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Potential consequences of a regional nuclear conflict

During the Cold War it was feared that a battle for supremacy between the United States and the Soviet Union might unleash a global catastrophe, each using a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons on the other. But now even a regional nuclear conflict, such as one involving India and Pakistan, could extract a gigantic cost in terms of human lives and suffering, according to studies carried out by a team of scientists in the United States. Such a regional war could also produce long-lasting climatic changes that would affect countries around the world.

A regional exchange between India and Pakistan, in which each side used 50 Hiroshima-sized nuclear bombs, could leave more than 21 million people dead, which would be equivalent to about half the global fatalities in the Second World War, pointed out Owen Toon and fellow scientists at the University of Colorado, the University of California at Los Angeles, and Rutgers University in a paper published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics last year.

Firestorms created by the nuclear blasts would produce millions of tonnes of soot, which would get transported high up into the atmosphere. As a result, there would be significant global cooling and reduction in rainfall lasting several years, noted a paper by A. Robock and others in the same journal last year. Such climatic changes would impact global food supply, they concluded.

The vast amounts of soot in the upper atmosphere would also punch a near-global ozone hole lasting several years, according to a paper appearing this week in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.

Such doomsday scenarios might not be implausible. “While the number of nuclear warheads in the world has fallen by about a factor of three since its peak in 1986, the number of nuclear weapons states is increasing and the potential exists for numerous regional nuclear arms races,” observed Dr. Toon and others in their paper. “Eight countries are known to have nuclear weapons, two are constructing them, and an additional 32 nations already have the fissile material needed to build substantial arsenals of low-yield (Hiroshima-sized) explosives.”

Nuclear weapons could be targeted at megacities where population and economic activity were increasingly getting concentrated, they point out. As a result, a regional conflict involving modest numbers of Hiroshima-class nuclear weapons could, in some cases, produce casualties that rival previous estimates for a limited strategic war between the superpowers involving thousands of far more powerful warheads, according to Dr. Toon and his colleagues.

If a single Hiroshima-class nuclear bomb exploded above India’s highest density city (presumably Mumbai), it could kill well over five lakh people, they estimated. If the 10 highest density regions in India and Pakistan were attacked, there could be 4.3 million fatalities and 8.9 million casualties.

With the large amounts of combustible material present in cities, the nuclear bombs would set off firestorms. If India and Pakistan were each to fire 50 nuclear bombs at the other, such fires would produce over six million tonnes of soot. As a result, cooling to the extent of several degrees Celsius could be expected over large areas of Asia, Europe and North America, pointed out Dr. Robock and others in their paper. Monsoon rains over Asia could be substantially reduced.

The huge amounts of soot that rises to the upper atmosphere would absorb sunlight and heat up the surrounding air. Consequently, chemical reactions that destroyed ozone would be speeded up.

During the first five years after the nuclear conflict, the ozone loss would average about 20 per cent globally, 25 per cent to 45 per cent over the mid-latitudes covering Europe and North America, and 50 per cent to 70 per cent at the northern high latitudes, Michael Mills of the University of Colorado, the first author of the paper being published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, told The Hindu. Substantial depletion in ozone levels would continue for a further five years.

Such a widespread ozone hole could be detrimental to human health and also affect other life on the planet.

It was during times of crisis between India and Pakistan that the risk of a nuclear war between the two countries would be relatively high, observed M.V. Ramana, who has worked on nuclear disarmament and peace issues and is currently with the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development in Bangalore. Escalation to nuclear conflict was more likely to come about through accidental or inadvertent use of nuclear weapons by one side or the other rather than by deliberate intent, he told The Hindu.

Since 1998 (when the two countries conducted nuclear tests), they fought a small war in 1999 and had a major military crisis in 2001-2002, pointed out Dr. Ramana.

On both occasions there were credible nuclear threats issued by high-level political leaders.

However, risks of a nuclear conflict would increase should the two countries deploy nuclear weapons on missiles that are kept ready to be fired at short notice, he warned.

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