Nuclear War 2014

EXTINCTIONGENERAL
Nuclear war causes human extinction

PHILLIPS 2000 (Dr. Allen, Peace Activist, Nuclear Winter Revisited, October, http://www.peace.ca/nuclearwinterrevisited.htm)
Those of us who were involved in peace activities in the 80's probably remember a good deal about nuclear winter. Those who have become involved
later may have heard little about it. No scientific study has been published since 1990, and very little appears now in the peace
or nuclear abolition literature. *It is still important.* With thousands of rocket-launched weapons at
"launch-on-warning", any day there could be an all-out nuclear war by accident. The fact that there
are only half as many nuclear bombs as there were in the 80's makes no significant difference.
Deaths from world-wide starvation after the war would be several times the number from direct
effects of the bombs, and the surviving fraction of the human race might then diminish and vanish
after a few generations of hunger and disease, in a radioactive environment.

Nuclear war destroys the environment and causes human extinction
The 1980's research showed that the dust and the smoke would block out a large fraction of the sunlight and the
sun's heat from the earth's surface, so it would be dark and cold like an arctic winter. It would
take months for the sunlight to get back to near normal.
The cloud of dust and smoke would circle the northern hemisphere quickly. Soon it could affect the tropics, and cold would bring absolute disaster for
all crops there. Quite likely it would cross the
equator and affect the southern hemisphere to a smaller degree.
While the temperature at the surface would be low, the temperature of the upper part of the troposphere (5-11 km) would rise because of sunlight
absorbed by the smoke, so there would be an absolutely massive
temperature inversion. That would keep many other products of combustion down at the levels
people breathe, making a smog such as has never been seen before. PYROTOXINS is a word coined for all the
noxious
vapours that would be formed by combustion of the plastics, rubber, petroleum, and other products of civilization. It is certain that these
poisons would be formed, but we do not have quantitative estimates. The
amount of combustible material is enormous, and it would produce dioxins, furans, PCB's,
cyanides, sulphuric and sulphurous acids, oxides of nitrogen, carbon monoxide and carbon
dioxide in amounts that would
make current concerns about atmospheric pollution seem utterly trivial. There would also be toxic chemicals
like ammonia and chlorine from damaged storage tanks.
Another bad environmental thing that would happen is destruction of the ozone layer. The reduction in the ozone layer could be
50% - 70% over the whole northern hemisphere - very much worse than the current losses
that we are properly concerned about. Nitrogen oxides are major chemical agents for this. They are formed by combination of the oxygen and nitrogen
of the air in any big fire and around nuclear explosions,
as they are on a smaller scale around lightning flashes. So after the smoke cleared and the sun began to shine again, there would be a large increase of
UV reaching the earth's surface. This is bad for people in
several ways, but don't worry about the skin cancers ? not many of the survivors would live long enough for that to matter. UV is also bad for
many other living things, notably plankton, which are the bottom layer
of the whole marine food chain. There would likely be enough UV to cause blindness in many
animals. Humans can protect their eyes if they are aware of the danger. Animals do not know to do that, and blind
animals do not survive. Blind insects do not pollinate flowers, so there is another reason why human crops
and natural food supplies for animals would fail.
Altogether, nuclear winter would be an ecological disaster of the same sort of magnitude as the major extinctions of species that have occurred in the
past, the most famous one being 65 million years ago at the cretaceous extinction. Of all the species living at the time, about half became extinct. The
theory is that a large meteor made a great crater in the Gulf of California, putting a trillion tons of rock debris into the atmosphere. That is a thousand
times as much rock as is predicted for a nuclear war, but the soot from fires blocks sunlight more effectively than rock debris. In nuclear winter there
would also be radioactive contamination giving worldwide background radiation doses many
times larger than has ever happened during the 3 billion years of evolution. The radiation would notably
worsen things for existing species, though it might, by increasing mutations, allow quicker evolution of new species (perhaps mainly insects and
grasses) that could tolerate the post-war conditions. (I should just mention that there is no way the radioactivity from a nuclear war could destroy "all
life on earth". People must stop saying that. There will be plenty of evolution after a war, but it may not
include us.)

Nuclear war directly causes extinction, and even if it didnt, it destroys society and
makes us vulnerable to other extinction events
SHULMAN 2013 (Carl Shulman is a Research Fellow at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, Some
notes on existential risk from nuclear war, December 9,
http://lesswrong.com/lw/jb9/some_notes_on_existential_risk_from_nuclear_war/)
If all regions of the world suffered damage at the scale of all-out Cold War nuclear exchange, it would seem to
set economic activity back by many decades or centuries as populations, industry, and social institutions
recovered. If some large developed uninvolved regions were spared the effect would be lessened but still would
represent a reversal of many years or several decades in global economic and population growth.
Even if the human population eventually recovered and was able to realize most of its potential, this
would still have consequences from a long-run perspective dwarfing the immediate casualties. For one,
a 'pause' of decades or centuries would mean that large future populations would live under worse conditions (this is a
problem relatively independent of one's population ethics). A setback of civilizational progress would result in
astronomical waste. And, without being large enough to constitute an existential catastrophe, societal changes might
constitute a trajectory change in the long run future, e.g. brutalizing society by allowing Malthusian trends to
suppress per capita wealth near subsistence during a slow recovery.
Damage on this scale could bring about an existential catastrophe by ruining responses to some
other threat capable of causing extinction directly, but perhaps the most plausible route to permanently
and drastically curtailing our civilization's potential would be if recovery from a small population turns out to be
impossible under modern conditions. We will return to this after the discussion of nuclear winter.

EXTINCTION/OUTWEIGHS

Nuclear war increases the risk of other existential threats
ZELINSKY 2011 (Joshua, Yale graduate, comment on 03 September 2011 to Impact of India-Pakistan nuclear war on x-risk?
http://lesswrong.com/lw/7fg/impact_of_indiapakistan_nuclear_war_on_xrisk/)
The question is not the right question to ask. Large scale war whether nuclear or not regardless of the countries increases
existential risk in all forms. The more resources taken up dealing with such situations the less
spent on preventing existential risks such as large asteroids, superbugs and very bad AI. The
increased stress levels to societies will also encourage risk taking liking it more likely that people will try to develop
major new technologies without adequate safeguards. Nanotech and AI both fall into this category. (To some degree this is the
worst case scenario . If technological progress is halted completely this won't be a problem. The really bad case is where technological research
continues but without safeguards.)
The question as phrased also emphasizes climate change rather than other issues. In the case of such a nuclear war, there would be many other negative
results. India is a major economy at this point and such a war would result in largescale economic problems throughout.
A slightly larger scale problem is that of total societal collapse, or human extinction. Both of these look unlikely in the Pakistan-India case but are worth
discussing (although at this point seem very unlikely for any plausible nuclear war scenario). One serious problem with coming
back from societal collapse that is often neglected is the problem of resource management. Nick
Bostrom has pointed out that. to get to our current tech level we had to bootstrap up using non-renewable fossil fuels
and other non-renewable resources. If the tech level is sufficiently reduced it isn't obvious that such
a bootsrapping can occur again.As more and more resources are consumed this problem
becomes more severe. (This is in my view an argument for conservation of fossil fuels that is too often neglected- we need them in reserve
in case we need to climb back up the tech ladder again.) But again, this situation doesn't seem that likely.
Overall, nuclear war is an example of many sorts of situations that would increase existential risk across
the board. In that regard it isn't that different from a smallish asteroid impact (say 2-3 km) in a major country, or Yellowstone popping, or a
massive disease outbreak or a lot of other situations. Nuclear war probably seems more salient because it involves human intent. This is similar to how
terrorism is a lot scarier to most people than car crashes.

EARTH EXPLODES

Nuclear war causes the earth to explode
CHALKO 2003 (Dr. Tom J., MSc., Ph.D., Head of Geophysics Research, Scientific E Research P/L, Can a Neutron Bomb Accelerate Global
Volcanic Activity? http://sci-e-research.com/neutron_bomb.html)
Consequences of using modern nuclear weapons can be far more serious than previously
imagined. These consequences relate to the fact that most of the heat generated in the planetary interior is a result of nuclear decay. Over the last
few decades, all superpowers have been developing so-called "neutron bombs". These bombs are designed to emit
intensive neutron radiation while creating relatively little local mechanical damage. Military are very keen to use neutron
bombs in combat, because lethal neutron radiation can peneterate even the largest and deepest bunkers. However, the military seem to
ignore the fact that a neutron radiation is capable to reach significant depths in the planetary interior. In
the process of passing through the planet and losing its intensity, a neutron beam stimulates nuclei of radioactive isotopes naturally present inside the
planet to disintegrate. This disintegration in turn, generates more neutron and other radiation. The entire process causes increased
nuclear heat generation in the planetary interior, far greater than the initial energy of the bomb.
It typically takes many days or even weeks for this extra heat to conduct/convect to the surface of the planet and cause increased seismic/volcanic
activity. Due to this variable delay, nuclear tests are not currently associated with seismic/volcanic activity, simply because it is believed that there is no
theoretical basis for such an association. Perhaps you heard that after every major series of nuclear test there is always a period of increased seismic
activity in some part of the world. This observable fact CANNOT be explained by direct energy of the explosion. The mechanism of neutron radiation
accelerating decay of radioactive isotopes in the planetary interior, however, is a VERY PLAUSIBLE and realistic explanation. The process of
accelerating volcanic activity is nuclear in essence. Accelerated decay of unstable radioactive
isotopes already present in the planetary interior provides the necessary energy. The TRUE
danger of modern nuclear weaponry is that their neutron radiation is capable to induce global
overheating of the planetary interior, global volcanic activity and, in extreme circumstances, may even
cause the entire planet to explode.

FAMINE

Even a regional nuclear war would cause global famine which would kill billions
and trigger pandemics and further wars
IPPNW 2010 (International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Won the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize, Zero is the Only Option: Four
Medical and Environmental Cases for Eradicating Nuclear Weapons, http://ippnweducation.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/zero-is-the-only-
option0303010.pdf)
Using South Asia as an example,5 these experts have found that even a limited regional nuclear war on the order of 100 Hiroshima-
sized nuclear weapons would result in tens of millions of immediate deaths and unprecedented global
climate disruption. Smoke from urban firestorms caused by multiple nuclear explosions would rise into the upper troposphere and, due to
atmospheric heating, would subsequently be boosted deep into the stratosphere.
The resulting soot cloud would block 710% of warming sunlight from reaching the Earths surface, leading to significant
cooling and reductions in precipitation lasting for more than a decade. Within 10 days
following the explosions, there would be a drop in average surface temperature of 1.25 C. Over the
following year, a 10% decline in average global rainfall and a large reduction in the Asian summer monsoon would have a significant impact on
agricultural production. These effects would persist over many years. The growing season would be
shortened by 10 to 20 days in many of the most important grain producing areas in the world, which might completely
eliminate crops that had insufficient time to reach maturity.
There are currently more than one billion people in the world who are chronically malnourished. Several hundred million more live in countries that
depend on imported grain. Even a modest, sudden decline in agricultural production could trigger
significant increases in the prices for basic foods, as well as hoarding on a global scale, making
food inaccessible to poor people in much of the world. While it is not possible to estimate the precise extent of the global
famine that would follow a regional nuclear war, it seems reasonable to anticipate a total global death toll in the
range of one billion from starvation alone. Famine on this scale would also lead to major epidemics of infectious diseases, and
would create immense potential for mass population movement, civil conflict, and war.
These findings have significant implications for nuclear weapons policy. They are powerful evidence in the case against the proliferation of nuclear
weapons and against the modernization of arsenals in the existing nuclear weapon states. Even more important, they argue for a fundamental
reassessment of the role of nuclear weapons in the world. If even a relatively small nuclear war, by Cold War standards within the capacity of eight
nucleararmed statescould trigger a global catastrophe, the only viable response is the complete abolition of nuclear weapons. Two other issues need
to be considered as well. First, there is a very high likelihood that famine on this scale would lead to major epidemics of
infectious diseases. Previous famines have been accompanied by major outbreaks of plague, typhus, malaria, dysentery,
and cholera. Despite the advances in medical technology of the last half century, a global famine on the
anticipated scale would provide the ideal breeding ground for epidemics involving any or all of
these illness, especially in the vast megacities of the developing world.
Famine on this scale would also provoke war and civil conflict, including food riots. Competition for
limited food resources might well exacerbate ethnic and regional animosities. Armed conflict
among nations would escalate as states dependent on imports adopted whatever means
were at their disposal to maintain access to food supplies.

Nuclear winter would produce unprecedented worldwide famines and pandemics
ROBOCK 2010 (Alan, Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University, Nuclear Winter, WIREs Climate Change, May/June,
Wiley Online Library via University of Michigan Libraries)
The most important consequence of nuclear winter for humans is the disruption of food
supplies.8 This comes from environmental disruptions that reduce or completely wipe out
agricultural production and the disruption of the distribution mechanisms. However, there has been no new
work on this subject since the 1980s. This is an area where new research, using scenarios of climate change from recent simulations,14,15 would
provide more specific information on impacts, so the following conclusions are rather general. Not only would it be virtually
impossible to grow food for 45 years after a 150-Mt nuclear holocaust, but it would also be impossible to
obtain food from other countries. In addition to the disruption of food, there would be many
other stresses for any surviving people. These would include the lack of medical supplies and
personnel, high levels of pollution and radioactivity, psychological stress, rampant diseases and
epidemics, and enhanced UV-B.
There are many ways that agriculture is vulnerable to nuclear winter. The cold and the dark
alone are sufficient to kill many crops. Superimposed on the average cooling would be large
variations. During the summer of 1816 in New England, there were killing frosts in each summer month.30 Only 1 day with the
temperatures below freezing is enough to kill rice crops. Colder temperatures mean shorter
growing seasons, and also slower maturation of crops; the combination results in much lower
yields. Most of the grains that are grown in midlatitudes, such as corn, are actually of tropical origin, and will only grow in
summer-like conditions. For example, a study done in Canada shows that with summer temperatures only 3C below normal, spring
wheat production would halt.8 Insufficient precipitation would also make agriculture difficult.
The tremendous productivity of the grain belt of the US and Canada feeds not only those
countries but also many in the rest of the world where normal climate variability often results in reduced harvests. This
productivity is the result of modern farming techniques that allow a tiny percentage of the population to produce more
than enough for the rest. To do this, tremendous energy subsidies are needed. Farmers depend on fuel for
their machinery, fertilizer, and pesticides, none of which would be available or distributed in the
aftermath of a war. Furthermore, insects have a higher tolerance for radiation and the stresses
that would follow than do their predators, such as birds. Whatever might grow would be eaten by
pests, already a significant problem in today's production. Also, the seeds that are in use were designed to yield high
productivity assuming the current climate and inputs of chemicals and energy as discussed above.
These seeds would not grow well in a radically altered growing environment. Our dependence on
technology is such that if every human in the US went out to the fields to try to raise crops with
manual labor, and if they knew what they were doing, and if they had enough food to eat, and if
they were healthy, they still could not produce what is produced today.
Thus, most of the world's people are threatened with starvation following a full-scale nuclear
war. The number that would survive depends on how much food is in storage and how much
could be produced locally. Earlier studies of various countries around the world conclude that even with extremely
optimistic assumptions of perfect distribution systems within countries,8 that each person who
will survive becomes a vegetarian and eats the minimum needed for survival, and the others
waste none of the food, that nations in Asia, Africa and South America could only last 12
months. In many nations, people would be reduced to a hunter/gatherer existence with nothing
to hunt and precious little to gather.
The effects on health would add to the misery. Immune deficiencies can be produced by any of the following:
burns and trauma, radioactivity, malnutrition, psychological stress, and UV-B radiation. All of
these would be present for the survivors in the target nations.
Pollution from dioxins, PCBs, asbestos, and other chemicals will make the air unhealthy to breath.
Severe psychological stress will prevent the survivors from making the efforts to continue to
exist.
One might think that the ocean shore would be a good place to survive because the temperatures would not fall as much, and there would be plenty of
food to catch. Although the ocean would not cool very fast, the darkness would decimate the phytoplankton, which are at the
base of the oceanic food chain. That, combined with toxic and radioactive pollution, would
severely limit the food sources in the oceans. Furthermore, the large temperature contrasts
between the oceans and the land would produce strong storms that would make fishing difficult
at best.

FALLOUT

Reactor targeting hasnt been accounted forfallout risks are huge
NISSANI 1992 (Moti, Professor at Wayne State, Lives in the Balance: The Cold War and American Politics 1945-1991,
http://www.is.wayne.edu/mnissani/pagepub/CH2.html)
Radioactive materials produced in nuclear power plants decay more slowly than the by-products
of nuclear bombs,
3
so the devastation of nuclear power plants would considerably increase the
area which would remain unsafe for human habitation after the war. For breeder reactors, reprocessing facilities, and
near-ground radioactive waste-disposal sites, the picture is even grimmer: certain portions of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the eastern
half of the continental U.S., the states of Washington and California, and considerable portions of Western Europe, could be contaminated for decades.
Even centuries later, it might be advisable to check radioactivity levels before buying land in these regions.
The wartime vaporization of most nuclear power facilities will increase (by about one-third) average
global fallout and its long-term effects. Moreover, because radioactive materials from this source
are longer-lived than materials produced by nuclear bombs, their relative contribution to the
global fallout will increase over time. For instance, ten years after the war, total radioactivity in global
fallout would be three times higher with such vaporization than without it.
Some people find it hard to believe that something as unpleasant as this could indeed take place, but war and politics obey their own logic. A junior
Soviet officer who defected to the West tells us that, due to shortage of uranium and plutonium in the Soviet Union, "not all Soviet rockets have
warheads . . . so that . . . use is being made of radioactive material which is . . . waste produced by nuclear power stations."
22
By the 1980s, at the latest,
both sides had enough accurate warheads, so they may have adopted the more efficient course of spreading radioactive dust by targeting nuclear power
installations. Needless to say, if rumors regarding the intentional destruction of Iraqi nuclear power facilities during the Persian Gulf War turn out to be
true, they support the view that nuclear power plants will be targeted in an all-out war. It also goes without saying that in
the future, nuclear states may be far less cautious than the USA and the USSR have been.
In sum, if this comes to pass, large areas of the northern hemisphere will be contaminated for years
and global fallout will pose greater risks for longer periods of time. As a result of both, there will
be greater loss of lives, property, and land than previously believed. Unquestionably then, and regardless of
whatever else one might think about them, nuclear power plants and installations constitute a grave risk to a nation's security.

Testing data proves massive casualties from fallout worldwide
US ACDA 1975 (U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Worldwide Effects of Nuclear War,
http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/Effects/wenw_index.shtml)
Much of our knowledge of the production and distribution of radionuclides has been derived
from the period of intensive nuclear testing in the atmosphere during the 1950's and early 1960's. It is estimated that more
than 500 megatons of nuclear yield were detonated in the atmosphere between 1945 and 1971, about half of this yield being produced by a fission
reaction. The peak occurred in 1961-62, when a total of 340 megatons were detonated in the atmosphere by the United States and Soviet Union. The
limited nuclear test ban treaty of 1963 ended atmospheric testing for the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union, but two major non-signatories,
France and China, continued nuclear testing at the rate of about 5 megatons annually. (France now conducts its nuclear tests underground.)
A U.N. scientific committee has estimated that the cumulative per capita dose to the world's population up to the year 2000 as a result of atmospheric
testing through 1970 (cutoff date of the study) will be the equivalent of 2 years' exposure to natural background radiation on the earth's surface. For the
bulk of the world's population, internal and external radiation doses of natural origin amount to less than one-tenth rad annually. Thus nuclear
testing to date does not appear to pose a severe radiation threat in global terms. But a nuclear war releasing
10 or 100 times the total yield of all previous weapons tests could pose a far greater worldwide threat. The biological effects of all
forms of ionizing radiation have been calculated within broad ranges by the National Academy of Sciences. Based on these calculations, fallout from the
500-plus megatons of nuclear testing through 1970 will produce between 2 and 25 cases of genetic disease per million live births in the next generation.
This means that between 3 and 50 persons per billion births in the post-testing generation will have genetic damage for each megaton of nuclear yield
exploded. With similar uncertainty, it is possible to estimate that the induction of cancers would range from 75 to 300 cases per megaton for each
billion people in the post-test generation.
If we apply these very rough yardsticks to a large-scale nuclear war in which 10,000 megatons of nuclear force are detonated, the effects on a
world population of 5 billion appear enormous. Allowing for uncertainties about the dynamics of a possible nuclear war, radiation-
induced cancers and genetic damage together over 30 years are estimated to range from 1.5 to 30 million for the world population as a whole. This
would mean one additional case for every 100 to 3,000 people or about 1/2 percent to 15 percent of the estimated peacetime cancer death rate in
developed countries. As will be seen, moreover, there could be other, less well understood effects which would drastically increase suffering and death.

