It's 150 tons not kilotons...
I've been traveling again and just starting to catch up on the thread. Noticed the interest in 150KT nuclear blasts, and made a few rough estimates to help out:
Reference 150KT nuclear device:
Just for comparism, the Soviet/Russian SS-18 Satan missile or the US ALCM-5 cruise missiles have warheads in that range.
The SS-18 warhead has different ranges from 150 KT to 550KT in yield, depending on if it uses MIRV's or a single warhead, if I remember correctly.
Blast radius: 3 miles approximately
Fallout radius: up to 40 miles depending on wind direction and windspeed
Kill radius: 2-3 miles radius of 100 percent casualties regardless of wind direction, and downwind fallout would carry the following approximate exposures: 1000 Rem exposure out to approximately 10-12 miles, 500 Rem to approximately 15, and 100 Rem out to approximately 40 miles if you are in the fallout path.
Pakistans nukes are believed to be in the 20-25 KT range. They are first generation and havent mastered the process of reducing payload weight.
Hope that helps out
Hiroshima was actually about 14.7 KT. One of my co-workers was the first person to physically visit Hiroshima to calculate the yield. His study included the melting patterns of the electric insulators on the power poles. Search for Gritzner and Hiroshima. Mike Gritzner did some pretty amazing work.
Thanks.
Re- nukes.
IMO their plan would provide for redundancy. I believe they would plan to detonate or lob more than one nuke per target city. Recall Sean said that there were some 35 nukes in clusters of 4-5 across US cities?
I think they would probably have a nuke or two stashed in the city, and a nuke or two coming in from the water.