How Long for WMD Affected-Area to Recover?

How long for an area (city, military base, etc) to significantly safe to inhabit post-WMD detonation?
I mean to have new settlement where its inhabitants won't suffer from radiation or other sicknesses there?

The WMDs are:
A) Hiroshima atomic bomb
B) standard thermonuclear bomb
C) Tsar Bomba
D) neutron bomb
E) Dirty bomb (poor man's nuke)
F) anthrax or other bioweapons
G) sarin or other poisonous gases
H) kinetic strike

Sorry for too many types, I need to know all
Thanks in advance!
 
How long for an area (city, military base, etc) to significantly safe to inhabit post-WMD detonation?
I mean to have new settlement where its inhabitants won't suffer from radiation or other sicknesses there?

The WMDs are:
A) Hiroshima atomic bomb
B) standard thermonuclear bomb
C) Tsar Bomba
D) neutron bomb
E) Dirty bomb (poor man's nuke)
F) anthrax or other bioweapons
G) sarin or other poisonous gases
H) kinetic strike

Sorry for too many types, I need to know all
Thanks in advance!
A)Depends on precisely where but was inhabited within a few years
B)About the same but bigger area
C)About the same but bigger area
C') Cobalt Bomb, hundreds of years
D)Less fallout than normal
E) Depends on the type but could be years or decades
F) Depends on the weapon, from a few hours to decades
G) Depends on specific gas, from a few hours to decades
H) As soon as the fires go out

Not an expert I could be wrong, added one you forgot
 
Asuming conventional nuclear weapons (not cobolt lined horrors), it's a function of if the devise is an airburst or ground burst.

Airburst? Fallout and other radioactive debris is limited, pretty much the moment the resulting firestorm goes out it'll be relatively safe to return.

Groundbursts? This is where things get nasty... fallout etc. is BAD. Years until the surrounding land is safe for reoccupation, decades until ground zero is?

Neutron bombs? Specifically designed for enhanced radiation production during the blast (gamma rays and high energy neutrons), but leftover fallout should be comparable to conventional nukes. Safe hours to days post-airburst. Longer for a groundburst
 
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Anthrax endospores are one of the most hardy organisms on the planet. An area may be hazardous for centuries to come if sufficient spores are deposited. Cold and/or dry areas will be hazardous for the longest period.

With other biological weapons, its less clear. Some types of fungi may be used against cereals or other crops could be unusable for years to decades. Virological weapons would only be effective for minutes, to days.
 

gridlocked

Banned
The WMDs are:
A) Hiroshima atomic bomb
B) standard thermonuclear bomb
C) Tsar Bomba
D) neutron bomb
E) Dirty bomb (poor man's nuke)
F) anthrax or other bioweapons
G) sarin or other poisonous gases
H) kinetic strike

Sorry for too many types, I need to know all


This need to know bit sounds ominous. Is there something you would like to tell us anw_rev?

Let me talk about the second half of the list. Note this is off the top of my head (not looking at Wikipedia etc.)

E) Depending what is in the bomb, low levels of contamination could persist for years. Not enough to kill people unless you ingested it. But enough to possibly cost tens of millions to clean up and bring the area up to code.

F) I gather the question is can the bioweapon organism survive drying out or direct exposure to sunlight and UV rays. This can vary depending how the disease is weaponized. Anthrax is not the most potent bioweapon but it can last a long time w/o moisture. I figure for Anthrax the area might not be safe for several weeks. Or years.

G) For actual poison gases like sarin or chlorine you would be safe possibly within the hour. They tend to dissipate very quickly. Some chemical weapons released as a fine spry can persist where they are not washed a away by rain for many months, perhaps longer.

H) None, unless you are talking about a giant asteroid or something, in which case tidal waves, aftershocks and stuff thrown up into the atmosphere etc.
 
Depends on your definition of inhabitable. There's at least one Pacific island - I forget which one - that the Department of Energy has certified as safe for the original inhabitants... Except they can't eat the local coconuts or other fruit. They can walk around, sleep there, live there indefinitely, they just can't eat any of the local plants. (Actually, I think there were some that were safe because they didn't bioaccumulate cesium and strontium, but there were enough that were dangerous that they didn't stay.)

For that matter, if we're talking about after a war that's seen wide-spread use of WMDs, people might be willing to accept a somewhat higher rate of cancer if the land was good enough. In which case there are a lot of areas that we today consider uninhabitable that they would consider fine.
 
"Habitable" is such a funny word.

From the perspective of New Jersey:

Nearby, in Staten Island, there is a rather large landfill called Fresh Kills.

When driving by that area, I make certain to put my car's air conditioning on "Recirculate."

Would you believe that several Staten Islanders I've spoken with say they cannot smell Fresh Kills?

In densely populated areas with a heritage of industrial development, habitability is relative. In Howard Beach, Queens, the jets flying over in and out of nearby JFK Airport tend to leave a sheen of jet fuel on swimming pools in the neighborhood. Do a little chart around LaGuardia Airport (on the other side of Queens County, near upper Manhattan and the Bronx) and you'll see a nice little uptick in cases of childhood breathing issues.

When I lived within a certain radius of a nuclear plant, we got free calendars with child-created illustrations for each month and detailed instructions on what to do in the event of an emergency. (Tip: Leave the air conditioning in your car off!)

Habitable is relative.
 
Depends on your definition of inhabitable. There's at least one Pacific island - I forget which one - that the Department of Energy has certified as safe for the original inhabitants... Except they can't eat the local coconuts or other fruit. They can walk around, sleep there, live there indefinitely, they just can't eat any of the local plants. (Actually, I think there were some that were safe because they didn't bioaccumulate cesium and strontium, but there were enough that were dangerous that they didn't stay.)

For that matter, if we're talking about after a war that's seen wide-spread use of WMDs, people might be willing to accept a somewhat higher rate of cancer if the land was good enough. In which case there are a lot of areas that we today consider uninhabitable that they would consider fine.



Ninja'd by 36 minutes :D


(For the precious little that it's worth, I had my reply window open for a bit of time before I completed and posted it... But, yeah.)


Edit: to accentuate the positive, I strongly concur with your point and am chilled by your example!

 
How long for an area (city, military base, etc) to significantly safe to inhabit post-WMD detonation?
I mean to have new settlement where its inhabitants won't suffer from radiation or other sicknesses there?

The WMDs are:
A) Hiroshima atomic bomb
B) standard thermonuclear bomb
C) Tsar Bomba
D) neutron bomb
E) Dirty bomb (poor man's nuke)
F) anthrax or other bioweapons
G) sarin or other poisonous gases
H) kinetic strike

Sorry for too many types, I need to know all
Thanks in advance!
A & B matter of year (5-10) just different sized area, although thermonuclears tend to be cleaner
C & D year or less, neutron bombs are designed to be clean, and the Tsar Bomba was one of the cleanest weapons compared to yield, so fallout spread over a huge area, so fallout average is low.

F anthrax - centuries to millenia
G as gridlocked said
H the time it takes for the debris/crater to cool down, unless you are talking about a asteroid of huge proportion, then you have an extinction event.
 
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