This post is regarding an event that I do not expect to happen, at all. But. There are too many nukes 'out there' and too many terrorists.

I'd like to discuss the worst case scenario of a nuke strike on a major city (say D.C., NY, London, etc) and whether there are typically enough standing bids in the ES futures market to fill my stop market order that exists at let's say, 3% below the market, to sell 5 contracts I am long, before the owners of these bids become aware and pull them and/or, before the markets are shut down. You'd think there would be a hell of an air pocket once you got below a certain price level. Mega-flash crash.

Now, it's kind of selfish of me to discuss being able to leave someone else holding the bag on my position while hundreds of thousands get their flesh melted off but I still will have to put food on the table. Were I short in such a situation, I would ease my mind a bit by contributing to relief efforts from my profits, if the markets reopened and the original trades let stand.

I have the same question in to the CME (about market depth anyway) and we'll see if I hear back. So, I'm trying to find out if there is a way to see historical market depth 3%-5% down on the CME future's contracts then current price.

Undoubtedly a bad thread, destined for the bit bucket.

Several things that would need to continue to trade, perhaps, would be currencies and hard commodities like agriculture and energy, oil/nat gas, maybe precious metals. I don't know if the CME futures markets would selectively remain open, trading these things and not stock index products.

Will update this if I hear back from the CME on the market depth on the ES but my guess is that sizable standing bids don't run very deep down as demonstrated by the flash crash.

Hoping for a peaceful world.