WASHINGTON:Up to 125 million people could be killed if Pakistan and India were engaged in a nuclear war with their highest yield weapons.
This has been envisaged in a study published the other day.
Both India and Pakistan currently possess around 150 nuclear warheads.
At last two million people could be killed and 1.5 million injured as a result of a single airburst from a nuclear bomb.
The newspaper quoting researchers said that “India would suffer two to three times more fatalities and casualties than Pakistan because, in our scenario, Pakistan uses more weapons than India and because India has a much larger population and more densely populated cities”.
They said that the firestorms could release 16 million to 36 million tonnes of soot (black carbon) into the upper atmosphere, spreading around the world within weeks.
The soot, in turn, would absorb solar radiation, heating the air up and boosting the smoke’s rise.
Sunlight reaching the Earth would decline 20 to 35 per cent, cooling the surface by 3.6 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit (2 to 5 degrees Celsius) and reducing precipitation by 15 to 30 per cent.
Worldwide food shortages would follow, with the effects persisting up to 10 years.