Nuclear war would cause worldwide fallout
When a weapon is detonated at the surface of the earth or at low altitudes, the heat pulse vaporizes the bomb material, target, nearby structures, and
underlying soil and rock, all of which become entrained in an expanding, fast-rising fireball. As the fireball rises, it expands and cools, producing the
distinctive mushroom cloud, signature of nuclear explosions. The altitude reached by the cloud depends on the force of the explosion. When yields are
in the low-kiloton range, the cloud will remain in the lower atmosphere and its effects will be entirely local. But as yields exceed 30 kilotons, part of the
cloud will punch into the stratosphere, which begins about 7 miles up. With yields of 2-5 megatons or more, virtually all of the cloud of radioactive
debris and fine dust will climb into the stratosphere. The heavier materials reaching the lower edge of the
stratosphere will soon settle out, as did the Castle/Bravo fallout at Rongelap. But the lighter particles will
penetrate high into the stratosphere, to altitudes of 12 miles and more, and remain there for
months and even years. Stratospheric circulation and diffusion will spread this material around the
world.

Smaller yield of modern weapons increases fallout damage
SUBLETTE 1997 (Carey, Nuclear Weapons Frequently Asked Questions, http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq5.html)
The megaton class weapons that were developed in the US and USSR during the fifties and sixties have been largely retired,
being replaced with much smaller yield warheads. The yield of a modern strategic warhead is, with few exceptions, now typically in the range of 200-
750 kt. Recent work with sophisticated climate models has shown that this reduction in yield
results in a much larger proportion of the fallout being deposited in the lower atmosphere, and a
much faster and more intense deposition of fallout than had been assumed in studies made during the sixties and
seventies. The reduction in aggregate strategic arsenal yield that occurred when high yield weapons
were retired in favor of more numerous lower yield weapons has actually increased the fallout
risk.

GENE POOL

Nuclear war reduces genetic diversity and makes the species less adaptable
Genetic Risks. We have noted earlier that nuclear war may cause harmful mutations and other genetic defects,
thereby causing millions of individual tragedies for centuries after the war. In this section I would like to draw attention to the
implications of these defects to the human gene pool as a whole.
Two modern developments (which have nothing to do with nuclear war) need to be mentioned in this context. First, owing to medical advances,
genetically unfit individuals are more likely to survive and reproduce now than in former ages. Second, the modern environment contains many
mutation-causing substances. Both developments may gradually raise the incidence of deleterious genes in the human gene pool and thereby bring
about a gradual decline in its quality. Some geneticists go as far as to prophesy a genetic twilight, in which the quality of the
human gene pool erodes to the point where everyone is "an invalid, with his own special familial twists."
23

Now, if it turns out that nuclear war increases the number of genetic defects, war might reduce the
quality of the human gene pool to some unknown extent. Moreover, if the specter of genetic twilight is real (many
geneticists believe that it is not), nuclear war might hasten its coming.

Genetic health key to human survival
MAC INNIS 2004 (Dr. Bronwyn, Geneticist at Stanford, Understanding Genetics, http://www.thetech.org/genetics/ask.php?id=184)
Of course, none of this would matter if the chromosomes were exactly the same between mom and dad. Luckily theyre not. In fact, there is on average 6
million differences between any two peoples DNA.
The mixing of DNA in this way generates lots of these differences. This genetic diversity is very
important for survival. Not necessarily the survival of any one individual, but for the species as a whole.
Say, for example, a new deadly disease hits (think of the plague during the Middle Ages). Lots of people would die, but some
would live. Some of these survivors would live because they had the right set of DNA differences.

Even small changes to the genome threaten extinction
HEAF 2000 (David, Engineering the Human Germline, http://www.ifgene.org/germline.htm)
Germline GE could eventually reduce the genetic diversity of the human race. Valuable genes needed for surviving disease --
for example sickle cell anaemia which confers some protection from malaria and cystic fibrosis which may give some protection from cholera -- and
plagues, may be lost. Some genes of currently unknown function may be evolving which have benefits for mankind in the future. Ad hoc
removal of genes from the population could drive humanity up an evolutionary cul de sac.
Natural evolution may turn out in the long run to be a wiser enhancer of the human race than
the genetic engineer. Even a 1% alteration of the genome when it involves millions of children will add up to a
significant effect on the population.

HORRENDOUS DEATH

Plain old death is inevitablenuclear war represents particularly awful
horrendous death
LIPTON 1991 (Judith, MD, Psychologist, Horrendous Death and Health: Toward Action, google books)
Although "plain old death has challenged human imagination since the dawn of conscious-
ness. the concept of horrendous death "is relatively new. and even more diffiadt. The ultimate
form of horrendous death is nuclear war, which represents not only the death of the human
species, but quite possibly the termination of life on earth. Nuclear war would be a cataclysm in
stages, each one building upon and expanding from the earlier stages. Short-term effects of
nuclear war would be primarily blast effects, thermal radiation, firestorms, and intense short-
term nuclear radiation. Intermediate effects would be the result of the previous ones, and would
include global darkening, cooling, bacteriological contamination of food and water resulting in
plagues in both human and animals, and radiological contamination of the food chain, resulting
in even more deaths. Long-range effects wuld include changes in the earths climate, probable
genetic and mutagenic effects in humans and animals, and further destruction of the biosphere
as a result of all of the above. Social effects of nuclear war would include the destruction not
only of populations but of civilizations as a result of the direct effects of bombing as well as
economic collapse. Psychological effects, consisting of acute and chronic posttraumatic stress
syndromes, would cripple survivors, who would probably ultimately perish anyway.
More than any other form of horrendous death, nuclear war highlights this basic concept:
plain old death is inevitable, while horrendous death in general and nuclear war in particular
can be prevented. Nuclear war is a man-made problem, with man- and woman-made solutions.
It is not inevitable. All that is necessary to prevent nuclear war is the collective will and
imagination to do so.

Death is inevitable, but murder is notnuclear war is the ultimate act of
horrendous death and is therefore unique
LIPTON 1991 (Judith, MD, Psychologist, Horrendous Death and Health: Toward Action, google books)
The novelist Kurt Vonnegut called it plain old death, and it is none too pretty. Regular old garden-
variety death is common, indeed universal and unavoidable, but nonetheless upsetting, even
terrifying. Glorious golden-plumed Waldeaumy 15-ycar-old golden retriever and the noblest, gentlest dog that ever
liveddied in amorous pursuit, the entire top of his skull ripped off by the horny, competitive, half-mastiff, half-St.
Bernard next door. A neighbors pregnant mare developed colic; as she died the foal was ripped from her belly, a last-
minute Caesarean section. We worked all night pumping fluids and antibiotics into the floppy baby, but to no avail. By
morning, the soft, furry creature was stiff and still, dead in a wheelbarrow, eyes filmed over and tongue protruding,
yet perfectly formed, bom never to trot or gallop in the spring. After six surgeries, ten thousand venipunc- tures, and
innumerable consultations, my fathers body is rotting away from cancer, and although his eyes are still bright and
his mind is clear, I know hes tired and ready to give up.
Plain old death is no picnic. What then differentiates horrendous death from the horrifies of
commonplace misery? Why contemplate horrendous death when regular death boggles the mind, and is
already the stuff of night- mares? Why write about the medical consequences of nuclear war, when everyone knows
that the consequences are just death, death, and more death? The answer to these questions, I believe, is embodied in the structure of this book:
thinking about horrendous, man-made death is the only route to becoming empowered enough
to do something about it. It seems to be a natural aspect of the human animal that we deny unpleasantness until
it is too obvious to avoid any longer. In particular, we avoid and deny death in general, because of the feelings of
helplessness, anxiety, and fear of loss, pain and abandonment that seem to accompany our perceptions of it. My
husband and I have noted that an adaptive aspect of denial is rooted in the human evolutionary history: when an
animal perceives that a problem is too big to solve, it is adaptive not to waste energy on it (Barash & Lipton, 1985).
This opens the door, however, to a common mistake when human beings misperceive the magnitude of a threat, or its
manageability. This commonplace error is particularly exemplified by the current world situation regarding nuclear
weapons. Many people downgrade the magnitude of the risk, suggesting that because an all-out nuclear war hasnt
happened yet, it never will. Others suggest that it would be survivable. However, I suggest that the most common
misperception about the nuclear arms raceand perhaps one of the most perniciousis that the problem is too big
for any individual to solve, and therefore it is best not to bother about it. Even the current improvement in U.S.-Soviet
relations, which reduces the threat of war, is balanced by conflict in the Persian Gulf, which highlights problems of
proliferation. The U.S.-Soviet thaw has not ended the nuclear arms race.
The wisdom of differentiating horrendous death from plain old death is that the concept of
horrendous death places the burden of responsibility for the death squarely on the shoulders of
men and women who plan, prepare, and perpe- trate murder. Plain old life is hard enough, full of pain,
losses, and sorrow, with an inevitably fatal outcome. Plain old death is scary, painful, and often extremely
wasteful. In my opinion it is simply atrocious to add, in any way, to the existing burden of pain,
waste, and misery in the world; moreover, murder, by any means and for any reason, is
horrendous. Nuclear war is the ultimate murder, not only of the human species, but probably of
life as we know it on earth. Ironically, it is also one of the most preventable forms of horrendous death, and thus
it is incumbent on every thinking person to participate in its prevention.

NUCLEAR WINTER

Nuclear winter causes extinction
If harm from explosions, fire, radiation, and the collapse of infrastructure were the only causes
of death, then at least some humans would be able to survive, even in a much reduced state: the damage
would be non-uniform, and survivors could sustain a population at some level. The damage would also spare some
countries and regions.
Nuclear winter makes civilizational collapse and extinction more plausible because it provides a
mechanism for nuclear weapons to disrupt food supplies worldwide. If survivors of initial
damage find themselves unable to produce or collect food to sustain themselves anywhere, then
human extinction would result as soon as stockpiles were exhausted. Nuclear winter would result from
burning cities under the right conditions propelling material into the upper atmosphere and blocking solar radiation,
cooling the Earth to a degree dependent upon the number and magnitude of firestorms (among other things). The
effect would decay over time, most rapidly at first, as the material gradually fell.

We have the best methodology and the only accurate modelnuclear winter theory
is correct
TOON et al 2008 (Brian Toon is chair of the department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences and a member of the laboratory for
atmospheric and space physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Alan Robock is a professor of atmospheric science at Rutgers University in
New Brunswick, New Jersey. Rich Turco is a professor of atmospheric science at the University of California, Los Angeles, Environmental
consequences of nuclear war, Physics Today, December, Wiley Online Library via UNC Libraries)
Many researchers have evaluated the consequences of single nuclear explosions, and a few groups have considered the results of a small number of
explosions. But our work represents the only unclassified study of the consequences of a regional
nuclear conflict and the only one to consider the consequences of a nuclear exchange involving
the SORT arsenal. Neither the US Department of Homeland Security nor any other governmental agency
in the world currently has an unclassified program to evaluate the impact of nuclear conflict.
Neither the US National Academy of Sciences, nor any other scientific body in the world, has
conducted a study of the issue in the past 20 years.
That said, the science community has long recognized the importance of nuclear winter. It was
investigated by numerous organizations during the 1980s, all of which found the basic science to be
sound. Our most recent calculations also support the nuclear-winter concept and show that the
effects would be more long lasting and therefore worse than thought in the 1980s.
Nevertheless, a misperception that the nuclear-winter idea has been discredited has permeated
the nuclear policy community. That error has resulted in many misleading policy conclusions.
For instance, one research group recently concluded that the US could successfully destroy
Russia in a surprise first-strike nuclear attack.10 However, because of nuclear winter, such an action
might be suicidal. To recall some specifics, an attack by the US on Russia and China with 2200 weapons could produce 86.4 Tg
of soot, enough to create Ice Age conditions, affect agriculture worldwide, and possibly lead to mass
starvation.
Lynn Eden of the Center for International Security and Cooperation explores the military view of nuclear damage in her book Whole World on Fire.11
Blast is a sure result of a nuclear explosion. And military planners know how to consider blast effects when they evaluate
whether a nuclear force is capable of destroying a target. Fires are collateral damage that may not be planned or
accounted for. Unfortunately, that collateral damage may be capable of killing most of Earths
population.
Climate and chemistry models have greatly advanced since the 1980s, and the ability to compute
the environmental changes after a nuclear conflict has been much improved. Our climate and
atmospheric chemistry work is based on standard global models from NASA Goddards Institute for Space Studies and
from the US National Center for Atmospheric Research. Many scientists have used those models to
investigate climate change and volcanic eruptions, both of which are relevant to considerations of the environmental effects of nuclear war. In the past
two decades, researchers have extensively studied other bodies whose atmospheres exhibit behaviors
corresponding to nuclear winter; included in such studies are the thermal structure of Titans ambient atmospheres
and the thermal structure of Marss atmosphere during global dust storms. Like volcanoes, large forest
fires regularly produce phenomena similar to those associated with the injection of soot into the
upper atmosphere following a nuclear attack. Although plenty remains to be done, over the past 20 years
scientists have gained a much greater understanding of natural analogues to nuclear-weapons
explosions.

Nuclear winter is realbest evidence disproves skeptics
Nuclear winter is the term for a theory describing the climatic effects of nuclear war. Smoke from the fires started by nuclear
weapons, especially the black, sooty smoke from cities and industrial facilities, would be heated by the Sun, lofted into the
upper stratosphere, and spread globally, lasting for years. The resulting cool, dark, dry
conditions at Earth's surface would prevent crop growth for at least one growing season, resulting in mass
starvation over most of the world. In addition, there would be massive ozone depletion, allowing
enhanced ultraviolet radiation. More people could die in the noncombatant countries than in those
where the bombs were dropped, because of these indirect effects. Nuclear proliferation is now expanding the threat. A nuclear
war between India and Pakistan could produce so much smoke that it would produce global
environmental change unprecedented in recorded human history. Although the number of
nuclear weapons in the world has fallen from 70,000 at its peak in the 1980s to less than 10,000 currently deployed, a
nuclear war between the United States and Russia could still produce nuclear winter. This theory
cannot be tested in the real world. However, analogs can inform us about parts of the theory, and there are many
that give support to the theory. They include the seasonal cycle, the diurnal cycle, forest, fires,
volcanic eruptions, and dust storms on Mars. The only way to be sure to prevent the climatic effects of nuclear war is to rid the
world of nuclear weapons. Copyright 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Nuclear war causes cooling feedbacksalso destroys the Amazon and the ocean
NCAR 2014 (National Center for Atmospheric Research, REGIONAL NUCLEAR WAR WOULD HAVE GLOBAL
REACH, AtmosNews, March 4, http://www2.ucar.edu/atmosnews/just-published/11155/regional-nuclear-war-
would-have-global-reach)
Scientists for several decades have studied the potential environmental impacts of a nuclear conflict
either an all-out conflagration between superpowers or a more limited regional war. Now a research
team led by NCAR has produced an unusually detailed picture of the aftermath of a hypothetical
regional nuclear war by using a modeling approach that includes simulations of atmospheric
chemistry, the oceans, land surface, and sea ice.
The study, published this month in the American Geophysical Union journal Earths Future, finds that an exchange
of 100 nuclear weapons between two regional adversaries would have more severe global
implications for society and the environment than previously thought.
The research teams model simulations show that global temperatures would drop initially by 1.5 degrees
Celsius (about 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) to their lowest levels in more than 1,000 years. The cooling
would be caused by firestorms in major cities lofting ash and other particles high into the
atmosphere, where they would block incoming solar heat. The colder temperatures would reduce
precipitation, likely leading to widespread fires in regions such as the Amazon and pumping still
more smoke into the atmosphere.
Whereas previous studies had projected that global temperatures would recover after about a
decade, the new work indicates that cooling would persist at least 26 years, which is as far into the
future as the simulations went. Two major factors would cause this prolonged cooling: an
expansion of sea ice that would reflect more solar heat into space, and a significant cooling in the
upper 100 meters (about 330 feet) of the oceans, which would warm only gradually.

Nuclear war causes nuclear winterrecent models confirm
option0303010.pdf)
More than 20 years ago, climate scientists led by the renowned Carl Sagan coined the term nuclear winter
to describe the global ecological destruction that would result from a massive nuclear exchange between the US and the former Soviet Union. Applying
climate model simulations available to them at the time, the scientists concluded that smoke and dust produced by a catastrophic nuclear war would
cause rapid drops in temperature and precipitation, block sunlight, and threaten agriculture worldwide for at least a year.
Using modern climate models that have been developed to study global warming, some of these
same scientists and their colleagues have recently returned to the question of nuclear winter and
have reexamined the climate consequences of a range of nuclear wars. These new studies have
reconfirmed that a nuclear war involving the large arsenals of the US and Russia would result in
a nuclear winter even more long lasting than previously thought.8

New models prove that even regional wars cause nuclear winter
ROBOCK et al 2007 (Alan Robock Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA Luke
Oman Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA Now at Department of Earth and Planetary
Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA Georgiy L. Stenchikov Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University, New
Brunswick, New Jersey, USA, Nuclear winter revisited with a modern climate model and current nuclear arsenals: Still catastrophic consequences,
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, July 6, American Geophysical Union via University of North Carolina Libraries)
[2] As first suggested by Crutzen and Birks [1982], climate model simulations by Turco et al. [1983] and Aleksandrov and Stenchikov [1983] showed
that a full-scale nuclear war would produce surface temperature, precipitation, and insolation reductions so large that the climatic
consequences were described as nuclear winter. Soon after the world was confronted with the prospect of potential indirect effects of nuclear
war much larger than the direct effects, and starvation of billions of people from the collapse of world agriculture, the arms race and cold war ended.
Since then, the global nuclear arsenal has been reduced by a factor of three.
[3] Prompted by the recent work of Toon et al. [2007] and Robock et al. [2007], who showed that a regional nuclear conflict using 100 Hiroshima-size
(15 kt) nuclear weapons, only 0.03% of the explosive power of the current global arsenal, would produce
climate change unprecedented in human history, we revisit the nuclear winter issue with a
modern climate model. We ask the question of whether the current nuclear arsenal could still
produce a nuclear winter.
[4] All previous simulations of the climatic response to the smoke generated from a nuclear war
were limited by computer power and the available climate models. As shown in Table 1, each simulation
addressed certain aspects of the climate model response with simple climate models or with short simulations of low-resolution atmospheric general
circulation models (GCMs), but now for the first time we use a coupled atmosphere-ocean GCM run continuously for multiple 10-year simulations and
with a model top at the mesopause.
[5] Some critics of previous nuclear winter results suggested that once uncertainties were
addressed, the severity of the results would decrease. Because of the use of the term nuclear autumn by Thompson and
Schneider [1986], even though the authors made clear that the climatic consequences would be large, in policy circles the theory of
nuclear winter is considered by some to have been exaggerated and disproved [e.g., Martin, 1988].
So we are motivated to include simulations of mechanisms not previously addressed, to see
whether prior results would hold up. However, unknowns by definition are unknown, and it turns out that not
only do we still get a nuclear winter using the previous baseline case, but that the climate
response is much longer than that of earlier results, and current nuclear arsenals can still
produce a nuclear winter.

