nuclear bomb proliferation Australia
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The bad news? One week of nuclear warfare could cause 2 to 5 billion famine-related deaths (depending on who pushes the button). The better news? Australia has been nominated alongside New Zealand as the most liveable country in such a scenario, according to research released today.

Any good news? A flat “no”, says author Ryan Heneghan.

“We had six different scenarios based on how many weapons are used,” Heneghan tells Crikey. “It ranges from a relatively ‘small’ exchange between India and Pakistan to a ‘global holocaust’ all-encompassing Russia-US situation. There’s no such thing as a limited nuclear war; it doesn’t exist.”

Unlike conventional war, Heneghan says conflict cannot be localised when things turn nuclear: “The power of weapons impacts the climate. They put a lot of soot out into the atmosphere which effectively acts as a giant shade cloth. It creates a global catastrophe.”

The report, from the Queensland University of Technology and Rutgers University, tackled the nuclear option, but the modelling doubles as a preparatory framework for smoke-pumping and air-polluting natural disasters that have a similar impact.

Throughout history, the soot loads of volcanic eruptions and (to a lesser extent) megafires have induced changes to global food production capacity.

The 2019-20 Australian bushfires released 1 million tonnes of soot into the atmosphere. Although devastating, this is one-fifth of the report’s smallest nuclear scenario. In 1783, Iceland’s Laki eruption thrust the world into darkness and fuelled food shortages with less rainfall, less sunlight and cooler temperatures that crippled crop yields.

The trials and tribulations of the infamous year 536 are also believed to be part of a similar phenomenon.

“It was widely deemed the worst year in history,” Heneghan says. “People all over the world were writing that the sun didn’t show, crops wouldn’t grow, it was extremely cold, and all evidence suggests it was due to a large volcanic eruption.”

So would we rather volcanic eruption or nuclear warfare? Neither. “Both scenarios are pretty nightmarish, but we wouldn’t want to cause this to happen. We can’t control volcanic eruptions, but we can control nuclear.”

Heneghan says that although the paper posits Australia would have enough food, it was “optimistic”: “Just because we could grow enough food, doesn’t mean we’d have the resources to do so.”

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