NATO-Russia nuclear war simulation shows ‘over 90 million dead and injured in first hours’

While we all know how devastating a nuclear bomb can be (Hiroshima and Nagasaki), most of us may not understand the magnitude of such a conflict.

Thus, for those who want to understand the effects of such a grim scenario, experts from the American Priceton University in the USA have created a graphic simulation of how the situation will get out of control between the United States and Russia, using realistic nuclear force positions, targets and estimates of casualties.

It is estimated that in the first hours of the conflict, more than 90 million people will lose their lives or be injured

This project is motivated by the need to highlight the potentially catastrophic consequences of the current plans for nuclear war between the US and Russia. The risk of nuclear war has risen dramatically in the past two years as the United States and Russia abandoned old nuclear arms control treaties, began developing new types of nuclear weapons and expanded the circumstances in which they could use nuclear weapons.

The simulation, carried out in 2019 and entitled “PLAN A,” attempted to predict how the war would begin and where the world’s nuclear weapons would be deployed, as well as how much the death toll could rise as the war continued, according to Mashable SEA.

“PLAN A”

The simulation, which lasts four minutes, estimates that within just hours of the start of the conflict, 90 million people will lose their lives or be seriously injured.

Gradually, “PLAN A”, presents how the conflict between Russia and NATO would escalate and turn into, indeed, a nuclear conflict.

For starters, Russia launches a nuclear strike of “warning” from a base in Kaliningrad. NATO also responds with a tactical nuclear bomb.

The first strike would act as the first domino in a series of events that would see the warring parties then deploy hundreds of nuclear weapons in an attempt to outdo each other, with the death toll rising rapidly as the conflict escalates.

In the first phase, Russia would try to destroy NATO bases across Europe by using 300 nuclear weapons, while NATO would respond with 180, and the death toll would reach 2.6 million in the first three hours.

Europe in ruins

The next phase, called “counterforce plan“, presents a destroyed Europe. Precisely because of this, NATO is launching another 600 submarine-launched nuclear missiles against Russia. In response, Russia also launches other missiles. The result: about 3.4 million dead, in just 45 minutes.

With so much damage done, both sides would enter the “compensation plan” with the intention of severely mutilating the resources of each country. Thus, their 30 most populous cities and economic centers will be hit by five to ten warheads each, the death toll in this phase proving to be the most terrifying of all – 85.3 million dead in 45 minutes.

The simulation suggests that in the aftermath of the cataclysm, there would still be nuclear weapons available, which could end up with a rising death toll.

Crucially, the simulation does not give a picture of what might happen outside the countries involved in the war, meaning that the death toll could rise much higher than the estimated 90 million.

Six Potential Nuclear War Scenarios. What the scientists’ data shows

To assess how such an apocalyptic event would affect the planet’s ability to support life, the researchers calculated the level of soot that would result from six potential nuclear war scenarios. Five of the scenarios analyzed involved a limited nuclear confrontation between India and Pakistan over the Kashmir region, which could produce between 5 million and 47 million tons of soot and ash, depending on the number of nuclear attacks between the two countries. The sixth scenario analyzes the effects of an all-out nuclear war between the US and Russia, which would push 150 million tons of ash and soot into the atmosphere.

The researchers entered this data into the Community Earth System computer model of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), a prediction tool that simulates changes in the level of solar radiation reaching the Earth’s surface, as well as changes in temperature and precipitation. The data obtained were used to assess, using other computer models, the dramatic effects of nuclear winter on corn, rice, soybean, wheat and fisheries crops.

Starting from the premise that international trade transactions stop in this case, the researchers calculated what would be the reduction in food calories at the global level, as well as the number of people who would die of hunger.

The average temperature would decrease by 16 degrees, globally. 5 billion people would die

According to the conclusions, in the case of a total Russian-American nuclear war, the average temperature on the surface of the planet would drop by 16 degrees Celsius (three times more than the temperature difference between the present period and the last ice age) and 5 billion people would die . By comparison, in the worst-case scenario of a nuclear confrontation between India and Pakistan, global food calorie production would drop by 50%, resulting in 2 billion deaths from starvation.

The most strongly affected regions would be the large food importing countries from Africa and the Middle East. Australia and New Zealand would best deal with such a crisis, being far from nuclear explosions in the northern hemisphere and relying on wheat crops that can grow in colder climates.

“The most important thing to know is the amount of smoke that reaches the atmosphere”, commented the other author of the study, Owen B. Toon, professor of atmospheric sciences at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, who collaborated with the famous Carl Sagan on the 1983 study that introduced for public the concept of “nuclear winter“.

“The energy released by the fires that break out after nuclear explosions is 100 to 1,000 times greater than the energy of the nuclear explosions themselves. And it doesn’t rain in the stratosphere. So if that much smoke gets there, it will stay there for years“, he warned.

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