OZONE

New models show that even a regional nuclear war would cause massive ozone loss
option0303010.pdf)
A nuclear war using only a small fraction of current global arsenals would quickly cause
prolonged and catastrophic stratospheric ozone depletion. The impact on human and animal
health and on fundamental ecosystems would be disastrous. Scientists have known for more than two decades that
a global nuclear waran event that came perilously close during the Cold War between the US and the former Soviet Union, and which cannot be ruled
out as long as those massive arsenals existwould severely damage the Earths protective ozone layer. Studies in the 1980s by the US National
Research Council and others showed that solar heating of the smoke produced by massive fires would displace and destroy significant amounts of
stratospheric ozone.6
Early in 2008, physicists and atmospheric scientists from the University of Colorado, UCLA, and the National Center for
Atmospheric Research published important new findings that a regional nuclear war involving 100 Hiroshima-sized
bombs would result in severe losses in stratospheric ozone.7 The scientists concluded that a regional nuclear conflict
between India and Pakistan in which each used 50 Hiroshima-sized weapons (~15 kt) would produce an estimated 6.6 teragrams (Tg) of black carbon.
In addition to the global surface cooling described above, large losses in stratospheric ozone would persist for years. The global
mean ozone column would be depleted by as much as 25% for five years after the nuclear exchange. At mid-latitudes (25-45%) and at northern high
latitudes (50-70%), ozone depletion would be even more severe and would last just as long. Substantial increases in ultraviolet radiation would have
serious consequences for human health. Those consequences, as we know from earlier studies of stratospheric ozone lossthe ozone hole that
prompted the Montreal Protocol and the phasing out of ozone depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) include steep increases in skin
cancer, crop damage, and destruction of marine phytoplankton.
A 1-Tg infusion of soot would also dangerously deplete stratospheric ozone, although the effects would be smaller and shorter-lived than in the 5-Tg
case. The study concluded that global mean ozone column losses would peak at 8% and that the perturbation would last up to four years. One of
the most surprising findings is that the magnitude and duration of the predicted ozone
reductions from the regional nuclear war considered by the scientists are greater than those
calculated in the 1980s for global thermonuclear war with yields a thousand times greater.

Nuclear war would cause extreme ozone depletion
MILLS et al 2008 (Michael J. Mills,* Owen B. Toon,* Richard P. Turco, Douglas E. Kinnison, and Rolando
R. Garcia, scientists, Massive global ozone loss predicted following regional nuclear conflict, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S
A. Apr 8, 2008; 105(14))
We use a chemistry-climate model and new estimates of smoke produced by fires in
contemporary cities to calculate the impact on stratospheric ozone of a regional nuclear war
between developing nuclear states involving 100 Hiroshima-size bombs exploded in cities in the northern subtropics.
We find column ozone losses in excess of 20% globally, 2545% at midlatitudes, and 5070% at
northern high latitudes persisting for 5 years, with substantial losses continuing for 5 additional
years. Column ozone amounts remain near or <220 Dobson units at all latitudes even after three years,
constituting an extratropical ozone hole. The resulting increases in UV radiation could impact
the biota significantly, including serious consequences for human health. The primary cause for the dramatic and
persistent ozone depletion is heating of the stratosphere by smoke, which strongly absorbs solar radiation.
The smoke-laden air rises to the upper stratosphere, where removal mechanisms are slow, so
that much of the stratosphere is ultimately heated by the localized smoke injections. Higher
stratospheric temperatures accelerate catalytic reaction cycles, particularly those of odd-
nitrogen, which destroy ozone. In addition, the strong convection created by rising smoke plumes alters the
stratospheric circulation, redistributing ozone and the sources of ozone-depleting gases, including N2O and
chlorofluorocarbons. The ozone losses predicted here are significantly greater than previous nuclear
winter/UV spring calculations, which did not adequately represent stratospheric plume rise.
Our results point to previously unrecognized mechanisms for stratospheric ozone depletion.

Nuke war causes ozone loss and extinction
More worrisome is the possible effect of nuclear explosions on ozone in the stratosphere. Not until the 20th century was the unique and paradoxical
role of ozone fully recognized. On the other hand, in concentrations greater than I part per million in the air we breathe, ozone is toxic; one major
American city, Los Angeles, has established a procedure for ozone alerts and warnings. On the other hand, ozone is a critically
important feature of the stratosphere from the standpoint of maintaining life on the earth.
The reason is that while oxygen and nitrogen in the upper reaches of the atmosphere can block out solar ultraviolet photons with wavelengths shorter
than 2,420 angstroms (), ozone is the only effective shield in the atmosphere against solar ultraviolet radiation between 2,500 and 3,000 in
wavelength. (See note 5.) Although ozone is extremely efficient at filtering out solar ultraviolet in 2,500-3,OOO region of the spectrum, some does get
through at the higher end of the spectrum. Ultraviolet rays in the range of 2,800 to 3,200 which cause sunburn, prematurely age human skin and
produce skin cancers. As early as 1840, arctic snow blindness was attributed to solar ultraviolet; and we have since found that intense ultraviolet
radiation can inhibit photosynthesis in plants, stunt plant growth, damage bacteria, fungi,
higher plants, insects and annuals, and produce genetic alterations.
Despite the important role ozone plays in assuring a livable environment at the earth's surface, the total quantity of ozone in the atmosphere is quite
small, only about 3 parts per million. Furthermore, ozone is not a durable or static constituent of the atmosphere. It is constantly created, destroyed,
and recreated by natural processes, so that the amount of ozone present at any given time is a function of the equilibrium reached between the creative
and destructive chemical reactions and the solar radiation reaching the upper stratosphere.
The mechanism for the production of ozone is the absorption by oxygen molecules (O2) of relatively short-wavelength ultraviolet light. The oxygen
molecule separates into two atoms of free oxygen, which immediately unite with other oxygen molecules on the surfaces of particles in the upper
atmosphere. It is this union which forms ozone, or O3. The heat released by the ozone-forming process is the reason for the curious increase with
altitude of the temperature of the stratosphere (the base of which is about 36,000 feet above the earth's surface).
While the natural chemical reaction produces about 4,500 tons of ozone per second in the stratosphere, this is offset by other natural chemical
reactions which break down the ozone. By far the most significant involves nitric oxide (NO) which breaks ozone (O3) into molecules. This effect was
discovered only in the last few years in studies of the environmental problems which might be encountered if large fleets of supersonic transport
aircraft operate routinely in the lower stratosphere. According to a report by Dr. Harold S. Johnston, University of California at Berkeley-- prepared for
the Department of Transportation's Climatic Impact Assessment Program--it now appears that the NO reaction is normally responsible for 50 to 70
percent of the destruction of ozone.
In the natural environment, there is a variety of means for the production of NO and its transport into the stratosphere. Soil bacteria produce nitrous
oxide (N2O) which enters the lower atmosphere and slowly diffuses into the stratosphere, where it reacts with free oxygen (O) to form two NO
molecules. Another mechanism for NO production in the lower atmosphere may be lightning discharges, and while NO is quickly washed out of the
lower atmosphere by rain, some of it may reach the stratosphere. Additional amounts of NO are produced directly in the stratosphere by cosmic rays
from the sun and interstellar sources.
It is because of this catalytic role which nitric oxide plays in the destruction of ozone that it is important to consider the effects of high-yield nuclear
explosions on the ozone layer. The nuclear fireball and the air entrained within it are subjected to great heat, followed by relatively rapid
cooling. These conditions are ideal for the production of tremendous amounts of NO from the air. It has
been estimated that as much as 5,000 tons of nitric oxide is produced for each megaton of nuclear explosive power.
What would be the effects of nitric oxides driven into the stratosphere by an all-out nuclear war, involving the detonation of 10,000 megatons of
explosive force in the northern hemisphere? According to the recent National Academy of Sciences study, the nitric oxide produced by
the weapons could reduce the ozone levels in the northern hemisphere by as much as 30 to 70
percent.
To begin with, a depleted ozone layer would reflect back to the earth's surface less heat than would normally be the case, thus causing a drop in
temperature--perhaps enough to produce serious effects on agriculture. Other changes, such as increased amounts of dust or different vegetation,
might subsequently reverse this drop in temperature--but on the other hand, it might increase it.
Probably more important, life on earth has largely evolved within the protective ozone shield and is presently
adapted rather precisely to the amount of solar ultraviolet which does get through. To defend themselves
against this low level of ultraviolet, evolved external shielding (feathers, fur, cuticular waxes on fruit), internal shielding (melanin pigment in human
skin, flavenoids in plant tissue), avoidance strategies (plankton migration to greater depths in the daytime, shade-seeking by desert iguanas) and, in
almost all organisms but placental mammals, elaborate mechanisms to repair photochemical damage.
It is possible, however, that a major increase in solar ultraviolet might overwhelm the defenses of some
and perhaps many terrestrial life forms. Both direct and indirect damage would then occur
among the bacteria, insects, plants, and other links in the ecosystems on which human well-
being depends. This disruption, particularly if it occurred in the aftermath of a major war
involving many other dislocations, could pose a serious additional threat to the recovery of
postwar society. The National Academy of Sciences report concludes that in 20 years the ecological systems would have essentially recovered
from the increase in ultraviolet radiation--though not necessarily from radioactivity or other damage in areas close to the war zone. However, a delayed
effect of the increase in ultraviolet radiation would be an estimated 3 to 30 percent increase in skin cancer for 40 years in the Northern Hemisphere's
mid-latitudes.

TURNS AIR POLLUTION

Nuclear war would exacerbate air pollution
PARKINSON 2003 (Stuart, Scientists For Global Responsibility, Does Anybody Remember the Nuclear Winter?
http://www.sgr.org.uk/climate/NuclearWinter_NL27.htm)
While the temperature at the surface would be low, the temperature of the upper part of the
troposphere (5-11 km) would rise because of sunlight absorbed by the smoke, so there would be a
huge temperature inversion. That would keep many other pollutants produced by widespread
fires (e.g. dioxins, PCBs, sulphurous gases) down at the levels people breathe, making a very dense and highly
toxic smog.

TURNS DISABILITY/AGEISM

Nuclear war would disproportionately hurt children, the elderly, and disabled
people
FME 2006 (For Mother Earth, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, Last Modified 4-17-06, http://www.motherearth.org/nuke/begin2.php)
From a psychological point of view, limited nuclear war probably is the worst of all worlds.
The imagery of nuclear war, the widespread casualties, and the intense fear of radioactivity
would lead to the "nuclear war survivor syndrome". This powerful sense of personal
vulnerability, helplessness, guilt, isolation and fear, was seen to varying degrees in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors.
The powerful psychological effects of the fear of radioactivity, and the "loss of trust" were described in studies of the nuclear accident at Three
Mile Island. The spread of radioactive fallout would create the image of nuclear threat and
vulnerability across wide areas.
The very short period required to carry out highly destructive nuclear attacks would intensify the emotional impact, particularly those reactions
associated with denial of the true extent of the damage or fostering flight from damaged areas.
Robert J. Lifton, in his study of Hiroshima survivors, described the psychological effect as "a sudden and absolute shift from normal existence to an
overwhelming encounter with death." The reaction, as reported by a witness to the disaster, Father Siemes: "Among the passers-by, there are many
who are uninjured. In a purposeless, insensate manner, distraught by the magnitude of the disaster, most of them rush by and
none conceives the thought of organizing help on his own initiative. They are concerned only with the
welfare of their own families." In some cases even families were abandoned. The result of this
experience was a deep fear of returning to the cities to rebuild the any form of normal life that may be possible after
a nuclear attack.
Families would be broken up by death, severe injury, disease, evacuation, or military and labour
conscription. The young, elderly, and handicapped would suffer disproportionately since they
depend most on society's material and institutional resources. For example, the young and elderly showed
significant increases in accidental death attributed to neglect in Great Britain in World War II. The loss of material and institutional resources in urban-
industrial attacks would make survival in the post-attack period difficult for individuals and groups alike, compounding the psychological stresses of
the attack itself. Satisfying even the simplest survival requirements (food, shelter, and clothing) would become
major tasks.

TURNS ECON

Nuclear war would destroy the world economy and kill millions through famine
Economic Consequences. To see the complexity of modern industrial economies, ask yourself how self-sufficient you are, in comparison, say, to a native
North American of some 500 years ago. Most likely you depend on a highly complex web for sheer physical
survival, let alone travel, leisure, education, and similar luxuries. Your food, water, heating fuel, and other necessities often come from outside
sources, and their continuous arrival depends on an intricate, finely tuned network. In the event of total war, this network
would be blown to smithereens in minutes.
The pool of workers and skilled professionals will be reduced by death and illness to a fraction of
its pre-war levels. Oil refineries, power plants, factories, food production facilities, and other industrial
and commercial facilities will be destroyed. Fallout will render immediate reconstruction impossible, for the
survivors in the combatant countries will have to spend the first weeks or months indoors, underground, or in shelters.
Without enough fuel to run tractors, fertilizers and pesticides to grow crops, and people to work the fields; without adequate means
of shipping raw materials to farms and factories and of shipping food and industrial products to consumers; and without money or some
other accepted standard of exchange; national economies may be in shambles.
Some areas may be highly contaminated. Many regions may be frozen solid during the first
growing season after the war. The survivors may be physically ill or sick at heart. They may not possess the necessary strength and
courage, like Job, to start all over again. Why, they may wonder, should they work like slaves to rebuild a modern society that might end again in death?
The present complex system of international trade will almost certainly vanish. International
aid, including grain and food exports, might cease. Millions of people in countries which depend on food imports or specialized exports will
suffer a great deal.
It is impossible to predict the long-term consequences of all this. Perhaps a modern economic system similar to our own could be re-created in 20 to 50
years, bringing much of the anguish and chaos to an end. Perhaps recovery would never take place, the world
sinking instead to something like the decentralized economies of the Dark Ages.

TURNS ENVIRONMENT

Nuclear war destroys the environment
There will be fewer people and less industrial and commercial activity long after the war, hence
some serious environmental threats will be ameliorated. By killing billions and destroying industrial infrastructures, nuclear
war might, for instance, halt or slow down the suspected trend of global warming. On balance, however, the war's overall
environmental impact will almost certainly be on the negative side.
Radioactive fallout will contaminate soils and waters. We shall probably learn to adjust to these new conditions, perhaps by
shunning certain regions or by carrying radioactivity meters everywhere we go the way our ancestors carried spears. Still, this will lower the quality of
human life.
Nuclear explosions might create immense quantities of dust and smoke. The dust and smoke might blanket, darken, and
cool the entire planet. Although the extent of the damage is unclear,
24
it would be far more severe during the growing season-late spring
and summer in the northern latitudes. One Cassandran and controversial prediction sounds a bit like the eerie twilight described in H. G. Wells' The
Time Machine. This "nuclear winter" projection forecasts freezing summertime temperatures,
25
temporary climatic changes (e.g.,
violent storms, dramatic reductions in rainfall), lower efficiencies of plant photosynthesis,
disruption of ecosystems and farms, loss of many species, and the death of millions of people from starvation and cold.
However, even these pessimists expect a return to normal climatic conditions within a few years.
26a,27

Nuclear war would be worse than the largest mass extinctions in geological history
PARKINSON 2003 (Stuart, Scientists For Global Responsibility, Does Anybody Remember the Nuclear Winter?
http://www.sgr.org.uk/climate/NuclearWinter_NL27.htm)
One further environmental problem would be widespread destruction of the ozone layer caused by high levels of nitrogen oxides. The average
loss of ozone could be as much as 70% - much higher than that currently cause by CFCs. So after several months
when the smoke cleared and the sun began to shine again, there would be a large increase of UV radiation
reaching the earth's surface. This would be bad for humans (e.g. eye and skin damage), but the major effect would be for other
living things, notably sensitive plankton, which are at the bottom layer of the whole marine food
chain. Animals would also suffer - blindness would be common - and blind animals would
quickly starve.
Altogether, nuclear winter would be an ecological disaster of a similar magnitude to the major
extinctions of the past, such as that at the end of the Cretaceous period 65 million years ago
when 75% of all species died out, including the dinosaurs. An added factor after a nuclear war would be
radioactive contamination giving worldwide background radiation doses many times larger than
has ever happened during the 3 billion years of evolution

TURNS FOOD

Nuclear war exacerbates food inequality
MALLAVARAPU 2013 (Siddharth Mallavarapu, Mallavarapu is an associate professor in, and chairperson of,
the Department of International Relations at South Asian University in New Delhi, Monumental failure in an
interconnected world, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September 4, http://thebulletin.org/nuclear-detonations-
contemplating-catastrophe/monumental-failure-interconnected-world)
In my view, a nuclear detonation's impact on poor and middle-income nations would be most
disconcerting along three specific dimensions. First, a detonation would likely exacerbate the already
abysmal nutritional conditions that exist in many countries. It would disrupt normal global
patterns of food availability and distribution, generating pathological economic anxieties that, as
Acheson suggests, would cause people to hoard food. A detonation would also have deleterious
effects on the quality of soil, water, and air and would harm agricultural productivity. These
effects would inflate prices for agricultural commodities and reduce poor people's access to food,
even in nations far from the blast site.

TURNS HEG

Nuclear war turns hegemony
International Consequences. The combatant countries might never recover their international standings.
They could terrorize the world for a while with whatever remained of their nuclear arsenals, but
with social and economic collapse these arsenals might fall into disrepair. In the long run, moreover, a
nation's international position depends on factors such as human resources, economic
performance, moral fiber, and education, all of which could be irreversibly weakened after an
all-out war. So one hundred years after the war, people in what was Russia may speak Chinese or Urdu. If descendants of the people who used to
live there a century earlier are around, their social status may resemble that of Japanese bomb survivors. The same forecast might apply to North
Americans, Japanese, or Germans, and their neighbors.

TURNS HEG/ECON

Nuclear war turns hegemony and economy
KATZ AND OSDOBY 1982 (Arthur, nuclear war researcher, served as consultant to the Joint Congressional Committee on Defense
Production, Sima, graduate student in the Department of Political Science, The Johns Hopkins University, The Social and Economic Effects of Nuclear
War, April 21, http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa009.html)
America's economic and military power derives in large measure from its ability to maintain its
technological leadership; higher education plays a central role in maintaining this lead. Universities and colleges provide trained
personnel to assist in scientific and technological development. They also provide the institutional framework for basic research that becomes the basis
of scientific discovery and technological innovation. In the above attack on the 71 major urban areas, over 50% of the higher
education system would be damaged or destroyed. Professional schools are even more vulnerable -- over 70% of the
students are concentrated in these urban areas, which contain only 55% of the general student population. Of equal significance, an attempt to measure
not only quantity but also the quality of graduate (science and engineering) and professional (medical, law) schools found a disproportionate number --
70% -- in attacked areas. In other words, in the academic areas we evaluated, quality educational facilities tended to be
highly concentrated in the major urban areas. In addition, these universities and professional schools attract or spin off
important private research-and-development or consulting firms and high-technology manufacturing firms in close proximity. Given the
massive scale of population losses and casualties after nuclear attacks, it is likely that the
concept of the function of the university would also change, assuming a more narrow role as a
vocational and professional training ground. The training could be at a very basic level, with many important
intellectual pursuits and professions abandoned. The basic scientific and technological infrastructure could be the
most seriously injured since even if the capacity remained, the justification for basic research
during the post-attack recovery period would likely be questioned, and any diversion of energies in this direction
challenged. Complex scientific experiments requiring extraordinary collaboration among scientific groups and expensive,
sophisticated equipment would be eliminated or delayed for perhaps decades. The quality of research and the
university's vital contribution to technology would diminish drastically in almost any nuclear
attack. Thus, the damage to the higher education system would pose serious obstacles to a
strong and rapid economic recovery.

TURNS INFRASTRUCTURE

Even a limited nuclear strike would devastate infrastructure
option0303010.pdf)
A related study published in 2002 showed that if only 300 of the weapons in the Russian arsenal attacked targets
in American cities, 90 million people would die in the first half hour. A comparable US attack on Russia
would produce similar devastation. Furthermore, these attacks would destroy the entire economic,
communications, and transportation infrastructure on which the rest of the population
depends for survival. In the ensuing months the vast majority of people who survived the initial attacks in
both countries would die of disease, exposure, and starvation. Such force levels are less than one
third of the nuclear weapons each country will retain after the current round of START
negotiations.

