Embedding NUKEMAP

NUKEMAP from version 2.4 onward can be embedded into any webpage very easily, and customized for your purpose. This page demonstrates this and outlines some of the options available to you.

NOTE: If your embedding of the NUKEMAP in any way introduces security problems, bandwidth problems, or any other problems for the NUKEMAP, your ability to embed the NUKEMAP or some of its individual components (e.g. the casualty estimates) may be revoked. The most computationally-intensive part of the NUKEMAP is the casualty estimator so if you can avoid linking to it with casualties turned on, that would help a lot.

NOTE: The ability to embed the NUKEMAP does not imply that you have been given any ownership or control over the NUKEMAP. All copyrights are retained. It also cannot be used to imply that I (Alex Wellerstein), any institutions I am associated with, or the NUKEMAP website itself is endorsing or collaborating with you in any way. Your use of the NUKEMAP on your site represents a non-transferable, revokable license issued by Alex Wellerstein.

IFRAME embedding

The NUKEMAP should be linked via an HTML <iframe> tag. Basic iframe syntax looks like this:

https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=20&lat=40.72422&lng=-73.9961&hob_opt=2&hob_psi=5&hob_ft=100&zm=13&lite=city,yield_preset,b_other,b_note,permalink,faq,nm3d,options,classic,footer,social,otheroptions,small
  <iframe src="https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/" width="800" height="400">
    If you can read this text, your browser does not support iframes. Sorry.
  </iframe>

Which in your browser would produce this as a result:

That doesn't look too bad (assuming your browser supports it), but as you can appreciate, that isn't much better, in and of itself, than just linking to the website directly.

Fortunately, there are a number of things you can do to customize how the NUKEMAP will appear in the iframe. This customization comes through modifying the src (source) property of the iframe tag.

Permalink embedding

The easiest and most obvious modification is to link to specific detonation settings. NUKEMAP is already enabled to produce URLs with links to whatever settings are currently displayed. These are known as permalinks, and they come in two forms. For single detonations, the URL contain easily modifiable properties, e.g.:

  https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=20&lat=40.72422&lng=-73.9961&hob_opt=2&hob_psi=5&hob_ft=100&zm=13

Where the parameters are as follows:

Basic information:

• kt: yield (kilotons) (required!)
• lat: latitude of ground zero (decimal degrees) (required!)
• lng: longitude of ground zero (decimal degrees) (required!)
• zm: map zoom (1 = whole world, 15 = very zoomed in, defaults to 12 if omitted)

• hob_opt: height-of-burst option (0 = "maximize for all effects", 1 = optimize for overpressure, 2 = specific height-of-burst)
• hob_psi: height-of-burst psi for overpressure optimization (required if hob_opt is 1)
• hob_ft: specific height-of-burst (in feet) (required if hob_opt is 2)
• airburst: if set to 0, then blast is a surface burst. If it is 1, then it is identical with hob_opt being set to 0. (This is for backwards compatibility after the HOB options were added.)

• fallout: if 1, displays fallout
• ff: fission fraction (0-100) of weapon (default is 100)
• fallout_angle: angle (degrees, where 90 is East) of fallout direction (default is 15)

• casualties: attempts to calculate casualties if set to 1 (this is computationally intensive!!)
• psi: which pressure rings (in psi) to show; multiple values separated by commas (default is 20,5)
• rem: which radiation exposure rings (in rem) to show; multiple values separated by commas (default is 500)
• thermal: which thermal radiation exposure rings (in cal/cm² if a number) to show; multiple values separated by commas. Special, non-numerical (calculated) thermal values are: _3rd-100 (100% chance of 3rd degree burns), _3rd-50 (50% chance of 3rd degree burns), _2nd-50, _1st-50 (50% chance of 2nd and 1st degree burns, respectively), _noharm-100 (100% chance of no harm from thermal effects). (The cal/cm² ratings vary by yield for these properties.)
• fallout_rad_doses: which fallout contour doses to map (in rads/hr); multiple values separated by commas (default is 1,10,100,1000).

• embedlive: If set to any value (e.g. embedlive=1), it will load the embedded page immediately and not use the embed splash screen. This makes your page more intensive for browsers and demands more from NUKEMAP servers so please consider whether this is absolutely necessary or not for your needs. If the splash screen is enabled, the NUKEMAP will not load map tile information (but load everything else it needs to) until the user click on it.
• embedbackcolor: Will be set as the background-color style property of the embed splash screen.
• embedbackimage: If set to 0, will remove the background image of the embed splash (which is necessary for embedbackcolor to have any effect). If set to a URL, it will be set as the background image of the embed splash screen. It will be centered in the DIV element, and not scaled in any way.
• embedtext: Will be set as the contents of the text at the bottom of the embed splash screen (default: "Click anywhere to load visualization")
• embedtextcolor: Will be set as the color style property of the text at the bottom of the embed splash screen.

Note that all of these properties are browser-based except casualties which is a server-side calculation. So when I note it is computationally intensive, I mean it is computationally intensive for the NUKEMAP server, not the user's computer.

