I got waylaid into this subject by another thread that brought it up, and a longstanding interest in nuclear weapons.

Really, it would depend on the size of the nuke. SR actually has a very simple in game method to do it. As an example, and gratuitous use of wikipedia and answers.com, the Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima, which was actually quite small as nukes go, was equivalent to 15 kilotons of TNT. Or, 15000 metric tons.
Which is 15000000 kilograms.
Taking the square root gives 3872 X rating of the explosives.
Using an explosives rating of 3, which is where other conventional ones begin in the Core Book gives 11616 as the damage code for a nuclear bomb.

This actually makes the strength of the bomb more powerful. The base blast radius for Little Boy was 1.6 kilometers, at -2 per meter that gives a remaining strength of 8416. The shrapnel and severe fire extended for about another 1.6 km leaving a strength of 5216 after 3.2 km.

Is what I have calculated up so far. Even though Little Boy was detonated a full .5 km above ground, the damage code is still excessive of where it should be. Not that it should really come up in a game but. . .

Of course, any sufficiently large explosion using the SR rules is going to encounter the same problems, but at those kilogram ranges, the nuke is having double the effect it should.

The Demo rules are such at low amount you don't blow up enoughs but with big amount you do way more that you would IRL

linear scaling vs diminishing returns?

Couldn't the blast attenuate at a rate greater than -2 per meters of radius? Also those rules assume small (sane?) explosions. The attenuation IRL is probably not linear. When you're dealling with relatively short ranges (grenades, rockets, etc) a linear function gives a rough approximation but when you start talking about blast radii measured in KM you probably need a log function or something (I suck at math so I'll let somebody smarter take it from here).

Otherwise I got two words for you: radioactive orichalcum.

winternight?

I think you'd have to start using the destroy a barrier rules with air as the barrier. Probably something like the "shoot through a barrier" rule. If we say that every meter of air has an armor value of 1, then one kilometer would be 1000 armor. So, after 3.2 km, instead of 5200 DV, it'd only be about 2000 DV. Still enough to shred everything in its path, but I think that brings it more in line with reality.

Emphasis mine. Really, now I've seen everything there is to see in dumpshock. Circular discussions, stick and shock discussions, drop bears, zombie apocalypse and now, how to calculate the damage caused by a nuclear device and how the damage diminishes along the blast radius.

Speaking of nukes, who all has them in the Sixth World, anyways? I mean, I know there's been some weird stuff going on where they don't work quite the same anymore (TBH, been ignoring that in my campaign). But is there a list of nuclear powers?

My best guesses:
We know Ares does, as far as the megas go. Others, I don't see how it would be profitable for them.
UCAS, France, Russia, Israel and Britain probably all still have them.
I recall something in Shadows of Asia where China's lost most of its stockpile, but I imagine the four main successor states would be working hard to get some of their own.
India probably still does, although Pakistan it sounds like, got most of theirs confiscated by CC operatives after Kashmir.
And I'd really be surprised if Aztlan didn't.
I could see Amazonia not having them, and instead investing in some other kind of WMD (Awakened high magic, bio weapons, who knows?).
Japan? Culturally taboo, so maybe not. Or maybe, since they're the big shots now. Might be that a Japanacorp has the nuclear umbrella? Or it's possible that post Korea-2, they picked up where NK left off.
It strikes me that a lot of the nation-states with their backs against the wall for whatever reason (Sioux, Asamundo) might be trying, at least.
Aside from Sioux, CAS and Pueblo strike me as the most likely North American successor states to have them.
I could see the Tirs pursuing it, as well, considering how much smaller in population they are in comparison to hostile powers like the UCAS.
Azania seems unlikely, but possible, as South Africa had them at one point. They really don't have neighbors strong enough to threaten them, unless the Angolans have them more worried than I think.

What do you guys think? Am I leaving out anything or anyone important?

One question, do nukes actually work in Shadowrun? I seem to recall every nuke fired since the start of the sixth world has either disappeared or failed to detonate for various reasons. I seem to recall reading a theory somewhere that nukes simply don't operate in the sixth world anymore.

Doh, Cermac. Never mind.

Oh and as for who has them, Lofwyr through Saeder Krupp, and also Mitsuhama.

Can't be ... they used nukes to kill off all the insect spirits in Chicago, didn't they?

cermac was a mess, it was a tac nuke inside a high rating physical barrier during a large scale ritual.

end result is a theory that the blast got somehow channeled onto the astral, at least partially.

the big, city busting nukes have all failed in some way or other.

1 Armor != -1 DV

and heck, its basically saying the same as the blast drops by 1 pr meter, rather then the "normal" 2 (except if your blast generated fragments).

And that too. Instead of -2 you're doing -3.

Realistically you'd be doing -1 per distance squared.

-1 per (m*m/3,000) gives us a reasonable value at 3.2 km: 1786 DV. A 5200 DV blast dissipates completely after 3949.6 meters.

