News

This map tells you how likely you are to die in World War Three

Picture:
Picture:
AFP/Getty Images

2016 has been the year when your most annoying Eeyore friend has been proven right, over, and over again.

Reward them for their prescience and counsel that everything is terrible, with this map, which shows how likely (or unlikely) it is that you will survive World War Three.

The map, created by 'Would I Survive a Nuke'.com, comes with several options that allow users to personalise their demise.

One can choose the location, and what type of weapon of mass destruction will be used in the conflict.

'Dinosaur ending meteor' is one of many WMDs that also include 'Fat-man' atomic bomb, and the LG-30 'Minute Man' or the LG-18 'Peacekeeper' intercontinental ballistic missiles, depending on your Megaton preference.

Based on his gung-ho comments regarding the use of nuclear weapons, president-elect Donald Trump appears to be emulating the 'mad man Richard Nixon' strategy of deterrence, by speaking about the use of thousands of warheads so brazenly, that enemies of the US will fear he might actually do it.

According to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons the nine nuclear countries have a combined 15,000 nuclear weapons at their disposal.

Trump's acquisition of the launch codes for 6,970 warheads, makes this map not only a morbid reminder that we are all one miscommunication away from a fiery death, but also a useful tool for assessing just how bad that death may be.

The graphics show exactly what areas will suffer first, second, and third degree burns respectively in the event of a nuclear strike on any chosen location.

The site doesn't log any kind of location data, so there are no statistics for the most searched nuclear targets.

The only entity which can track user data on the site is Google.

Picture:Picture:

Speaking to indy100, the creator of the interactive map, Britton Matthews, explained how it evolved from a disagreement with his boss:

WouldISurviveANuke.com actually started as a joke. I developed it by myself over a weekend five years ago. I am a software developer in Washington state. During lunch one day, my project manager and I got into this discussion about if a nuke dropped on Seattle would we survive.

Matthews lives in Tukwila, just outside Seattle:

My project manager at the time was this loud mouth, cocky, always right kind of guy. He did have a sense of humour though and didn’t mind us poking fun at him. So after this argument I went home and over the weekend made the site just to prove him wrong. I came back Monday and showed him he was wrong. What was humorous to me and my colleges was that someone would go so out of their way to just prove this project manager wrong. We all had a good laugh.

In addition to telling you how bad your burns will be in the nuclear fall out, the website also throws up helpful tips in the form of gallows humour. Matthews explained his inspiration for the jokes:

I am a big fan of the old computer games from Sierra On Line (Kings Quest, Space Quest - all those games from the 80s where you had to type in commands). I decided to pay homage to these games by putting in funny death messages, similar to those games, in my site. Josh Mandel, a comedian and game designer who wrote 'Space Quest 6', 'Freddy Pharkas Frontier Pharmacist', and 'Callahan's crosstime saloon' contributed by also writing some of the death messages.

Matthews said that the point of the map, despite the jokes, was to prove that "there really is no surviving a nuclear war".

Enjoy!

More: This mum's 'thank you' note to her ex’s new girlfriend has gone viral

More: This woman recreates celebrity Instagram pictures and they're hilarious​

The Conversation (0)
x