For multiple detonations, these settings are stored on the server and a reference hash is created. These cannot be edited on the fly. They look like this:

  https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?t=d7638b279957ef91eade5ab570ec29b9

These are generated by clicking "Generate permalink" and then clicking "Permalink" again. There is currently no way to automate multiple permalink production (maybe someday, if there is interest; it requires using JSON to send a "detonation object" to the server and setting that up for external use would take a little bit of work and explanation).

Using either of these kinds of links as the src property of the iframe tag results in something like these:

  <iframe src="https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=20&lat=40.72422&lng=-73.9961&hob_opt=2&hob_psi=5&hob_ft=100&zm=13" width="800" height="400">
    If you can read this text, your browser does not support iframes. Sorry.
  </iframe>

  <iframe src="https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?t=d7638b279957ef91eade5ab570ec29b9" width="800" height="400">
    If you can read this text, your browser does not support iframes. Sorry.
  </iframe>

You will note in the last one that our last example, the zoom is a bit too close for the iframe. To fix this, we can load the detonations from the hash, zoom out a bit more, and then create a new hash:

Generating and loading hashed values is very quick (not computationally difficult) so please feel free to experiment with creating multiple detonations.

Styling the NUKEMAP

As you've no doubt noticed, the NUKEMAP menu is a bit much for such purposes. There are ways to remove or minimize the options available to the user. These are added on manually to the src URLs above with the property of lite. Here's a very stylized version of one of the maps from above:

Notice that the menu on the right has had all of its options removed except for the legend, and has had its size reduced. For certain purposes, this might be much better. So might this sort of display, where the description is completely hidden by default:

Note that clicking on either the words "NUKEMAP" or the small icon at the bottom right restores the menu.

And for others, you might just want to simplify the options available:

In the above, we have disabled all options except for the choice of yield and the detonation button.

A few small things to note: you can never hide the word NUKEMAP (it has to be somewhere), you can never remove the "Created by" section, and whenever you use the function it will insert a small item in the menu explaining that the application has been modified and linking back to the original. You must accept these limitations and not try to work around them or your access will be blocked.

OK, here's how it is done. In addition to a regular permalink URL above, we can add the aforementioned lite parameter. It can simply be appended to the URL like so:

    https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=20&lat=40.72422&lng=-73.9961&zm=13&lite=minify,city,yield

The lite commands can be appended with commas as shown above. The list of working commands follows:

• minify: Completely hides the menu by default (note that you can still style the underlying menu with further commands; the changes will appear when the menu is restored).
• small: Decreases the size of the side menu and some of the elements within it. (If you are using this you will also want to use nm3d or the header will get too crowded.)
• nm3d: Hides the NUKEMAP3D MISSILEMAP plug in the header
• faq: Hides the FAQ link from the header.
• city: Hides the entire "choose a city" section.
• city_preset: Hides only the drop-down city list.
• city_input: Hides the "type in the name of a city" option.
• yield: Hides the entire "enter a yield" section.
• yield_preset: Hides only the drop-down bomb/yield list.
• options: Hides the entire options (both basic and advanced) section.
• advoptions: Hides the advanced options.
• otheroptions: Hides the "other" options at the bottom (auto-zoom, logging of data).
• detonate: Hides the entire "detonate" section.
• b_other: Hides all "detonate" section buttons except "detonate."
• b_clear: Hides only the "clear all effects" button.
• b_detach: Hides only the "launch multiple" button.
• b_center: Hides only the "center ground zero" button.
• b_probe: Hides only the "probe_location" button.
• b_note: Hides the note that says "you can drag the target marker after you have detonated the nuke."
• legend: Hides the effects legend.
• legend_hr: Stops the effects legend from generating a line on top of it (sometimes this is an issue depending on what else you have hidden).
• fallout: Hides the fallout legend.
• places: Hides the "humanitarian impact" legend.
• social: Hides the social media buttons.
• permalink: Hides the section that links to or generates a permalink.
• footer: Hides whatever else might be in the "footer" (at the moment it is sponsor info but sometimes other things might go in here).
• createdby: Will reduce the amount of information in the "Created by" section (this is allowed, removing the entire section is not).

So to replicate the example above where only the yield (but no drop-down list), detonate button, and legend are shown with a small menu, the lite property looks like this:

  lite=city,yield_preset,b_other,b_note,permalink,faq,nm3d,options,classic,footer,social,otheroptions,advoptions,small,createdby

So, in order, it is disabling the city section, the yield preset drop-down list, all buttons except "detonate," the note about dragging the marker, the permalink section, the FAQ link, the NUKEMAP3D link, the basic options section, the classic note, the footer, the social network links, the "other" options, the advanced options, and the "small" tag shrinks everything a bit. Phew!

You can add the lite tag to any URL, it doesn't have to be embedded, so you can play around with it and find the settings that work best for your purposes. (Here is the URL embedded above.) Note that the lite property is not preserved with new permalink creations, so you will have to copy the lite settings if you are going to change the blast parameters. You can also add the lite tag to hashed URLs.

All of the lite hiding/removals/transformations/etc. are applied while the page is still loading. So you can often see the changes being done in real-time. The way the code works now, there's no way around that.