Doesn't the armor rating of the barrier decrease the DV of the attack? And I'm saying that the air's barrier rating should be used in addition to normal blast attenuation rules (which are for small things where air pressure just doesn't matter as much).

No. It adds armor. Which is rolled. Subsequent layers get all the previous layer's armor as an armor bonus.

And that's still linear.

Given the fact that they want to own South American, you know that Aztech has gotta have 'em...

There is a theory that they aren't as powerful as they used to be, and there have been hints that nuclear reactions interact with mana in some way, the Bug City Cermak Blast should have shredded that part of Chicago, but only toasted the hive there.

Dunkelzahn's Secrets includes a drop in about funding a thesis on the relationship between mana and nuclear energy.

Aztlan contains drop in discussion between Big D and some unidentified IEs that Lofwyr controlling nukes is somehow ironic. This may be a reference to his activities in the Fourth World, or could be indicative of their belief that nukes aren't final sanction weapons the way they are portrayed anymore.

The Winternight storyline implies nukes can be moderated via magic, but provides no details. In System Failure, there is the question of how effective nukes would be as final sanctions against the Winternight site. In the aftermath, there is some discussion of whether the yield of the weapons is as expected.

I'm going to state the obvious here: accurately calculating the DV of a nuke is totally beyond the scope of any SR game I can imagine. And I would would like to point out that to do so would require the GM to determine the total armor and structure ratings for every building, car, landscape feature, etc between the epicenter and a target.

Also, TNT is a rating 4 explosive according to Arsenal, so the original proposed DV is conservative.

Who'd use nukes anyhow if Thor shots will do the job just as well without the fallout stuff?

Lots of little factions that don't have the space infrastructure to support thor shots, perhaps?

Nukes should just go into the 'Deus Ex Machina' territory as a GM'ing tool. Is some PC / player / rules lawyer going to actually try to argue that they have enough armor or barriers or xyz to be able to survive it? That goes against 2 rules of GMing to begin with.

1) You only nuke from orbit ... just to be sure.
2) You don't argue with the GM

Regarding the ability to use nukes, isn't Israel implied/stated to have used nukes in the Jihad?

Yes, they nuked Libya. Pre-Awakening.

And now they hold corporate death match war games there!

Speaking of Desert Wars, I'm still seriously hoping to get some "Sports of the 6th world" write-ups for that and Urban Brawl and other totally cyberpunk style things in either an upcoming book, or in one of the PDF-only supplements. 4th ed has made the whole setting far too reasonable. Death games FTW.

I was actually referring to the Jihad in 2036/7.

Actually, IIRC, there was at least some kind of explanation for this in Burning Bright (might be wrong there, it's been a decade since I last read it and GM'ed my Bug City campaign...),

That was aimed towards Europe and not Israel

Israel only nuked Lybia in reasponse to a chemical weapons attack...which seemingly caused very little damage (given that Israel is still around), so maybe C weapons also are no longer what they used to be.

Hmm, now i find myself pondering magic as a star trek replicator. Sir clarke would have had fun with that...

IMO, if a nuke goes off, you don't roll Armour, you roll Edge.

You roll over and die

more like burn edge, hand of god style.

(and pray that there is a refrigerator nearby)

I actually worked up the numbers back when I wrote Burning Bright, based on the publicly available information on the yields of sub-tactical nuclear weapons and even had a map at one point of ground zero and the various effect radii for both the expected blast and what actually occurred. I remember being surprised at the time at how limited the destruction really would have been for that class of weapon. (A bit of trivia for those who do not know - ground zero for the blast was across the street from the FASA Corp offices at the time, and the final stages of the op were controlled out of that building... see here... so, yea, I kinda nuked FASA...)

TomD

BTW, for what it is worth... I cannot think of any reason for rolling any kind of damage tests for a nuclear weapon. Nukes are storytelling devices. Edge, perhaps, damage dice no.

TD

Israel was also involved. Their ability to hold out and threaten the invaders from the rear caused the Great Jihad to stall in the Balkins allowing time for Europe to organize their defense.

well heck, of all the people to show up on this forum...

Yeah, Israel got shoehorned in with Shadows of Asia, because the guys at [which company had the licence at that time?] probably realized that a giant invasion force which nearly rolled over Europe should have had some effect on Israel. So the creative heads got together and after long and careful determination these professionals came up with a good story to explain Israel's survival...they used magic.
And if you add "they used nukes" it does not get any better - right, we just had WW III and people got this close to pushing the Red Button, let's just fling a few nukes left and right and no superpower is going to think the missiles are aimed at them.

aircraft and non-icbm delivery? Heck, the tomahawk can be used to deliver a nuke, iirc.

Yeah, I started out using rating 4 initially, and the DV was way too high. So I dropped it to rating 3 to try and approximate it more accurately.

