Turns out Teddy's nuclear missile had a bigger impact than many would've guessed in Fear The Walking Dead season 7. John Glover's Teddy proved a welcome departure from the usual Walking Dead villain. A cult leader in the classic mold, Teddy's deluded mind viewed the zombie apocalypse as a chance to start over, but reanimated corpses roaming the land apparently wasn't enough of a "reset" for him. In Fear The Walking Dead's season 6 finale, Teddy detonated a nuclear missile from the beached U.S.S. Pennsylvania, and transformed a large chunk of Texas into a wasteland.
Fear The Walking Dead's season 7 premiere revealed how much worse the apocalypse has become thanks to Teddy. Food was hard enough to scavenge before, but now every can of beans needs to be scanned for radiation, while there's no point fishing because the fish are poisoned. Any form of shelter must be lined with lead or foil sheets, and venturing outside requires special protective gear, including masks. But Fear The Walking Dead season 7's opening episode only glimpsed the nuclear landscape through Victor Strand and his new friend Will. Episode 2 ("Six Hours") follows Grace and Morgan on a road trip, and provides a better overview of Teddy's damage. And it's not good news...
Lennie James' Morgan Jones says the yield of Teddy's missile has covered several hundred miles in any direction. That's an area approximately 400 miles across from one end to the other. According to Fred (one of the new characters introduced in Fear The Walking Dead season 7, episode 2), a badly-timed storm then pushed the radioactive air even further toward Louisiana. Helpfully, Fred's map marks approximately 8 blast zones where each of the missile's warheads landed. These uninhabitable zones stretch from Laredo up through San Antonio, then Austin, and right the way to Dallas. The second wasteland reaches from Houston through to Baton Rogue and Shreveport - more or less consistent with Grace's 400 mile estimate. Essentially, the entire right half of Texas isn't somewhere you want to be in Fear The Walking Dead.
That's not even the worst part. When Morgan tries driving clear of the affected land, Grace (something of a nuclear specialist) is able to better assess the blast's impact. She discovers the warheads actually burned "on the ground" and speculates there's a lot of "dangerous stuff" that won't dissipate for many, many years. Said "dangerous stuff" doesn't get picked up by a Geiger counter either, so any explorers will be flying blind. Grace elaborates after meeting Bea and Fred, noting their beta radiation burns and guessing they've been exposed to "worse stuff too." By this, she could mean gamma rays, which are generally more lethal since they penetrate the body easier than beta particles (hence why beta radiation damages the skin). Geiger counters don't differentiate between types of radiation, which means gamma rays might be the hidden danger Grace was referring to.
Previously, The Walking Dead characters have happily hit zombies upside the head whenever one gets within biting range. Teddy's nuclear missile made zombies both radioactive and less cohesive, meaning hitting one and getting a chunk on you is now a major problem. Fear The Walking Dead season 7 has performed a solid job of making the zombie apocalypse even more dangerous, but only after "Six Hours" can viewers truly appreciate just how dire the situation in Texas has become. The only salvation appears to be Padre - a safe spot in the middle that somehow managed to avoid getting hit.