Developer releases ‘Nuclear War Simulator’ game on Steam to let people experience the horror of warfare

A new game, Nuclear War Simulator, is intended to allow people to experience the full horror of modern warfare.

The game lets people create their own nuclear weapons, direct them at places on the maps and then see what damage it would cause.

Players can even include their own friends and family in the game to examine whether they might survive the outbreak of nuclear war.

The game’s creator, Ivan Stepanov, was born in Semipalatinsk, a city in Kazakhstan not far from the site of Soviet nuclear tests. He now lives in Germany, but said the game had been inspired by witnessing the effects of the development of nuclear warheads nearby.

“The biggest motivation to create this software is the constant threat of nuclear war,” he said in a statement. “There needs to be an accessible, interactive simulation available to the public to highlight the very real threat and consequences of such a conflict.”

The system was originally developed for educational systems and is already used by academics, who have helped improve its simulations. But it has now been released on Steam, the gaming platform, so that anyone can buy and play it.

“You can design warheads, missiles, and carriers, place them on the map and execute attack plans to tell a credible story about how nuclear conflicts play out and what the consequences are,” the game’s website reads.

“Using a high-resolution population density map and realistic weapons effects like blast, heat, and radiation you can make an estimate of how many people will die in a conflict. Individual humans can be placed on the map, travel, and take shelter to analyze the effects and estimate injuries and survival probability.”