According to an international study published in the journal Nature Food , led by scientists at Rutgers University (USA), a nuclear conflict that uses less than 3% of the world’s nuclear stockpile could also cause serious damage. A third of the world’s population died in just two years.

A larger nuclear conflict between a superpower like the US and Russia could kill three-quarters of the world’s population.

“The use of any nuclear weapon could be catastrophic for the world,” said climate scientist and study author Alan Robock at Rutgers University.

According to SCMP newspaper , 30 years have passed since the end of the cold war, now the threat of nuclear conflict is greater than ever.

Recently, British national security adviser Stephen Lovegrove said that the breakdown in dialogue between countries has pushed the world into “a dangerous new age”.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also warned that “the prospect of nuclear conflict, once unimaginable, is now possible”.

While science had previously predicted that nuclear war would affect food supplies, it was not until recent research that scientists calculated for the first time the extent of the famine and the number of deaths. .

Specifically, detonating even a small fraction of a nuclear weapon would cause massive firestorms, bringing soot into the atmosphere, dramatically lowering the temperature on Earth. In addition to the tens of millions of people who died immediately in the war zone, hundreds of millions of people would later die from starvation.

That doesn’t take into account the effect of increased UV radiation on crops due to the destruction of the ozone layer.

“Using nuclear weapons is like suicide bombing. You attack people but you will die of hunger,” said scientist Robock.

Also according to Robock’s research, there is a high probability that India and Pakistan will have a nuclear conflict. The two countries have fought in four wars and often clash on the border.

If India and Pakistan were to target each other’s cities with 250 100-kiloton nuclear weapons that the two countries are believed to possess, about 127 million people in South Asia would be killed by the explosions. fire and radiation.

Next, an estimated 37 million tons of soot will enter the atmosphere, causing temperatures across the planet to drop by more than 5 degrees Celsius, affecting food production. As a result, hunger will kill 2 billion people globally.

In the event that a conflict breaks out between the two countries believed to hold more than 90% of the world’s nuclear, Russia and the United States, an estimated 5 billion people around the world will die.

However, any of the nine countries with nuclear weapons including China, North Korea, France, Israel and the UK have enough firepower to cause these disasters

Source: CafeF