Why survivors of a nuclear World War III will envy the dead

An all-out nuclear war could wipe out hundreds of millions of people around the world within the space of just a few hours.

The huge flash of blinding light when a nuclear bomb detonates is ‘like bringing a piece of the sun down to the ground’. Everything within the miles-wide firestorm is instantly incinerated.

Those spared annihilation in the initial blast would then face being poisoned to death by the radioactive fallout or noxious smog billowing from burning cities and industrial areas.

The consequences of nuclear war on the world’s climate make for even more terrifying reading. Smoke from the fires would block out the sun, reducing its warming rays by up to 70% and plunging the world into a new horror – nuclear winter.

Brian Toon, professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, is one of the pioneers of nuclear winter research.

He spoke to Metro about nuclear winter theory and why his warnings about it stretching back 40 years are still just as valid today.

What is nuclear winter?

Nuclear winter theory first caught the world’s attention in 1983 when one of the its most famous scientists, Carl Sagan, published an article asking ‘Would nuclear war be the end of the world?’.

In it, he wrote that ‘in a nuclear exchange more than a billion people would instantly be killed, but the long term consequences could be much worse’.

Sagan and some of his students, including Prof Toon, along with meteorologists subsequently set out in horrifying detail what those consequences would be.

They found the thick black smoke billowing from burning cities and industrial areas would rise high up into the stratosphere and block out the sun’s light.

The ensuing cold, dry and dark would send temperatures plummeting below zero and condemn billions more people to starvation with the collapse of agriculture.

The idea of mutually-assured destruction – if country A attacks country B, the retaliation by country B would render any first strike suicidal – has helped prevent nuclear war in the decades since.

But subsequent research also suggests it would be suicidal for country A to launch a first strike regardless of whether country B responds due to the climate changes caused by the smoke.

Faced with the poisoned apocalyptic world that would await any survivors of a full-scale nuclear war, former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev said: ‘The living will envy the dead.’

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