Nuke war turns infrastructure
TOON et al 1997 (Owen B. Toon, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences,
University of Colorado, Boulder Kevin Zahnle David Morrison NASA Ames Research Center Moffett Field, California Richard P. Turco Department of
Atmospheric Sciences and Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics University of California, Los Angeles Curt Covey Environmental Programs
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Livermore, California, ENVIRONMENTAL PERTURBATIONS CAUSED BY THE IMPACTS OF ASTEROIDS
AND COMETS, Reviews of Geophysics, Feb, http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/graduate/classes/spring2011/Griffith_656B/Toon97.pdf)
On the other hand, nuclear wars could be worse in some ways than impacts that release comparable or even substantially larger amounts of energy. In
a nuclear war the infrastructure of societythe transportation, communications, and energy
supplieswould be purposefully targeted for destruction. Much of the ability of society to
rally for recovery would be intentionally suppressed. Although even a relatively small impact may have the potential to
disrupt crop harvests for a year, such an impact would be unlikely to destroy the world's economic and transportation infrastructure. It is therefore
much more likely that society could cope with the problems following a small impact better than it could adjust to the problems following a nuclear war.
For instance, an impact occurring in the southern hemisphere during the late fall of the northern hemisphere might lead to crop loss in the southern
hemisphere. However, enough food might still be stored in the northern hemisphere and grown during the next harvest to make up for the agricultural
losses in the southern hemisphere, thereby alleviating mass starvation. How-ever, for an impact rivaling the size of the K-T event, global fires may rage
that would destroy most structures and therefore make it impossible for portions of society that still have food to help those that do not.

Nuclear war turns infrastructure
GARWIN 2003 (Richard, International Seminar on Nuclear War and Planetary Emergencies, 27
th
Session, August 2002, p. 219,
GoogleBooks)
Of course, hospitals would be overwhelmed with the number of people actually injured by flying glass, suffering from radiation
exposure, and the like. Furthermore, transit in the city would be disorganized in the regions effected. With buildings
down over a square kilometer or so, as was evident in the case of the World Trade Center
collapse covering 1% of that area, severe damage to the communications and transportation
infrastructure would be expected.
Organized medicine would be unable to cope. A volunteer emergency medical corps, with adequate planning and practice, could save some people who
would otherwise die.
Nevertheless, a terrorist nuclear explosion would explode in one place, or a very few, compared with
the nuclear attack which we feared for many years and decades from the Soviet Union. So other localities could send
personnel and supplies and be a destination for evacuation from contaminated areas.

TURNS OCEANS

Nuke war destroys ocean biodiversity
SEYMOUR 1983 (Allyn, marine biologist and prof Emeritus at University of Washington Seattle, former Director of the Laboratory of
Radiation Ecology, The Aftermath: The Human and Ecological Consequences of Nuclear War, p. 113)
Other effects may result from a drastic reduction in the incidence of solar light at the earths surface or a significant
increase in the flux of ultraviolet light following a nuclear war. Both factors have the potential to
produce devastating effects upon marine populations at the bottom of the food chain. Crutzen and Birks (10) state,
If the production of aerosol by fires is large enough to cause reductions in the penetration of sunlight to ground level by a factor of a hundred, which
would be quite possible in the event of an all-tou nuclear war, most of the phytoplankton and herbivorous zooplankton in
more than half of the Northern Hemisphere oceans would dieThis effect is due to the fast consumption rate of
phytoplankton by zooplankton in the oceans.
The increase in the flux of ultraviolet (uv) light at the earths surface is associated with the introduction of nitrous oxide (NOx) into the stratosphere,
which would reduce the ozone reservoir and permit uv penetration. Bacteria and yeasts in the surface film of the ocean would receive the greatest
exposure, but their vulnerability to injury may be tempered by their long history of exposure to natural uv. However, other marine
organisms appear to have little reserve tolerance to uv, and the effectiveness of uv-B in killing
bacteria and other microorganisms is well established (11).

Nuclear war would destroy ocean ecosystems
MILLS 2012 (Michael, atmospheric scientist at National Center for Atmospheric Research, interview in Wired,
How One Nuclear Skirmish Could Wreck the Planet, http://www.wired.com/2011/02/nuclear-war-climate-change/)
Mills: UV has big impacts on whole ecosystems. Plant height reduction, decreased shoot mass, reduction in
foliage area. It can affect genetic stability of plants, increase susceptibility to attacks by insects and pathogens, and so
on. It changes the whole competitive balance of plants and nutrients, and it can affect processes from which plants get
their nitrogen.
Then theres marine life, which depends heavily on phytoplankton. Phytoplankton are essential;
they live in top layer of the ocean and theyre the plants of the ocean. They can go a little lower in
the ocean if theres UV, but then they cant get as much sunlight and produce as much energy. As
soon as you cut off plants in the ocean, the animals would die pretty quickly. You also get
damage to larval development and reproduction in fish, shrimp, crabs and other animals.
Amphibians are also very susceptible to UV.
A 16 percent ozone depletion could result in a 5 percent loss in phytoplankton, which could result in a 7 percent loss
in fisheries and aquaculture. And in our model we see a much greater global average loss of ozone for
many years; the global average hides a lot.
Wired.com: This doesnt sound very good at all.
Mills: No, as we said its a real bummer. Its pretty clear this would lead to a global nuclear famine.

Nuclear war crushes ocean biodiversity and global agriculture by increasing UV-B
exposureimpact is global nuclear famine
MILLS et al 2014 (Michael J. Mills1,*, Owen B. Toon2, Julia Lee-Taylor1 andAlan Robock3,
1NCAR Earth System Laboratory, Boulder, Colorado, USA
2Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of
Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, USA
3Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers, State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA
Multidecadal global cooling and unprecedented ozone loss following a regional nuclear conflict, Earth's Future,
Volume 2, Issue 4, pages 161176, April)
Pierazzo et al. [2010] reviewed literature considering the effects of large and prolonged increases in UV-B
radiation, similar to those we calculate, on living organisms, including agriculture and marine ecosystems. General
effects on terrestrial plants have been found to include reduced height, shoot mass, and foliage
area [Caldwell et al., 2007]. Walbot [1999] found the DNA damage to maize crops from 33% ozone depletion
to accumulate proportionally to exposure time, being passed to successive generations, and
destabilizing genetic lines. Research indicates that UV-B exposure may alter the susceptibility of
plants to attack by insects, alter nutrient cycling in soils (including nitrogen fixation by cyanobacteria),
and shift competitive balances among species [Caldwell et al., 1998; Solheim et al., 2002; Mpoloka, 2008].
The ozone depletion we calculate could also damage aquatic ecosystems, which supply more than
30% of the animal protein consumed by humans. Hder et al. [1995] estimate that 16% ozone depletion
could reduce phytoplankton, the basis of the marine food chain, by 5%, resulting in a loss of 7 million
tons of fish harvest per year. They also report that elevated UV levels damage the early developmental
stages of fish, shrimp, crab, amphibians, and other animals. The combined effects of elevated
UV levels alone on terrestrial agriculture and marine ecosystems could put significant pressures
on global food security.
The ozone loss would persist for a decade at the same time that growing seasons would be
reduced by killing frosts, and regional precipitation patterns would shift. The combination of years of
killing frosts, reductions in needed precipitation, and prolonged enhancement of UV radiation, in addition
to impacts on fisheries because of temperature and salinity changes, could exert significant
pressures on food supplies across many regions of the globe. As the January to May 2008 global rice
crisis demonstrated, even relatively small food price pressures can be amplified by political
reactions, such as the fearful restrictions on food exports implemented by India and Vietnam, followed by Egypt,
Pakistan, and Brazil, which produced severe shortages in the Philippines, Africa, and Latin America [Slayton,
2009]. It is conceivable that the global pressures on food supplies from a regional nuclear conflict
could, directly or via ensuing panic, significantly degrade global food security or even produce a global
nuclear famine.

Nuke war causes ocean coolingdestroys biodiversity and causes ice feedbacks
As Figure 5 shows, sea ice extent expands significantly over the first 5years in the Arctic, and the
first 10years in the Antarctic. Sea ice extent is defined as the total area of all surface grid points in the ocean
model with sea ice coverage greater than 15%. Both hemispheres experience an earlier onset of sea ice
formation in the autumn, as revealed by the seasonal maxima, consistent with Stenke et al. [2013]. In the Arctic,
sea ice extent increases peak at 10%25% in years 47. Antarctic sea ice extent peaks at 20%75% larger than the
control ensemble in years 715, and remains 5%10% larger throughout the years 2026. These vast expansions
of sea ice affect not only transfer of energy between the atmosphere and the oceans but also
enhance planetary albedo, further cooling the surface by reflecting more sunlight to space.
Expanding sea ice would also have large impacts on ocean life, strongly impacting the range of
organisms that are in equilibrium with the current climate [e.g., Harley et al., 2006].

Nuke war destroys oceansworse than warming
SEYMOUR 1983 (Allyn, marine biologist and prof Emeritus at University of Washington Seattle, former Director of the Laboratory of
Radiation Ecology, The Aftermath: The Human and Ecological Consequences of Nuclear War, p. 119)
Two other consequences of nuclear war, however, do have the potential for devastating
effects upon marine ecosystems. It has been predicted (10) that a 100-fold reduction in solar
light intensity at the earths surface due to particles in the atmosphere is possible; this would
result in death to most of the phytoplankton and herbivorous zooplankton in more than half of
the oceans of the Northern Hemisphere. And under some circumstances, the depletion of ozone
in the stratosphere by NOx could increase uv radiation at the earths surface, and the magnitude
of the change would be sufficient to seriously reduce the populations of organisms at the base of
the food web (11). Temperature changes would be of little consequence.

TURNS OCEANS/FISHERIES

Nuclear war would destroy ocean ecosystems and ruin fisheries
GREENE AND LONGMAN 1987 (Owen, physicist and Lecturer in Peace Studies at Bradford University;
Alan, botanist, Nuclear Winter: Uncertainties, Scientific Consensus, and the SCOPE-ENUWAR Report, MEDICINE
AND WAR, VOL. 3)
Part II of the SCOPE report examines the biological conscquences of nuclear war in considerable
detail, basing itself on the more moderate (though still unprecedented) baseline estimates of the likely
climatic effects and allowing for the uncertainties considered in Part I and elsewhere. Its 500-odd pages are
divided into three parts, covering ecological, agricultural and human effects of nuclear war. This approach allows a
logical development from, for example, the physiological responses of animals and plant organs to low temperatures,
through vulnerability to climatic disturbance at the ecosystem level, to predictions about the susceptibility to
disruption of agriculture and food supplies. The text as a whole is remarkably clear, and is written in language that
admirably avoids extremes, both of scientific blandness and of unscientific exaggeration. However, not surprisingly
for a large multidisciplinary work, there are some rough edges: a few misprints, one or two ambiguous,
oversimplified or conflicting statements, and some unevenness of tone.
The potential effects of nuclear war on the worlds ecosystems, from the Arctic to the tropics and
from deserts to the oceans, are fully reviewed. Far from being irrelevant, this allows some unexpected
conclusions to be drawn about the linkages with human beings. For example, amongst habitats most at risk
from temperature drops are the coastal mangroves, whose high productivity supports not only
the animals living in or visiting them, but is also essential for the food chains of commercial
fisheries in nearby estuaries. Similarly, fisheries worldwide would be likely to be seriously affected by
stratospheric ozone depletion, and consequently enhanced UV-B damage, to food-fish larvae
and zooplankton in the surface layers of the sea. Although any drop in temperature here would
be slight, because of the great heat capacity of the oceans, reduction in sunlight could severely reduce
photosynthesis by the phytoplankton that form the basis of marine food chains.

TURNS POVERTY

Nuclear war would exacerbate poverty and income inequality
Second, a detonation could destroy many people's livelihoods because of its environmental
effects. Many poor nations are predominantly agrarian; they are also characterized by
fragmented land holdings and poor returns on cultivation. People dependent on the land for a
living would in the event of a detonationwhich could alter climate, creating some version of
"nuclear winter"face further impoverishment and disenfranchisement. Under circumstances so
dire, even a wave of farmer suicides would not be inconceivable. Thus the economic cleavages that already
exist in structurally disadvantaged economies could become even deeper.

TURNS RACISM/SEXISM/ETC

Nuclear war would cause authoritarianism, racism, xenophobia, sexism, and
religious intolerance
FME 2006 (For Mother Earth, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, Last Modified 4-17-06, http://www.motherearth.org/nuke/begin2.php)
To understand the effects of a nuclear war it is important to distinguish it from conventional war
or a natural disaster. In particular, all the factors that would make it possible to cope with a normal emergency
situation would be lacking: limited damage, a relatively small number of casualties, surviving political or social leadership, a desire to perform
common emergency work rather than look after ones own family, large reservoirs of external, easily mobilized skilled workers, material resources, and
organizational skills.
The massive and simultaneous destruction of economic and human resources would result in an inability to provide immediate and sufficient human
and material aid to damaged areas. There will be no time to adapt and to innovate as nations did in World War II. More
importantly, the lack of outside aid would create a sense of individual and common isolation. Aid
symbolizes a reconnection with a larger, normal world. This connection helps provide the
impetus for rebuilding the damaged society, creating a sense of vitality and ability to dispel the
continuing perception of isolation. It also has an important function for binding together
society, restating a common thread of hope and shared aspirations.
Economic destruction, loss of political leadership (especially at the local level), and the need to mobilize resources for relief and recovery would present
extraordinary demands on weakened political institutions. In the interest of implementing survival programs, legal
norms and practices would have to be suspended for prolonged periods in many areas. The character of
political institutions and authority would almost certainly change, especially if hostilities or the
threat of hostilities persisted. Both old and new political structures would be likely to suffer from
greatly reduced credibility. Decentralization of political power and more authoritarian methods
of political, social, and economic control would be probable responses to post-attack conditions.
However, even before any outbreak of nuclear war, the presence of nuclear weapons has an enormous potential to distort social and economic
priorities. Each of the nuclear weapons states has spent billions of dollars on constructing, maintaining and protecting its nuclear weapons. It is not
necessary to point out that this money could have been better spent on providing health care, education or other public services.
The development of nuclear weapons also makes it necessary to create an unaccountable "nuclear elite", made up of scientists, military and civil
servants, who work largely in secret to control the development, testing and deployment of nuclear weapons. This makes the presence of nuclear
weapons incompatible with a democratic society.
It is possible to link an increased importance of the military, and a general increase in
militarism, to a growth of xenophobia, racial and religious intolerance, as well as male
chauvinism.

Nuclear war would create widespread psychological problems that magnify the
effect of war, cause authoritarianism, and encourage racism, war, and ethnic
conflict
KATZ AND OSDOBY 1982 (Arthur, nuclear war researcher, served as consultant to the Joint Congressional Committee on Defense
Production, Sima, graduate student in the Department of Political Science, The Johns Hopkins University, The Social and Economic Effects of Nuclear
War, April 21, http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa009.html)
To understand the effects of a nuclear war it is important to distinguish it from common disasters, even World War II. Especially if hostilities continue
or their resumption is threatened, all the elements that make a small disaster tractable will be lacking: limited damage, modest casualties, surviving
leadership, a diminishing incidence of role conflict (desire to protect one's family rather than to perform emergency work) and large reservoirs of
external, easily mobilized skilled workers, material resources, and organizational skills.
The massive and simultaneous destruction of economic and human resources would result in an inability to provide immediate and sufficient human
and material aid to damaged areas. There will be no time to adapt and to innovate as nations did in World War II (U.S.S.R. as
previously cited is an example). More important, the lack of outside aid would create a sense of individual and
communal isolation. Aid symbolizes a reconnection with a larger, normal world. This connection helps provide the impetus for rebuilding
the damaged society, creating a sense of vitality and competence to dispel the continuing perception of isolation. It also has an important
function for binding together society, restating a common thread of hope and shared aspirations that are the essence of national
life. The post-attack situation could be like Japan near the end of World War II.
There could be "a drift toward accomplishing personal and private aims rather than those which are
national...farmers...growing little more than is required for their own subsistence,"[17] or more likely, the complete
demoralization seen in an earlier tragedy: "Survivors of the Black Death in growing helplessness fell into
apathy, leaving ripe wheat uncut and livestock untended...no one had any inclination to concern
themselves about the future."[18] More pertinent, a panel of experts in a study of social consequence of nuclear war for the Office of
Civil Defense concluded: "One month after the attack, less than half the potential labor force could be expected to work without immediately beneficial
compensation, and that, of these, one in five would be able to function only at a level greatly degraded from his normal abilities."[19]
The experience of nuclear war is likely to have devastating psychological effects, especially for Americans, whose
homes and institutions have essentially escaped the ravages of recent wars. The very short period required to carry out highly destructive nuclear
attacks would intensify the emotional impact, particularly those reactions associated with denial of the true extent of the damage or fostering flight
from and resistance to reentering damaged areas.
Robert J. Lifton, in his study of Hiroshima survivors, described the psychological effect as "a sudden and absolute shift from normal existence to an
overwhelming encounter with death."[20] The reaction, as reported by a witness to the disaster, Father Siemes: "Among the passersby, there are many
who are uninjured. In a purposeless, insensate manner, distraught by the magnitude of the disaster, most of them rush by and none conceives the
thought of organizing help on his own initiative. They are concerned only with the welfare of their own families."[21] In some cases even families were
abandoned. The result of this experience was, as Fred Ikle described it 25 years ago, a deep aversion to returning to the cities to rebuild the economy.
"And thus a very different situation will exist from that envisaged in most civil defense plans (in the 1950s)."[22] The economic implications of this type
of withdrawal would be serious.
A high incidence of abnormal behavior, ranging from the nonfunctional to the antisocial, could
be anticipated. Specific psychological effects would include disorientation, fear, doubt, apathy,
and antipathy toward authorities. The effects on Hiroshima/Nagasaki survivors provide ample evidence to support these concerns.
Families would be broken up by death, severe injury, disease, evacuation, or military and labor conscription. The young, elderly, and
handicapped would suffer disproportionately since they depend most on society's material and institutional resources. For
example, the young and elderly showed significant increases in accidental death attributed to neglect in Great Britain in World War II.
The loss of material and institutional resources in urban-industrial attacks would make survival in the post-attack period difficult for individuals and
groups alike, compounding the psychological stresses of the attack itself. Satisfying even the simplest survival requirements -- food, shelter, and
clothing -- would become major tasks.
Significant interpersonal, intergroup, and inter-regional conflicts would probably arise. Ethnic,
racial, regional, and economic conflicts present in the pre-attack society, while minimized in the period
immediately after an attack, would be heightened after only a limited time by the extent of the deprivation and the resulting
tensions. New antagonisms would develop between hosts and evacuees or refugees over the
possession and use of surviving resources.
These phenomena were observed both in Britain and in Japan during World War II. The Allnutt study predicted these conflicts would be so
serious that they "would necessitate the imposition of martial law or other authoritarian system
in many localities, and the widespread use of troops to maintain order." r 231
Continuing hostilities or prolonged threat of renewed war would engender even more profound changes in the social fabric. Major, possibly permanent,
changes in social values and institutions could be expected as society sought to adjust to a radically altered environment dominated by the question of
physical survival.
Economic destruction, loss of political leadership (especially at the local level), and the need to mobilize resources for relief and recovery would present
extraordinary demands on weakened political institutions. In the interest of implementing survival programs, legal norms and practices
would have to be suspended for prolonged periods in many areas. The character of political institutions and
authority would almost certainly change, especially if hostilities or the threat of hostilities
persisted. Both old and new political structures would be likely to suffer from greatly reduced
credibility. Decentralization of political power and more authoritarian methods of political,
social, and economic control would be probable responses to post-attack conditions.

