| 2012 Sevier County nuclear attack | |
|---|---|
 The mushroom cloud rises over I-70 the late morning of June 1 | |
|
Attack type: |
Tactical, Nuclear |
|
Area of attack: |
I-70 Interstate, Sevier County, Utah |
|
Attackers: |
Al-Qaeda allied terrorists |
The 2012 Sevier County nuclear attack refers to the detonation of a tactical nuclear device on the I-70 Interstate in Sevier County, Utah in June, 2012. The intended target of the bomb was initially downtown Salt Lake City, but when the Al-Qaeda allied terrorists suspected that the United States's law enforcement and intelligence agencies were getting too close to discovering them and their plot, they detonated the device where they were at the time, which happened to be the I-70 in Sevier County. Forty-four were killed instantly in the blast around 1:19 AM on June 1, but many more would die of radiation poisoning several months later, bringing the total deaths caused by the bomb to seventy-eight. The blast irradiated an area of nearly twenty-seven square miles of Utah wilderness around the interstate. Due to prevailing winds, the fallout mainly affected sparsely populated towns and campgrounds in west-central Utah. Also due to weather conditions at the time, the mushroom cloud was actually visible from Salt Lake City for sixteen to eighteen hours after the detonation. It was the third nuclear attack by hostile forces on US home soil in nine years, the first having been in north-central Nevada in early 2003.