A scary map has revealed a long list of targets that could be in the firing line in the US in the event of a terrifying nuclear war – and targets range from major cities to rural areas.
A chilling war map details the terrifying Armageddon that could be in store for the US in the event of a nuclear attack.
The map appears to date back to an article in American news outlet CBS in 2015, but it has resurfaced on social media a number of times since. It has been claimed that the same map uses data from the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) along with the National Resources Defense Council and Medicine and Global Survival.
But a spokesperson for FEMA told the Independent in 2023 that it “does not, and has not, released any type of formal map of potential nuclear targets.” The statement added: “However, FEMA provides information to the public to help them prepare for a potential hazardous or radiological event through Ready.gov.”
According to the map, Alabama, Arizona, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee could be targeted because of active nuclear plants. Some survival hopes can be found in rural areas of Idaho, Maine, Northern California, and Oregon.
Fears of a nuclear attack on US soil have been raised in a series of current global conflicts, including in the Middle East and Ukraine. There are around 12,500 nuclear weapons in the world, with more than 5,000 each belonging to Russia and the US.
This week, tensions between North and South Korea escalated as North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un flaunted his advancing nuclear and missile programme. He has engaged in electronic and psychological warfare, such as flying thousands of balloons to drop trash and anti-South Korean propaganda leaflets in the South.
Urging Kim to stop, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said North Korean operations to manipulate GPS signals were detected from around the western border city of Kaesong and the nearby city of Haeju on Friday and Saturday. They said the activities disrupted dozens of civilian aircraft and several vessels.
This year, investigative journalist Annie Jacobsen detailed the awful horror of what could occur in the event of nuclear war in her book ‘Nuclear War: A Scenario’.
The book said a counteroffensive launched by the US president would mean that in just 72 minutes, five billion people could be wiped out.
Jacobsen wrote: “This is the reality of the world in which we all live. The nuclear war scenario proposed in this book could happen tomorrow. Or later today.”
She added: “On top of the initial flash of thermonuclear light, which is 180 million degrees, which catches everything on fire in a nine mile diameter radius; on top of the bulldozing effect of the wind and all the buildings coming down and more fires igniting on top of the radiation poisoning people to death in minutes and hours and days and weeks, if they happen to have survived, on top of all of that, each one of these fires creates a mega fire that is 100 or more square miles and so.”
Quicker than Michael Johnson but still not enough for gold