Plot Seed: Six Places to Nuke When You’re Serious

[Nyrath]

http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/?p=120

Your players will go insane while globe-trotting to foil the villain's Evil Plot at these various locations.

 

The idea was if you had a 1 megaton nuclear device, what are the top six places you could detonate it to cause maximum evil?

 

[1] Center of Tehran, Iran. Israel would be blamed, and the middle east would erupt into total war.

 

[2] Washington, D.C. While congress is in session. At the very least, every member of Congress would be wiped out, along with thousands of important ambassadors, lobbyists, political thinkers, and of course the Administration.

 

[3] Destabilize an oceanic shield volcano next to a methane clathrate deposit. This would make global warming 1000% worse.

 

[4] New York City, NY. Given the urban density, one could wipe out almost 1/300 of the entire population of the US.

 

[5] Knock off a chunk of Cumbre Viejo at La Palma in the Canary Islands. The tidal wave would cross all the oceans of the globe three times before they died out.

 

[6] Nuke the Yellowstone Caldera. This would create a megavolcano that would cover the US out to the Mississippi river with lava, and the ash cloud would stop sunlight for about a year.

 

[5]

[Cancer]

Re: Plot Seed: Six Places to Nuke When You’re Serious

 

So we get to fill out the rest of the Top Ten based on personal preferences?

[ghost-angel]

Re: Plot Seed: Six Places to Nuke When You’re Serious

 

[1] Long Beach, CA, USA - munisions base for the pacific fleet.

 

[2] Paris, France - They will return fire, this will piss off the rest of Europe as well I'm sure. The pact with Germany forces them into action and it will bring NATO to alert.

 

[3] Colorado Springs, CO, USA - NORAD

 

[4] Israel (pick a spot) - They will also return fire. Possibly indistriminately.

 

[5] Canary Islands - as above, knocking off the shelf will likely trigger a tidal wave to remove the eastern seaboard of the US and then some. (this will damage and/or remove DC, no need to waste a bomb there).

 

[6] Beijing, China - Making China angry will never be a good thing.

[sinanju]

Re: Plot Seed: Six Places to Nuke When You’re Serious

 

MECCA -- The islamic world will immediately assume that Israel, America or Britain (or some combination of the three) did it and go ape-****.

[megaplayboy]

Re: Plot Seed: Six Places to Nuke When You’re Serious

 

Religious targets--Mecca, Vatican City, Jerusalem, Tibet, Salt Lake City, and somewhere in India

 

Cultural targets--Hollywood, Manhattan/Broadway, London, Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong

 

Political targets--Moscow, DC, NYC, the capital of the EU, Peking, Bombay or Calcutta

 

Economic targets--Shanghai, Tokyo, NY, Detroit, Persian Gulf, main Saudi oilfield or refinery site

 

Military targets--Okinawa, San Diego, St. Petersburg Russia, Baghdad, somewhere in North Dakota, Dimona

 

even one nuke going off any of these places would be devastating and traumatic

[Funksaw]

Re: Plot Seed: Six Places to Nuke When You’re Serious

 

Omaha, Nebraska.

 

Weird choice but it's a major communications hub WITHOUT being a culturally significant target. If you've got a villian who wants to conquer the world, rather than destroy it, this would through most of America's communications into disarray and destablize the economy.

 

The X-Plane

 

This is for the sadistic villian who wants to make the world -suffer.- A nuclear blast in the high atmosphere would be low in immediate body count but the radioactive explosion would cover a wider area, resulting in not an immediate massive kill but generations of cancer-ridden flipper babies.

 

Auckland, New Zealand

 

For the villian who wants to destroy the world but can wait a few decades. Wellington's "No Nukes" policy is designed expressly to prevent this sort of thing. Nuking a location in New Zealand would greatly increase the demand for nuclear proliferation in smaller nations who until now have seen the aquisition of nuclear weapons as a reason to be targeted in a nuclear strike.

 

Arabian Sea

 

Can you say Tsunami? Not only do you have major population centers in India and Pakistan (who will both likely blame each other for the attack) you also disrupt the international shipping of oil from the Persian Gulf.

[Basil]

Re: Plot Seed: Six Places to Nuke When You’re Serious

 

Interesting page you linked to. I doubt his idea annent the Yellowstone caldera; I suspect his bomb is a couple of orders of magnitude too small.

 

My list of 6 is oriented towards long-term economic effects:

 

1-3: destroy the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal, and the St. Lawrence Seaway. Bingo! you've played unholy hell with world trade.

 

4: I believe a bomb placed just right at the southeast end of the Strait of Malacca could churn up enough mud and debris to block the strait. After all, it is very shallow there. Again, world trade is scragged.