TURNS STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE

Nuclear war exacerbates inequality and violence against women, children, the
poor, and nonhuman species
Dire circumstances. But given all that, how would a nuclear detonation affect poor and middle-income
nations and their development goals? To begin with, nations situated well beyond the blast site would feel the
effects. The world today is deeply interconnected and events can no longer be confined to the areas
where they occur. The United Nations Development Programme underscores this reality in its 2013 Human
Development Report, which argues that "as global development challenges become more complex and transboundary
in nature, coordinated action on the most pressing challenges of our era, whether they be poverty eradication, climate
change, or peace and security, is essential." And efforts to contend with the four areas of development upon
which the report focuses"enhancing equity, including on the gender dimension; enabling greater voice and
participation of citizens, including youth; confronting environmental pressures; and managing
demographic change"would in every case be seriously complicated by a nuclear detonation.
Indeed, as argued succinctly by Ray Acheson of the disarmament organization Reaching Critical Will, a detonation
would seriously compromise efforts to achieve all the Millennium Development Goals. It would undermine
poverty alleviation initiatives as well as cooperative efforts to foster development; limit
agricultural productivity; undermine women's and children's well-being; damage national
infrastructures; and reduce the planet's biodiversity.

Nuclear war would disproportionately affect women and children
Third, the health and well-being of populations in the developing world would be seriously
threatened. Not only would food prices increase, but essential drugs would likely be in short
supplyboth in the areas directly affected and, as supplies were directed to these areas, in other regions as well.
The well-being of women and children in particular might be severely threatenedas Acheson
observes, "women suffer disproportionately in disasters and their specific needs are usually
ignored during relief and rehabilitation initiatives." She also notes that "violence against women
soars under the stress in post-disaster environments." The negative impact on women's quality
of life would likely have a direct bearing on the well-being of children: Women's capacity to care
for their children would be diminished, and children would be affected in areas ranging from
nutrition to cognitive development.

TURNS TRADE

Nuclear war would immediately destroy global trade
ROBOCK 2010 (Alan Robock, Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University, New START, Eyjafjallajkull, and Nuclear
Winter, Eos, November, American Geophysical Union via UNC Libraries)
Soot from the fires ignited by nuclear weapons would consist of small black particles, which are very effective at absorbing
sunlight, heating the atmosphere and cooling the surface much more efficiently than lighter-colored volcanic ash. If injected into the
upper troposphere, the soot particles would be heated by sunlight and rise into the upper stratosphere, where their e-folding lifetime is about
5 years [Robock et al., 2007a]. Even if only 100 Hiroshima-sized nuclear weapons were used in Pakistan and India against targets that would produce
the maximum amount of smoke, the global average surface air temperature would fall to levels colder than the Little Ice Age of the 16001800s C.E.
[Robock et al., 2007a]. So much sunlight would be absorbed by the smoke in the stratosphere that there would be massive ozone depletion due to
stratospheric heating from the aerosols and injection of ozone-poor air and ozone-destroying chemicals from the troposphere, with enhanced
ultraviolet light at the surface. The surface would get cold, dark, and dry, with significant impacts on
agriculture. The growing season would be shortened by a few weeks in the agricultural regions of the midlatitudes of the Northern and Southern
Hemispheres. Crop production in the United States, Ukraine, China, Australia, Argentina, and many other places would be reduced or even halted.
Panic might halt all agricultural trade, producing huge shortages and famine. Imagine the trade disruption of
the Icelandic volcano amplified for years, as people worry about being able to grow enough food and thus hoard
what they have. And a nuclear war between the United States and Russia, with current arsenals or even those that will result from the New
START reductions, could still produce nuclear winter, with surface air temperatures in midcontinents plunging below freezing even in the summer
[Toon et al., 2008].

TURNS WARMING

Nuclear winter would be followed by rapid warmingfirst we freeze, then we burn
NEW SCIENTIST 1987 (Researchers blow hot and cold over nuclear Armageddon, Feb 26, google books)
THE SURVIVORS of a nuclear war may not freeze to death. They could, instead, swelter in a global
infrared oven. A session called to discuss the theory that the world would be plunged into a nuclear winter",
after a war involving nuclear weapons, heard from Fred Singer of the George Mason University in
Virginia that a scorching nuclear summer" was a more likely aftermath of a large nuclear
exchange.
Singer believes that the heat lost by the Earth's atmosphere as clouds of smoke block out the sun
would be more than made up for by clouds absorbing massive amounts of infrared radiation.
The biggest component of this giant greenhouse effect" would be water vapour blasted into the
stratosphere by the nuclear explosions. A one-megaton explosion would send about a million
tonnes of water vapour into the air, says Singer.
A major nuclear exchange would double the amount of water vapour in the stratosphere. The
vapour would con- dense and freeze to form ice particles. The ice would appear as a mass of whispy cirrus cloud coven
ng the world. Such clouds formed when the US carried out nuclear tests in the Pacific Ocean in the
1950s, claims Singer, though nobody thought to measure them at the time.
The infrared properties of ice particles arc very important, says Singer. Having absorbed the infrared energy they
radiate it to the ground as heat, warming the ground. Ice particles have the capability to produce a huge greenhouse
effect, depending on their thickness and the lifetime of the cloud."
The giant clouds of black smoke, created as the world burns, may also heat rather than cool the
Earth, says Singer. Smoke particles will tend to coagulate inside the cloud. If the particles reach one micrometre in
diameter, they too bccome excellent absorbers of infrared energy bombarding the Earth from the Sun.
If the infrared capacity of the cloud becomes large it will heat up the surface of the Earth to the temperature of the
cloud. Gases such as methane, created by the burning of cities and forests below would add to
the ability of the clouds to absorb infrared radiation.
These effects would be much greater if, as Singer believes, typical smoke clouds would hover around 2 kilometres
above the surface, rather than the 10 kilometres suggested in some scenarios. Scientists know even less about the
ecological conscqucnccs of a nuclear summer than a nuclear winter. At temperatures of up to 50 degrees
Celsius everything from soil microbes to large mammals could face a bleak few weeks until the
cirrus clouds disperse, leaving 3sidc the effects of the nuclear bombs themselves.
Singer s paper opened up an unusually frank discussion among aflicionados of nuclear winter
about how little they know of what would really happen on Arma- geddon day. Stephen
Schneider from the USs National Center for Atmospheric Research, who is a leading proponent
of the theory, admitted that fog could be a confounding factor.

Nuclear war would freeze us first and burn us laternuclear winter would be
followed by scorching nuclear summer
GATES 2002 (John, prof of history emeritus at the College of Wooster, The U.S. Army and Irregular Warfare,
http://www3.wooster.edu/history/jgates/book-ch11.html)
Although such statistics are frightening, even worse outcomes might have occurred. Scientists have spoken of
the possibility of a nuclear winter, in which the smoke and dust created by nuclear explosions would create a
cloud in the troposphere and stratosphere capable of absorbing sunlight and lowering the temperature of the earth.
The scientist Carl Sagan noted that "the explosion of the Tambora volcano in Indonesia in 1815 led to an average
global temperature decline of only 1o C, yet due to the obscuration of sunlight by the fine dust propelled into the
stratosphere the hard freezes the following year were so severe that 1816 became known in Europe and America as
'the year without a summer.'"[9] The results of a nuclear winter would be far worse. In fact, many estimates indicate
that temperatures might drop as many as 8o to 45o C, with the drop in temperature lasting as long as a
year or more.
Nuclear winter might give way to a nuclear summer. The high temperatures of the nuclear
fireballs could destroy the ozone gas of the middle stratosphere. The result would be an increase
in ultraviolet radiation on the surface of the earth, affecting both plant and animal life. Whether it
brought on a nuclear winter, a nuclear summer, or both in succession, a large scale nuclear
exchange could do potentially fatal ecological damage to the earth and its many plant and
animal populations.
Most frightening, perhaps, given the number of nuclear warheads remaining today, is the point at which some
scientists assume such ecological devastation might take place. Sagan noted that the "very rough threshold at
which severe climatic consequences are triggered" is relatively low. All that would be needed to
bring about such a disaster would be the detonation of "a few hundred nuclear explosions over
cities, for smoke generation, or around 2,000 to 3,000 high-yield surface bursts at, e.g., missile silos, for dust
generation and ancillary fires."[10]
Sagan concluded that "we have, by slow and imperceptible steps, been constructing a Doomsday Machine."[11] By
continual deployment of more and more warheads, the world's nuclear nations and their leaders created a situation
that threatens climatic disaster, and, as Sagan observed, "beyond the climatic threshold, an increase in the number of
strategic weapons leads to a pronounced decline in national (and global) security."[12] Unfortunately, the climatic
threshold of 500 to 2,000 warheads is far below the number of warheads presently available.

Nuke war causes rapid warming by destroying forests
WOODWELL 1983 (George, Director of the Ecosystems Center of the Marine Biology Laboratory at Woods Hole, MA. PhD in Ecology,
previously Senior Scientist at Brookhaven National Lab and prof at Yale, The Aftermath: The Human and Ecological Consequences of Nuclear War, p
138)
I have emphasized effects on forests because forests dominate the natural vegetation in most of the habitable sections of the globe. Forests,
moreover, have an extraordinarily large influence on the rest of the biosphere. They have the
capacity for fixing and releasing enough carbon to change the CO2 content of the atmosphere by
several parts per million in a few weeks. The massive destruction of forests following an exchange of
nuclear weapons can be expected to contribute a further surge in the rate of release of CO2 from
the biota and soils into the atmosphere, compounding the growing problem of a CO2-caused climatic warming.
Such analyses, however, are sufficiently complex and uncertain to be speculative, and require a much more elaborate analysis than can be offered here.

OUTWEIGHS WARMING

Nuclear war outweighs warming
ROBOCK 2008 (Alan, distinguished prof at Rutgers, We should really worry about nuclear winter, Bulletin of
the Atomic Scientists, August 14, http://thebulletin.org/has-time-come-geoengineering/we-should-really-worry-
about-nuclear-winter)
The greatest danger that humans pose to Earth isn't geoengineering, ozone depletion, or even
global warming. Rather, it's the climatic consequences of nuclear war. As recent work by Brian Toon,
Gera Stenchikov, Luke Oman, Rich Turco, Chuck Bardeen, and myself has shown, we now understand that the
atmospheric effects of a nuclear war would last for at least a decade--more than proving the
nuclear winter theory of the 1980s correct. By our calculations, a regional nuclear war between
India and Pakistan using less than 0.3 percent of the current global arsenal would produce
climate change unprecedented in recorded human history and global ozone depletion equal in
size to the current hole in the ozone, only spread out globally. We need to solve this problem so
that we have the luxury of worrying about global warming and the consequences of geoengineering.

Nuclear war would destroy agricultureoutweighs warming
SAKAI 7-2-2012 (Jill, War-related climate change would substantially reduce crop yields, U of Wisconsin-Madison News,
http://www.news.wisc.edu/20836)
Though worries about nuclear winter have faded since the end of the Cold War, existing stockpiles of nuclear weapons still
hold the potential for devastating global impacts.
Researchers at UWMadison and Rutgers University have found that the climate effects of a
hypothetical nuclear war between India and Pakistan would greatly reduce yields of staple crops,
even in distant countries.
The work, by Mutlu Ozdogan and Chris Kucharik of the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment in the Nelson Institute for Environmental
Studies at UWMadison and Alan Robock of Rutgers Center for Environmental Prediction, will appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Climatic
Change.
Robock used global climate models to calculate the climate impacts of a conflict between India
and Pakistan, each using 50 nuclear weapons.
This is essentially a climate change experiment, but instead of running a climate change model under a global CO2 scenario, you run it under a soot
scenario, where the soot comes from fires from cities and industrial areas burning as a result of the war, explains Ozdogan, a UWMadison professor
of forest and wildlife ecology.
The soot and smoke can travel around the world in the atmosphere and block some of the sunlight that would normally reach the Earth. That leads to
cooler temperatures, altered weather and precipitation patterns, and shorter growing seasons.
We were surprised that there was such a large climate change climate change unprecedented
in recorded human history even from a war with 50 small nuclear weapons per side, much,
much less than one percent of the current nuclear arsenal, says Robock. He adds that the changes also
lasted a full decade, much longer than he expected. The question is, what impact does that have on things that matter to
humans, and the most important is our food supply.
The researchers used the climate changes predicted for the Midwest to calculate potential effects on corn and soy production in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana
and Missouri. Using climate-based agricultural output models, they compared yields under modern weather patterns and under the war scenario.
They found that the climate effects of nuclear war led to decreases in corn yields of 10 to 40 percent and soy yields of 2 to 20 percent, with the
reductions gradually declining over the course of the decade following the war.
Those changes in any year are much larger than the natural variation we might see due to
weather fluctuations alone, Ozdogan says. And unlike gradual environmental changes associated with
greenhouse gas accumulation, the rapid onset of a war would not permit farmers or the global
economy any time to adapt.
A companion study by Robock and Lili Xia of Rutgers University, also published in Climatic Change, calculated that the same scenario would
dramatically reduce rice production in China: an average decrease of 21 percent during each of the first four years after the war and 10 percent less for
the next six years.
Such losses add up to a huge impact on regional food supplies that could escalate into wider
food shortages and trade breakdowns with dire economic and political consequences, Robock says.
The take-home message, Ozdogan says, is that localized events can have disproportionately large global impacts.

OUTWEIGHS WARMING/ENVIRONMENT

Nuke war outweighs warming and all other environmental impacts
AMBIO ADVISORY GROUP 1983 (Various professors, scientists, and diplomats writing on behalf of the Royal Swedish
Academy of Sciences, The Aftermath: The Human and Ecological Consequences of Nuclear War, p. v)
The aftermath is published in the belief that a realistic assessment of the possible human and ecological consequences of a nuclear war may help to
deter such a catastrophe.
It is based on a special issue of the international journal Ambio, which is published by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and dedicated to recent
work in the interrelated fields of environmental management, technology and the natural sciences. Throughout the years Ambio has
dealt with the possible consequences of many threats to the environment, such as rising CO2
levels in the atmosphere, pollution of the worlds freshwater resources, the rapid spread of desertification and the
accelerating rate of the disappearance of species. However, the impact of a nuclear war would be far
more devastating to the biosphere than any other threat that is likely to appear in our time. Moreover, the
likelihood of such a war occurring does not seem to be diminishing. In the past innumerable scenarios have been constructed to describe variations on
the nuclear war theme. The reference scenario round which this book is built (and which we refer to in the text as the Ambio scenario) is not intended
to be the most likely of these possibilities and it is not intended for use in civil defense planning. It was formulated by the Advisory Group for the
Issue. Their scenario does not describe a limited nuclear war because in their view the concept of limited nuclear war is fallacious. Once a
nuclear war had broken out it would probably be neither containable nor controllable. The Ambio
scenario was chosen to emphasize the environmental effects of a major nuclear exchange.

OUTWEIGHS ASTEROIDS

Nuclear war outweighs asteroid collision
BENNETT 2010 (James, Prof of Economics at George Mason, The Doomsday Lobby: Hype and Panic from
Sputniks, Martians, and Marauding Meteors, p. 155-157)
For a near-impossible scenario, an awful lot of laser ink has gone into studies of the
consequences of an impact. Lets face it: The topic is sexy. The effects of an Earth-space rock
collision with energies below 10 Megatons would be negligible, write Owen B. Toon, Kevin Zahnle, and David
Morrison of the NASA Ames Research Center, Richard P. Turco of UCLA, and Curt Covey of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in Reviews
of Geophysics. Impacts measuring between 10 Megatons and 10 to the 4th power Megatons say,
comets and asteroids with diameters of less than 400 meters and 650 meters, respectively would be
equivalent to many natural disasters of recent history. In other words, death-dealing but manageable
in a global sense. Those with an energy range in the 10 to the 5th6th power Megatons are transitional the fires, earthquakes, and tsunamis would
unleash devastation, though the authors do not believe a global catastrophe would occur at less than an
energy level of 10 to the 6th power Megatons. They do admit to considerable uncertainty, noting that previous estimates
may have overstated the damage at certain levels of impact, though they say, with great wisdom, that it is to be hoped that no large-scale terrestrial
experiments occur to shed light on our theoretical oversights.59 They can say that again. The impact upon the Earth of an object
of more than 400 meters in diameter crashing into an ocean would be a tsunami, an enormous wave created by the impact of the
asteroid or comet upon the ocean floor, which could cause massive numbers of deaths due to drowning, though it would be highly
unlikely to cause extinction of the human species. A wall of water a wave over 60 meters high would sweep over the
impacted oceans coasts. The huge and widespread fires would claim uncounted lives, too, and the opacity of the smoke generated by the fires would
contribute to the sharply reduced level of sunlight upon the Earth. The consequences of an impact with an energy of 10 to the 7th power Megatons
could be KT like, as 100-meters-high tsunamis swamp coastal zones, fires rage around the world, and Light levels may drop so low from the smoke,
dust, and sulfate as to make vision impossible.60 Photosynthesis, too, becomes impossible, and food supplies disappear. Dwellers in sea and on land
perish of fire, starvation, or flood. In the aftermath, survivors would compete with rodents for the available food. (As paleontologists Peter M. Sheehan
and Dale A. Russell note, In the short term domestic cats might play a useful role in protecting food supplies.61 Humans, they believe, would
survive such a catastrophe, though in greatly reduced numbers and for millennia they would be vegetarians practicing subsistence
agriculture. No doubt, that sounds appealing to some of the greener readers.) If an impact with a smaller body is sometimes
compared to the aftermath of a nuclear war, the fact that in a war the civilian infrastructure is
specifically targeted means that it is much more likely that society could cope with the
problems following a small impact better than it could adjust to the problems following a
nuclear war, according to Toon, Zahnle, et al.62 Interestingly, the authors say that acid rain very much a fashionable environmental cause in
the 1980s, though it has since receded before global warming would not be a widespread problem, although the rain may well be acidified due to the
nitric oxide resulting from impact-induced shock waves.

BEST METHODOLOGY

Prefer our methodologybest climate models and includes negative feedbacks
[12] We conducted climate model simulations with a state-of-the-art general circulation model,
ModelE from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Institute for Space Studies [Schmidt et al., 2006], which includes a module
to calculate the transport and removal of aerosol particles [Koch et al., 2006]. The atmospheric model is connected to a full
ocean general circulation model with calculated sea ice, thus allowing the ocean to respond quickly at the
surface and on yearly timescales in the deeper ocean. We run the atmospheric portion of the model at 4 5 latitude-longitude resolution, with 23
vertical layers extending to a model top of 80 km. The coupled oceanic general circulation model [Russell et al., 1995] has 13 layers and also a 4 5
latitude-longitude resolution.
[13] This climate model has been tested extensively in global warming experiments [Hansen et al., 2005;
Schmidt et al., 2006] and to examine the effects of volcanic eruptions on climate. The climate model (with
a mixed-layer ocean) does an excellent job of modeling the climatic response to the 1783 Laki [Oman et al.,
2006b] and the 1912 Katmai [Oman et al., 2005] volcanic eruptions. We have also used this model to simulate the transport and
removal of sulfate aerosols from tropical and high-latitude volcanic eruptions [Oman et al., 2006a], and have shown that it does a good job
of simulating the lifetime and distribution of the volcanic aerosols. In the stratosphere, these aerosols
have an e-folding residence time of 12 months in the model, in excellent agreement with
observations.
[14] The aerosol module [Koch et al., 2006] accounts for black carbon particles. We assigned an effective radius of 0.1
m to the soot particles, a standard value based on observations. At visible wavelengths, we assign the following optical properties to the black carbon
particles: mass extinction coefficient of 5.5 m2/g, single scattering albedo of 0.64, and mass absorption coefficient of 2.0 m2/g. These are typical of a
mixture of black soot, smoke, and dust that would be injected into the atmosphere using the baseline scenario of Turco et al. [1983].
[15] While Warren and Wiscombe [1985] and Ledley and Thompson [1986] suggested that soot falling on
sea ice would increase the albedo and negate some of the cooling from a massive atmospheric
aerosol loading, Vogelmann et al. [1988] used the Robock [1984] energy-balance climate model and showed that this effect would
only be important with enough solar insolation to make snow and ice albedo important. By the
time the atmosphere was clear enough, Vogelmann et al. showed that clean snow would have fallen on the
dirty snow, making the effect small. Nevertheless, we included this feedback in the runs presented here.

