A War in India Kills … Most Americans?

From hunger! Two years later!

Below is my latest article published in The Nation magazine. You can read it for free here, at The Nation (assuming you haven’t used up your free reads with them). Otherwise, part of it here will be for subscribers only. 😢

How Worldwide Famine Would Follow Even a “Limited” Nuclear War

Thanks for reading — and on to the article!

The United States has a population of about 329 million people, we are protected by two oceans, and we grow food that feeds hundreds of millions around the world. We have a powerful military, peaceful borders with our neighbors, and a network of alliances. We would seem well-positioned to defend ourselves from the dangers of foreign war. Our fate surely thus rests in our own hands; the only question is whether we will be wise enough and lucky enough to chart a safe national course.

Who knew? It turns out that this sense of control is illusory. 

Consider a hypothetical regional nuclear war between India and Pakistan. This event does not involve a single U.S. soldier or weapon. The entire war takes place 7,000 miles from North America. It uses less than 1/20th of all nuclear weapons in the world. Yet as a result of those far-off developments, more than 200 million Americans — 200 million! — end up dead from hunger over the next two years.

So finds a landmark study just published in Nature Food. An international team led by scientists at Rutgers University modeled what happens to crop production worldwide after a minor or regional nuclear war. 

It would not bring about the dreaded “nuclear winter” — that follows a major nuclear war between Russia and the United States. But a regional or “limited” nuclear war would still bring “nuclear famine” — several years of abrupt global cooling and agricultural collapse.