Nuclear winter

India struck at night. Pakistani action was in broad daylight. India bombed a jungle. Pakistan bombed military targets. A massive intelligence failure on India’s part. A huge intelligence success on Pakistan’s part. Pakistan willing to settle through dialogue. India bent upon settling through violence.

The five nuclear-weapon states under the terms of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) are: the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China. There are a total of eight countries that have successfully detonated nuclear weapons: the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea.

A member of parliament of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has ‘urged a nuclear attack’ against Pakistan. A nuclear detonation has three effects: “A blast wave that can flatten cities, intense heat that can ignite fires and burn skin, and radiation.” To be certain, even if there is a limited nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India more than 21 million people will be killed in the first week from “blast effects, burns and acute radiation”. An additional “two billion people worldwide would face risks of severe starvation….”

India and Pakistan will see little or no sun for 20 years. We will lose 50 percent of the ozone layer over our populated areas. India and Pakistan will go through the “coldest average surface temperatures in the last one thousand years”. ‘Nuclear winter’ means that India and Pakistan will not be able grow crops for 20 years. Cancer would be more common than the common flu. An estimated 15 megatons of black carbon will be released into the upper troposphere. It would take about a week for the smoke to reach North America and about two weeks to cover the entire earth. No one in the entire planet would be safe.

From 1-9 weeks of a nuclear exchange, 40 million deaths will be from thermal injuries and super-lethal radiation. From 10-12 weeks, deaths are from ionising radiation. At 20 weeks plus, bone-marrow deaths and deaths from blood disorders, cancer, gastrointestinal disorders, central nervous system, lung-related and multiple organ failures.

Years after the nuclear exchange, Pakistan and India will have children with leukaemia and other cancers. There will be permanent genetic damage, significant impairment of the immune system and retardation in children. We will have children with severe immunosuppression, increased incidence of viral infections and lack of antibody response. Years after the nuclear exchange, Pakistan and India will suffer infectious disease epidemics.

Nuclear blasts will destroy our ‘telecommunications networks, information processing equipment, sophisticated medical technology, microprocessors and electrical power grids’. It will take a century to rebuild the lost industrial capacity and critical industries like pharmaceuticals, the energy infrastructure and banking.

Remember Russia’s Chernobyl nuclear disaster in which radiation was released – and the incidence of thyroid cancer in children skyrocketed? Within no time radiation reached the United Kingdom, Sweden, Finland, Lithuania, Poland, Norway and Germany. Yes, that was in 1986. After 33 years, they are still busy cleaning up. After 33 years, “restriction orders are still in place in the production, transportation and consumption of food contaminated by [the] Chernobyl fallout”. After 33 years, they are still testing sheep for radioactivity (200,000 sheep have been found affected).

Nuclear winter is about extremely cold temperatures, little or no sun and little or no rain. Nuclear winter means little or no world trade and global recession. Nuclear winter is all about death, destruction, famine, drought, darkness and depression – not just in the Subcontinent but the world over.

The writer is a columnist based in Islamabad.

Email: farrukh15@hotmail.com Twitter: @saleemfarrukh