Full-Scale Nuclear War Could Kill 5 Billion People, Study Shows
A mushroom cloud rises from the underwater atom bomb test 'Baker' in 1946.
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Five billion people would die in a modern nuclear war with the impact of a global famine -- triggered by sunlight-blocking soot in the atmosphere -- likely to far exceed the casualties caused by lethal blasts.
Scientists at Rutgers University mapped out the effects of six possible nuclear conflict scenarios. A full-scale war between the US and Russia, the worst possible case, would wipe out more than half of humanity, they said in the study published in the journal Nature Food.