In the past week alone, tensions have intensified as the United States and Israel, both nuclear powers, became involved in military action with Iran. At the same time, missiles were exchanged around Tehran while the Taliban in Afghanistan launched what it described as an “open war” against neighboring Pakistan, another country that possesses nuclear weapons.
These developments are already terrifying for people living across the Middle East, where daily life includes the threat of airstrikes, sirens, and travel warnings. However, when multiple nuclear powers become entangled in growing conflicts, it raises the frightening possibility of a global nuclear catastrophe.
Once there, those particles could block sunlight around the planet. This process could trigger what scientists call a “nuclear winter,” where temperatures drop and sunlight becomes scarce across nearly every region on Earth.
Annie Jacobsen, an investigative journalist and author of Nuclear War: A Scenario, examined scientific research and consulted defense experts to explore what might happen if the world’s major powers began launching the roughly 12,000 nuclear weapons currently in global arsenals.
“Hundreds of millions of people die in the fireballs, no question,” the journalist explained during an appearance on Steven Bartlett’s The Diary Of A CEO podcast.
“Places like Iowa and Ukraine would be just snow for 10 years, and so agriculture would fail. When agriculture fails, people just die,” she said, before Bartlett asked the question that many people wonder about in such a scenario: where on Earth could anyone possibly remain safe.
According to Jacobsen, research suggests that people living in New Zealand and Australia could have the best chance of enduring the aftermath. Scientists believe these two countries might be the only places capable of continuing agricultural production during a nuclear winter.
Detonating so many weapons could also damage the Earth’s protective ozone layer, the thin band of gas that shields the planet from harmful radiation coming from the sun.
Jacobsen described the consequences in stark terms: “On top of [a nuclear winter], you have the radiation poisoning, because the ozone layer would be so damaged and destroyed that you can’t be outside in the sunlight.”
If sunlight itself became dangerous because of the damaged ozone layer, most of the surviving population would struggle to live on the surface of the planet.
Even with this grim outlook, Jacobsen noted that a nuclear conflict would still be different from the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs and about 70 percent of species on Earth millions of years ago.
Unlike an asteroid, nuclear weapons are created by humans. That means humanity also has the power to prevent their use and to limit the spread of these weapons, even though achieving that goal can feel extremely difficult.
John Erath, Senior Policy Director at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, shared this warning during an interview with Newsweek. He explained that the impact of nuclear weapons would spread far beyond the places where they were detonated.
“While those who live near military facilities, ICBM silos in the Midwest or submarine bases along the coasts might bear the most immediate and severe consequences of a nuclear attack, there’s no question: ANY nuclear war or weapons detonation would be bad for everyone.”
“Nowhere is truly ‘safe’ from fallout and other consequences like contamination of food and water supplies and prolonged radiation exposure.”