There have been some good ideas in here, and some interesting stuff. Thinking using -3 per meter for a spherical explosion, which follows the SR linear extrapolation nicely. -1 for planar which drops off equal to radius, -2 for circular which drops off based on r^2, and -3/m for a spherical wave.

Using -3, leaves a DV of 2016 at 3.2 km. Which is still a bit high, but gives the closest, simplest, approach so far.

@ Tom D, I am interested to know what calculations you used, as I ignored most of the real world mechanics and did purely SR mechanics .

Personally, I am not sure if even burning edge should be enough to survive at ground zero. In the end, if you screwed up bad enough to be at ground zero for a nuke in SR, you got whats coming to you.

But, now that the general DV is worked out, even if it is still under discussion for specifics, what is the AP of a nuke?

Attenuation by wave action in any system is geometric. Referencing acoustics on this one.

A couple of real world figures

fireball radius for a ground burst is approximately 145 feet * ((yield in kilotons) ^ 0.4)

Blast damage scales according to the cube root of the yield, pretty much as SR shows.

99% of people die at 55-65 PSI of overpressure. That's at about 400 feet from a 1kt ground burst.
50% of people die at 45-55 PSI of overpressure. That's at about 500 feet from a 1kt ground burst.
1% of people die at 35-45 PSI of overpressure. That's at about 600 feet from a 1kt ground burst.
These are direct injuries, ignoring minor issues like getting thrown into a concrete wall or ripped to shreds by a plate glass window....

At 1/2 mile you'll get whole body 2nd degree burns from a 1kt burst, in the first 1/10 of a second or so. Being completely covered in blistered burns seems like it would suck... This doesn't exactly scale like blast.

At about 3750 feet you get a 100 rem radiation dose. At 2250 feet you'll get 1000 rems and are going to die. again, this doesn't exactly scale like blast.

Atztlan Sourcebook mentioned in the shadowtalk that all of the big 8 corps have nukes, but most only own a very small stockpile (Ares and SK being the main exceptions).

I could imagine that nuclear weapons are extremely widespread in SR.
In fact, the unclear interactions between magic and nuclear weapons would be about the only thing to keep proliferation in check.

This is WWII technology we are talking about.
Nukes aren't that hard to make, there'd be a whole lot more nuclear powers around nowadays if it wasn't for the political repercussions.

I'd also add the CAS as the other main successor of the USA to the list of nuclear powers and i'd definitely count the Japanese empire in.
They've completely abandoned their pacifist doctrines in SR, they've got the know how, they have been surrounded by more or less hostile nuclear powers for decades (PrC, North Korea, Russia), the USA have stopped to protect them long ago and do not even exist anymore, they have become openly imperialist in the SR fluff- it's a good guess they have their collection of nukes.
I don't think they'd have invaded San Francisco without a nuclear option to back up their position.

I also don't think that CFS has nuclear weapons, otherwise the Japanese wouldn't have dared to start their invasion.

Or perhaps they could have the few nukes deployed there by the old USA government before they declaring independence, but lack the resources and funds to make new ones?

Pre 6th world nukes/longrage nukes don't seam to work any more. For all we know there could be some pro world free spirit that eats ICBMs. I'm having a hard time working out all the nuking and types + did they secuseed for fail in SR off the top of my skull.

Cruise missiles are slow and (in comparison) short-ranged, and freefall nukes are sooo last century

maybe so. but if it works, use it.

Burning Edge/Hand of God always works. Standing at ground zero when a multi-warhead missile takes out the entire Metroplex.

If your the only one around with edge than a free spirit with the necessary powers pulls you bodily into the astral just in time.

If enough people burn edge all at the same then maybe it makes more sense to gremlin the warheads so that they do not go off, or do not go critical. Surviving in a zone hit by a dirty bomb may not be the players definition of survival (radiation still sucks), but fate may consider it good enough.

I guess it's a good thing for all those setting off bombs that only PCs and a very small minority of NPCs have Edge.

Nukes manufactured before the Awakening not working any more matches my recollection as well; but I do not recall the source.

"Nuclear energy no longer work in the Sixth World" was a theory pushed around ten years ago or so, based only on the Lone Eagle story (two years before the Awakening), several nuclear power plants failure in Seattle, Great Britain and France, and the limited effect of the Cermak Blast. SOTA:2064 and Shadows of Asia told us since India and Pakistan managed to nuke Kahsmir in the 2020ies, while France still conduct underground testing off the coast of French Guiana. SOTA actually gives a more or less complete list of nuclear powers by 2063.
It seems like the meme evolved to survive, and no only concerns ICBM.

I was never given the opportunity to read the elusive and secret Line Developers' Book of Real Truth, but as far as I know, at least Tom Dowd, Mike Mulvihill, Steve Kenson, Jon Szeto and Peter Taylor, wrote or helped wrote materials that involved the more or less successful detonation of nuclear weapons. If one of SR author ever intended nuke to no longer work, I could safely claim such idea was anyway dropped a long time ago.