What would have happened to Gotham?(Dark Knight Rises)

[FaxModem1]

Okay, first off, spoilers for the end of Dark Knight Rises.




There, that said, at the end of the film, Batman chooses to take the fusion bomb and have it detonate over the coastline. Just how badly would this have affected the city of Gotham, the Atlantic Ocean, and the wildlife and citizens of the East coast?

Would it have been better if Batman had simply destroyed Gotham?

[Tribble]

I'm assuming that anyone who happened to be looking in that direction should have been instantly blinded by the explosion, and I'd imagine that practically the whole city would be suffering from various levels radiation poisoning. Of course it goes without saying that Batman should have been totally vaporised.

What I want to know is how the fusion power plant was converted into a nuclear weapon. I'm not a physicist, but it's my understanding that the whole point of nuclear fusion is that it doesn't give off much radioactive material and that it isn't self-sustaining - unless energy is constantly applied in a very controlled fashion to the material the reaction would quickly cease. So the moment Bane ripped the reactor out of its housing, it should have killed off any reactions going on inside, no? Why would it turn into ticking time bomb?

[Sinewmire]

What I want to know is how the fusion power plant was converted into a nuclear weapon. I'm not a physicist, but it's my understanding that the whole point of nuclear fusion is that it doesn't give off much radioactive material and that it isn't self-sustaining - unless energy is constantly applied in a very controlled fashion to the material the reaction would quickly cease. So the moment Bane ripped the reactor out of its housing, it should have killed off any reactions going on inside, no? Why would it turn into ticking time bomb?

Wasn't that why he needed Dr Pavel? To actually *turn* it into a bomb, just disconnecting it presumably wouldn't have worked.

[Darmalus]

Yeah, only Dr Pavel knew the magic spell to turn it from a power plant into a bomb.

Anyway, it's a fusion bomb. As I remember it blew up in the air over the ocean where the remote-piloted bat-plane took it.

So.... nothing much other than some dead fish and broken windows. No significant fallout because fusion, blew up too far away for the fireball to hit anyone, radiation from the explosion was absorbed into the air to make the fireball, so none of that. Might have kicked up some waves and drowned some people.

So, probably some blinded and possibly deaf people who were looking the wrong way when it went off, maybe a few unlucky people were washed out to sea by the waves.

[Eternal_Freedom]

It was stated to be a 4 megaton neutron bomb, IIRC, so no long term fallout. As Darmalus said, anyone looking that way would probably be blind but there shouldn't any appreciable radioactive effects (and there clearly aren't, the city is still inhabited after the film).