I've made some progress, but have also lost some due to trying to figure out how calcs work on this site as well as what values are appropriate. Most recently I thought about using a half ellipsoid for volume since that seems to be the shape rather than a cylinder like I previously thought of using. The values I need to get before I do a calc are the height (because I have length and width) as well as the material of the island so I can use the specific Destruction Values. Tira doesn't seem to have a mention of a specific rock type. I'm tempted to assume it's Basalt because that is the most common volcanic rock and Ulleungdo has a volcanic origin, as I can't find a most common island material from my searches. As for the height, that's tricky because only a height for the two peak mountains are mentioned.
Also, while searching through the novel around where Tira is mentioned, I found this line from 170 suggesting it was not the island itself that was destroyed.
There is a
common feat calc for destroying a forest, but that presents its own difficulties since we would need to figure out the size of the forest. We could probably just use the area of Tira for that, convert it to acres, use the 435 trees per acre value and then multiply that by some decimal smaller than one because the trees very clearly do not cover the whole island, just a large percentage of it. 70 or 80% looks accurate to me.
EDIT: Here's the
Destruction Values table as well as the
site I got information on a half-ellipsoid volume from.
Here's the proof I actually did some work rather than just pretending I did. Below is the "tree stuff" portion of my work. This is part of what I would put on a blog, which includes only the calc and none of the images.
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Based on the References for Common Feats, we can assume there are 435 trees per acre. The acres can be calculated directly from the area.
67.21km in acres is 16607.953 acres.
435 trees/acre * 16607.953 acres = 7224459.555 trees
7,224,459.555 trees * 9.1700460e7 Joules = 6.6248626e+14 Joules
6.6248626e+14 Joules = 158,338.016252390051 Tons of TNT
158,338.016252390051 Tons of TNT = 158.338016252390051 Kilotons of TNT (High 7-C)
That's for destroying all the trees on the island, as well as assuming the island is covered in trees, which it is clearly not.
First, we multiply by 0.2 because only a fifth of the forest was destroyed.
158338.016252390051 Tons of TNT * 0.2 = 31667.6032505 Tons of TNT
Next, we reduce it further to account for the island not being completely covered by trees.
I will use a low end of 60% trees, a mid of 70%, and a high end of 80%.
Low End:
0.6 * 31667.6032505 Tons = 19000.5619503 Tons of TNT (7-C Town level)
Mid End:
0.7 * 31667.6032505 Tons = 22167.3222753 Tons of TNT (7-C Town level)
High End:
0.8 * 31667.6032505 Tons = 25334.0826004 Tons of TNT (7-C Town level)
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Looks like that mention of attacks comparable to nukes is substantiated.