According to research published in Nature Food on Monday, a full-scale nuclear war between Russia and the U.S. could cause a global famine and kill more than 5 billion people.
A study suggests that a limited nuclear war could kill a lot of people.
After a nuclear exchange, soot blasted into the atmosphere would block out sunlight and cause temperatures to plummet, according to climate models.
The models analyzed changes to agricultural production and trade in five scenarios for how smaller nuclear wars between India and Pakistan could play out and one large war between Russia and the U.S.
A large-scale nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia would cause more than 75% of the world's population to be starving within two years, according to researchers.
Two billion people could die within two years of a smaller exchange between India and Pakistan.
Crop declines would be the most severe in mid-high latitude nations, which includes exporting powerhouses like the U.S. and Russia.
The researchers said that savings from offsetting strategies like using crops fed to livestock to feed people or eliminating all food waste could be of limited help in the immediate aftermath of a nuclear war.
Nuclear war can affect food production. The researchers focused on calories and soot in their scenarios. Caloric intake is only a small part of the human's nutrition needs, and future research should consider the impact on the various vitamins and minerals vital to human health. Beyond a nuclear winter, a nuclear war would have impacts. The ozone layer could be destroyed by heating the atmosphere by nuclear detonations. Key infrastructure and products for food production could be wiped out due to radioactiveContamination. Future research should consider these issues.
It is possible that humans could adapt agricultural systems to function in the case of a nuclear winter, though it will be difficult to implement in time for the second year predicted by models. The researchers said that using cold-adapted crops that need less light, greenhouses or switch to alternative food sources could help reduce the impact, but were not examined using the models.
Even a limited nuclear exchange could be devastating for the entire planet and the research adds yet another grim insight into the catastrophic consequences of nuclear war. Researchers believe that soot thrown into the atmosphere after a nuclear exchange will block out the sun and cause a nuclear winter. A nuclear winter could cause famine, dramatic alterations of ocean chemistry, and plunge the world into a new ice age, according to models. At a time when many nuclear-armed states are on edge, the study came at a good time. The conflict that has seen a nuclear power plant become a battleground and threats from President Putin to deploy nuclear weapons may lead to a nuclear catastrophe. The U.S., the U.K., France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel are all nuclear-armed.
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