Hi all! I'm nearing the end of my ambassador term and I wanted to do a report on a nuclear apocalypse event and how it will destroy the environment.This writeup was written by me for a theoretical biology class and I felt it was a good warning to everyone of the drastic consequences of a nuclear war. I incorporated historical events to make this even more insightful. I hope you read it and learn from it.

Introduction

Let us imagine for a second, a third world war scenario. For a score and a half decade of peacetime, the idea seems preposterous. The collapse of the Soviet Union gave us unprecedented peace and stability, with the United States taking the helm as the global and preeminent police power (Lockwood, 2000). However, the recent rise of extremist groups, testament to the remnants of Cold War foreign policy by the great powers, such as ISIS in Syria and Boko Haram in Nigeria seem to point out to a renewed polarisation in geopolitics. Russia, the successor state of the Soviet Union, earned the ire of many European nations when it unilaterally annexed Ukraine?s Crimean peninsula, leading many analysts, such as Dragneva and Wolczuk (2016) to consider a renewed divide between East and West. It seems that Samuel Huntington?s(1993) theory of a clash of civilisations is happening already, dividing the world into distinct poles of Western, secular oriented, to Eastern, Sinic or Islamic oriented spheres of influence. Currently, the NPT (1985) cites five countries with nuclear weapons : China, France, Russia, the UK and the USA. Three states who developed nuclear weapons after the treaty came into force were India, Pakistan and North Korea. Israel is also presumed to have its own nuclear arsenal (Clary, 2001). In the event of a nuclear war between the world powers ,  retaliatory attacks and firestorms in urban centres are projected to cost tens of millions of lives (Nature, 1986). The Earth would be affected significantly by harmful gases, radioactive compounds and soot rising up into the atmosphere , potentially forming a smokescreen that could block sunlight, leading to cooler temperatures for a long period of time in Earth, a hypothesis commonly known as  a Nuclear Winter ,its effects mirroring a historical event called A Year Without a Summer (Nature, 1986). 

The year 1816 saw the eruption of Mt. Tambora in the Sunda Islands, Netherlands East Indies (present day Indonesia) , purportedly Earth?s largest volcanic eruption in at least 1,300 years. This eruption was also precluded by several eruptions around the world: most notably in La Soufriere in Saint Vincent (1812), Awu in Indonesia (1812), Suwanosejima in the Ryukyu Islands of Japan (1813) and Mt. Mayon (1814). The destruction caused by these eruptions were immense, especially since the Earth was also undergoing a cooling period since the 14th century, now known to us as the Little Ice Age (Kondratyev, 1996). Agriculture languished as crops weren?t able to thrive in frost, early winters and snowfall during the summer months were observed in New England, continental Europe, Iceland and Great Britain (Sigurdsson, 1982). In Ireland, the failure of the potato, wheat and oats crops led people to insurrection, and widespread looting and arson of bakeries were observed (Robock, Oman, Stenchikov, Bardeen and Turco, 2007). Italian cities such as Rome experienced ?red? snowfall, brought about by the introduction of volcanic sulphurous compounds present in the atmosphere, and hail was observed in Hungary and Switzerland. China?s monsoon season was erratic and there were floods along the Yangtze alluvial plain, leading to the inundation of many towns along its fertile coasts. The rice crop failed and disease outbreaks, according to Zhang, Blender, & Fraedrich (2011), were common, chief among them typhus, which led to the deaths of many people. The world experienced massive food shortages as a result, and still reeling from the catastrophic Napoleonic Wars, many people in Europe and its colonies were left impoverished. A 2012 study by researchers in Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature found out that the Earth?s average drop in temperature was almost 1 degree Celsius, seemingly insignificant, but catastrophic in scope (Rohde et al., 2013). This mirrors the effects of a rise in temperature, and as to why climate scientists are very concerned about climate change. The map below shows us a  climate map of Europe, this is similar to the climate model predicted by scientists in a nuclear winter scenario.

 Nuclear Winter hypothesis and climate models

Perhaps one of the most tumultuous years in recent history, 2016 saw terrorist attacks in France, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Turkey.The UN, seemingly, is powerless in stopping these global conflicts. Russia is increasingly provocative in asserting its influence in Eurasia, and China is following suit. It is clear that we are now living in a globalised, arguably more connected world, yet the supreme irony of it all is that seemingly, we are now more divided than ever.

The dystopian nuclear winter hypothesis, states that when a nuclear war occurs globally, the resulting reprisal attacks by competing governments would lead to firestorms that can serve as a conduit for the transmission of soot and radioactive materials in the atmosphere. The combustion, as predicted by computer generated climate models, will lead to smoke remaining in the atmosphere for years, leading to massive drops of temperature similar to what the world experienced in 1816, except the fact that a longer time period is seen here  (Robock et al., 2007). Crutzen and Birks (2016) however, points out to a nuclear war as a potential cause only, and it could be said that the firestorm scenario can also be caused by other phenomena such as naturally observed ones, e.g. volcanic eruptions or artificial ones ,e.g. factory fires, bushfires in the African savanna. The change in climatic conditions is predicted to be catastrophic , with the climate model on the side detailing the massive changes in temperature predicted (Robock et al., 2007). One curious implication from the data is a predicted warming in Antarctica, while equatorial Asia and Africa will see colder temperatures. This spells disaster for crop cycles globally, leading to crop failure with increased rainfall and melting snow caps, the world will experience massive flooding and outbreaks of water-borne diseases such as cholera. The famine that will ensue is similar but even more disastrous in scope than the one observed in 1816. Another implication that we can draw from the model also point to the existence of an ozone hole, one that can be explained perhaps, by the deleterious effects of the  ?nuclear? smoke in the atmosphere.  This harmful gases, though lowering the Earth?s temperature by blocking UV light , also destroy the ozone layer in areas where it is thinnest, in the Antarctic ice caps.

Below is a climate map detailing the perceived increases in temperature

Sources:

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