 

5: This is obscure---How does sharply decreasing the supply of bread, baked goods, and similar in Europe, and playing hob with the economy of the USA/Canada "wheat bowl," simultaneously, sound? There is a railroad from south Saskatchewan to the port town of Churchill in Manitoba, on Hudson Bay. In the summer, a majority of the wheat exported from the USA and Canada travels on that railroad. Lonely, isolated, it carries a big part of the money wheat farmers make, and a goodly fraction of the food Europe eats. It is out on the permafrost, far from anywhere else, which means it'd be a ripe royal pain in the rear to fix, particularly if the area broken is also radioactive.

 

6: I'm not sure. Perhaps the Bosporus or the Dardanelles, though they may be deep and steep enough to not be blockable with one bomb (the Strait of Gibraltar certainly is). The same is true of the Strait of Magallan. Perhaps the Volga-Don Canal? I might have to settle for one of the great "economic capitals" like NYC, London, Tokyo, Zurich, etc.

[JackValhalla]

Re: Plot Seed: Six Places to Nuke When You’re Serious

 

I read somewhere that if you dropped a decent size explosive charge into the six major continental shelves, you'd disrupt the pressure-crystallized methane plates under the water. The best deposits would off the Eastern seaboard of the USA, off the southern coast of Mexico, the Dead Sea, the Sea of Japan, Millions of years worth of built-up methane deposits stored and compressed that have not been released and broken down in the atmosphere. If you released them all at once, it would covere the surface of the earth to a distance of 124 feet or so. That's sufficient to choke out a large amount of animal life. And then, it catches fire. The whole world burning, with over 120 feet of methane over every square foot of the planet. That'll affect the climate some.

Previous poster mentioned disrupting enough to increase global warming by a thousand percent, but if you go far enough with it, you can just end all human life.

[Highwayman]

Re: Plot Seed: Six Places to Nuke When You’re Serious

 

I read somewhere that if you dropped a decent size explosive charge into the six major continental shelves, you'd disrupt the pressure-crystallized methane plates under the water. The best deposits would off the Eastern seaboard of the USA, off the southern coast of Mexico, the Dead Sea, the Sea of Japan, Millions of years worth of built-up methane deposits stored and compressed that have not been released and broken down in the atmosphere. If you released them all at once, it would covere the surface of the earth to a distance of 124 feet or so. That's sufficient to choke out a large amount of animal life. And then, it catches fire. The whole world burning, with over 120 feet of methane over every square foot of the planet. That'll affect the climate some.

Previous poster mentioned disrupting enough to increase global warming by a thousand percent, but if you go far enough with it, you can just end all human life.

 

Even if that's actually not true, and I suspect it isn't, it's too "comic book" not to be true in a comic book universe. Stolen and repped.

[freakboy6117]

Re: Plot Seed: Six Places to Nuke When You’re Serious

 

oldie but goodie the strategic gold reserve at fort knox

 

alternativly there are stategic oil reserves also major refinaries (there are only a few taking out even 2 or 3 at once would seriously damage things

[Hermit]

Re: Plot Seed: Six Places to Nuke When You’re Serious

 

And to our friends in the NSA, CIA, and FBI...

Hope you're enjoying the thread

[shadowcat1313]

Re: Plot Seed: Six Places to Nuke When You’re Serious

 

various stories about an ocean trench or some such where a well placed nuke could set off the whole "Ring of Fire" volcano chain...

 

if this is more than just a mad scientist plan, one nuke could wreck more havoc than most of hte above scenarios

[bwdemon]

Re: Plot Seed: Six Places to Nuke When You’re Serious

 

Hmm... New York, Tokyo, Washington (D.C.), Vatican City, Jerusalem, or Moscow?

 

You could go with one of the potential world-destroying options, but I don't see myself as one of those villains who just wants to destroy everything. I'd want to survive to live in a world largely unaltered (except in the social/economic/political senses) by my actions.

[Rapier]

Re: Plot Seed: Six Places to Nuke When You’re Serious

 

WotC headquarters?

 

Fox News Studio?

[Marketeer]

Re: Plot Seed: Six Places to Nuke When You’re Serious

 

For the serious sadistic supervillain:

 

1 Haight Street, Suite A

San Francisco, CA 94102

 

 

[Undertow]

Re: Plot Seed: Six Places to Nuke When You’re Serious

 

Maybe some items for 7, 8, 9,

How about Niagra Falls? if done right it could upset the infrastructure for electric power for most of the east coast that could last for months. That would cause the US government, and Wall street to grind to a halt, rampant looting and a humanitarian disaster that would make New Orleans look like a tailgate party. It also would sever the St Lawrence river channel that is critical for the American and Canadian economy in the great lakes region.

 

What effect would such a bomb have if detonated on the south end of the Goldengate bridge? The San Francisco area is home to a major US navy base and massive port facilities The most valuable real estate in the world would be worthless overnight, This would also have economic effects on silicon valley and that's assuming the blast is to small to cause a sizemic event.

