Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 13-3. A typical nuclear explosion mushroom cloud (Photo courtesy of U.S. Department
of Energy)
Nuclear weapons are almost always characterized in terms of the equivalent amount of
TNT. When a reference is made to a nuclear weapon with a yield of 1 megaton, this means a
weapon with an explosive energy equal to one million tons of TNT. For game programming
purposes, the TNT equivalence equations developed earlier in this chapter can be applied to
nuclear explosions as well.
Nuclear explosions generate a significant amount of heat. Approximately 35% of the energy
released from a nuclear explosion is converted to thermal energy. The fireball from a 10-kiloton
nuclear weapon can be 300 m in diameter. The thermal radiation from a 10-kiloton nuclear
weapon can cause second-degree burns, called flash burns, on exposed skin at a distance of 2.4 km
from the point of explosion. A 10-megaton bomb, 1000 times more powerful than the 10 kiloton
bomb, can cause second-degree burns up to 32 km away.
Summary
In this chapter, you learned a little bit about how to model explosions. Starting with some basic
terminology and concepts, we explored different types of explosives and how to model the damage
from an explosion. Some of the specific things covered in this chapter include the following:
The force vector due to an explosion and how to properly model it
How TNT is used as a standard explosive and how other explosives compare to TNT
How blast damage can be estimated using the TNT explosion model
That the TNT explosion model can be applied to other explosive types using the concept
of an equivalent mass of TNT
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