With a suspected convoy to a nuclear warhead site spotted moving through Reading, some residents have wondered - what would happen if a nuclear bomb were to go off in our town?

The convoy was made up a large police presence and ummarked trucks - typical of nuclear material transportation operations - moving along the Bath Road towards the Atomic Weapons Establishment in Burghfield. 

Reports from locals and bystanders suggest that the convoy consisted of several large, unmarked trucks, typical of those used for transporting nuclear materials, accompanied by various support vehicles.

AWE Burghfield is one of the UK's key sites for the assembly and maintenance of nuclear weapons.

A former munitions factory, AWE Burghfield is a 225-acre site where warheads are assembled and maintained while in service, and decommissioned when out of service.

So what would happen if a nuclear warhead were to detonate in Reading town centre? 

An interactive tool called outrider.org shows what damage would be caused by the bomb.

It allows people to enter specific cities and choose between four types of bombs – including the USSR’s 50,000 KT Tsar Bomba.

The map simulates the bomb dropping on the area and shows the extent of fireball, shock wave, radiation, and heat.

A W87 American thermonuclear missile warhead - still in the US arsenal - would see an explosion with a fireball that is more than one kilometre across. 

With a suspected convoy to a nuclear warhead site spotted moving through Reading, some residents have wondered - what would happen if a nuclear bomb were to go off in our town? Picture: OutriderThe small white circle represents the fireball from a nuclear blast. The large red circle would be the area torched by searing heat. The yellow ring is the shockwave from the blast - while the grey ring would the area covered in radiation from an American W87 warhead. Picture: Outrider 

In a fission bomb, the fireball burns 10,000 times hotter than the surface of the sun and is hot enough to ignite the fusion reaction in a hydrogen bomb.

If the explosion took place in Friar Street, the fireball would cover an area from Crown Steet to Vastern Road, and from Chatham Street to Forbury Road. 

It means the entire town centre would be vaporised. 

Burning heat would extend from Woodley to Calcot. 

The online tool projects that 87,000 people would be killed, and almost 80,000 would be seriously injured. 

If the nuclear devise was the largest ever detonated by the former USSR - the Tsar Bomba bomb - the vaporising fireball would be 42 miles squared. 

It means everything from Mapledurham to Woodley would be destroyed. 

Searing heat would stretch from Guildford to Oxford, as well as covering Slough and stretching into Harrow in London. 

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Reading road sees suspected nuclear warhead convoy

The result would be more than 450,000 people killed and more than one million seriously injured. 

Outrider supports multimedia storytelling about nuclear threats and climate change, raising awareness about the destruction possible from nuclear weapons.