A thermonuclear war would ruin your whole day and several years after that. "Heck, I reckon you wouldn't even be human beins if you didn't have some pretty strong personal feelings about nuclear combat."
"Our research supports that there would be worldwide destruction," said Michael Mills, co-author of the study and a research scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "It demonstrates that a small-scale regional conflict is capable of triggering larger ozone losses globally than the ones that were previously predicted for a full-scale nuclear war."
Combined with the climatic impact of a regional nuclear war -- which could reduce crop yields and starve hundreds of millions -- Mills' modeling shows that the entire globe would feel the repercussions of a hundred nuclear detonations, a small fraction of just the U.S. stockpile.
Will we ever witness a nuclear war? If we do then start thinking about your food supply.
A nuclear war between Pakistan and India would kill over a billion people just from starvation.
"An Assessment of the Extent of Projected Global Famine Resulting from Limited, Regional Nuclear War" by Dr Ira Helfand, an emergency medicine specialist from Massachusetts, projects "a total global death toll in the range of one billion from starvation alone."
So glad I do not live in one of the countries that would face massive starvation.
World grain stores are low and the planet would cool down.
Earlier studies have suggested that such a conflict would throw five million tonnes of black soot into the atmosphere, triggering a reduction of 1.25°C in the average temperature at the earth's surface for several years. As a result, the annual growing season in the world's most important grain-producing areas would shrink by between 10 and 20 days.
Helfand points out that the world is ill-prepared to cope with such a disaster. "Global grain stocks stand at 49 days, lower than at any point in the past five decades," he says. "These stocks would not provide any significant reserve in the event of a sharp decline in production. We would see hoarding on a global scale."
So if we implemented climate engineering projects to cool down the Earth by a similar amount we'd cause a lot of starvation.
Also, a bunch of small nukes would destroy a large fraction of the ozone layer.
Another study being unveiled at today's conference suggests that the smoke unleashed by 100, small, 15 kiloton nuclear warheads could destroy 30-40% of the world's ozone layer. This would kill off some food crops, according to the study's author, Brian Toon, an atmospheric scientist from the University of Colorado in Boulder, US.
I bet a lot of species would go extinct as well. Human hunger would lead to more hunting of animals.
So is it conceivable that India and Pakistan would ever duke it out with nuclear weapons?