The Russian invasion of Ukraine entered its second-month last week, with Vladimir Putin’s forces stalling en route to Ukraine. Intelligence has revealed that the advancing army has encountered stiff resistance in key strategic areas, allowing Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration to reclaim tracts of Russian controlled land. But as the conflict drags on, the risk that Putin could lash out in desperation with increasingly devastating weapons rises, and the prospect of mutually assured destruction (MAD) with it.
What would happen in a nuclear winter?
Early during the invasion, Putin announced that he had put Russian deterrents – a mixture of military capabilities that includes nuclear warheads – on “high alert”.
The statement, although dismissed as rhetoric by most western leaders, underlines Russian capabilities.
The country has a large enough arsenal of nuclear warheads to destroy the planet several times over.
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Present estimations suggest Putin has a stockpile of 6,000 at his disposal, more than any single nation and most of the west combined.
It’s unlikely that Putin would ever launch a nuclear missile, but if he were to launch even just a fraction of his arsenal, and court a response from other warhead wielding nations, the process of MAD would wipe out most of the planet.
Any survivors would have to reckon with a “nuclear winter” that promises to render the surface near uninhabitable.
The concept suggests that weapons would change the planet’s innate workings for decades after their detonation.
Nuclear winter is a term coined by atomic scientists in 1952 when proliferations in the US and USSR started in earnest.
They suggested that bombs would eject dust and debris, specifically black carbon charged with radiation, high into the atmosphere, where it would block sunlight.
Without the sun, the world would descend into a decades-long winter with uninterrupted freezing temperatures akin to an ice age.
The climactic catastrophe would render farming near impossible, and irradiated land could kill almost anything trying to survive on the surface.
DON’T MISS
Only those living far enough away from the conflict have a chance to make it out the other side.
In theory, this would include non-nuclear nations and their smaller, remote counterparts.
For example, a war between Russia and the west would ignite most western capitals such as London, Washington, and their allies in Europe.
Nations like the far reaches of Canada, parts of South America, and potentially Australia or New Zealand might see less debris captured in their atmospheres and likely wouldn’t feature as targets.
But, the chances of having to endure a nuclear winter are incredibly small, as it remains unlikely that a nuclear war will take place.