Mistakes and unrealistic things about Jericho

I just watched this show and other than a few unlogical choices made by the people in this show the thing that seemed weirdest to me was when the Cheyenne government decided to take the nuclear bomb directly to their government seat in a city with over a million people. I mean is that not making things a bit too easy for people that might want to use it at that excact location even if it wasn't activated and all?

you can't just hide in your basement and "avoid the rain" to avoid contamination. you need to have a thick barrier between you and the radiation. a couple feet of solid steel, or ~6 feet of wood/earth.. or even more of lesser. there are manuals on how to make fallout shelters. taping windows is a waste of time. unless you have a major opening, simply being in the basement with windows closed is fine. its the invisible radiation seeping down that's the dangerous part, which can last days to around a week. and yes the crops and animals would all be wasted for ... umm what 10k years? lol.. its bad stuff.

the EMP pulse "bomb" that came after... well the nuke itself should have created its own emp, i believe, so it was unnecessary.. but a fun effect (it looked like a firecracker) haha.

assault rifles shoot through cars like butter. so many firefights, esp the big war battle vs that neighboring town.. they were kneeling behind cars as if they were impervious to 50cal rounds

but the serious made up for it 1/2 way through the 1st season and througought the rest by getting good, actors getting better, drama comming together nicely, and not spacing crap out so your pissed that episdes end at the worst times, or when something crazy is about to happen it switches to another thing at the worst times, like EVERY other trendy series.

just wish it wasnt canceled right before 'the big show'!

Things that bugged you the most. I'm not saying you are wrong and I'm not saying my take is right. I just think that some of your conclusions lack more thought. #1-it was said in episode 2 I think that a Hydrogen bomb was used. The WW2 bombs that were dropped were a Uranium 235 (Littleboy) and a Plutonium (Fatman) device. These bombs had a blast range of 13-18 kt for LB and 21 kt for FM.

We don't know for sure that all the bombs were 20 kt bombs. We know that Hawkins had one. If a H bomb was used on larger cities the yields could go into the 100 MT range.
Also nothing was mentioned about these bombs being dirty bombs. If that were the case them the damage overall could have been exponential.

2- The EMP burst was cause by missiles based in the US. Jake(?) said that the ICMBs were going up and then someone else said that the nearest silos were in Wyoming. There is no doubt in my mind that the EMP was caused by US Missles, launched by Americas. If you want to control a population completely then cut off all electronics, power and anything else electronic. Keep the people in the dark.

3- Seriously?? Candles?? Have you ever been through storm season in the Midwest. During the height of storm season you are lucky if you have power at any given time. Massive electrical storms and tornados can wipe out the power grid of a small town for weeks. Every person I know who lives in farm country (I live in East Colorado) have a over abundance of candles, fresh water and canned food. In fact just a few years ago I went to a event at the home town of a friend of mine (Goodland KS right over the Colo state line. It was a fairly small town but each year everyone gets together before storm season and they all can vegetables, jerky meat, store fresh water and make a LOT of homemade candles. A dozen handmade candles can be made in less than a hour. Multiply that by 30-40 people making them. Your issue of candles is easily explained.

4- The crops like corn with a husk would be on to eat even if small levels or radiation were to fall on them. That's what the husk does. It's protects the corn-assuming it was ripe (and they said it was)

"First off, the terrorist, anarchists or whoever "blew up" those cities used 20kt bombs (repeat: 20 kilotons! thats about as much as was used in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, and those cities only had about 150,000 to 200,000 people each!!!) for their attacks. Those bombs could NEVER EVER take out a city the scale of Chicago, New York, Denver or Los Angeles. Washington DC might be another story because its much smaller, but not even Washington would be "wiped out" as it was stated in the series so often.

You can check the effects here: http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/gmap/hydesim.html.";


That tool is actually very limited. If you check the data they use as a baseline, there is a notation:

Note that the displayed rings are "idealized"; that is, no account is taken of terrain, urban density, ground type, weather conditions, and so on.


