Nuke

The nuke is an explosive in MaddTech, which creates a significantly larger blast compared to TNT, but is much more expensive. In MaddTech 1.0, the nuke was nothing more than a simple, though very strong, explosive (basically the equivalent of a very large amount of TNT going off at once). The rest of this article discusses the nuke from MaddTech 1.1 onwards.

The nuke has 3 effect, each with a different radius. The shortest is the immediate blast radius - blocks within this radius are simply destroyed as if by TNT. The next, larger radius, depends on height (the higher the nuke goes off, the larger the radius) - this is the shockwave radius. Within the shockwave radius, each block has a 25% chance of disppearing, every stone has 70% of disappearing (if it didn't already) or otherwise turning into cobblestone, and dirt turns into gravel. Ores usually survive this process, so it can make it easier to mine within the nuke crater. The final radius is 2 times larger than the shockwave radius, and it's the thermal blast radius - within this radius, wooden blocks as well as leaves have 30% chance of catching fire on the top side (you can cover wooden blocks like crates and chests with non-flammable blocks to protect them). All entities within the cube with the thermal blast radius will also catch fire and burn for 50 seconds (and usually die).

The nuke will also consume uranium-containing blocks (uranium ore, uranium blocks, and other nukes) within a 10x10x10 box (with the nuke in its center), and use uranium from them to increase its blast.

Defence
Here are some ways to protect yourself and your machinery from nukes.

Nuclear Shelter
A nuclear shelter is an underground structure that helps to keep things out of reach of nuclear weapons. It should be hidden under moderately high ground. The shockwave radius (assuming large amounts of uranium weren't consume from surroundings) ends half-way between the nuke's height and the bottom of the world - thus, you must place your shelter as far down as possible. If the covering is high enough, you'll also be protected from the immediate blast radius.

The thermal blast radius, however, will reach the bottom of the world. For this reason, all wooden blocks (such as crates) will have to have their top side covered with a non-flammable rock - perhaps cobblestone. The floor of the shelter should be covered in water, so that entities such as players cannot catch fire.

The immediate blast radius of nukes will slowly allow subsequent nukes to fall deeper and deeper into the ground. A "nuclear shell" made of strong materials, which nukes cannot easily penetrate, should be placed high above the shelter. An "alarm" can also be used: right below your nuclear shell, place a block of redstone, and connect it using redstone cables going straight down and into your shelter, to a lamp (or inverted lamp). This lamp will indicate whether or not the shell was penetrated.

Nuclear Network
An even more effective way to protect from nukes is to have lots of nuclear shelters, far away from each other, connected by tunnels, which also have water on the floor. When an alarm is signaled in a shelter, it should be abandoned, and boats can be used to travel via the tunnels to another shelter, then the compromised shelter should be shielded off.