Best models prove massive global coolingworse than the last Ice Age
[21] The effects of the smoke cloud on surface temperature are extremely large (Figure 2). Stratospheric
temperatures are also severely perturbed (Figure 3). A global average surface cooling of 7C to 8C persists for
years, and after a decade the cooling is still 4C (Figure 2). Considering that the global average cooling at the depth
of the last ice age 18,000 years ago was about 5C, this would be a climate change unprecedented
in speed and amplitude in the history of the human race. The temperature changes are largest over land.
Maps of the temperature changes for the Northern Hemisphere summers for the year of smoke injection (year 0) and the next year (year 1) are shown
in Figure 4. Cooling of more than 20C occurs over large areas of North America and of more than
30C over much of Eurasia, including all agricultural regions. There are also large temperature
changes in the tropics and over Southern Hemisphere continents. Large climatic effects would
occur in regions far removed from the target areas or the countries involved in the conflict.
[22] As examples of the actual temperature changes in important grain-growing regions, we have plotted the time series of daily minimum air
temperature for grid points in Iowa, United States, at 42N, 95W, and in Ukraine at 50N, 30E (Figure 5). For both locations (shown in Figure 4),
minimum temperatures rapidly plummet below freezing and stay there for more than a year. In Ukraine, they stay below freezing for more than two
years. Clearly, this would have agricultural implications.
[23] As a result of the cooling of the Earth's surface, evapotranspiration is reduced and the global hydrological
cycle is weakened. In addition, Northern Hemisphere summer monsoon circulations collapse, because the driving continent-ocean
temperature gradient does not develop. The resulting global precipitation is reduced by about 45% (Figure 2). As an example,
Figure 6 shows a map of precipitation change for the Northern Hemisphere summer one year after the smoke injection. The largest precipitation
reductions are in the Intertropical Convergence Zone and in areas affected by the North American, Asian, and African summer monsoons. The small
areas of increased precipitation are in the subtropics in response to a severely weakened Hadley Cell. Figure 7 shows time series of monthly
precipitation for the same Iowa location as shown in Figure 5, and it is clear that these large precipitation reductions would also
have agricultural implications.
[24] This is the first time an atmosphere-ocean general circulation model of the climate system
has been used to study nuclear winter. It is the first one to be able to estimate the amplitude and
timescale of ocean cooling, and to evaluate the time the system will need to return to the previous equilibrium. This is because the model
explicitly models the effects of the thermal inertia of the ocean at different depths, as well as oceanic circulation changes. The long-lasting climate
response to this smoke injection is a combination of the ability of the model to loft the soot aerosols high into the stratosphere, and of the ability of the
model to calculate the characteristic response time of the climate system.

A2: NO EXTINCTION

Even if they answer all of our individual arguments, nuclear war is still bad
synergy between different effects would be catastrophic
Similarly, the disruption of international communications--satellites, cables, and even high frequency radio links--could
be a major obstacle to international recovery efforts. In attempting to project the after-effects of
a major nuclear war, we have considered separately the various kinds of damage that could
occur. It is also quite possible, however, that interactions might take place among these effects, so that one
type of damage would couple with another to produce new and unexpected hazards. For
example, we can assess individually the consequences of heavy worldwide radiation fallout and
increased solar ultraviolet, but we do not know whether the two acting together might
significantly increase human, animal, or plant susceptibility to disease. We can conclude that massive dust
injection into the stratosphere, even greater in scale than Krakatoa, is unlikely by itself to produce significant
climatic and environmental change, but we cannot rule out interactions with other phenomena,
such as ozone depletion, which might produce utterly unexpected results. We have come to realize that
nuclear weapons can be as unpredictable as they are deadly in their effects. Despite some 30 years of development and
study, there is still much that we do not know. This is particularly true when we consider the
global effects of a large-scale nuclear war

Nuclear war is unpredictableerr against it since our arguments are just as likely
to be underestimates
New discoveries have been made, yet much uncertainty inevitably persists. Our knowledge of nuclear warfare rests largely
on theory and hypothesis, fortunately untested by the usual processes of trial and error; the paramount goal of statesmanship is
that we should never learn from the experience of nuclear war.
The uncertainties that remain are of such magnitude that of themselves they must serve as a further
deterrent to the use of nuclear weapons. At the same time, knowledge, even fragmentary knowledge, of the broader effects of nuclear weapons
underlines the extreme difficulty that strategic planners of any nation would face in attempting to predict the results of a nuclear war. Uncertainty is
one of the major conclusions in our studies, as the haphazard and unpredicted derivation of many of our discoveries emphasizes. Moreover, it now
appears that a massive attack with many large-scale nuclear detonations could cause such
widespread and long-lasting environmental damage that the aggressor country might suffer
serious physiological, economic, and environmental effects even without a nuclear response by
the country attacked.

Even if humanity survived the war, we could never rebuildthis makes us
vulnerable to extinction
BOSTROM PH.D. FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY AT OXFORD, 2002 (Nick, Journal of Evolution
and Technology, March, http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html)
While some of the events described in the previous section would be certain to actually wipe out Homo sapiens (e.g. a breakdown of a meta-
stable vacuum state) others could potentially be survived (such as an all-out nuclear war). If modern
civilization were to collapse, however, it is not completely certain that it would arise again even if the
human species survived. We may have used up too many of the easily available resources a primitive
society would need to use to work itself up to our level of technology. A primitive human society
may or may not be more likely to face extinction than any other animal species. But lets not try that experiment.

A2: BIAS

Nuclear winter theory is correcttheir authors are biased
The prediction of nuclear winter was published by a group headed by Carl Sagan in 1983. The initials of their names were T-T-A-P-S,
so the paper and their book has become known as "t-taps". It caused some alarm in government circles in U.S.A. and NATO
countries, not so much because this further disaster would follow a nuclear war, but because of the boost it gave to the Peace
Movement.
A number of studies were published in the next few years, including major reports by The Swedish Academy of
Sciences (Ambio), the International Council of Scientific Unions (SCOPE), and the U.S. National
Research Council.
There was a drive by government and the military establishment to minimize the matter, and
after a few years the media were talking about "nuclear autumn". (The most astonishing lies
were propagated, e.g. that Carl Sagan admitted that his publication was "a propaganda scam".) It
was true that islands and coastal areas would have less severe temperature drops than the original predictions, because of the modifying effect of the
ocean. They would have violent storms instead, because of the big temperature difference between land and water.
In 1990 another paper was published by the T-TAPS group reviewing in detail the later studies, and showing that some modifications to their 1983
paper were necessary. Some of these were in the direction of more severe changes, others towards milder changes. The general picture was little
changed. The book: "A Path Where No Man Thought" by Sagan and Turco (one of the T's), also published in 1990, gives an account of current
conclusions for the serious non-specialist reader. It gives detailed descriptions of nuclear winters of different severity according to how many weapons
were used, and against what targets. If oil refineries and storage were the main targets, 100 bombs would be enough to cause a
nuclear winter, and the smallest sizes of nuclear bombs would be effective in starting the fires.

A2: MODELS OLD

Newest models show even more extreme effects
NCAR 2014 (National Center for Atmospheric Research, REGIONAL NUCLEAR WAR WOULD HAVE GLOBAL
REACH, AtmosNews, March 4, http://www2.ucar.edu/atmosnews/just-published/11155/regional-nuclear-war-
would-have-global-reach)
The research team used an NCAR-based computer model: the Community Earth System Model,
which simulates interactive responses in atmosphere, ocean, land, and sea ice components of the
Earth's climate system. For the atmospheric component, the team turned to the Whole Atmosphere
Community Climate Model, which extends from the Earth's surface to the edge of space, and
includes interactive calculations of stratospheric ozone chemistry and atmospheric dynamics.
The scientists ran a total of seven simulations, comparing a hypothetical war between two nations
that have developed nuclear arms relatively recently (India and Pakistan) with control simulations in which
there was no nuclear war.
Its such a complex process that you need sophisticated climate models to understand it, said
NCAR scientist Michael Mills, the lead author. As we get a more detailed picture, we find that the
atmospheric effects for a given amount of weapons deployed are even more severe than we
previously thought.

Newest models prove nuclear winter
ROBOCK AND TOON 2012 (Alan Robock is a distinguished professor in the Department of Environmental
Sciences, and the associate director of the Center for Environmental Prediction, at Rutgers University; Owen Brian
Toon is a professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, and a research associate at the
Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Self-assured destruction: The
climate impacts of nuclear war, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September)
That changed in 1982, when the journal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Ambio, published a ground-
breaking article (Crutzen and Birks, 1982) that identified the issue of smoke generated by nuclear-ignited forest fires
as a global concern, following earlier suggestions by a graduate student in political science that the burning of forests
and grasslands could cause changes in continental weather (Lewis, 1979). We and our colleagues then
discovered that smoke from urban fires posed an even greater global hazard in the form of
climate anomalies, defined as a nuclear winter, capable of causing the worldwide collapse of
agriculture (Aleksandrov and Stenchikov, 1983; Robock, 1984; Turco et al., 1983). A nuclear war would also
threaten much of the worlds population by causing societal chaos and the loss of transpor-
tation and energy production. Modern climate models not only show that the nuclear winter
theory is correct, but also that the effects would last for more than a decade (Robock et al., 2007a,
2007b) because of an unexpected phenomenon: Smoke would rise to very high altitudesnear 40
kilometers (25 miles)where it would be protected from rain and would take more than a decade to clear
completely. As a consequence, the smokes climate impacts would be more extreme than once
thought. For example, the new models show that a full-scale nuclear conflict, in which 150 million
tons of smoke are lofted into the upper atmosphere, would drastically reduce precipitation by 45
percent on a global average, while temperatures would fall for several years by 7 to 8 degrees
Celsius on average and would remain depressed by 4 degrees Celsius after a decade (Robock et al.,
2007a). Humans have not experienced temperatures this low since the last ice age (Figure 2). In
important grain-growing regions of the northern mid-latitudes, precipitation would decline by
up to 90 percent, and temperatures would fall below freezing and remain there for one or more
years.

Old models underestimated nuclear winterbest simulations ever done prove it
would destroy global agriculture
[28] The amplitude of the climate changes from the 5 Tg, 50 Tg and 150 Tg cases are compared to those from global warming of the past century in
Figure 8 and climate change of the past 1000 years in Figure 9. In both cases it is clear that all cases would produce
unprecedented long-lasting climate change. The 50 Tg and 150 Tg cases produce cooling as large
or larger than that experienced 18,000 years ago during the coldest period of the last Ice Age.
[29] Harwell and Hutchinson [1986] clearly described the impacts of nuclear winter. They assumed that there would
be no food production around the world for one year and concluded that most of the people on
the planet would run out of food and starve to death by then. Our results show that this period
of no food production needs to be extended by many years, making the impacts of nuclear
winter even worse than previously thought.
[30] Agriculture would be affected by many factors, including temperature changes, precipitation
changes, and changes in insolation [e.g., Robock et al., 1993; Maytn et al., 1995]. As an example, Figure 10 shows changes in the
length of the freeze-free growing season for the third full growing seasons in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Such large
reductions in growing season would completely eliminate crops that have insufficient time to
reach maturity. Also, global ozone loss is likely [Toon et al., 2007], with effects on downward ultraviolet
radiation [Vogelmann et al., 1992] and atmospheric circulation. Further analysis of these and other effects, which is beyond the
scope of this paper, is needed.
7. Uncertainties
[31] The calculations presented here, combined with the 5 Tg case of Robock et al. [2007], are the first ever of the
effects of black carbon from nuclear conflicts with a coupled atmosphere-ocean general
circulation model, presumably the most complete and accurate representation of our
understanding of the climate system. Nevertheless, as pointed out by Robock et al. [2007], the results depend on the fidelity of the
climate model we used and on the assumptions we made. The climate model has been extensively evaluated by our
own volcanic cloud simulations [Oman et al., 2005, 2006a, 2006b] and in international intercomparisons as
part of the Fourth Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [e.g., Miller et al., 2006; Stenchikov et al., 2006a]. This model
has a climate sensitivity in the middle of the range of other models and performs at a level equal to other state-of-the-art
models. However, the experiments should be repeated with other climate models to examine how dependent the results are on the model used.

A2: MODELS BAD

Observational data proves nuclear winter theory
The climatic effects of a nuclear war between emerging nuclear powers or between Russia and the US are theories based
on computer model calculations. Normally, scientists test theories by doing experiments, but we never want to do these experiments
in the real world. Thus we look for analogs that can inform us of parts of the theory. And there are many such analogs that convince us
that the theory is correct:
1. Cities burning. Unfortunately, we have several examples of cities burning, firestorms created by the intense release of energy, and smoke
being pumped into the upper atmosphere. These include San Francisco as a result of the earthquake in 1906, and cities bombed in World
War II, including Tokyo, Dresden, Hamburg, Darmstadt, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. At the end of the 1991 Gulf War, Iraqi troops set fire
to about 700 oil wells in Kuwait. The resulting climatic effects were small, as the smoke did not get into the stratosphere and was only thick in the
immediate region. The total amount of smoke from them, however, was much less than that would be
generated from fires on targets with much more fuel, such as cities or refineries, with their above ground
oil tanks. Therefore, the small climatic response to this smoke does not negate the nuclear winter theory.
2. The seasonal cycle. This analog gave nuclear winter its name. In the winter, the climate is cooler, because the days are shorter and
sunlight is less intense. Again, this helps us to quantify the effects of reduction of solar radiation.
3. The diurnal cycle. At night the Sun sets and it gets cold at the surface. If the Sun did not rise tomorrow, we already have an intuitive feel
for how much cooling would take place and how fast it would cool.
4. Volcanic eruptions. Explosive volcanic eruptions, such as those of Tambora in 1815, Krakatau in 1883, and Pinatubo in 1991,
provide several lessons. The resulting sulfate aerosol cloud in the stratosphere was transported around
the world by winds, thus supporting the results from the climate model simulations.34 The surface temperature plummets
after each large eruption, in proportion to the thickness of the stratospheric cloud. Following the Pinatubo eruption, global precipitation,
river flow, and soil moisture all reduced, since cooling the planet by blocking sunlight has a strong effect on reducing evaporation
and weakening the hydrologic cycle.35 This is also what the nuclear winter simulations show.
5. Forest fires. Smoke from large forest fires sometimes is injected into the lower stratosphere. And smoke from large forest fires
is transported to large distances, producing cooling under the smoke.36,37
6. Dust storms on Mars. Occasionally, dust storms start in one region of Mars, but the dust is heated by
the Sun, lofted into the upper atmosphere, and transported around the planet to completely
enshroud it in a dust blanket where it reduces daytime temperatures by tens of degree Celsius depending on
how much dust is present. The spread of dust around the planet takes a couple weeks, just like our
computer simulations for the nuclear winter smoke.
7. Extinction of the dinosaurs. About 65,000,000 years ago, an asteroid smashed into Earth in Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. The resulting dust
cloud, mixed with smoke from fires, blocked out the Sun, killing the dinosaurs, and starting the age of mammals. This Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T)
extinction may have been exacerbated by massive volcanism in India at the same time. This teaches us that large amounts of
aerosols in Earth's atmosphere have caused massive climate change and extinction of species. The
difference with nuclear winter is that the dinosaurs could not have prevented the K-T extinction.

Natural observations confirm modeling data
ROBOCK 2010 (Alan Robock, Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University, New START, Eyjafjallajkull, and Nuclear
Winter, Eos, November, American Geophysical Union via UNC Libraries)
But you may say, I thought nuclear winter was disproven long ago, or The end of the arms
race in the 1980s ended the threat of nuclear winter. Both of these impressions, however, are wrong. In the
past several years I have worked with Brian Toon, Richard Turco, and Georgiy Stenchikov, all pioneers in nuclear winter studies, along with two of our
former students, Luke Oman and Charles Bardeen, to revisit the problem. The climate effects that were calculated in the 1980s [e.g., Turco et al., 1983;
Aleksandrov and Stenchikov, 1983] were rather uncertain because of the primitive climate models and computers that were available for us to use.
Those models were not able to simulate the lofting and persistence of the smoke or the long time it would take the ocean to warm back up. Using the
same climate models being used for global warming calculations, we now have actually discovered that not only would the
climate effects be as large as we had gotten with simpler models but also they would last much
longer than previously thought [Robock et al., 2007a, 2007b]. Although we can never actually do the experiment to test our models,
many analogs in nature, including volcanic eruptions and forest fires, give us confidence that
our current models simulate the relevant processes well [e.g., Robock and Toon, 2010].

A2: SURVIVORS

Even if some people live, survivor populations wont remain stablebirthrates will
drop and long-term effects will drive casualties up
Human Populations. The direct effects of war on human populations have already been discussed. Here I shall only superimpose the war's indirect
effects on projection IV above, a projection which entailed one billion deaths in targeted countries as a result of near-term effects of nuclear bombs:
blast, heat, initial radiation, and local fallout (the effects of the other three projections would be correspondingly lighter). The death toll will
continue to climb for years after the war, as a consequence of widespread famine in targeted nations,
famine in numerous non-targeted Third World countries whose people partly depend for survival on food or food-related imports from targeted
nations, general deterioration of the health care and disease prevention system, lingering radioactivity, paucity of
shelters, temporary but severe climatic changes, and the likelihood that some grief-stricken survivors will
prefer death to a prolonged struggle for sheer physical survival. Several years after the war, the world's population
may go down by another billion people.
The longer-term impact of total war on human populations depends in part on whether social conditions resembling our own are re-established. If not,
human populations could keep declining for decades. But even if such conditions are re-created, further reductions seem
likely during the first few decades because young children, infants, and fetuses are more vulnerable to the stresses
of a post-nuclear world (radiation, starvation, death of parents, etc.), and so proportionately more
individuals in these age brackets will die. In addition, many people may refrain for years after from
having children, so the death rate is likely to be higher than the birth rate. (I have confined the discussion
here to dry statistics not because they are the most interesting, but because books like this one cannot possibly convey the countless individual tragedies
these numbers imply.)

A2: NEW ZEALAND SURVIVES

New Zealand would be destroyed
CNZES 1984 (Council of the New Zealand Ecological Society, THE ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES TO
NEW ZEALAND OF NUCLEAR WARFARE IN THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE, NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF
ECOLOGY, VOL. 8, 1985)
It is apparent that, for communities of plants and animals in both terrestrial and aquatic
environments, nuclear war will cause enormous disruption. Ecological relationships are so
complex that ecologists cannot anticipate all the likely outcomes. However, extended darkness,
reduced temperatures, and high levels of radiation damage would see photosynthesis effectively
prevented, food chains disrupted or collapsing thus progressively pushing species after species to low
numbers, and then to extinction. The final toll of individuals would be uncountable; the number of
species lost could reach the tens of thousands, especially in the tropics4 . New Zealand would
not be immune to many of these consequences

A2: TOO FEW WARHEADS

Warhead numbers are underreported and doctrine is still aggressivenuclear war
causes extinction
ROBERTS 2014 (Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the
Wall Street Journal, has held numerous university appointments, The Lethality of Nuclear War: Washington Is
Beating The War Drums, June 18, http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-lethality-of-nuclear-war-washington-is-
beating-the-war-drums/5387453)
In an article published in the December 2008 issue of Physics Today, three atmospheric scientists point out
that even the substantial reduction in nuclear arsenals that the Strategic Offensive Reductions
Treaty hoped to achieve, from 70,000 warheads in 1986 to 1700-2200 warheads by the end of 2012, did not
reduce the threat that nuclear war presents to life on earth. The authors conclude that in addition to
the direct blast effects of hundreds of millions of human fatalities, the indirect effects would
likely eliminate the majority of the human population. The stratospheric smoke from firestorms
would cause nuclear winter and agricultural collapse. Those who did not perish from blast and
radiation would starve to death.
Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev understood this. Unfortunately, no successor US government has. As far as
Washington is concerned, death is what happens to others, not to the exceptional people. (The SORT
agreement apparently failed. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research
Institute, the nine nuclear-armed states still possess a total of 16,300 nuclear weapons.

