Re- the nukes. I believe from what I've read that the AQ "nukes" are all about in the range of a one kiloton weapon. Reportedly, OBL obtained several Paki nukes from 2 rogue scientists connected with Khan.
He also obtained non-working suitcase weapons from former states of the Soviet Union- and paid scientists from Russia, Pakistan and even China to bring the weapons back into working order. Reportedly the Chinese provided the titrium (sp?) triggers needed for the nukes.
So I'm guessing we would be looking at- generally- a one kiloton size weapon.
You would definitely get the visuals depicted in the images.
That's still a serious concern. I'm afraid some folks might treat this like a category 1 Hurricane and say Oh well, heck it's ONLY a 1KT device so .....no worries! That's still a yield of One THOUSAND TONS of T.N.T.! And don't forget the gamma radiation and EMP generated by the blast itself. I also thought I heard that it's not certain how big the aforementioned nukes are. IIRC they're in the range from .2 KT (two hundred tons of tnt) up to TEN KT which is almost the size of the Hiroshima bomb. Any city that is on the receiving end of either end of that range is in for a lot of death.
Exactly my thoughts, one k and then I would be safe from initial blast