Citation

Liska AJ, White TR, Holley ER, Oglesby RJ. Environment 2017; 59(4): 22-33.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/00139157.2017.1325300

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Many people tend to think that the outcome of any nuclear weapons use today will result in an escalatory situation with apocalyptic outcomes for the countries involved. (R. Wuthnow, Be Very Afraid: The Cultural Response to Terror, Pandemics, Environmental Devastation, Nuclear Annihilation, and other Threats (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2010). Yet many factors are increasing the probability of the limited use of nuclear weapons (e.g., 1 to 20 warheads) in a range of conflict scenarios. Previous atmospheric model simulations of regional nuclear conflicts employing many relatively small bombs have been estimated to cause a global "nuclear autumn," with great reductions in agricultural productivity, stratospheric ozone loss, and spread of hazardous radioactive fallout.22 O. B. Toon et al., "Consequences of Regional-Scale Nuclear Conflicts," Science 315, no. 5816 (2007): 1224-25; O. B. Toon et al., "Atmospheric Effects and Societal Consequences of Regional Scale Nuclear Conflicts and Acts of Individual Nuclear Terrorism," Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 7, no. 8 (2006): 1973-2002 (revised 2007); L. Badash, A Nuclear Winter's Tale (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009); A. Robock and O. B. Toon, "Local Nuclear War, Global Suffering" Scientific American 302, no. 1 (2010): 74-81; D. Pimentel and M. Burgess, "Nuclear War Investigation Related to a Limited Nuclear Battle with Emphasis on Agricultural Impacts in the United States," Ambio 41 no. 8 (2012): 894-99; M. J. Mills, O. B. Toon, J. Lee-Taylor, and A. Robock, "Multidecadal Global Cooling and Unprecedented Ozone Loss Following a Regional Nuclear Conflict," Earth's Future 2, no. 4 (2014): 161-76. The totality of these effects would result in widespread damage to human well-being and to terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. In this article, we estimate minimum thresholds for the prevalent types of currently deployed nuclear weapons that would cause equivalent climate impacts, and provide a discussion of the factors that may influence the probability of nuclear weapons use, current risk perception, and possible mitigation actions...

Language: en