According to modeling by a US university, a nuclear war between India and Pakistan could kill more than two billion people. The cooling of the planet would bring with it disruptions in food production, and the situation would be worsened by the export restrictions of major producing countries.
Russian and a full-scale nuclear war between the United States could lead to the death of more than five billion people, according to a research article published on Monday in an academic peer-reviewed in Nature Food magazine.
According to the conclusions of a team of researchers from Rutgers University in the United States, nuclear explosions would create huge fires that would push large amounts of ash and soot into the atmosphere. “It would spread globally and rapidly cool the planet,” the study says.
The cooling of the planet would lead to disturbances in food production and bring with it widespread famine. According to the same researchers, a smaller nuclear war between India and Pakistan could lead to the death of more than two billion people.
Estimates of more than five and two billion dead are the worst-case scenarios shown by the atmospheric modeling and other estimates used by the researchers.
Researchers refer, among other things, to the great volcanic eruptions in history, such as the eruption of Tambora in Indonesia in 1815.
The ash cloud created by Tambora cooled the whole earth for a year so that the year 1816 known as summerless. Crops failed in various parts of the world and at least tens of thousands of people died of starvation and disease as far away as North America and Europe.
In the modern world economy, a sharp decrease in food production in some major producing countries would, according to the researchers, mean that food exports would also begin to be restricted. It would be disastrous, for example, in the countries of Africa and the Middle East, where they are very dependent on imported food.
The food situation the worsening would depend on how many nuclear weapons are used and in how large an area. According to the researchers, a more limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan would reduce the world’s food production by Seven percent in the 1-5 year time frame.
A large-scale nuclear war between the great powers, on the other hand, would lead to the world’s food production falling by 90 percent in about 3–4 years, the researchers estimate.
According to the researchers, their modeling “underlines the importance of international cooperation in order to avoid nuclear war”.
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