Nuclear warIndia-Pakistan nuclear war would lead to world-wide famine: study
An India-Pakistan nuclear war may see the use of about 100 Hiroshima-size bombs – about half of India and Pakistan’s nuclear arsenals. A new study says that a nuclear exchange on such a scale would “probably cause the end (of) modern industrial civilization as we know it” by subjecting about two billion people to the risk of starvation, and causing massive economic and social disruptions far away from the theater of war. Among the consequences of a nuclear exchange: Chinese winter wheat production could decline by 50 percent during the first year and by more than 30 percent over ten years; there would be a 21 percent decline in Chinese middle-season rice production during the first four years and an average 10 percent decline in the following six years; corn and soybean production in the United States would decline by 10 percent on average for ten years.
A nuclear war between India and Pakistan could result in worldwide famine, have damaging effects on global climate, and create widespread economic instability.
Global Security Newswire reports that a recent study by Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) — Nuclear Famine: Two Billion People at Risk? Global Impacts of Limited Nuclear War on Agriculture, Food Supplies, and Human Nutrition — updates an earlier study on the impacts of a nuclear war between the two South Asian countries. The earlier study, published in 2012, estimated that corn and soybean production in the United States would decline by 10 percent on average for ten years. The study also predicted a 21 percent decline in Chinese middle-season rice production during the first four years and an average 10 percent decline in the following six years.
The 2012 study by PSR predicted that an India-Pakistan nuclear war could put more than one billion people at risk of starvation. The more recent study, released last month, adjusts this figure and calculates that an India-Pakistan nuclear war would put more than two billion people at risk.
The updated analysis includes a study that shows that Chinese winter wheat production could decline by 50 percent during the first year and by more than 30 percent over ten years. Increasing crop prices due to a reduction of supply would worsen food shortages.
“Significant, sustained agricultural shortfalls over an extended period would almost certainly lead to panic and hoarding on an international scale as food exporting nations suspended exports in order to assure adequate food supplies for their own populations,” the report says. “This turmoil in the agricultural markets would further reduce accessible food.”
Ira Helfand, a medical doctor from Northampton, Massachusetts and lead author of the report, told GSN that the equivalent of 100 Hiroshima-size bombs could “probably cause the end (of) modern industrial civilization as we know it.” Helfand said that a war on such a scale would represent the use of half of India and Pakistan’s nuclear arsenals, or a “tiny portion” of the U.S. and Russian stockpiles.
“This is an unbelievably huge shock to the international system,” Helfand said. “We saw what happened to the world’s economy when the housing bubble collapsed in the United States — [here] we’re talking about a shock to the international economic-social system orders of magnitude larger than that. I think it’s quite hard to imagine how this much-more-fragile-than-we’d-like-to-think system can survive that.”
The chain of events which would lead to the catastrophe described in the report begins with firestorms caused by nuclear detonations. These detonations would send more than six-million metric tons of soot into the atmosphere, shutting out sunlight and creating a global cooling effect scientists call “nuclear winter.”
Cooling of the Earth’s atmosphere and other anticipated climatic impacts would dramatically reduce crop yields, disrupting markets and causing famine. “Even a limited use of nuclear weapons essentially is an act of suicide,” Helfand said. “These weapons simply have to be understood to be completely useless. From the U.S. perspective, if we were to use even a tiny fraction of our own arsenal against an adversary on the other side of the planet, we would end up causing this global catastrophe that would have terrible repercussions here at home.”
Helfand says that President Obama and other world leaders are doing little to reduce and eliminate nuclear arms. “There is this notion at the moment in policy circles that we don’t really have to worry about nuclear war — just nuclear terrorism because the U.S. and Russia are never going to fight a war,” Helfand said. “I don’t know where they get that sense of confidence from — I certainly don’t have it watching the jockeying between the U.S. and Russia over the last year and knowing how many times we have stumbled accidentally into near-disaster situations even after the end of the Cold War.”
— Read more in Ira Helfand, MD, Nuclear Famine: Two Billion People at Risk? Global Impacts of Limited Nuclear War on Agriculture, Food Supplies, and Human Nutrition, 2nd. ed. (Physicians for Social Responsibility, November 2013)
