The Return of 1980s-Era Nuclear-Strike Maps

I grew up with maps showing how cities would be obliterated by a nuke. They’re back

A Nukemap visualization of New York getting hit with a Topol Russian nuclear weapon

It’s never a great time to be a teenager, but the 1980s had their own particular challenges.

One of the main ones? Wondering — on a daily basis — if you were going to die, without much warning, in a nuclear strike.

I’m not really exaggerating how frequently I and my friends pondered nuclear death. We had good reason to think about it! In the early 1980s, the Cold War was in full bloom, Ronald Reagan was ad-libbing jokes about dropping bombs, and pop culture was positively jittery with nuclear anxiety. (Back then, the Top 10 frequently featured songs about nuclear war: “Games Without Frontiers”, “99 Red Balloons”, or — if you lived in Canada as I did — Rush’s “Distant Early Warning”.)

And on top of all that was the ghastly spectacle of “The Day After”, a 1983 movie that dramatized the lives of Americans who survive nuclear strikes on US cities. Some are blinded by the bomb strike; others are slowly killed by radiation poisoning. The movie ends with a survivor trying vainly to reach others by short-wave radio. Over 100 million people saw “The Day After” on its first airing, despite it being wildly controversial, with the network requiring edits to make it…