Experts warn that eliminating nuclear arsenals is essential to prevent billions of deaths
Leading scholars say a full-scale nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia could kill or injure over 90 million people within hours and trigger a climate collapse that would endanger billions more.
In response to heightened nuclear rhetoric surrounding the Ukraine conflict, a team of arms experts has run detailed simulations of a possible US-Russia nuclear clash. Starting with a single tactical detonation, the model rapidly expands to regional missile exchanges and then a full intercontinental barrage, producing immediate deaths and injuries exceeding 90 million. The ensuing firestorms would loft massive soot into the stratosphere, blocking sunlight for years and sparking a global “nuclear winter” that would cripple agriculture and fisheries.
A separate climate-impact study predicts that a war using 4,400 100-kiloton warheads could wipe out roughly 6.4 billion people, with 95 % of populations in the US, Canada, Russia, China and Europe perishing by the second year, mainly from starvation. Researchers highlight that current US government estimates consider only prompt military casualties, vastly undercounting the longer-term human toll. They call for rapid worldwide disarmament, citing the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and urging all nuclear states to eliminate their arsenals.
Why it matters
A nuclear war could cause immediate mass casualties and a climate disaster that threatens the survival of most of humanity.
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