I remember at the height of the cold war they had released a list of projected targets back in the 70's and I was shocked to see that Cincinnati was actually higher on the list than Chicago.

The explanation was that if you nuke Cincy, you wipe out several major defense contractors like GE, P&G, Milacron, and most importantly, Fernald, Ohio which back in the seventies was the largest weapons feed plant in the US. The damage yield of just 50kt would knock out the I-75 and I-70 corridors, effectively crippling the interstate highway system connecting all points of the compass. You would also eliminate barge traffic on the Ohio River which supplies most of the US (back during the cold war) with coal and steel. It would also contaminate one of the largest aquifers in the U.S., and the contamination would turn the fertile soil of the major heartland states, so there would be no crop for several years:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mississippi_watershed_map_1.jpg

If I recall, Eisenhower actually commissioned a study that predicted you would actually do more harm to the U.S. by hitting the tactical midwest smaller targets if your goal was to cripple the country. If your goal is terror, you go for NY, Chicago, and LA, where the population is denser and you get higher casualty rates.

Keep in mind NY and Chicago are important commerce targets, but those markets rely on the products that are created someplace else. They could leave those cities alone--the trading floor is useless, if there is nothing left to trade. It would also be easier to control dense population centers by controlling the resources those centers draw from to survive, if occupation, or in the case of the show, political reconfiguration is your goal.

"First off, the terrorist, anarchists or whoever "blew up" those cities used 20kt bombs (repeat: 20 kilotons! thats about as much as was used in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, and those cities only had about 150,000 to 200,000 people each!!!) for their attacks. Those bombs could NEVER EVER take out a city the scale of Chicago, New York, Denver or Los Angeles."

I beg to disagree. You might want to peruse the findings of the ABCC:

The two explosions had a blast yield equivalent to 16 to 21 kilotons of TNT (88 TJ). The hilly terrain of Nagasaki reflected the explosion and amplified the effect to the higher yield range, where the Hiroshima flatter terrain trended to the lower spectrum of blast yield.

Each explosion generated heat estimated at 3,900 °C (7,050 °F) and winds that were estimated at 1,005 km/h (624 mph) which were sustained for over 20 minutes and caused destruction as far as 25 miles from the initial detonation. Tremors and shock-waves over 5 on the Richter scale were felt as far as 100 miles from the detonation center. The total destruction field (not even foundations were discernible) was 4.7 square miles. Over 65% of the buildings in the downtown areas were destroyed completely, the remaining 35% were severely damaged, 17% of which would later be condemned and demolished during reconstruction.

The ABCC eventually determined the total causality rate of both explosions to exceed 440,000 deceased. There was a 300% rise in cancer and luekemia over the next two generations in an area of about 17 mile circumfrence to each detonation.

At first these numbers seem horrific, but the alternative was completely unimaginable, if Truman balked on the use of atomic bombs and allowed Marshall and MacArthur to proceed with a traditional invasion plan.

The alternative to the two bombs was Project Downfall which called for increased bombing raids, chemical warfare (Okinawa was stocked and ready with massive reserves of mustard gas, phosgene and cyanogen chloride by late June of 1945), followed by a massive landing on the Kanto Plain near Tokoyo in an invasion effort that would have been triple the size of the Omaha Beach landing.

It was predicted that the alternative would have resulted in nearly 20 million shared casualties.

Honestly, who cares. Its a tv show...not everything is going to be perfect or exactly correct. It's suppose to be entertaining.

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In response to your "Third" and "Next thing" mistakes:

"Third": In places where power outages are common, such as due to weather (tornadoes, blizzards, hurricanes, etc) stocking up on candles is not uncommon. They provide both heat and light, and are cheap and efficient. Also in a rural farming town, there will likely be several beekeepers to help pollinate the crops. Making candles from beeswax is extremely easy (though it usually retains a brownish color, where many of the candles shown were white).

"Next thing": It's explained in an episode late in the first season that the fallout projections from a nuclear attack carries the majority of the fallout away from Jericho.