The Truth About Nuclear Winter
Concerns about nuclear winter faded when the cold war ended. Few people think about it today. But nuclear winter was recently revisited by several scientific teams using the latest computer climate models.
In every case, the threat posed by nuclear winter was found to be worse than anyone imagined.
Mass fires are the problem.
Fire wasn’t even considered during nuclear war planning until Dr. Lynn Eden’s groundbreaking 2004 book The Whole World On Fire. But Dr. Eden showed that fires started by nuclear weapons can be more destructive than blast and radiation combined. Only a few mass fires have occurred in recorded history, all caused by city-bombing during World War II. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima started the last mass fire.
Mass fires are not ‘line fires’, like forest fires, that burn fuel as they come to it, a little at a time. Instead, they ignite huge areas simultaneously, generating temperatures sufficient to burn asphalt streets. Mass fires are unaffected by weather or icy terrain. Frozen trees flash-dry in an instant and burst into flames just as quickly.
Concrete explodes violently from intense heat. Steel melts and skyscrapers collapse. Pipelines and pressure vessels burst, spewing toxic chemicals, transportation fuels, and natural gas. Superheated fumes streak skyward, sucking in air at speeds exceeding that of any hurricane, like a giant bellows fueling the flames.
Particles of smoke and soot are lofted high into the stratosphere where no rain exists to wash them out. Multiple mass fires can pollute the stratosphere enough to reduce surface sunlight for a decade or more.
Less sunlight means less food from agriculture. How much less depends upon contamination levels, but it’s much easier to create a devastating nuclear winter than scientists originally thought.
A series of studies at Rutgers University in 2007 used advanced computer climate models to see what would happen in a nuclear war between India and Pakistan where each used only half their nuclear arsenals, or a total of 100 conventional atomic bombs.
That would involve just 0.2% of today’s nuclear firepower, but would still kill millions worldwide from starvation as crops failed. Follow-on studies by scientific teams in America and Switzerland drew similar conclusions, and results of a 2013 study were even worse.
Then the most detailed and comprehensive research ever conducted on nuclear winter was released on October 2, 2019. Advanced NASA climate models revealed that effects a nuclear winter caused by India and Pakistan had grown worse because of their expanding nuclear arsenals.
As many as 2 billion people would die from starvation if India and Pakistan have a nuclear war today.
Investigating a nuclear war between the United States and Russia with current arsenals, the study concluded that temperatures would be lower than the last Ice Age, eliminating agricultural growing seasons worldwide for several years. Survivors would be those with enough supplies stocked to live independently until food crops were possible again.
A preview of that was seen after the largest series of volcanic eruptions in recorded history occurred in Indonesia in 1815. The ensuing worldwide temperature drop wasn’t even half of what a nuclear war between India and Pakistan would bring. But 1815 nevertheless became known as the ‘Year Without Summer.’ Crop-killing frosts appeared every month in New England, while Europe suffered widespread famine.
So gloomy was the summer of 1815 that Mary Shelley was inspired to write her classic tale of horror ‘FRANKENSTEIN’.
A nuclear war between India and Pakistan today would have a much greater impact on agriculture than the 1815 volcanoes did. A nuclear war between the US and Russia would be unspeakable.
Of course, some might survive without stocking supplies. It seems like a horror movie, but roving bands of desperate, starving people really would take whatever they could by whatever means necessary.
WE DON’T HAVE TO GO THERE!
Enough voters can keep it from happening, but they need our organization and support.