As geopolitical tensions rise, questions about the possibility of a wider global conflict continue to attract attention. But if a nuclear war ever occurred, would every part of the United States face the same risks? Research highlighted by Newsweek points to eight states that could experience particularly dangerous radioactive fallout because of their proximity to important U.S. nuclear missile-silo fields.
The states identified are Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Iowa, and Minnesota. These areas are close to facilities associated with America’s land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). In a nuclear attack targeting those installations, nearby communities could face severe radiation exposure from radioactive material carried by the wind.
The research is based on computer simulations examining attacks on approximately 450 U.S. missile silos under different weather conditions. A separate project, Under the Nuclear Cloud, supported by researchers at Brown and Princeton, modeled 365 scenarios using weather data from 2021. Its findings showed that fallout could spread across large parts of North America, with some communities facing particularly serious exposure. This is a specific hypothetical attack scenario, not a prediction of which states would be attacked in World War III.
Other states might experience lower fallout exposure in that particular simulation, but that does not make them completely safe. Nuclear explosions, radioactive contamination, disrupted food and water supplies, and damage to critical infrastructure could affect people far beyond the immediate targets. Experts emphasize that no location is guaranteed to be safe in a nuclear conflict. The research is a reminder of the potentially devastating consequences of nuclear weapons, not a reason to panic or assume that moving to another state would guarantee protection.
