Nuclear war would wipe out half of humanity
A nuke war to end us STATS OF THE DAY
FIVE billion people would die in a modern nuclear war with the impact of a global famine — triggered by sunlight-blocking soot in the atmosphere — likely to far exceed the casualties caused by lethal blasts.
The results of such a conflict would be catastrophic for food production, climate scientists at Rutgers University have found in a peer-reviewed study published in the context of the war in Ukraine.
A full-scale war between the US and Russia, the worst possible case, would wipe out more than half of humanity, they said in the study published in the journal Nature Food.
The new study has calculated how much sun-blocking soot would enter the atmosphere as a result of firestorms created by the detonation of nuclear weapons.
Decline
They considered six scenarios involving nuclear arsenals of different sizes, five based on smaller conflicts between India and Pakistan, and one on a war between the US and Russia.
Even the smallest scenario caused famine, with the global average caloric production decreasing by seven per cent within five years.
In the largest scenario, a full-scale nuclear conflict, the global average caloric production decreased by about 90 per cent between three and four years.
The enormous decline in crop yields would cause billions to starve to death, 75 per cent of the world’s population, within two years.
Even a relatively small-scale conflict would have devastating consequences for global food production.
A localised battle between India and Pakistan would see crop yields decline by seven per cent within five years, the study suggested, while a US-Russia war would see production fall by 90 per cent within three to four years.
Researchers also considered whether utilising crops currently used as animal feed or reducing food waste could offset losses in the immediate aftermath of the conflict, but concluded that savings would be minimal in larger-scale battles.
Climate
According to the researchers, the disruption of global food markets from even the smallest scenario – the drop of seven per cent – would be larger than the greatest anomaly ever recorded.
Although the study focused just on how many calories were being produced globally, humans also need proteins and micronutrients to survive, and these are also likely to be significantly affected.
The nuclear war would have an even greater impact on climate change, according to Lili Zia, assistant research professor with Rutgers University.
“The ozone layer would be destroyed by the heating of the stratosphere, producing more ultraviolet radiation at the surface, and we need to understand that impact on food supplies,” she said.
The study comes after the spectre of conflict between the US and Russia was raised following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned in April that there was a “serious” risk of nuclear war breaking out.
“The data tell us one thing,” said Alan Robock, the study’s co-author and a professor of climate science in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University.
“We must prevent a nuclear war from ever happening.”
The warning comes as “humanity is just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation”, according to UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres.
1970: Venera 7, the first spacecraft to land successfully on the surface of another planet, was launched
1982: The first Compact Discs (CDs) were released in Germany
2004: Serbia reinstated the coat of arms and national anthem it used before 1918, when the country became part of Yugoslavia
2007: Russia resumed long-range patrols by nuclear-capable bombers after a 15-year hiatus