In June 2025, the U.S. Federal Emergency Administration Company (FEMA) launched a map of potential nuclear targets within the U.S.
The map, created in 2002 by the nonprofit and nongovernmental group Pure Sources Protection Council, was not created or launch by FEMA, nor was it based mostly on FEMA knowledge. It was made for example a paper analyzing hypothetical nuclear assaults from Russia and it was based mostly on the authors’ hypotheses and calculations.
After the U.S. joined the battle between Israel and Iran, putting three nuclear enrichment websites in Iran in June 2025, web customers shared what they claimed was a Federal Emergency Administration Company (FEMA) map displaying potential nuclear targets within the U.S.
For instance, the map appeared on TikTok (archived):
(@narutoisbttr0 on TikTok)
As of this writing, the submit had gained 203,500 likes and 52,400 reshares. The map appeared a number of instances on TikTok, in addition to on Threads and X.
Snopes discovered studies by information shops, together with The Mirror in 2025 and The Independent in 2023, that credited a 2015 CBS article for the map, asserting that it was based mostly on knowledge allegedly compiled by FEMA.
Nevertheless, our investigation discovered that FEMA was not concerned within the creation of the map, which didn’t date to both 2025 or 2015. Quite, as we’ll clarify beneath, it first appeared in a 2002 paper in regards to the potential results of Russian nuclear assaults on well being care companies within the U.S. Because of this, we have rated the map miscaptioned.
The map appeared to have first circulated on-line on Sept. 20, 2011, on an web discussion board for firearm fans named AR15.com. Different posts on Reddit and Pinterest between 2011 and 2014 mentioned the map confirmed potential targets of Soviet nuclear missiles pointed on the U.S. throughout the C
Snopes discovered one other 2023 report by the Daily Mail that included the map with a caption saying it was from 2002 and was the work of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a nonprofit nongovernmental environmental advocacy group.
A black-and-white model of the map appeared in a February 2002 paper in a now-defunct journal referred to as Medicine and Global Survival. The paper, titled “Projected US Casualties and Destruction of US Medical Services From Attacks by Russian Nuclear Forces,” additionally credited the map to the NRDC. The paper offered two eventualities for potential Russian thermonuclear assaults on the U.S. and calculated how such assaults would possibly have an effect on the nation’s medical infrastructure.
A spokesperson for the NRDC confirmed in an e-mail {that a} employees member created the map particularly for example this paper in 2002. It was based mostly on the authors’ hypotheses and calculations they made utilizing knowledge from public databases, previous NRDC analysis on nuclear weapons, and federal paperwork launched to NRDC below the Freedom of Info Act. The information was first compiled and analyzed in a 2001 NRDC report, although the map didn’t seem on this earlier report.
An overview of the methodology for the map’s creation seems within the 2002 paper on pages 70, 71 and 72 (pages 3, 4 and 5 of the file):
The primary situation considers an assault on the continental United States involving 2,000 550-kiloton Russian warheads delivered to their targets by SS-18 and SS-19 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Every warhead is assumed to have a 25% likelihood of failing to blow up heading in the right direction due to technical issues, however the advanced problems with warhead “fratricide” (the failure of a nuclear warhead to detonate as a result of results of close by explosions) is just not addressed, nor are the focusing on logistics regarding “footprint measurement” (the utmost space inside which targets could possibly be reached by warheads independently focused and launched throughout the ballistic section of the flight of a single ICBM).
[…]
The second situation considers an assault on the continental United States by a Russian pressure of 500 550-kiloton warheads. The US is assumed to have deployed a missile protection system that may intercept incoming warheads. In response, the Russians have focused their missiles on US inhabitants facilities in an effort to preserve the power to inflict unacceptable casualties. As with the primary situation, 25% of the five hundred warheads are assumed to malfunction and a top of burst of 1,840 meters for all warheads is chosen, leading to no important native fallout.
The five hundred particular inhabitants targets for Russian nuclear weapons had been chosen as follows: a one square-kilometer inhabitants grid for the continental United States was computed utilizing 1999 census knowledge; for every one-square kilometer cell in that grid, the inhabitants inside a 9.6 kilometer circle centered on the cell (i.e., the anticipated zone of mass fires, as mentioned beneath) was summed; the cells had been then rank-ordered based on the summed populations; and, lastly, the five hundred cells with the biggest inhabitants sums had been chosen as targets below the constraint that the 9.6 kilometer circles across the chosen cells didn’t overlap.
The authors then examined the results of an NMD able to intercepting 10%, 20%, or 30% of those warheads—an operational functionality that tremendously exceeds present expectations for this expertise. Determine 1 shows the places of the targets for each the two,000 warhead and the five hundred warhead eventualities.
In sum, the map was from 2002, and its creators made it for a paper that hypothesized two eventualities for a Russian nuclear assault, one with 2,000 warheads and the opposite with 500 warheads utilizing knowledge accessible in 2001 from public databases, previous NRDC analysis on nuclear weapons, and federal paperwork launched to NRDC below the Freedom of Info Act. FEMA didn’t create or launch the map