 

Borrowing an idea from Tom Clancy use the Nuclear weapon to touch off a war between China and India. What happens when the worlds two most populous countries start fighting. At this point in time India, and China export how many things to the world?

[Manic Typist]

Re: Plot Seed: Six Places to Nuke When You’re Serious

 

For the serious sadistic supervillain:

 

1 Haight Street, Suite A

San Francisco, CA 94102

 

 

 

Hero Games has made contingency plans. I dareyou.

[Mr_Yuck]

Re: Plot Seed: Six Places to Nuke When You’re Serious

 

Living in WA state, I've grown up with volcanoes in my back yard. I've seen a lot of information regarding the eventual eruption of Mt. Ranier.

 

If a well placed nuke could kick start this old girl, most of Seattle and the surrounding areas would be destroyed by the pyroclastic flows as well as the population being choked to death by the resulting ash cloud.

[shadowcat1313]

Re: Plot Seed: Six Places to Nuke When You’re Serious

 

the scene from Mars Attacks where the white house gets obliterated and everybody stands up and cheers comes to mind.

 

other places where one could wreck havoc without even using nukes etc

Prudhoe Bay oil terminals or the pipeline stations

 

the old Morrow Project RPG had a whole list of nuclear targets, and you get 150 nukes to spread around the kindness on your own

 

bloomington normal probably wouldnt see a nuke, unless your upset with Mitsubishi Motors or State Farm Insurance, both of which are headquartered here.

[Sundog]

Re: Plot Seed: Six Places to Nuke When You’re Serious

 

Tokyo, Japan.

 

Japan is the only nation besides Iceland that has specifically renounced offensive warfare. If it gets nuked, the entire non-proliferation deal is OFF. Plus, Japan would almost certainly rearm - which would cause political chaos throughout East Asia.

[Kenn]

Re: Plot Seed: Six Places to Nuke When You’re Serious

 

the scene from Mars Attacks where the

bloomington normal probably wouldnt see a nuke, unless your upset with Mitsubishi Motors or State Farm Insurance, both of which are headquartered here.

 

No, but most of Illinois a few hours north would be roasted in a nuclear attack.

 

Chicago - major population center.

Batavia - Fermilab

Rockford - production of vital airplane parts

Savanna - the Savanna Army Depot (I don't know for 100% certainty if it's still activly used, but I know that during the Cold War it used to house a fair number of nuclear weapons.)

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Plot Seed: Six Places to Nuke When You’re Serious

 

the scene from Mars Attacks where the white house gets obliterated and everybody stands up and cheers comes to mind.

 

other places where one could wreck havoc without even using nukes etc

Prudhoe Bay oil terminals or the pipeline stations

 

the old Morrow Project RPG had a whole list of nuclear targets, and you get 150 nukes to spread around the kindness on your own

 

bloomington normal probably wouldnt see a nuke, unless your upset with Mitsubishi Motors or State Farm Insurance, both of which are headquartered here.

 

I used that list from the Morrow Project to help with a end of term project in high school. I did a multiple overlay map of California showing estimated Soviet targets in the event of a nuclear exchange. Using TMP's stats for target and type of missile, I did overlays for Primary Secondary and tertiary blast effects, plus probable fallout patterns based on current weather patterns modified in pattern by the blast zones.

 

It got put up on the wall, and would up in some district display.

 

I really freaked out my class

[Yansuf]

Re: Plot Seed: Six Places to Nuke When You’re Serious

 

The X-Plane

This is for the sadistic villian who wants to make the world -suffer.- A nuclear blast in the high atmosphere would be low in immediate body count but the radioactive explosion would cover a wider area, resulting in not an immediate massive kill but generations of cancer-ridden flipper babies.

 

Sorry to tread on your bubble, but from the point of view of serious health consequences, a high altitude nuke burst is negligible.

Fallout is the material vaporized by the fireball and made radioactive, "falling out" of the cloud as it turns solid. A surface burst can vaporize millions of tons of earth, etc.; a high altitude burst only vaporizes the bomb itself, at most one ton or so. Insignificant radioactive effects. The "initial pulse" of radiation (x-rays and neutrons) is quickly stopped by air, over a mile or so away it is generally harmless. A high altitude detonation will have little effect on the ground, except for EMP.

The EMP effect could be major, depending on the location and height of the detonation. But that's a seperate matter.

[Yansuf]

Re: Plot Seed: Six Places to Nuke When You’re Serious

 

the scene from Mars Attacks where the white house gets obliterated and everybody stands up and cheers comes to mind.

 

I believe that you are thinking of the movie "Independence Day."

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

Re: Plot Seed: Six Places to Nuke When You’re Serious

 

1) My ex-wifes apartment.

 

 

 

 

Six times