London, Europe Brief News – Amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine and rising geopolitical tensions, revived fears of nuclear war have prompted many to question what a nuclear conflict would mean for humanity and the planet.
Any nuclear conflict would have a huge range of devastating consequences, from initial deaths in the direct blasts to the lingering effects of radiation and environmental pollution.
But immediate casualties could be dwarfed by deaths from a subsequent global famine, caused by massive amounts of soot blocking the Sun and disrupting climate systems and food production, according to new research published on Monday in the journal Nature Food.
Climate scientists at Rutgers University have mapped out the effects of six possible nuclear war scenarios.
A full-scale nuclear war between the US and Russia, the worst scenario modelled, could result in more than five billion people dying of hunger after two years. Even a relatively small-scale conflict between India and Pakistan could lead to worldwide famine.
In a nuclear war, bombs targeted at cities and industrial areas would start firestorms, injecting large amounts of soot into the upper atmosphere which would spread globally and rapidly cool the planet, say the researchers.
This would disrupt the Earth’s climate, impacting food production systems on land and in the oceans.
The researchers used a climate forecasting tool to estimate the productivity of major crops on a country-by-country basis.
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.
They analysed what would happen in six possible nuclear conflict scenarios, each of which would result in different amounts of soot in the atmosphere, and could see temperatures fall between one and 16 degrees Celsius.
Even a relatively small-scale battle between India and Pakistan could result in crop yields declining by around 7 per cent within five years of the conflict.
Both countries possess nuclear arsenals of comparable size, and of the world’s nine nuclear-armed countries, the two are also among the handful that has been increasing their nuclear warhead stockpiles, according to the Federation of American Scientists (FAS).
Meanwhile, a full-scale nuclear war between the US and Russia, which are jointly estimated to account for 90 per cent of the world’s nuclear stockpile, could see production fall by around 90 per cent in the three to four years after the fighting.
