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Effects of nuclear war – Famine

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For Day 3 of the Global Week of Action, let’s look at the agricultural effects of nuclear weapon detonations.

International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)

Nuclear weapons are the only devices ever created with the capacity to destroy all complex life forms on Earth within a relatively short period.

In addition to causing tens of millions of immediate deaths, a regional nuclear war involving around 100 Hiroshima-sized weapons would disrupt the global climate and agricultural production so severely that more than a billion people would be at risk of famine, according to research by IPPNW.

The smoke and dust from a limited nuclear war would cause an abrupt drop in global temperatures and rainfall by blocking up to 10 per cent of sunlight from reaching the Earth’s surface. Sudden global cooling would shorten growing seasons, threatening agriculture worldwide.

Increases in food prices would make food inaccessible to hundreds of millions of the poorest people in the world. For those who are already chronically malnourished, just a 10 per cent decline in food consumption would result in starvation. Infectious disease epidemics and conflict over scarce resources would be rife.

For more on the climate and agricultural effects of nuclear detonations, see Dr Ira Helfand in Unspeakable Suffering: Nuclear famine: A billion people at risk

Click to access PartII.pdf

 

February 12, 2017 - Posted by | Uncategorized

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