responsible for the injurious effects of radioactive fallout. The exposure is normally measured using a unit of absorbed gamma radiation energy denoted as a rad. Without going into detail, the consequences of acute (early time) exposure are usually summarized in terms of the total dose received in rads. A dose exceeding about 1,000 rads is expected to cause mortality nearly 100 percent of the time. The dose that would be lethal for 50 percent of exposed individuals has been placed in the range of 500-600 rads. Lower acute doses of 200–500 rads can lead to debilitating morbidity and a significant number of eventual deaths, while even below 200 rads, immediate medical attention would be advisable.^[4]

The distribution and intensity of radioactive fallout created by a nuclear surface burst, and the potential exposures due to that fallout, can only be very roughly described because of variability associated with numerous factors, including even soil composition and meteorological conditions. Glasstone and Dolan (1977) provide a simple empirical model that is useful for scoping “early” fallout effects (i.e., due to the radioactivity deposited within the first day post-detonation). For a 500-kiloton surface contact burst as described above, using standard assumptions of a 50 percent fission fraction and a constant background wind speed of 15 miles per hour, the following general picture can be drawn: The area in which total doses exceeding several thousand rads over a one-day period of exposure could extend more than 25 kilometers downwind from ground zero and encompass something like 90 square kilometers. A larger zone in which exposures exceeding 700 rads are possible in one day, and more than 1,200 rads in two weeks, would extend to about 50 kilometers, covering more than 300 square kilometers. A larger area of 1,300 square kilometers, with 24-hour doses above 100 rads, extends about 120 kilometers from ground zero. Outside of these highly contaminated zones, fallout would still compromise people, animals, water, and food with unprecedented accumulations of radioactive dust settling over thousands of square kilometers.

Obviously, some of the area affected by fallout will also have been devastated by blast, thermal radiation, and fire. But radioactive fallout would substantially increase the overall area impacted by the weapon burst, and likewise total casualties. Fallout would also further complicate attempts at evacuation, rescue, and firefighting, due to uncertainty in the distribution and intensity of the radioactivity.

The pathway to recovery. A striking difference between the Los Angeles wildfires and a putative nuclear attack on the city involves damage areas and number of casualties. In the L.A. wildfires, something like 20 square kilometers of urban development was destroyed, and about 150 square kilometers was burned overall. This total area is comparable to that of the primary destruction zone of a strategic nuclear weapon. The total wildfire fatalities of 29 people (to date), however, pales in contrast to the hundreds of thousands of deaths expected in a nuclear attack. Indeed, in the example analyzed above, including potential radioactive fallout casualties, it is not unlikely that up to a million individuals would eventually succumb to trauma. Such a tsunami of death and destruction would place enormous stresses on survivors as well as external agencies responding to the tragedy.

Accordingly, in the weeks, months and years following a large nuclear detonation over a densely populated area, efforts at recovery and a return to normalcy would be seriously compromised. The core infrastructure supporting local communities would be gone. Even though vast areas would have been left unscathed by the direct effects of the nuclear burst or fallout, everyone remaining in the area would be overwhelmed with pain, fear, and grief. Family, friends, acquaintances, coworkers, neighbors, customers—everyone would be connected in one way or another to the devastation. There would be questions of leadership, funding, manpower, and safety. There would be profound needs for housing, food, clean water, medical care, services of all kinds—most of which would have to come from outside the area. And after an initial nuclear attack, the threat of detonations to come would instill paralyzing dread.

The shattering of social, economic and political systems in the aftermath of a nuclear weapon explosion in a city like Los Angeles leaves considerable doubt about the pathway to full recovery and whether the city could ever rebuild and reconstitute its social milieu.

At a much smaller scale, this is the problem facing Los Angeles in the aftermath of recent extraordinarily violent wildfires.

