November 14, 2011

Will Your Block Survive the Nuclear Apocalypse?

<a href="http://www.wouldisurviveanuke.com/">wouldisurviveanuke.com</a>

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As usual, global thermonuclear war could be just around the corner. And while the US offensive arsenal is pretty stacked, we’d be screwed if the ICBMageddon were barreling in on us. Missile defense? Ha!

But there’s good news on the atomic holocaust front: Thanks to a new Google Maps mashup, you can now see whether your domicile (and your meat husk of a corpse) could withstand a direct nuclear attack. WouldISurviveANuke.com is a pretty simple interactive feature: You enter your address, you select a weapon yield (puny 18-kiloton Fatman, or the 50-megaton Russian behemoth Tsar Bomba? How about a more modest nine-megaton city killer?), and then you check the blast radius to see whether you lived, or died as a crispy critter. (Hint: Anyone anywhere near the San Francisco MJ offices, or near San Francisco Bay in general, you’re truly screwed.) Either way, when you’re done, you can post the results of your nuke test on Facebook.

Now, if only we could combine this knowledge with the location of the nukes nearest to us—oh wait, we can!

(Via Gizmodo)

[UPDATE: MoJo Twitter follower Eddie Edenfield points out another cool “Ground Zero” nukes/maps mashup that’s been around for awhile. Care to calculate your fallout and windage?]

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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