In relation to the danger of a nuclear war, the warnings have been equally clear, though they have received much less attention. Former Secretary of Defense William Perry has said repeatedly that we are closer to a nuclear war than we were during the Cold War. The expert panel at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which includes 13 Nobel laureates, assessed that “the international security situation is now more dangerous than it has ever been.” This year, they set their iconic Doomsday Clock to 100 seconds to midnight — or a potential global catastrophe — the closest to planet-wide apocalypse that it has ever been.
The healthcare community is buckling under the strain of the current pandemic; it would collapse if even a single nuclear bomb were used against an urban target.
A nuclear war, even a limited nuclear war, would be a disaster for the entire planet. Climate and medical scientists have warned that a war between India and Pakistan could cause enough abrupt climate disruption to drastically reduce food production around the world. This would trigger a global famine that would put up to billions at risk and almost certainly end modern civilization. A large-scale nuclear war between the US and Russia would kill hundreds of millions in an afternoon and trigger a nuclear winter that would kill the vast majority of the human race.
