1000 in the Italian version -- not that it really matters. It's still 10 times the destructive power of the Tsar Bomba, the deadliest thermonuclear weapon ever produced in the real world. And those balistic missiles, unlike the T.B., definitely weren't test weapons, meaning that the devices to prevent nuclear fallout wouldn't have been implemented.
And I choose to refuse their different rules and call them out for their BS any time a director takes shortcuts so that he doesn't have to think too much on consequences.
Does the bomb detonate on the ground? Yes, otherwise the San Andreas fault wouldn't be brought to breaking point.
Does the whole western portion of California immediately disappear under the sea? No, otherwise Superman could have never saved the day.
Therefore nuclear fallout is bound to happen and millions of square miles of US soil, Lex's newly-acuired properties included too, get a nice rain of radioactive ash for the next weeks or even months.
Yeah, you're right. The problem with writing parts of my posts non-consecutively.
Then no fertile land on the horizon for Lex Luthor for a lot of time, I fear, since seeding the oceanic depths (where the organic content of the ground is zero, meaning incredibly low levels of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium) and sea water are not the best way to get it. Maybe he should have chosen a place like Nebraska for his evil plan! Also, if what Lois says is true, why didn't the proto-continent already display signs of "advanced alie technology" like the one in the Fortress of Solitude? It had grown quite a lot bigger than the latter by the time it's sent into space, after all.
By the way, I haven't heard any reply about the fact that Luthor can become the owner of this new continent only if he admits he created it, triggering the extermination of large swathes of the human species. THAT would to be quite a legal mess to overcome, don't you think?
I don't know, I've never watched the Donner cut and I'm in no hurry to remedy. You may be right but the fact is that the Fortress of Solitude, in the form depicted in Donner's and Donner-compliant movies, always looked more like a pillow fortress made of crystal pillars. Not the paradygm of impregnability, if you know what I mean.