...e. the reality however, is years of rainshowers of radioactive mud and ash accompanied by complete sterilization of the earth.
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You a zoomie? If so, you should know better.
If you could penetrate a warhead 200' in compact dirt, please let me know. There is an open RFP with DARPA we can both profit from.
As for some of the other comments, it wasn't at SAC, it was at NORAD. It wasn't a signal; it was a bad test procedure. It got as far as flushing a few wings. They used to do that a several times a month anyway. however, it did have the effect of increasing systems budget for NORAD/SPACECOM.
Stone and marble is pretty resilient to overpressure. It think many of you would be surprised how well DC would handle a multi-warhead strike on it. That said, I would expect the crater at the White House to be much, much bigger, since I suspect there would have been many ground bursts targeted for that point.
No tactical nukes would have been used in this war. It would have been over long before that. Assuming a 50s/60s type profile for the weapons, the warheads would have been very high yield and quite dirty, most of which delivered by bombers. In a more modern America, the vast majority would have been sub-megaton bombs placed by missiles.
A radioactive plume would do little to disrupt communication to nuclear forces, which would be primarily by super-/ultra-high frequency with birds (DSCSII/III or later Milstar) or ELF.