2019/10/28 by Alan Robock, O. B. Toon, Charles Bardeen +7 · 1 voice
Health Professions · Social Sciences · #Health and Conflict Studies #International Relations and Foreign Policy #Nuclear Issues and Defense
paper · doi:10.1080/00963402.2019.1680049
openalex publication_date 2019/10/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
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.