02 Mar Dire consequences if India and Pakistan go nuclear

by Beyond Nuclear

   Peace, civil society and non-proliferation groups around the world are urging for cooler heads to prevail as tensions between India and Pakistan, both nuclear weapons powers, continue to simmer. Studies in 2007, and updated by the authors in 2018, show that even a limited nuclear exchange between the two countries would have a global impact, causing widespread famine, aside from the obvious and immediate terrible devastation in Pakistan and India themselves. Beyond Nuclear advisory board member, Dr. M.V. Ramana, looked at the effect of just one Hiroshima-sized (15 kt) bomb exploded over Mumbai, which “would result in 150,000 to 800,000 deaths within a few weeks from the combined effects of blast, burn, and radiation.” The new Toon et al. findings show that the effect would be even worse than their 2007 study predicted after an India-Pakistan nuclear exchange: “Smoke would rise into the stratosphere and within weeks spread over the Earth. The smoke would absorb sunlight and cool the surface by several degrees, while heating the stratosphere by more than 50o C. The lower surface temperatures would adversely impact agriculture globally, possibly leading to crop losses so severe that many would starve to death even far from Asia.” IPPNW also has a new report out on the effects of a nuclear exchange. Read it here.