Nuclear war

The big picture: Soot and ash from nuclear weapon detonation would block the sun and cause disruptions to the Earth's climate, causing a "catastrophic ...

Driving the news: Moderna is seeking unspecified monetary damages for patent infringement. [failed to make progress](https://www.axios.com/2022/06/29/iran-nuclear-deal-talks-no-progress-qatar)and [appear unlikely to succeed](https://www.axios.com/2022/07/27/iran-nuclear-deal-return-biden-mcgurk-unlikely)anytime soon. [COVID-19 vaccin](https://www.axios.com/2020/03/15/coronavirus-latest-news-quick-highlights)e approved in the U.S., [the company announced Friday](https://investors.modernatx.com/news/news-details/2022/Moderna-Sues-Pfizer-and-BioNTech-for-Infringing-Patents-Central-to-Modernas-Innovative-mRNA-Technology-Platform/default.aspx). [increased tensions](https://www.axios.com/2022/08/01/nuclear-humanity-un-nonproliferation) between the U.S. [published](https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-022-00573-0) in Nature Food journal. [study](https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-022-00573-0#Tab1) published Monday.

A nuclear blast would cause worldwide famine, according to the study, published in Nature Food on Monday, as massive amounts of soot would block sunlight, ...

Those findings emerged after Russia's foreign minister said the risk of nuclear conflict "should [not be underestimated](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-news-russia-warns-nuclear-world-war-if-west-keeps-sending-weapons/)." Nuclear weapons haven't been used in a conflict since 1945, but currently, the U.S. But not all nations of the world would face the same fate under the scenarios studied. The density of the soot would reduce global temperatures by more than 58ºF. But a new study shows just how deadly the scope of such a war would be. They also assumed that people would repurpose biofuel crops for human consumption, that food waste would be limited and that global food trade would halt as nations tried to save their own. The study said after two years, with international trade at a halt and a 34.7ºF temperature drop, the famine it creates would kill 255 million people, assuming that the rest of the population got the minimum food needed to survive, about 1,999 calories per capita per day. "Future problems are brewing," he said. and South Korea. Even a relatively small nuclear conflict, such as one between India and Pakistan, would be devastating, researchers found. Under the smallest nuclear war situation studied, researchers found that the Middle East, parts of Central America and parts of Asia would see some food deprivation to starving while most of the rest of the world would continue to have a normal food intake. "While amounts of soot injection into the stratosphere from the use of fewer nuclear weapons would have smaller global impacts," researchers said in their article, "once a nuclear war starts, it may be very difficult to limit escalation."

More than 5 billion people would die of hunger following a full-scale nuclear war between the US and Russia, according to climate scientists who estimated ...

Our work makes clear that it is time for those nine states to listen to science and the rest of the world and sign this treaty.” “Banning nuclear weapons is the only long-term solution. Even a 7% global decline in crop yield would exceed the largest anomaly ever recorded since the beginning of Food and Agricultural Organization observational records in 1961. In the largest war scenario tested—a full-scale US-Russia nuclear conflict—global average caloric production decreased by about 90% three to four years after the fighting. The NCAR Community Land Model made it possible to estimate productivity of [major crops](https://www.futurity.org/nuclear-winter-food-production-2721242-2/) (maize, rice, spring wheat, and soybean) on a country-by-country basis. Building on past research, Xia, Robock, and colleagues calculated how much sun-blocking soot would enter the atmosphere from firestorms that the detonation of nuclear weapons would ignite.

What could a nuclear war do to the climate — and humanity? A new study on “nuclear winter” estimates that as many as 5 billion people could die from starvation.

Delegates [have been meeting](https://www.icanw.org/npt_review_conference_2022_starts) this month at the United Nations in New York for the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, the cornerstone of the nuclear arms control regime, but little progress is expected even as global military spending is [reaching a record high](https://www.defensenews.com/global/2022/08/02/global-military-spending-hits-record-high/) and international tensions have tightened. [studies published](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.222.4630.1283) in 1983 by a team of researchers including the celebrity scientist Carl Sagan. International arms control treaties have begun to crumble, even as philanthropies [have withdrawn](https://www.vox.com/2022/3/17/22976981/nuclear-war-russia-ukraine-funding-macarthur-existential-risk-effective-altruism-carnegie) from the nuclear realm. But we do know from the past that we would likely see significant cooling in the event of a nuclear firestorm. [year without a summer](https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/how-climate-works/mount-tambora-and-year-without-summer),” as crop failures and famines led to global starvation. [demonstrates](https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22981207/russia-ukraine-nuclear-war-civil-defense), we may have forgotten about nuclear war, but nuclear war hasn’t forgotten about us. While his administration pushed back against the research, President Ronald Reagan was largely persuaded by the argument, as was then-Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev; Reagan noted that a nuclear war “could just end up in no victory for anyone because we would wipe out the earth as we know it.” The fires from such a war could release as much as 47 million tons of soot into the atmosphere, with a worst-case scenario causing global calorie production to drop by as much as 50 percent and leading to 2 billion deaths around the world. In the cold and dark, crops would wither and die, as would the livestock that depend on them. The results were grim: a full-scale nuclear war between the US and Russia with their current number of warheads could lead to as much as 150 million tons of soot being injected into the atmosphere, thanks to massive fires ignited by the explosions. [Community Land Model](https://www.cesm.ucar.edu/models/clm/). Forget [threatened species](https://www.iucnredlist.org/) — these were the moments when the lights almost went out on all life on Earth.

The team also tested what would happen in the event of U.S. Russia nuclear conflict. In this instance, global average caloric production would decrease by about ...

“Banning nuclear weapons is the only long-term solution. and Russia – more than 75% of the planet would be starving within two years. The team also tested what would happen in the event of U.S. Even under the smallest nuclear scenario, say a localised war between India and Pakistan, the destruction would be immense. The researchers determined soot dispersal for a variety of war scenarios – from smaller India-Pakistan wars to a large U.S.- [Russia war](https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/first-nato-summit-since-russia-ukraine-war/138914/). [sun-blocking soot could be ignited, as a result of nuclear weapons](https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/modelling-armageddon-the-effects-of-nuclear-weapons-on-climate/109988/).

Climate disruption and nuclear contamination would spread well beyond two nations engaging with nuclear weapons. Trade restrictions following the start of a war ...

This study didn’t look at how a nuclear winter could impact the ocean or just how changes to the food production model—such as increasing cold-adapted crops and changing to alternate food sources—might offer benefits. That leaves Australia and New Zealand as potentially the countries in the best position to withstand the devastation, largely based on the location. “The reduced light, global cooling, and likely trade restrictions after nuclear wars would be a global catastrophe for food security,” write the authors in a study published by Nature Food. Other countries in Africa and South America may be better positioned to survive the starvation onslaught if, for example, a U.S. Using various models of how the climate could change and how crops would be impacted, the team of researchers analyzed six scenarios. Not to go all doomsday on you, but even the smallest of nuclear wars could be enough to spark global famine.