Even a 'limited' nuclear war would starve millions of people, new study reveals

A nuclear war would cause a worldwide food crisis lasting at least a decade in which hundreds of millions of people would starve, according to our new modeling.

In a nuclear war, bombs dropped on cities and industrial areas would cause fires in the upper atmosphere. The soot would spread and cause a lot of problems.

The effects on Earth's climate could last for more than a decade. Climate and food production models were used to explore what this would mean for the world's food supply.

There are catastrophic scenarios.

Conflicts between nuclear-armed powers are a global concern. The world's food supply would be affected by a nuclear war. How would global food production and trade be affected by such a large war?

Simulations of the global climate and models of major crops were used to try to answer the questions. After a nuclear war, these simulations can be used to assess the impact on the food supply.

The amount of soot injected into the upper atmosphere depends on how many weapons are used.

The smallest war in our scenarios was a limited conflict between India and Pakistan that involved 100 weapons. Russia and the US destroyed most of the world's nuclear weapons in the largest nuclear holocaust of all time.

Between 5 million and 150 million tons of soot were injected into the upper atmosphere. About one million tons of smoke was injected into the sky by the Australian summer fires of 2019.

Nuclear conflict involving other nations could result in the same amount of smoke and climate impacts, even though we focused on India and Pakistan.

There was widespread hunger.

Impacts on the world's climate would be significant for a decade after a nuclear war. Global food production would decline as a result.

Under the smallest war scenario, sunlight over global crop regions would fall by 10% and global average temperatures would drop by up to C. All human-caused warming would be canceled out for a decade or so.

After a small-scale regional nuclear war, global food production would decrease by seven percent. The biggest recorded drop in food production is almost double the smallest fall. More than 250 million people would be without food after the war.

A nuclear war would leave over five billion people without food.

In this scenario, global temperatures would fall by 10–15C for the first five years after the war, while sunlight would crash by up to 80%, and rain would fall over crop regions. It would take over a decade for global food production to return to pre-war levels.

A limited nuclear war is not something.

After a small nuclear war, behavioral change could save some people from starving. In major food-exporting countries such as Russia, the United States and Australia, we found that reducing household food waste and redirecting feed to humans would reduce the effects of a nuclear war on food supply.

Global food distribution is still a challenge despite great improvements. Despite present-day food production being more than enough to nourish the world's population, over 700 million people suffer from undernutrition.

In a post- nuclear-war world, exporting countries will stop exporting food and focus on feeding their own populations. This would make war-caused shortages worse in countries that import food.

There is no such thing as a limited nuclear war where impacts are limited to warring countries.

The 1985 statement by Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev is supported by the current leaders of China, France, the U.K., Russia and the U.S.

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