Day 318 of #countdowntothedarkfuture draws attention to the events of 2024 and 2025. We're moving firmly past #cyberpunk2020 now!
We are getting somewhere But... Nuke in Manhattan killed 11k people...I believe, honestly, its the other way around. While there was fighting in Night City, the safest place at the time WAS the Corporate Center. Arasaka more or less controlled it and had it tightly locked up. Anyone with any sort of ability to get be there would be there to avoid fighting elsewhere. Meaning it may well have been more crowded than normal.
The Towers falling caused chain reactions within the center, destroying other buildings, rupturing gas lines, causing fires which swept outward.
Meanwhile, the nuclear shockwave liquified a good portion of the solidified fill that parts of the city were built on. Buildings collapsed. Sink holes opened up.
And, of course, there was rioting. Looting. Gangs already prone to violence on GOOD days taking advantage of the chaos.
Instantly might have been a poor choice of words but within hours? Half a million people dead isn't a bad estimate.
There are probably areas where my suspension of disbelief works better and some where it's not that efficient
Tis nuke is not more massive or efficient (well, efficient, maybe, because it's miniaturized) 5KT is still 5KT. 5KT in 1955 is exactly as powerful (or not powerful, comparing with an usual yield of US warheads, which is 150KT). It's just 5KT has not much of a power. It surely would vapourize most of the Arasaka tower, and devastate the city centre. But for the area outside of the kill zone (some 300-500 meter radius) the impact would be severely reduced due to the high density urban area. The shock wave would be directed through the streets and sewers, but it's still just not enough. Anyhow, the effects would be terrible, and with the whole state infrastructure on the brink of collapse, the death toll would be astronomical. Probably just not that astronomical.I can't talk for the creators, but I find no obvious suspension of disbelief... If you can imagine an over-crowded urban area in the future, bombed by a nuclear weapon of a futuristic generation than even a "small" nuke would cause big trouble (more massive or efficient compared to WW2 or even modern nukes), wouldn't it be believable then ? Perhaps the word "died almost instantly" was a bit too much, but I imagined that most of the victims died under the collapsing structures, and not from the direct blow. And considering that dystopian cities are often depicted as vertical structures, you could have quite a few people in the same area...
In my campaign story it would probably be some 200-300k.
As I mentioned above Johnny's body in a cryotank is a "bit" of a problem. EVERYTHING within 150m of the nuke was turned into vapor. I suppose if the nuke was high in the tower and the tank was in the sub-sub-sub basement it might not have been vaporized ... merely turned into molten slag.