Nuclear deterrence, or disarmament? It is worth debating whether nuclear deterrence, as currently implemented, is an effective means of preventing warfare and the use of nuclear weapons. Proponents correctly note that nuclear weapons have never been employed in conflict since the end of World War II. In every other respect, however, deterrence doctrine appears to have been broadly ineffective at best. Consider the continuing conflicts in the Middle East, Southern Asia, Eastern Europe, and throughout Africa. The history of the last 80 years is, in fact, a continuing testament to the failure of nuclear deterrence as a means for stabilizing international relations and preventing hostilities. The United States, as an example, has participated in numerous wars, from Korea to Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan, and even an assault on the small island nation of Grenada. More recently, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has introduced nuclear blackmail as a useful tool for conventional aggression.

Indeed, owning nuclear weapons is seen as inoculating a nation against military retaliation, freeing unstable leaders to carry out risky military adventures. Meanwhile, amid the modern mayhem, continental South America has remained relatively peaceful since the end of World War II—in the complete absence of nuclear weapons. Although both Brazil and Argentina once sought nuclear arms status, they are today signatories to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, as well as the parallel Treaty of Tlatelolco that applies to all of Latin America and the Caribbean.

Africa is also a nuclear-weapon-free zone, but has nevertheless labored under multiple conflicts, mainly civil wars, insurrections, and coups, as opposed to major international warfare. Many of these conflicts are basically long-standing internal or regional disputes supported as proxy wars by non-African countries. It was during the superpower Cold War that South Africa—then governed by a West-oriented apartheid regime—developed nuclear weapons as a deterrent against hostile neighbors backed by the Soviet Union. In the early 1990s, as the Soviet Union collapsed and apartheid ended, so did the South African nuclear arms program, with all its existing weapons dismantled. South Africa became a nuclear-free, democratic state, demonstrating the ineffectual relationship between owning a nuclear arsenal and maintaining an untenable political system.

Evolving circumstances are offering up new pathways to nuclear disaster, with the Bulletin’s Doomsday Clock ticking ever closer to midnight (Mecklin, 2025). Important arms control treaties are lapsing with no alternatives in sight. Also troubling are efforts to develop and deploy hypersonic cruise missiles, to integrate artificial intelligence into military command and control systems, to marshal space forces, and so on. Add to that the emboldenment of autocrats like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, with North Korean troops now fighting against Ukraine. What could possibly go wrong?

On the more hopeful side, newly elected President Donald Trump has signaled his desire for possible negotiations on nuclear arms with other states, including Russia and China (Wolfsthal, 2025). The question is whether Trump is sincere, knowledgeable, or capable enough to restabilize the nuclear weapon control regime.

It is likely that the ties binding nations together in cooperative, conflict-free, mutually beneficial relationships will be built principally through economic integration. This is already well along globally, with impediments to further progress dominated by political divisions among nuclear states. Rather than moving nations to solve problems, nuclear weapons seem more often to perpetuate posturing and belligerence. The path toward the abolition of nuclear weapons as an existential threat to humanity can only be travelled by leadership with the appropriate vision, conviction, and caution. Ironically, Ronald Reagan and Michail Gorbachev were such leaders. By contrast, heads of nuclear states today seem incapable of compromising toward a general benefit. In these leaders, the vision of a nuclear-free world has faded, leaving the rest of us with a vision of burning cities. Unfortunately, the coincident alignment of statesmen with sufficient wisdom across all nuclear states, as well as those seeking a nuclear shield, seems unlikely anytime soon.

Is it then possible that a major city like Los Angeles could someday become a sacrificial pawn in a dangerous game of bluff and bluster triggered by policies built around such questionable concepts as “escalate to de-escalate”? Could a hypersonic missile launch be misinterpreted by a buggy computer program as a nuclear attack? Might arrogance and ignorance in high offices lead to poor decisions and disaster? The world should not be at the mercy of such hypotheticals.

