“There isn’t a single jurisdiction in America that has anything approaching an adequate plan to deal with a nuclear detonation,”

According to Irwin Redlener, a public-health expert at Columbia University who specializes in disaster preparedness, [federal] guidelines aren’t enough to prepare a city for a nuclear attack.

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.