[PA Engineer]

I agree with your assessment. I have a fallout macro that gives the following results. Assume the fallout is tear shaped and moving from west to east. Without immediate evacuation to shelter, outside the fallout zone (North or South) or at least 10 miles down wind, we could expect fatalities of 50-100% in the effected zone (outside exposure).

Fallout Deposition Pattern Table

R1 (rads@1hr)	3000   1000   300   100     30     10      3      1
length (mi.)	2.7      5.1     12.7  25.1    45.1   67.6  84.6 112.7
Width (mi.)	0.1      0.2     0.6    1.5      2.8    4.7    7.0   10.0
Grnd zero width (miles)	0.1      0.2     0.6    1.0      1.4    1.7    2.3    3.9
contam. area est. (sq.mi)	0          1        6      32      103    263   483   930

*Assuming a ground burst with 50% blast yield or 5KLT equivalent.

[Poohbah]

Your figures map well with the map in At the Abyss. (It's a damn good book, BTW. Reed was a close associate of Reagan's for over 15 years.) The "half the people die" isocline for a 5KT blast centered on the World Trade Center site extended about 3/4ths of the way along Central Park. The "weaker people die" line extended to 125th Street; the entire island of Manhattan was covered in the "acute radiation sickness line."

BTW, Wall Street was inside the 100% death line. This did not include fire and blast.

If the bad guys had used a nuke, there is no way you'd be able to evacuate Manhattan in time to save those people...and southern Manhattan's daytime population is in the millions.

[Dan Evans]

According to your table, a strip of real estate about half a mile wide and twelve miles long would be contaminated with radiation levels that would be fatal in about one hour if they were standing outside. If they move to the lower levels of multi-story buildings and went to interior rooms away from the broken windows and dust they would be receiving a much lower dose.

So how many people would that affect? Figure about 35,000 people per sq mi times 7.8 sq mi. That's 273,000 thousand people that would need to be evacuated in a few days.

It could be done.