What will happen to the planet after a nuclear war?

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What will happen to the planet after a nuclear war?
What will happen to the planet after a nuclear war?
Anonim

No matter how peaceful the sky above our heads may seem to us, the situation on the planet is extremely tense. As of 2017, there were about four dozen armed conflicts and wars in the world, and 2020 began with an escalation of the conflict in the Middle East. The hand of the metaphorical Doomsday Clock - midnight, which marks the beginning of a nuclear war - froze at 23:58. This means that the threat of nuclear war, which seemed to be in the distant past, has not gone anywhere. Moreover, over the past decades, the nuclear potential of the world powers has increased significantly. But what will happen to the planet if midnight does come?

The Doomsday Clock is a project of the University of Chicago, a magazine called the Bulletin of the Atomics. The magazine has been published since 1945, but the watch itself was first mentioned on the pages of the publication in 1947. The magazine was founded by members of the Manhattan Project, which is the codename for the secret US nuclear weapons program. The last time the hands were at 23:58 was in 1953, when the USSR and the United States first tested hydrogen bombs.

What will a limited nuclear conflict lead to?

Almost everyone has seen what a nuclear winter looks like. At least the way filmmakers and writers see it. Now it's time to get acquainted with how scientists see the nuclear winter. According to a study published back in 2014 in the journal Advancing Earth and Space Science, scientists modeled what would happen after a "limited regional nuclear war." In their work, the researchers presented the development of the nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan. The choice of these countries is probably due to the small nuclear potential of the two powers, compared to the United States, Russia and China.

After exchanging 100 nuclear warheads, each the size of a bomb dropped by the US on Hiroshima, five megatons of black carbon will immediately enter the atmosphere. Black carbon or soot will block sunlight and deplete the ozone layer. Some of the black carbon will eventually land in the rain.

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Nuclear winter as seen by the artist

A year later, the planet's average surface temperature will drop by about two degrees Fahrenheit, and in five years, the Earth will be as much as three degrees colder. However, the drop in temperature will be uneven, and the amount of precipitation will be significantly reduced. European winters will be snowy and cold, and other regions will experience drought. Depletion of the ozone layer can lead to more sunburn and skin cancer, as well as reduced plant growth and DNA destabilization in crops such as corn. In general, the consequences of a limited nuclear conflict will be cooling, crop failures and famine, and the number of victims will be at least 2 billion people.

What will be the consequences of a large-scale nuclear war?

In the fall of 2019, scientists from Princeton University published a video that paints a dire picture of the aftermath of a nuclear war between Russia and the United States. Due to a hypothetical large-scale conflict, Europe will completely plunge into darkness, suffocating from nuclear ash. According to experts, more than 91 million people may become victims of war. And this is only at the very beginning of hostilities. In an official statement published on the website of the journal Science & Global Security, it is said that scientists have developed a simulation to highlight the potentially catastrophic consequences of a nuclear war between Russia and the United States. As a reminder, the risk of nuclear war has skyrocketed over the past few years as the United States and Russia abandoned long-standing nuclear arms control treaties.

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It looks like a simulation of a nuclear war between the United States and Russia

The four-minute video, uploaded by Alex Glaser, co-editor of Science & Global Security magazine, illustrates the horrific chaos that can result from a nuclear war. The simulation begins with a targeted Russian attack on the border areas of Germany and Poland. Within a few hours, the United States entered into a conflict and dropped a nuclear bomb on the territory of the Kaliningrad region. According to the calculations of experts, by this time at least 2.6 million people will have died. In total, more than 3.4 million people will die as a result of hostilities during the first 45 minutes.

Note that the simulation uses extensive data sets on the real nuclear weapons of the states of the world, weapons stocks and possible purposes for their use.

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