Nuclear winter is possible with a very small arsenal
The number of weapons needed to initiate these climate changes falls within the range of
arsenals planned for the coming decade (Toon et al., 2008). For instance, the use of 4,000 weapons
(the rough total for US and Russian arsenals in 2017 under New START), each with a yield of 100 kilo-
tons (a typical yield for submarine weapons, but at the low end for most nuclear weapons), against urban or
industrial targets would produce about 180 million tons of soot. A single US submarine carrying
144 weapons of ioo-kiloton yield could produce 23 million tons of smoke if these weapons were
used on densely populated Chinese cities.

Counterforce targeting, damage limitation, de-escalation, and arms control dont
take out our impactnuclear war still causes extinction
STARR 2014 (Steven Starr is the Senior Scientist for Physicians for Social Responsibility and Director of the
Clinical Laboratory Science Program at the University of Missouri, There Can be No Winners in a Nuclear War,
Truthout, June 11, http://www.truth-out.org/speakout/item/24290-there-can-be-no-winners-in-a-nuclear-war)
Even more frightening is the fact that the neocons running US foreign policy believe that the US has "nuclear
primacy" over Russia; that is, the US could successfully launch a nuclear sneak attack against
Russian (and Chinese) nuclear forces and completely destroy them. This theory was articulated in
2006 in "The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy," which was published in Foreign Affairs by the Council on Foreign
Relations. By concluding that the Russians and Chinese would be unable to retaliate, or if some small part of their
forces remained, would not risk a second US attack by retaliating, the article invites nuclear war.
Colonel Valery Yarynich (who was in charge of security of the Soviet/Russian nuclear command and control systems
for 7 years) asked me to help him write a rebuttal, which was titled "Nuclear Primacy is a Fallacy." Colonel
Yarynich, who was on the Soviet General Staff and did war planning for the USSR, concluded
that the "Primacy" article used faulty methodology and erroneous assumptions, thus
invalidating its conclusions. My contribution lay in my knowledge of the recently published (in
2006) studies, which predicted even a "successful" nuclear first-strike, which destroyed 100% of
the opposing side's nuclear weapons, would cause the citizens of the side that "won" the nuclear
war to perish from nuclear famine, just as would the rest of humanity.

Current nuclear arsenals would still cause nuclear winter
[36] The major policy implication of nuclear winter was that a full-scale nuclear attack would produce climatic effects which would so disrupt the food
supply that it would be suicide for the attacking country [Robock, 1989] and would also impact noncombatant countries. The subsequent end of the
arms race and reduction of superpower tensions can be traced back to the world being forced to confront both the direct and indirect consequences of
the use of nuclear weapons by the public policy debate in response to nuclear winter theory, but the relative impact of nuclear winter theory as
compared to other factors has not been studied, as far as we know. However, the arms race ended several years before the Soviet Union collapsed.
While significant reductions of American and Russian nuclear arsenals followed, our results show that
each country still retains enough weapons to produce a large, long-lasting, unprecedented global
climate change.
[37] Star Wars (Strategic Defense Initiative, now the Missile Defense Agency) is not the answer, since it still does not
work after 20 years of trying. Even if it worked according to specifications, it would let in too
many weapons, such as on cruise missiles. Indirect effects of nuclear winter are greater that
direct effects. There would be many innocent victims in noncombatant nations.
[38] The United States and Russia are signatories to the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, which commits both to a reduction to 17002200
deployed nuclear weapons by the end of 2012. This continuing reduction of nuclear weapons by both parties is to be
commended, but only nuclear disarmament will completely remove the possibility of a nuclear
environmental catastrophe. In the meantime, it is instructive to ask why Britain, France, and China have chosen nuclear arsenals of only
a couple hundred nuclear weapons (Table 2). The threat of how many nuclear weapons dropping on your major cities would be necessary to deter an
attack on another nuclear power? More than one? An immediate reduction of the Russian and American nuclear arsenals to the same size as those of
Britain, France, and China would set an example for the world, maintain the nuclear deterrence of each, and dramatically lower the chances of nuclear
winter.

Current arsenals would still cause nuclear winter
More than 25 years ago, three independent research groups made valuable contributions to elaborating the consequences of nuclear warfare.1 Paul
Crutzen and John Birks proposed that massive fires and smoke emissions in the lower atmosphere after a global nuclear exchange would create severe
short-term environmental aftereffects. Extending their work, two of us (Toon and Turco) and colleagues discovered nuclear winter, which posited
that worldwide climatic cooling from stratospheric smoke would cause agricultural collapse that threatened the majority of the human population with
starvation. Vladimir Aleksandrov and Georgiy Stenchikov conducted the first general circulation model simulations in the USSR. Subsequent
investigations in the mid- and late 1980s by the US National Academy of Sciences2 and the International Council of Scientific Unions3,4 supported
those initial studies and shed further light on the phenomena involved. In that same period, Presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev
recognized the potential environmental damage attending the use of nuclear weapons and devised treaties to reduce the numbers from their peak in
1986a decline that continues today. When the cold war ended in 1992, the likelihood of a superpower nuclear conflict greatly decreased. Significant
arsenals remain, however, and proliferation has led to several new nuclear states. Recent work by our colleagues and us57 shows that
even small arsenals threaten people far removed from the sites of conflict because of environmental changes
triggered by smoke from firestorms. Meanwhile, modern climate models confirm that the 1980s predictions of
nuclear winter effects were, if anything, underestimates.8
The Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) of 2002 calls for the US and Russia each to limit their operationally deployed warheads to 1700
2200 by December 2012. The treaty has many unusual features: warheads, rather than delivery systems, are limited; verification measures are not
specified; permanent arsenal reductions are not required; warheads need not be destroyed; either side may quickly withdraw; and the treaty expires on
the same day that the arsenal limits are to be reached. Nevertheless, should the limits envisioned in SORT be achieved and
the excess warheads destroyed, only about 6% of the 70000 warheads existing in 1986 would remain. Given
such a large reduction, one might assume a concomitant large reduction in the number of
potential fatalities from a nuclear war and in the likelihood of environmental consequences that
threaten the bulk of humanity. Unfortunately, that assumption is incorrect. Indeed, we estimate that the
direct effects of using the 2012 arsenals would lead to hundreds of millions of fatalities. The
indirect effects would likely eliminate the majority of the human population.

Current arsenals still threaten nuclear winter
Based on some early experiments with a general circulation model that was limited in vertical extent and length of runs,12 some
(e.g., Ref 13) suggested that nuclear winter theory was disproved. But recent work with modern
climate models and computers has shown that nuclear winter theory was correct, and that, in
fact, the effects would last for many years, much longer than previously thought.14 The number of
nuclear weapons in the world has decreased to 1/3 of the peak number of more than 70,000 in the 1980s, and current treaties
call for the global arsenal to be less than 10% of that number by 2012. Yet, if used, even this arsenal could plunge the planet
into nuclear winter. Furthermore, nuclear proliferation now presents the problem that a nuclear war
between new nuclear states, say India and Pakistan, using much less than 1% of the current global
arsenal, could produce so much smoke that, while it would not produce winter conditions in the summer, it could
produce global environmental change unprecedented in recorded human history.15

A2: LOWER YIELD

Even low-yield weapons alter climate and destroy the ozone layer
Since 2007, studies have revisited the issue of global nuclear conflicts with modern global
climate models, confirming the severity of the climatic impacts that had been predicted with
simple climate models or with short simulations of low-resolution atmospheric general circulation models in
the 1980s [Robock et al., 2007a], and raising new concerns about severe global climatic impacts of
regional nuclear conflicts [Robock et al., 2007b; Toon et al., 2007; Mills et al., 2008; Stenke et al., 2013]. Even
the smallest of nuclear weapons, such as the 15kt weapon used on Hiroshima, exploding in modern
megacities would produce firestorms that would build for hours, consuming buildings,
vegetation, roads, fuel depots, and other infrastructure, releasing energy many times that of the
weapon's yield [Toon et al.,2007]. Toon et al. [2007] estimated the potential damage and smoke production from
a variety of nuclear exchange scenarios, and found that smoke would initially rise to the upper troposphere
due to pyroconvection. Robock et al. [2007b] examined the climatic impact of the smoke produced by a regional
conflict in the subtropics in which two countries each used 50 Hiroshima-size (15 kt) nuclear weapons, creating such
urban firestorms. Using the global climate model GISS ModelE (Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York), they
calculated that nearly all the 5 Tg of smoke produced would rise to the stratosphere, where it would
spread globally, reducing the global average temperature by 1.25C for 34 years and by more than 0.5C for a
decade. This effect was longer lasting than that found in previous nuclear winter studies,
because older models could not represent the rise of smoke into the stratosphere. Mills et al.
[2008] then used a chemistry-climate model to calculate that the concurrent heating of the stratosphere by
up to 100C would produce global ozone loss on a scale unprecedented in human history, lasting
for up to a decade.

A2: WONT ESCALATE

Any nuclear use could escalate
The prospect of a nuclear detonation anywhere in the world is horrifying but, for a variety of reasons,
it is not entirely implausible. The suspect logic of deterrence that pertains among nuclear adversaries
could unravel amid changing geopolitical circumstances. Disgruntled non-state actors could
gain access to the know-how and materials needed to fashion a nuclear weapon. Or a simple
accident might result in a detonation. In any of these situations, a single detonation could create
a spiral of retaliation.

Nuclear war will escalate
GATES 2002 (John, prof of history emeritus at the College of Wooster, The U.S. Army and Irregular Warfare,
http://www3.wooster.edu/history/jgates/book-ch11.html)
During the course of the Cold War a number of so-called experts argued that the dangers were
not as great as presented because an exchange of nuclear devices could and would be controlled
to limit damage and restrained to prevent the use of all the warheads available. As the strategic
analyst Desmond Ball noted, however, "a strategic nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet
Union would involve so many novel technical and emotional variables that predictions about its
course--and especially about whether or not it could be controlled--must remain highly
speculative."[13] Ball observed that it would require only between 50 and 100 warheads to destroy
the national command system of the United States or to impair the communication between the
nation's leaders and nation's nuclear forces. Anyone who placed his or her faith in the ability to
control a nuclear exchange once it began would appear to have been engaging in a dangerous act
of self-deception. One would have done better to accept the view of nuclear war that General A. S. Collins, Deputy
Commander of the U. S. Army in Europe from 1971 to 1974, said he had developed "as a soldier." Collins said that he
"never considered nuclear war to be a rational form of warfare or a rational instrument of policy."[14]
Certainly the military use of nuclear explosives does not fit into a traditional model of war. Karl von Clausewitz, the
nineteenth century German officer whose treatise On War is still the primary work of military theory in the west, saw
war as a continuation of politics or policy by other means. If the destructive potential of nuclear devices even
approaches the levels that some scientists have predicted, however, a nuclear exchange would not be an act of rational
policy. There is no political goal that could possibly be achieved by such environmental suicide. Similarly, although
Clausewitz spoke of the goal of disarming one's enemy in war, such disarmament would seem to be an impossibility in
the nuclear age, and by the 1980s the recognition of the logical fallacy of nuclear war had thrown strategic theory into
"a state of arrested ambiguity."[15] Authors labeled it a "morass"[16] and argued that it had reached "a state of
confusion amounting almost to disintegration."[17]
For decades two approaches had dominated thinking about nuclear devices. The strategist Bernard
Brodie presented the first, stressing deterrence, as early as 1946. The awesome potential of nuclear power for
destruction formed the basis for a doctrine in which fear combined with uncertainty to deter war. Should deterrence
break down, however, the result would be devastating. A common acronym for the doctrine was MAD, for Mutually
Assured Destruction.
The other view, first articulated by William Liscum Borden, took an opposite approach. Borden concentrated on
the military potential of nuclear power, attempting to integrate it into traditional military theory. As the
Cold War intensified the thought of deterrence based upon a doctrine of mutually assured destruction became more
frightening, leading some theorists to argue that a less dangerous alternative existed in a doctrine
of nuclear use. Nuclear-use theorists, nicknamed NUTS by a few of their MAD detractors, devoted their
energies to the development of ways in which nuclear devices might be used to fight, survive,
and prevail in a war.
Both approaches were doctrines for disaster, for neither doctrine provided a means of survival
should deterrence fail. In MAD, suicide was assured by the very nature of the doctrine. Although
the doctrine of the NUTS did not intend suicide, that was still the most likely outcome given the
probable consequences of even a limited nuclear exchange.

A2: ONLY U.S.-RUSSIA WAR

Any nuclear war could cause nuclear winter
The number of weapons needed to initiate these climate changes falls within the range of
arsenals planned for the coming decade (Toon et al., 2008). For instance, the use of 4,000 weapons (the
rough total for US and Russian arsenals in 2017 under New START), each with a yield of 100 kilotons (a typical yield
for submarine weapons, but at the low end for most nuclear weapons), against urban or industrial targets would
produce about 180 million tons of soot. A single US submarine carrying 144 weapons of ioo-kiloton
yield could produce 23 million tons of smoke if these weapons were used on densely populated
Chinese cities.
Regional nuclear war
The United States and Russia are not the only countries capable of wreaking worldwide climate
havoc. All of the nuclear statesexcept North Korea, with its relatively small arsenalif involved
in a nuclear war, have the destructive power needed to alter the global environment (Robock et
al., 2007b).

Fifty nuclear explosions are enough to cause global climate change and ozone
depletion
As discussed in detail by Robock et al.,14 earlier climate model simulations of the effect of massive smoke injections from nuclear fires were limited by
the available computer time, available data, and the small number of people working on the problem. They used single-column radiative-convective
models, energy balance models, or low-resolution atmospheric general circulation models that only considered the lower atmosphere, ignored ocean
changes, and were run for very short periods. This prevented them from calculating the lifetime of smoke or long-term responses. However,
modern climate models have now been applied to this problem. These new climate model simulations, with the capability of
including the entire atmosphere and oceans, find that the smoke would be lofted by solar
heating to the upper stratosphere, where it would remain for years.15 The climatic effects of the
smoke from burning cities and industrial areas would last for several years, much longer than
we previously thought. And a nuclear war between India and Pakistan, with each country using
50 Hiroshima-sized atom bombs as airbursts on urban areas, could produce climate change unprecedented
in recorded human history.15 This would be less than 0.02% of the explosive power of the current
global arsenal. This same scenario would produce global ozone depletion, because the heating of
the stratosphere would enhance the chemical reactions that destroy ozone.29

A2: U.S.-RUSSIA WAR NOT BIG ENOUGH

US-Russian nuclear war would kill everyonetheir ev is too old
ROBERTS 2014 (Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the
Wall Street Journal, has held numerous university appointments, The Lethality of Nuclear War: Washington Is
Beating The War Drums, June 18, http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-lethality-of-nuclear-war-washington-is-
beating-the-war-drums/5387453)
US war doctrine has been changed. US nuclear weapons are no longer restricted to a retaliatory
force, but have been elevated to the role of preemptive nuclear attack. Washington pulled out of the
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia and is developing and deploying an ABM shield. Washington is demonizing
Russia and Russias President with shameless lies and propaganda, thus preparing the populations of the US and its
client states for war with Russia.
Washington has been convinced by neoconservatives that Russian strategic nuclear forces are in
run down and unprepared condition and are sitting ducks for attack. This false belief is based
on out-of-date information, a decade old, such as the argument presented in The Rise of U.S.
Nuclear Primacy by Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press in the April 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs, a publication of
the Council on Foreign Relations, an organization of American elites.
Regardless of the condition of Russian nuclear forces, the success of Washingtons first strike
and degree of protection provided by Washingtons ABM shield against retaliation, the article I
posted by Steven Starr, The Lethality of Nuclear Weapons, makes clear that nuclear war has no winners.
Everyone dies.

U.S.-Russian nuclear war would cause human extinction
STARR 2014 (Steven Starr is the Senior Scientist for Physicians for Social Responsibility and Director of the
Clinical Laboratory Science Program at the University of Missouri, There Can be No Winners in a Nuclear War,
Truthout, June 11, http://www.truth-out.org/speakout/item/24290-there-can-be-no-winners-in-a-nuclear-war)
Nuclear war has no winner. Beginning in 2006, several of the world's leading climatologists (at Rutgers,
UCLA, John Hopkins University, and the University of Colorado-Boulder) published a series of studies that
evaluated the long-term environmental consequences of a nuclear war, including baseline
scenarios fought with merely 1% of the explosive power in the US and/or Russian launch-ready
nuclear arsenals. They concluded that the consequences of even a "small" nuclear war would
include catastrophic disruptions of global climate and massive destruction of Earth's protective
ozone layer. These and more recent studies predict that global agriculture would be so
negatively affected by such a war, a global famine would result, which would cause up to 2 billion
people to starve to death.
These peer-reviewed studies which were analyzed by the best scientists in the world and found
to be without error also predict that a war fought with less than half of US or Russian strategic
nuclear weapons would destroy the human race. In other words, a US-Russian nuclear war would
create such extreme long-term damage to the global environment that it would leave the Earth
uninhabitable for humans and most animal forms of life.
A recent article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, "Self-assured destruction: The climate impacts of nuclear
war," begins by stating:
"A nuclear war between Russia and the United States, even after the arsenal reductions planned under
New START, could produce a nuclear winter. Hence, an attack by either side could be suicidal, resulting in
self-assured destruction."
In 2009, I wrote "Catastrophic Climatic Consequences of Nuclear Conflicts" for the International Commission on
Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament. The article summarizes the findings of these studies. It explains that
nuclear firestorms would produce millions of tons of smoke, which would rise above cloud level and form a global
stratospheric smoke layer that would rapidly encircle the Earth. The smoke layer would remain for at least a decade,
and it would act to destroy the protective ozone layer (vastly increasing the UV-B reaching Earth) as well as block
warming sunlight, thus creating Ice Age weather conditions that would last 10 years or longer.
Following a US-Russian nuclear war, temperatures in the central US and Eurasia would fall below
freezing every day for one to three years; the intense cold would completely eliminate growing
seasons for a decade or longer. No crops could be grown, leading to a famine that would kill most humans
and large animal populations.
Electromagnetic pulse from high-altitude nuclear detonations would destroy the integrated
circuits in all modern electronic devices, including those in commercial nuclear power plants.
Every nuclear reactor would almost instantly meltdown; every nuclear spent fuel pool (which
contain many times more radioactivity than found in the reactors) would boil off, releasing vast
amounts of long-lived radioactivity. The fallout would make most of the US and Europe uninhabitable. Of
course, the survivors of the nuclear war would be starving to death anyway.Once nuclear weapons were
introduced into a US-Russian conflict, there would be little chance that a nuclear holocaust
could be avoided. Theories of "limited nuclear war" and "nuclear de-escalation" are unrealistic.
In 2002 the Bush administration modified US strategic doctrine from a retaliatory role to permit preemptive nuclear
attack; in 2010, the Obama administration made only incremental and miniscule changes to this doctrine, leaving it
essentially unchanged. Furthermore, Counterforce doctrine used by both the US and Russian military
emphasizes the need for preemptive strikes once nuclear war begins. Both sides would be under
immense pressure to launch a preemptive nuclear first-strike once military hostilities had
commenced, especially if nuclear weapons had already been used on the battlefield.

A2: COUNTERFORCE TARGETING

Targeting strategy doesnt take out our impact
Any of several targeting strategies might be employed in a nuclear conflict. For example, in a rational war, a
few weapons are deployed against symbolically important targets. Conversely, a counterforce war entails a massive attack against key military,
economic, and political targets. We consider a countervalue strategy in which urban areas are targeted, mainly to destroy economic and social
infrastructure and the ability to fight and recover from a conflict. In any case, when the conflict involves a large number of weapons, the
distinction between countervalue and counterforce strategies diminishes because military,
economic, and political targets are usually in urban areas.

