BALTIMORE, MD — The war of words between the heads of state in North Korea and the United States has again raised the specter of nuclear war. North Korea's announcement that its military might attack the U.S. territory of Guam, met by President Trump's pledge to unleash "fire and fury like the world has never seen," has people talking about a highly-armed standoff. But what would happen if a medium- or long-range missile with a nuclear bomb inside reached Maryland?

Straddling the line between entertainment, fantasy and terrifying reality is NUKEMAP, a Google Maps mashup tool for visualizing the real-world impact of a nuclear explosion on specific locations. Here's how it works: Users choose their preferred weapon of mass destruction and their target. Which bomb they choose depends on how much damage they want to do — are you aiming for total annihilation, or do you just want to create a little chaos? Your choices start with the American-made "Davy Crockett," which is relatively benign when compared to the "Tsar Bomba," a Russian-made bomb that means business. (SIGN UP: Get Patch's daily newsletter and real-time news alerts, or like us on Facebook. Or, if you have an iPhone, download the free Patch app.)



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Once the bomb is detonated, ringed circles appear around the targeted cities, showing the radius of the fireball, the radius of thermal radiation and an outer radius where buildings would likely survive the blast. It graphically displays the extent of injuries and damage to buildings from firestorms.



If a weapon similar to one North Korea tested in 2013 was detonated in Baltimore's Inner Harbor, for example, about 53,140 people would die, according to NUKEMAP, created five years ago by historian Alex Wellerstein, who specializes in the history of nuclear weapons and secrecy. Another 102,900 would be injured. The rest of the scenario is pretty ugly, too.

In five years, the website has hosted more than 99 million virtual detonations, Wellerstein wrote on his nuclearsecrecy.com blog. He said he typically sees viral spikes in site visits around the anniversaries of the bombings of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945.

Maybe you're a high-priority government staffer with access to two safe area in Maryland and Virginia built to survive catastrophes like war. One shelter is the Raven Rock compound carved out of a mountain near the Pennsylvania-Maryland border. The website ZeroHedge reports the facility its own subterranean water supply. The site is speculated to have been one of the "undisclosed locations" former Vice President Dick Cheney worked from in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks after he was evacuated from DC. The other underground government complex, Mount Weather, is a huge bunker inside a mountain at the border of Loudoun and Clarke counties in Virginia. It is rumored to be the official evacuation site for Supreme Court justices, documents such as the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, and the National Gallery of Art's most valuable paintings.