If nuke does not kill you, famine will... a total of 5 bn

If the US and Russia go for a nuke war, it could kill 5 billion people, a new study has claimed. But this wiping out of more than two-thirds of the world would not be done by the nuclear bombs directly. Many would starve to death.

The study

Scientists at Rutgers University have mapped potential effects of six possible nuclear conflict scenarios. A full-scale war between the US and Russia has been treated as the worst possible case, which, they estimated, would wipe out more than half of humanity.

They said a modern nuclear war would release so much of soot in the atmosphere that it would block the sunlight from reaching the earth for a long time. In the absence of the sunlight, the planet would face massive famines. They estimated that five billion people would die. The study was published in Nature Food journal. 

The model

The scientists based their calculations of how much soot would enter the atmosphere from firestorms ignited by the detonation of nuclear weapons. Researchers used a climate forecasting tool, which allowed them to estimate productivity of major crops on a country-by-country basis. 

What if India, Pak…

The study suggested that even a relatively small-scale conflict would have devastating consequences for global food production. A localised battle between India and Pakistan would see crop yields decline by an estimated 7% within five years, while a US-Russia war would see production fall by 90% within three to four years. 

This comes after the spectre of conflict between the US and Russia was raised following Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned in April that there was a "serious" risk of nuclear war breaking out.

I read this news report on Reuters.