Experts predict five billion people will die if a nuclear war erupts between Russia and the US

A stark reminder of the tense global situation still looming

Experts are predicting that as many as "five billion people" or more could die should the precarious relationship between Russia and the US escalate to nuclear war. As the Russian President Vladimir Putin's ongoing invasion continues to claim lives in Ukraine and have a wider impact on the global economy, oil and food resources, an open access study published in the Nature Food journal estimates that the total number of deaths could vastly exceed those claimed directly by nuclear devastation. The study explains how the fallout and "atmospheric soot loadings" from nuclear blasts would effect livestock, marine life and water supplies, as well as crop harvests across the globe. [caption id="attachment_354351" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Credit: Getty - The detonation power of the 1945 bombs at Hiroshima (L) and Nagasaki (R) pale in comparison to the WMDs and nuclear weapons of today[/caption] Pulling data on the amount of "available calories" the world would be left with following nuclear contamination, lingering radiation and resultantly fallow food sources, they estimate that "more than five billion could die from a war between the United States and Russia." Extrapolating their calculations beyond the ever-rising tension between the two global superpowers, the study also states that "more than two billion people could die from nuclear war between India and Pakistan" as well, should a hypothetical and even limited conflict ever arise between the two given their fractious history. Similarly damning predictions were made in a 2019 publication by Alan Robock in the academic journal, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which stated that at least "125 million people" would die across the two countries alone. While both studies suggested that the wider ramifications would be untenable, neither took into account how catastrophic circumstances could be were China to become involved in a potential nuclear standoff. As summarised in the findings of the former - on which Robock was also an author - researchers determined that their work only further "underlin[es] the importance of global cooperation in preventing nuclear war", warning world leaders that "banning nuclear weapons is the only long-term solution.” The research team  want the likes of the UK, France, the US, Israel, Russia, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea to sign up to the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. While US President Joe Biden has declared that the Russian leader "cannot remain in power", Putin and even the leader of the opposition party, Aleksey Zhuravlyov, have already warned that "Europe would be reduced to ashes" in the event of nuclear war.

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