“What would it look like? At least ten million dead I would say. And a clean-up that would take decades.”
A resounding NO to the 10 million dead. First off, the entire population of NYC (including the outer boroughs) is about 8 million. A 10 KT bomb exploded at ground level in Greenwich Village in Manhattan is way, way too small to do much beyond about 2.5 km - and would produce about 103,000 deaths and about 213,000 injuries. NO effects beyond the island of Manhattan, and you wouldn’t even have windows in the Empire State Building broken.
Check out this site: http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ for the details of any sized-bomb in any locality. It ain’t pretty, but it isn’t some all-consuming disaster, either.
“A 10 KT bomb exploded at ground level in Greenwich Village in Manhattan is way, way too small to do much beyond about 2.5 km - and would produce about 103,000 deaths and about 213,000 injuries. “
This due to the blast itself.
How many would be exposed to radiation at levels causing radiation syndrome, which can cause death over a week or month time frame.
Ground blasts would cause a $hitload of fallout.
Most military nukes are set to go off above the target which increases downward pressure and it reduces fallout.
A nuclear attack on America, including NYC, was discussed in the novel Warday by Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka.
It went into detail about salvage ops in the city.
Salvors were precluded from receiving any type of formal medical treatment due to the high rads they received. They were stripping all the buildings of valuable copper wire, which was no longer produced.
It is an odd book, written from an early 1980s sensibility.