*WASHINGTON: *The year is 2025 and a war erupts between Pakistan and Indiaafter severe clashes on the Line of Control (LoC). New Delhi retaliates bysending tanks into Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK).
Fearing it will be overrun; Pakistan hits the invading forces with itsbattlefield nuclear weapons, triggering the deadliest conflict in history –and catastrophic global cooling, with temperatures not seen since the lastIce Age.
This scenario was modelled by researchers in a new paper published onWednesday, which envisaged more than 100 million immediate deaths, followedby global mass starvation after megatonnes of thick black soot block outsunlight for up to a decade.
It comes at a time of renewed tensions between the two South Asian rivals,which have fought several wars over Indian-occupied Kashmir (IOK) and arerapidly building up their atomic arsenals.
They currently each have about 150 nuclear warheads at their disposal, withthe number expected to climb to more than 200 by 2025.
“Unfortunately it’s timely because India and Pakistan remain in conflictover Kashmir [IOK], and every month or so you can read about people dyingalong the border,” said Alan Robock, a professor in environmental sciencesat Rutgers University, who co-authored the paper in Science Advances.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi scrapped the autonomy of IOK inAugust, with his Pakistani counterpart Imran Khan warning the UnitedNations last week the dispute could escalate into nuclear war.
The two countries last fought a border conflict in February, but theypulled back from the brink after Pakistan returned a downed pilot to India.
India has a “no first strike” policy but reserves the right to mount anuclear response to any hit by weapons of mass destruction.
Pakistan has declared it would only use nuclear weapons if it could notstop an invasion by conventional means or were attacked first with nuclearweapons.
The authors wrote that although their scenario had Pakistan pulling thetrigger first, they did not mean to imply they believed this was morelikely.
Based on their current populations and the urban centres that would belikely targeted, the researchers estimated up to 125 million could bekilled if both countries expended the bulk of their highest yield weapons.
Around 75-80 million people were killed in World War II.
This most extreme scenario would involve the use of 100 kilotonne weapons,more than six times as powerful as the bombs dropped on Hiroshima.
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A single airburst from such a bomb could kill two million people and injure1.5 million – but most of the deaths would occur from the raging firestormsthat followed the blast.
“India would suffer two to three times more fatalities and casualties thanPakistan because, in our scenario, Pakistan uses more weapons than Indiaand because India has a much larger population and more densely populatedcities,” the paper said.
As a percentage of its urban population, though, Pakistan’s losses would beabout twice those of India.
But nuclear Armageddon would be only the beginning.
The research found that the firestorms could release 16 million to 36million tonnes of soot (black carbon) into the upper atmosphere, spreadingaround the world within weeks.
The soot, in turn, would absorb solar radiation, heating the air up andboosting the smoke’s rise.
Sunlight reaching the Earth would decline 20 to 35 per cent, cooling thesurface by 3.6 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit (2 to 5 degrees Celsius) andreducing precipitation by 15 to 30 per cent.
Worldwide food shortages would follow, with the effects persisting up to 10years.
“I hope our work will make people realize you can’t use nuclear weapons,they are weapons of mass genocide,” said Robock, adding the paper lent moreevidence to support the 2017 UN Treaty on the Prohibition of NuclearWeapons.
Johann Chacko, a columnist for Quartz India and doctoral student at SOAS inLondon, said the work “helps the global community evaluate the cost ofnuclear war for everyone, not just the combatant nations,” particularly itsclimatic impacts.
But, he added: “There’s very little in the history of Indo-Pakistan kineticconflict to suggest that leadership on either side would continueescalating until they annihilated the other.” -APP/AFP
