T he NRDC Nuclear Program has developed software and databases that providenew capabilities to analyze the scale and consequences of nuclear violence. During the Cold War, a number of individuals and institutions published studiesand reports about nuclear conflict, creating a reference set of calculations andformulas in the process. We have revisited some of these earlier efforts with vastlyimproved technological and computing resources and with greater access to oncesecret information. NRDC’s nuclear war simulation model can now provide aglimpse of the war planning process. The NRDC Nuclear War Simulation Model relies on a collection of nuclear weapon effects formulas and several sets of input data, including: Characteristics of the attacking nuclear weapons or forcesParameters of the attacked targets, including coordinates, and vulnerabilityGeographic and demographic data for the attacked countryMeteorological data, particularly wind data for fallout calculations These nuclear weapons effects formulas and input data are integrated into a Geographic Information System (GIS) called ArcView. This commercial softwarepackage allows the user to display any data that have associated spatial coordinates,such as latitude and longitude. The user can integrate into ArcView other computermodels, e.g., the nuclear weapon effects, to perform additional calculations. ArcViewis then able to further analyze and display the results of the calculations. NRDChas customized ArcView to facilitate management of the input and output data, toperform the nuclear weapon effects calculations, and to reduce the time requiredfor the calculations. Below we review the components of NRDC’s nuclear conflict software and database suite.