As pointed out in email: who nukes whom?

[james_davis_nicoll]

I am going to put a cut in because I am not sure how large that image is.

From February 3 through May 1, 843,860 unique visitors logged 4,328,729 "detonations" on NUKEMAP (the average of five "nukes" per visitor has stayed strong throughout the entire period). Given how the link circulated (and the fact that at the moment NUKEMAP is written only in English), it is not surprising that the top two countries are the United States (363,000 visits) and the United Kingdom (65,400).[4] After that, though, come Canada, China, Russia, France, Germany (between 44,800 to 56,000 visits each), Sweden (33,400), Spain (20,500) and Switzerland, Australia, and Finland (between 13,800 to 14,100 each). From there, all visits are less than 10,000 per country, though people from nearly ever country in the world have visited. Notably, from a nuclear perspective, Brazil had 8,300 visits, Israel 3,600 visits, India 2,900 visits, South Korea 2,000 visits, Japan 1,600 visits, Pakistan 276 visits, and Iran 44 visits.[5] (North Korea does not appear on the list, but its web traffic is reportedly routed through China.)

As for countries targeted by the "detonations," the numbers are only slightly different.[7] Some 41 percent of all "detonations" (1.8 million) were within the boundaries of the United States. This roughly equals the fact that 39 percent of all visits were from American IP addresses, and perhaps supports the conclusion that quite a lot of people were "nuking their own backyard," as a number of commentators put it. The percentage of "detonations" of the United Kingdom, Canada, China, Russia, France, and Germany (between three to eight percent of the total) compares very closely with the percentage of total users from those countries as well (between six to seven percent of the total).

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/krin_o_o_/]

why are there so many detonations mid-atlantic, mid-indian, and mid-pacific oceans? Somebody planing for Atlantis, Mu, and Lemuria rising?

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe they just like the cool visual effect of an underwater explosion? http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4139/4925999983_a8979dcb1a.jpg

Bruce

[kgbooklog.livejournal.com]

I can see the appeal of nuking the Marianas Trench or the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, but there's a lot that looks like people tossing in random coordinates.

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

History shows again and again how nature points up the folly of men.

[malada.livejournal.com]

Points for the Blue Oyster Cult reference.

Godzilla!

-m

[tortoise.livejournal.com]

I'd bet the clusters right in the middle are kind of like the mid-Africa and mid-Australia clusters; they're people trying to see how big the bomb has to be to hit both coasts simultaneously.

[lostwanderfound.livejournal.com]

I'd assumed that the mid-Australia cluster was people trying to flatten Uluru...

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

oh hey, a new geographical location I've never noticed before: what's that big elongated island north of russia?

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

Novaya Zemlya, I believe. (Lit. "New Land".) Ironically it was the site of many of the USSR's nuclear tests, including the "Tsar Bomba" 50MT test.

-- Steve will admit to nuking his own home town just to get a feel for the scale.

edited to wikify

[captaincrowbar.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

Now I'm wondering how many of those spots east of New Zealand represent people trying to nuke R'lyeh.

[refugee50s.livejournal.com]

When I played with this some months ago, I pretty much only nuked likely targets around my location and other places I've lived, just to see my risk. I didn't bomb any place I consider to be hostile.

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

In bombing places I've lived, I was bombing places I considered to be hostile. Win-win!

[derekl1963.livejournal.com]

We used to use the lat/long of the piers in Charleston (since we had them in a manual for other reasons) for making up training target packages for our missiles...

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I can see no way that could go horribly wrong.

How did Albino Pirate put it? Something about spendidly.

[derekl1963.livejournal.com]

Training targeting never went fully 'live' (active, completed, and enabled on ready missiles), so that's not a problem. :) Many, many precautions, checks, and balances to ensure that only authorized targeting ever went fully 'live'.

We just did it that way because the books with lat/long of real targets had some very special and onerous handling requirements, while the manual with the lat/longs for Navy piers was classified at a much lower level. (But still classified because their accuracy was much higher than that available to civilians.)

[le-trombone.livejournal.com]

As I pointed out, one nukes one's self, of course.