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Attack Potency Question (Tier 7)

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I'm trying to estimate the size of a city in a Light Novel series, and I'd like some help.

It is surrounded by peripheral roads (undivided expressways), something that generally only exists around cities that have some size to them. Some of the characters were driving in a car on said road for at least 20 minutes before stopping at a restaurant, at which point they hadn't made a full circle yet. Speed limit on Japanese undivided expressways is 70km/h. It's mentioned they're going fast, so let's use that. If in 1 hour, they'd cross 70km, in 1/3 of that time, they'd cross 1/3 of the distance, so 23.3km. Considering they still were nowhere near the other end of the peripheral expressway, it's longer than 23.3km.
For comparison, Thessaloniki, the 2nd biggest city in Greece has a peripheral road of 31km.

Based on several descriptions of the city in the book, it is said to be very wide, but also a bit rural with a medium density of population, though important enough to have multiple high-schools and a university, at least one line of subway, a large train station and many large multi-story buildings, such as hotels.
For another comparison, Catania, a city in Sicily, has a subway system of a single line with 10 stations; the city is 182.9km2 large.

In order to destroy such a place entirely and "leave nothing but shadows and dust" (wording used in the book), how do you think this should be treated as? It sounds like a semi-urban city, so maybe Small City?
 
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How was it destroyed? Explosion? Heat beam? Shockwave? Big punch? Etc.
 
Seems definitely more of a city than a town to me yeah. Probably just "city", not small or large, but obviously the actual ap comes form the kind of feat
 
The destruction of the city was prevented, but if it had happened, it would have been an explosion. "A weapon of mass destruction" would have "removed the city off the map", which sounds like complete destruction to me.
There's a couple characters is that series can survive attacks such as this one, or are on par with such weapons of mass destruction.
 
I'm not sure if "City" is safe to use, because the population density isn't crazy high and the place is described as kind of rural despite the things it has. I was thinking maybe "Small City"?

I also don't know what counts as a Large Town, Small City or City on the wikia. Are there examples?
 
Maybe figure out the approximate size and use airburst? To find a "rough" value just as a proof of concept?
I mean, 23km is like a city. It's not a super major city, but it is one. Take Manhattan as an example of something of similar length. The values you're giving definitely aren't that of a town.
 
Manhattan is a large urban city, though. Which isn't the case for one in this setting.
The population doesn't effect it's size.
The feat isn't about destroying a bunch of people, it's about destroying the city itself is it not?
 
Alright, so I used the NukeMap calculator linked in the Explosion Yield page, and used a map of the city of Catania as reference (a city with similar characteristics as the city in the book).

In order to destroy Catania, "leave nothing but shadows and dust" and "remove the city off the map", as described in the book, a yield of 46 megatons would be needed, as that way the entire city is within the "Fireball radius", the radius within which anything is vaporized and turned to dust. Dividing that value by 2 because the blast takes up about 50% of the total energy of the explosion, we get 23 megatons, so City level.

A character able to tank such a blast would then have City level durability.
 
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As long as it's tanked at mostly point-blank range yeah. If they're far from the explosion then it goes down really fast, I have a character who's 9-A off a Low 7-C nuke.
 
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