How an India-Pakistan nuclear war could start—and have global consequences
By Alan Robock, Owen Brian Toon, Charles G. Bardeen, Lili Xia, Hans M. Kristensen, Matthew McKinzie, R. J. Peterson, Cheryl S. Harrison, Nicole S. Lovenduski, Richard P. Turco | October 31, 2019
This article describes how an India-Pakistan nuclear war might come to pass, and what the local and global effects of such a war might be. The direct effects of this nuclear exchange would be horrible; the authors estimate that 50 to 125 million people would die, depending on whether the weapons used had yields of 15, 50, or 100 kilotons. The ramifications for Indian and Pakistani society would be major and long lasting, with many major cities largely destroyed and uninhabitable, millions of injured people needing care, and power, transportation, and financial infrastructure in ruins. But the climatic effects of the smoke produced by an India-Pakistan nuclear war would not be confined to the subcontinent, or even to Asia. Those effects would be enormous and global in scope. Free-access until January 1, 2020.
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Issue: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Volume 75 Issue 6
Keywords: Cold start, Kashmir, South Asia, nuclear war, nuclear winter, tactical nuclear weapons
Topics: Doomsday Clock, Nuclear Weapons
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Alan Robock
Robock is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1970 with a B.A. in Meteorol...
Owen Brian Toon
Toon is a professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, and a research associate at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, at the University of Colorado, Boulde...
Charles G. Bardeen
Bardeen is a research scientist in the Atmospheric Chemistry Observations and Modeling laboratory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. His research interests include the role of ...
Lili Xia
Xia is a Research Associate in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University. Her research interests are climate change impacts on natural vegetation, agriculture, and air p...
Hans M. Kristensen
Kristensen is the director of the Nuclear Information Project with the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) in Washington, DC. His work focuses on researching and writing about the status...
Matthew McKinzie
McKinzie is the director of the Nuclear Program of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) in Washington, DC. He and Kristensen recently co-authored “Reducing Alert Rates of Nucle...
R. J. Peterson
Peterson is a Professor Emeritus of physics at the University of Colorado and a former Jefferson Science Fellow for the U.S. Department of State. After receiving his undergraduate (1961) and...
Cheryl S. Harrison
Harrison is a biophysical oceanographer and Assistant Professor in Earth, Environmental and Marine Science at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, a 2018 Make Our Planet Great Again fe...
Nicole S. Lovenduski
Lovenduski is an oceanographer and Associate Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. She studies the biogeochemistry of the ocean with a particular focus on the ocean carbon cycle a...
Richard P. Turco
Turco is a Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles, and is the Founding Director of UCLA’s Institute of the Enviro...
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