In the event of a full-scale nuclear war between the United States, Russia and their allies, more than 5 billion people would die of famine, according to a new study.
The conflict would cause widespread fires that could cause up to 150 million tons of soot to be ejected into Earth's atmosphere, which would cause crop declines in the U.S. and Russia.
The study, published in August in the journal Nature Food, is the latest in four decades of landmark research that attempts to sketch out the threat of a nuclear war. The United States and Russia have 5,428 and 5,977 nuclear warheads, respectively, according to the latest report. China has 350 nuclear warheads which is the third most. Both India and Pakistan have 160.
The clock on the doorstep of doom is 100 seconds.
Alan Robock, a professor of climate science at Rutgers University, said at a news conference on Monday that a full-scale nuclear war would produce unprecedented climate change. In a nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia, more people would die from famine in India and Pakistan than from fighting the war.
Since the US dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, the most immediate effects of a nuclear war have become known. A new world was created in 1945. More than 60,000 buildings in the city were damaged or destroyed by the single bomb that killed an estimated 140,000 people. John Hersey, a journalist, wrote six accounts of the attack's aftermath. The light of the bomb appeared as a blinding flash as bright as the sun, but then the shock wave arrived, throwing bodies under buildings. The survivors who were close to the blast emerged naked, their skin "sloughed off" by the heat of the blast, to wander the ruined city.
Many people would last a lifetime because of the studies that sprang up after the attack. Increased rates of cancer, cataracts and other health conditions persisted for years in survivors who had been close to the bombs's epicenter.
The most lethal and frightening outcome of a small-scale nuclear war would take four more decades to be understood by scientists. A lot of the sun's light would be blocked out by radioactive dust and smoke. Many of the world's crops would die, creating a global famine and wiping out billions of people, if the temperature dropped.
To model how this apocalyptic event would affect the planet's ability to sustain life, the researchers calculated the amount of soot that would be generated from six different scenarios.
The soot data was plugged into the NCAR's Community Earth System Model, a forecasting tool that mimics changes to Earth's sunlight, temperature and precipitation. The Community Land Model gave the scientists a breakdown of the dramatic reductions a nuclear winter would bring to corn, rice, soybean, wheat and fish harvests.
Nuclear winter would reduce the food calories produced worldwide, as well as the number of people who would starve, if international trade ceased and the remaining resources weren't used.
In the worst-case scenario of a nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia, the temperature on Earth's surface would plummet by as much as 29 degrees Fahrenheit (16 degrees Celsius), more than three times the temperature difference between now and the last ice age. The war between India and Pakistan could cause 2 billion deaths.
The scientists said that Africa and the Middle East would be the hardest hit regions. Most of the bombs dropped in the Northern Hemisphere would be avoided by Australia and New Zealand.
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The amount of smoke being put into the atmosphere is the most important thing to know according to study co-author Owen B. Toon. The energy released from the fires is a lot more than the weapons' energy. It does not rain in the sky. It will stay there for a long time when there is a lot of smoke up there.
The topic of nuclear winter was first brought to the attention of Toon and his team by a revelation about what might have killed the dinosaurs. The Yucatn Peninsula was hit by an asteroid 66 million years ago. The dinosaurs were wiped out by the asteroid. Around 75% of Earth's animals were killed by the impact of the collision, but it wasn't the energy from the collision that killed them.
They applied this insight to nuclear conflicts using rudimentary atmospheric models and satellite data. They found that small-scale thermonuclear wars, using as few as 100 1-megaton nuclear warheads, could start enough fires to cause land temperatures to plummet to 5 to minus 13 F. The cooling effect would last up to 20 years. Their study concluded that there is a chance of extinction.
The Drake equation is a famous formula that can be used to estimate the number of intelligent alien civilizations in the universe. According to the first estimates made by the inventor of the equation, the advanced extraterrestrial civilizations could be anywhere from 20 to 50 million in size. If that were the case, why hadn't we come across them yet?
He concluded that intelligent civilizations were doomed because they were destroying themselves with nuclear weapons.
The number of countries with nukes has gone down since the end of the Cold War, but the number of countries with peace treaties with the US and Russia has gone up. According to an assessment by the U.S. Department of Defense, China could triple its nuclear arsenal to more than 1000 by the end of the decade.
"All of the nuclear-armed states are increasing or upgrading their arsenals, and most are sharpening nuclear rhetoric and the role nuclear weapons play in their military strategies," the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute wrote in its latest annual report.
The new research shows the need to commit to long-term strategies to eliminate nuclear weapons from the planet.
Robock said that the world has come close to nuclear war several times and that if nuclear weapons exist, they can be used. The only long term solution is banning nuclear weapons. The UN treaty banning the development, testing, production, stockpiling, stationing, transfer, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons has been in effect for five years. It is time for those nine states to listen to science and sign the treaty.
Tom Collina, director of policy at the Ploughshares Fund, a San Francisco-based foundation that supports initiatives to prevent the proliferation and use of nuclear weapons, said that the New START treaty is set to expire in 2026.
Both sides should work to reduce their excessive arsenals by negotiating a new treaty to replace the New START treaty.
The 10th Non- Proliferation Treaty Review Conference is a key test of political barriers. At the U.N. headquarters in New York, delegates are renewing pledges on nuclear non proliferation. The Arms Control Association says that little progress has been made at the conference.
It was originally published on Live Science
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