6.7 billion people could die in a U.S. - Russia nuclear war

A study from Rutgers University proposes that even a “limited” nuclear exchange would have drastic consequences for the human race.

For example, a limited exchange between India and Pakistan, the study found, has the potential to decimate global food supplies, leading to rampant death worldwide. The Rutgers team found that such an exchange, involving less than 3% of the world’s stockpiles, could kill a third of the world’s population in just two years.

And a large-scale nuclear exchange, something between the US and Russia? That could wipe out three-fourths of the world’s population, again, in just two years.

“It’s really a cautionary tale that any use of nuclear weapons could be a catastrophe for the world,” the study’s author, Rutgers climate scientist Alan Robock, said.