From: 	DEREK SHERMAN[SMTP:doppleganger@usa.pipeline.com]

Actually, he didn't say it destroyed everything within 400,000 km, just

that it "screw[ed] up the functions of nature" for everything in that
distance......<<

Did you read his discription of what the survivors saw when they crawled out of the shelter? The Bomb was dropped on Bejing, do you know how far that is from Tokyo? If the effect was that bad at that distance, do you think it will be any less halfway around the world?

it could be that a new type of weapon was developed, and

since the US doesn't carry out nuclear tests any more, they didn't realize
that it would have that sort of effect until it was too late..... <<

I must admit there is that possiblity. Something like in "The Pandora Directive" a new game. But that bomb only cast a radioactive pall across the planet, the only devastation was at ground zero. And it did involve something other than human science....
 

Of course, dropping a nuke on someone is gonna make for "bad effects"
anyways  ^_^ 

That's distance related.