A nuclear attack on US soil would most likely target one of six cities:
But a public-health expert says any of those cities would struggle to provide emergency services to the wounded.
The cities also no longer have designated fallout shelters to protect people from radiation.
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The chance that a nuclear bomb would strike a US city is slim, but nuclear experts say it's not out of the question.
A nuclear attack in a large metropolitan area is one of the 15 disaster scenarios for which the US Federal Emergency Management Agency has an emergency strategy. The agency's plan involves deploying first responders, providing immediate shelter for evacuees, and decontaminating victims who have been exposed to radiation.
For everyday citizens, FEMA has some simple advice: Get inside, stay inside, and stay tuned.
But according to Irwin Redlener, a public-health expert at Columbia University who specializes in disaster preparedness, these federal guidelines aren't enough to prepare a city for a nuclear attack.
"There isn't a single jurisdiction in America that has anything approaching an adequate plan to deal with a nuclear detonation," he said.
That includes the six urban areas that Redlener thinks are the most likely targets of a nuclear attack: New York, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. These cities are not only some of the largest and densest in the country, but home to critical infrastructure (like energy plants, financial hubs, government facilities, and wireless transmission systems) that are vital to US security.
Each city has an emergency-management website that informs citizens about what to do in a crisis, but most of those sites (except for LA and New York) don't directly mention a nuclear attack. That makes it difficult for residents to learn how to protect themselves if a bomb were to hit one of those cities.
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