Los Angeles. Hiroshima. Two cities—separated by thousands of miles and decades of time—have each suffered one of the two greatest existential threats of the modern era: climate change and nuclear war. Global warming is approaching slowly like a tsunami wave on the horizon. Nuclear war waits in the shadows, a rattlesnake ready to strike. Almost everyone escapes from a wildfire. Few have ever walked away from a nuclear burst. Manmade climate change represents the slow withering of humankind. Nuclear war represents its swift annihilation, a vision of Armageddon.

Notes

[1] In terms of absolute numbers, the difference between 1982 and today is an increase in urban/suburban residents of nearly three billion people. In 2022 in the United States, 83 percent of the population was urbanized; in the Russian Federation, 75 percent; the European Union, 75 percent; China, 64 percent; and India, 36 percent—all representing significant increases from earlier decades. According to the United Nations, the world overall is projected to be 68 percent urbanized by 2050.

^[2] By convention, one kiloton of yield is equivalent in energy to 1×10¹² calories (cal), or 4.2×10¹² joule (J). Hence, the thermal energy emission amounts to about 3.4×10¹¹ cal/kt. Glasstone and Dolan (1977) provide general algorithms for estimating thermal pulse intensities (as well as blast and initial radiation effects) at various distances from a weapon detonation, authoritatively based on extensive nuclear test data and analysis. The thermal radiant exposure is measured in units of calories per square centimeter (cal/cm²); that is, the total thermal energy falling on a one centimeter by one centimeter surface directly facing the fireball unobstructed. Glasstone and Dolan present values of potential thermal exposure as a function of yield and slant path for detonations in the lower atmosphere assuming a visibility range of 12 miles.

Glasstone and Dolan also discuss the response of many common materials to exposure to nuclear thermal radiation. The response is sensitive to the size of a detonation owing to the change in duration of the thermal pulse with yield, such that mid-range yields are more effective than megaton yields by about a third. Some paper materials can ignite at thermal fluences as low as about 5 cal/cm², and certain fabrics at approximately 10 cal/cm². Light outdoor organic debris can also be lit at about 5 cal/cm². In general, the larger and bulkier the material the more intense the radiation required for ignition. Nevertheless, many everyday items are flammable at thermal exposures of 10–20 cal/cm².

Glasstone and Dolan also point out that most structures will be extensively damaged by blast overpressures in the range of 10–20 pounds per square inch (psi). ‘Overpressure’ is the peak pressure of the blast shock wave above normal ambient air pressure, which is nominally ~14–15 psi at the ground. The overpressure is accompanied by powerful dynamical winds behind the blast front. The combination of overpressure and dynamical forces can be indicated by stating the overpressure alone. Typical residential homes would be severely damaged at 4–5 psi, while windows could be shattered, along with some structural damage, at overpressures as low as 0.5–2 psi. For a 500-kt detonation, the height of burst (hob) that maximizes the area subject to overpressures ³10 psi is ~1.8 kilometers (km), when the ground range for ³10-psi overpressure is ~3.6 km from ground zero, covering an area of some 40 square kilometers (km²). Overpressures of 5 psi occur out to ~5.3 km, or an area of ~90 km², while 2 psi reaches ~9 km and ~250 km². For comparison in this case, the distance at which thermal radiation exceeds 10 cal/cm² would be ~8 km, with an exposed area of ~200 km². At 5 cal/cm², the range is ~11 km and the exposed area ~380 km². These effects indicate that for modern strategic weapons, the heavily blast-destroyed area (³10 psi) would represent perhaps 10–20% of the overall area of significant blast and fire damage.

[3] Beyond that, significant blast damage would reach to about 6.2 kilometers and thermal ignitions to about 6 kilometers from ground zero.

[4] With respect to the course of radiation induced illness, complicating factors would be important, such as concomitant injuries, food and water deprivation, hygienic challenges, exposure to smoke and other toxins, and psychological stresses, all of which would be expected after a nuclear attack.

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