Counterforce wont limit damageencourages escalation
SCHWARZ 2006 (Benjamin, former RAND analyst, The Perils of Primacy, Atlantic Magazine, Jan/Feb,
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/01/the-perils-of-primacy/4526/2/)
Lieber and Press emphasize that their analysis doesn't prove that a U.S. first strike would succeed, but it
highlights a development that is grave if only because it's one that prudent planners in Russia
and China, who conduct similar analyses, are no doubt already surmising: that their countries can no longer
be confident of having a viable deterrent. Surely adding to their alarm is the realization that the nuclear imbalance, troubling
enough already, will only grow in the coming years. Washington's withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and its concomitant pursuit of a
national missile-defense system will greatly enhance its offensive nuclear capabilities, because although critics of missile defense correctly argue that it
could never shield America from a massive full-scale nuclear attack, it could quite plausibly deal with the very few missiles an adversary might have left
to deploy after a U.S. first strike. What's more, the United States is actively pursuing a series of initiativesincluding further advances in
anti-submarine and anti-satellite warfare; in missile accuracy and potency; and in wide-area remote sensing, aimed at finding
"relocatable" targets such as mobile ICBMsthat will render Russia's and China's nuclear forces all the more
vulnerable. To be sure, America's emerging nuclear hegemony could bring benefits, including potential
leverage vis--vis our superpower counterparts in such areas of competition as the Balkans and Taiwan. It will also force China to divert defense
resources from its power-projection efforts in East Asia. (This, however, would be both a blessing and a curse: "We should expect a new, prolonged, and
intense nuclear arms race," Lieber and Press conclude.) But whether or not America has deliberately pursued the ability to win a nuclear conflict,
that capability will increase the risk of great-power war. U.S.-Chinese relations are bound to be
edgy or worse for the foreseeable future, and although relations between Washington and
Moscow are nowhere near their Cold War nadir, actual and potential strains remain formidable.
Each country has nuclear-armed missiles that can be delivered against the other within
minutesand in America's nuclear-war plans the overwhelming number of targets remain inside Russia. Most important, any shift in the
nuclear balance itself will engender a volatility that could cause seemingly small conflicts
between countries to quickly spiral. Confronted with the growing nuclear imbalance, Russia and
China will be forced to try to redress it; but given America's advantages, that effort, as Lieber and Press note,
could take well over a decade. Until a nuclear stalemate is restoredif it ever isMoscow and Beijing will surely buy
deterrence by spreading out their nuclear forces, decentralizing their command-and-control
systems, and implementing "launch on warning" policies. If more than half a century of
analyzing nuclear dangers and "crisis stability" has taught us anything, it is that all these steps
can cause crises to escalate uncontrollably. They could trigger the unauthorized or accidental
use of nuclear weapons; this could lead to inadvertent nuclear war.
A2: NUCLEAR TESTS DISPROVE

Nuclear tests dont disprove nuclear winter
MILLS 2012 (Michael, atmospheric scientist at National Center for Atmospheric Research, interview in Wired,
How One Nuclear Skirmish Could Wreck the Planet, http://www.wired.com/2011/02/nuclear-war-climate-change/)
Wired.com: There have been thousands of nuclear tests. Why hasnt this already happened?
Mills: Were not talking about direct impacts of the explosions themselves, but the firestorms that
result when you detonate these in cities. Most tests were in deserts or atolls or space or
underground.

A2: EXTREME ESTIMATE

Our estimates are for moderate-case conflicts with current arsenal levels
Box 1 on page 38 describes how we estimate casualties (fatalities plus injuries) and soot (elemental carbon) emissions; figure 1 shows results. The figure
gives predicted casualties and soot injected into the upper atmosphere from an attack on several possible target countries by a regional power using 50
weapons of 15-kiloton yield, for a total yield of 0.75 megaton. The figure also provides estimates of the casualties and soot injections from a war based
on envisioned SORT arsenals. In the SORT conflict, we assume that Russia targets 1000 weapons on the US and 200 warheads each on France,
Germany, India, Japan, Pakistan, and the UK. We assume the US targets 1100 weapons each on China and Russia. We do not consider the 1000
weapons held in the UK, China, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, and possibly North Korea. (Box 2 on page 40 provides information on the worlds
nuclear arsenals.) The war scenarios considered in the figure bracket a wide spectrum of possible
attacks, but not the extremes for either the least or greatest damage that might occur.
As figure 1 shows, a war between India and Pakistan in which each uses weapons with 0.75-Mt total yield could lead to about 44 million casualties and
produce about 6.6 trillion grams (Tg) of soot. A SORT conflict with 4400 nuclear explosions and 440-Mt total yield would generate
770 million casualties and 180 Tg of soot. The SORT scenario numbers are lower limits
inasmuch as we assumed 100-kt weapons; the average SORT yield would actually be larger. The
results can be relatively insensitive to the distribution of weapons strikes on different countries because attacks on lower-population areas produce
decreased amounts of soot. For instance, 100 weapons targeted each on France and Belgium leads to about the same amount of soot as 200 on France
alone. On the other hand, using fewer weapons on densely populated regions such as in India and China would reduce soot generation.

A2: NUCLEAR AUTUMN

Their authors are politically motivatedall scientific evidence points to nuclear
winter
ROBOCK 2011 (Alan, prof in the Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University Nuclear winter is a
real and present danger, Nature, May 19)
The idea of climatic catastrophe was fought against by those who wanted to keep the nuclear-
weapon industry alive, or who supported the growth of nuclear arsenals politically*.
Scientifically, there was no real debate about the concept, only about the details. In 1986,
atmospheric researchers Starley Thompson and Stephen Schneider wrote a piece in Foreign Affairs appraising the
theory4 and highlighting what they saw as the patchiness of the effect. They coined the term nuclear autumn,
noting that it wouldnt be winter everywhere in the aftermath of a nuclear attack. They didnt mean for
people to think that it would be all raking leaves and football games, but many members of the
public, and some pro-nuclear advocates, preferred to take it that way. The fight over the details of the
modelling caused a rift between Sagan and Schneider that never healed. When I bring up the topic of nuclear winter,
people invariably tell me that they think the theory has been disproved. But research continues
to support the original concept. By 2007, models had began to approximate a realistic
atmosphere up to 80 kilometres above Earths surface, including the stratosphere and mesosphere. This
enabled me, and my coauthors, to calculate for the first time that smoke particles would be
heated by the Sun and lifted into the upper stratosphere, where they would stay for many years5-
6. So the cooling would last for much longer than we originally thought.

Even mild nuclear autumn would cause worldwide famine
SUBLETTE 1997 (Carey, Nuclear Weapons Frequently Asked Questions, http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq5.html)
Although the initial TTAPS study was met with significant skepticism and criticism, later and
more sophisticated work by researchers around the world have confirmed it in all essential
details. These studies predict that the amount of soot that would be produced by burning most of the major cities in the US and USSR would
severly disrupt climate on a world-wide basis. The major effect would be a rapid and drastic
reduction in global temperature, especially over land. All recent studies indicate that if large scale
nucelar attack occur against urban or petrochemical targets, average temperature reductions of
at least 10 degrees C would occur lasting many months. This level of cooling far exceeds any that has been observed in
recorded history, and is comparable to that of a full scale ice age. In areas downwind from attack sites, the cooling can reach 35
degrees C. It is probable that no large scale temperature excursion of this size has occurred in 65
million years.
Smaller attacks would create reduced effects of course. But it has been pointed out that most of the world's food crops are
subtropical plants that would have dramatic drops in productivity if an average temperature
drop of even one degree were to occur for even a short time during the growing season. Since the world
maintains a stored food supply equal to only a few months of consumption, a war during the Northern
Hemisphere spring or summer could still cause deadly starvation around the globe from this effect alone
even if it only produced a mild "nuclear autumn".

A2: BRIAN MARTIN

Every defensive argument made by Martin is wrong and hes biased anyway
PITTOCK 1984 (Barrie, Comment on Brian Martin's "Extinction politics, SANA Update (Scientists Against
Nuclear Arms Newsletter), number 20, September 1984, pp. 13-14,
https://www.uow.edu.au/~bmartin/pubs/84sanap.pdf)
It is unfortunate that Brian Martin, in SANA Update (May 1984) and elsewhere, uses such emotive terms
as "extinction politics" and "doomsday beliefs", which display a lack of respect for, and a tendency to
make categorical generalisations about, many and varied statements and positions about the
effects of nuclear war held by sincere and thoughtful people.
It is ironic that Brian notes disapprovingly that "By the 1950's, a large number of people had come to believe that the
killing of much or all of the world's population would result from global nuclear war", when in point of fact it was in
the mid-50's that the combined arsenals of the superpowers probably did reach the level at which they were for the
first time capable of causing a global climatic disaster (Sagan, 1983). It is arrogant of scientists to dismiss people's gut
feelings when scientists themselves were then, and may well still be, largely ignorant of the effects. In the face of
scientific ignorance "common sense" is often a good guide.
Brian quotes Nevil Shute's novel On the Beach as if it had no shred of scientific basis, completely ignoring the explicit
scenario which Shute drew up in which large numbers of nuclear weapons coated with cobalt were exploded with the
deliberate intention of increasing nuclear fallout. Again, it is ironic that a recent study conducted at the
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (Knox, 1983) shows that fallout estimates for a major
nuclear war have been under-estimated by about a factor of five hitherto, and that attacks on
nuclear power stations and fuel cycle installations could increase long-term fallout by another
factor of ten or so.
Next Brian attacks Jonathan Schell for discussing the implications of human extinction in The Fate of the Earth.
Brian never acknowledges that Schell quite explicitly said that human extinction is not a certainty (see Schell p. 93),
and ignores the powerful arguments which Schell advances for regarding the mere possibility of
human extinction as important. These are developed further in Schell's more recent articles in The New Yorker
(Jan. 2 & 9, 1984). Brian then claims that the scientific basis of the ozone depletion problem has
"almost entirely evaporated". In fact, while we now know that the nuclear winter effect is almost
certainly far more serious than ozone depletion, the ozone depletion problem has not been
dismissed except in so far as the trend to smaller warheads may limit the quantity of oxides of nitrogen injected
into the stratosphere by the nuclear explosions themselves. Ozone depletion could in fact end up being
more serious due to injections of combustion products, including smoke, into the stratosphere.
Brian claims that the impact on populations nearer the Equator, such as in India, "does not
seem likely to be significant". Quite to the contrary, smoke clouds are likely to spread into the
tropics within a matter of weeks and would probably lead to below freezing temperatures for
months on end. Populations and the ecology in such regions are the least able to withstand such
a climatic onslaught and must be very seriously affected.
Then he says that major ecological destruction "remains speculative at present". Is he suggesting that a sudden and
prolonged plunge to below freezing temperatures, with insufficient light for photosynthesis, might have little harmful
effect, or is he denying the reality of "nuclear winter"?
There have been a number of specific criticisms of the various published papers on nuclear
winter, but after more than two years in print there has been no criticism which has
substantially altered the basic conclusions. The most prominent criticism has come from John Maddox,
editor of Nature (307, 121: 1984), who completely failed to take account of the vital difference in optical properties of
soot and volcanic dust (La Marche and Hirschboeck, 1984). Principal uncertainties exist as to the war scenarios, the
fraction of soot in the smoke, the height of injection of the smoke, the amount which would be removed by washout in
the initial plumes, and the later rate of removal. In most cases the published papers made assumptions which tended
to under-estimate the effects, especially with regard to the height of injection of the smoke and its lifetime. Two
possible exceptions are the war scenarios, in which the so-called "baseline" case may be too large by a factor of 2, and
perhaps the particle coagulation rates if the initial plumes are not rapidly dispersed. My judgement now is that the
initial effects would be much as described in the published papers, even with a 2,000 megatonne war, except that the
lifetime of the effects could well turn out to be years rather than months. I will discuss the technical details elsewhere.
Brian goes on to suggest that the worst effects might be avoided by "migration to coastal areas,
away from the freezing continental temperatures", but fails to realise that the huge temperature gradients
induced between the continents and oceans will cause violent storms to lash these coastal zones,
which in any case are likely to be subject to a strong outflow of cold air from the continental
interiors.
Brian then invokes the advantages of turning to grain rather than meat to extend "reserves of food". The fact is of
course that in the event of a nuclear winter any human survivors will have little choice but to eat
whatever food is available, be it meat or grain. But where are there huge grain reserves sufficient
to feed the survivors for one or more years, and will such reserves survive in convenient
proximity to the human survivors? Is Brian going to seriously advocate creating grain reserves sufficient to
feed a couple of thousand million people for one or two years?
It is difficult to assess the motivation behind Brian's consistent bias towards dismissing the
possibility of extinction, but perhaps there is a hint at it in his protest that believing in such a
possibility fosters resignation. In my experience most people already feel rather helpless to influence the
political process - what they need in order to act politically is the motivation of feeling personally threatened or
outraged to the point of anger, plus a sense of hope which we in the peace movement must provide.
The key political impact of nuclear winter and the possibility of extinction, however, lies in the
way it forces proponents of reliance on nuclear weapons back on deterrence as the only possible
rationalisation, and at the same time makes the risks inherent in nuclear deterrence
unacceptable to rational human beings. There can in my view be no more radicalising realisation than that
the logic of reliance on nuclear weapons leads to extinction, if not now, then some time in the foreseeable future. The
possibility of extinction makes a qualitative difference to how we view nuclear weapons.
To sum up, I am in broad agreement with most of the positive things Brian advocates here and elsewhere, but I
disagree with the way he has, in my opinion, biased the evidence on the effects of nuclear war to fit his
psychological theory as to what motivates people. I believe it is time he faced up to the grim realities of
nuclear war, worked through psychological denial, and gave other people credit for being able to
do likewise.

NO EXTINCTION

Even the creators of nuclear winter theory acknowledge that nuclear war could
never wipe out everyone
While it is important to point out the consequences of nuclear winter, it is also important to
point out what will not be the consequences. Although extinction of our species was not ruled
out in initial studies by biologists, it now seems that this would not take place. Especially in
Australia and New Zealand, humans would have a better chance to survive. Also, Earth will not be
plunged into an ice age. Ice sheets, which covered North America and Europe only 18,000 years ago and were more than 3-km
thick, take many thousands of years to build up from annual snow layers, and the climatic disruptions would
not last long enough to produce them. The oxygen consumption by the fires would be
inconsequential, as would the effect on the atmospheric greenhouse by carbon dioxide
production. The consequences of nuclear winter are extreme enough without these additional effects, however.

Nuclear war wont cause extinction and nuclear winter is wrong
NYQUIST 1999 (J.R., Defense Analyst, Worldnetdaily.com, May 20, 1999)
I patiently reply to these correspondents that nuclear war would not be the end of the world. I then point to studies
showing that "nuclear winter" has no scientific basis, that fallout from a nuclear war would not kill all life on
earth. Surprisingly, few of my correspondents are convinced. They prefer apocalyptic myths created by pop scientists, movie producers and
journalists. If Dr. Carl Sagan once said "nuclear winter" would follow a nuclear war, then it must be true. If radiation wipes out mankind in a movie,
then that's what we can expect in real life. But Carl Sagan was wrong about nuclear winter. And the movie "On the Beach" misled
American filmgoers about the effects of fallout. It is time, once and for all, to lay these myths to rest. Nuclear war would not bring about the end of the
world, though it would be horribly destructive. The truth is, many prominent physicists have condemned the nuclear
winter hypothesis. Nobel laureate Freeman Dyson once said of nuclear winter research, "It's an absolutely
atrocious piece of science, but I quite despair of setting the public record straight." Professor Michael McElroy, a Harvard
physics professor, also criticized the nuclear winter hypothesis. McElroy said that nuclear winter researchers
"stacked the deck" in their study, which was titled "Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions" (Science,
December 1983). Nuclear winter is the theory that the mass use of nuclear weapons would create enough smoke and dust to blot out the sun, causing a
catastrophic drop in global temperatures. According to Carl Sagan, in this situation the earth would freeze. No crops could be grown. Humanity would
die of cold and starvation. In truth, natural disasters have frequently produced smoke and dust far greater than
those expected from a nuclear war. In 1883 Krakatoa exploded with a blast equivalent to 10,000 one-megaton bombs, a
detonation greater than the combined nuclear arsenals of planet earth. The Krakatoa explosion had
negligible weather effects. Even more disastrous, going back many thousands of years, a meteor struck Quebec with the
force of 17.5 million one-megaton bombs, creating a crater 63 kilometers in diameter. But the world did not freeze. Life on earth was
not extinguished. Consider the views of Professor George Rathjens of MIT, a known antinuclear activist, who said,
"Nuclear winter is the worst example of misrepresentation of science to the public in my
memory." Also consider Professor Russell Seitz, at Harvard University's Center for International Affairs, who says that the nuclear winter
hypothesis has been discredited. Two researchers, Starley Thompson and Stephen Schneider, debunked the nuclear winter hypothesis in the summer
1986 issue of Foreign Affairs. Thompson and Schneider stated: "the global apocalyptic conclusions of the initial nuclear winter hypothesis
can now be relegated to a vanishingly low level of probability." OK, so nuclear winter isn't going to happen. What
about nuclear fallout? Wouldn't the radiation from a nuclear war contaminate the whole earth, killing everyone? The short
answer is: absolutely not. Nuclear fallout is a problem, but we should not exaggerate its effects. As it happens, there are two types of fallout
produced by nuclear detonations. These are: 1) delayed fallout; and 2) short-term fallout. According to researcher Peter V. Pry, "Delayed fallout
will not, contrary to popular belief, gradually kill billions of people everywhere in the world." Of course, delayed fallout would increase the number of
people dying of lymphatic cancer, leukemia, and cancer of the thyroid. "However," says Pry, "these deaths would probably be far fewer
than deaths now resulting from ... smoking, or from automobile accidents." The real hazard in a nuclear war is the short-term
fallout. This is a type of fallout created when a nuclear weapon is detonated at ground level. This type of fallout could kill millions of people, depending
on the targeting strategy of the attacking country. But short-term fallout rapidly subsides to safe levels in 13 to 18 days. It is not
permanent. People who live outside of the affected areas will be fine. Those in affected areas can survive if they
have access to underground shelters. In some areas, staying indoors may even suffice. Contrary to popular
misconception, there were no documented deaths from short-term or delayed fallout at either
Hiroshima or Nagasaki. These blasts were low airbursts, which produced minimal fallout effects. Today's thermonuclear
weapons are even "cleaner." If used in airburst mode, these weapons would produce few (if any) fallout
casualties.

No extinction
TONN 2005 (Bruce, Futures Studies Department, Corvinus University of Budapest, Human Extinction Scenarios,
www.budapestfutures.org/downloads/abstracts/Bruce%20Tonn%20-%20Abstract.pdf)
The human species faces numerous threats to its existence. These include global climate change, collisions with near-earth objects, nuclear war,
and pandemics. While these threats are indeed serious, taken separately they fail to describe exactly how humans could
become extinct. For example, nuclear war by itself would most likely fail to kill everyone on the
planet, as strikes would probably be concentrated in the northern hemisphere and the Middle
East, leaving populations in South America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand some hope of
survival. It is highly unlikely that any uncontrollable nanotechnology could ever be produced but even it if were, it is likely that humans could develop
effective, if costly, countermeasures, such as producing the technologies in space or destroying sites of runaway nanotechnologies with nuclear
weapons. Viruses could indeed kill many people but effective quarantine of healthy people could be accomplished to save large numbers of people.
Humans appear to be resilient to extinction with respect to single events.

Effects of nuclear war are exaggeratedanti nuclear authors ignore adaptation
MARTIN 1984 (Dr Brian Martin is a physicist whose research interests include stratospheric modelling. He is a research associate in the
Dept. of Mathematics, Faculty of Science, Australian National University, and a member of SANA, SANA UPDATE, MARCH)
Opponents of war, including scientists, have often exaggerated the effects of nuclear war and
emphasized worst cases. Schell continually bends evidence to give the worst impression. For example, he implies that
a nuclear attack is inevitably followed by a firestorm or conflagration. He invariably gives the maximum time for people having to remain in shelters
from fallout. And he takes a pessimistic view of the potential for ecological resilience to radiation
exposure and for human resourcefulness in a crisis. Similarly, in several of the scientific studies
of nuclear winter, I have noticed a strong tendency to focus on worst cases and to avoid
examination of ways to overcome the effects. For example, no one seems to have looked at
possibilities for migration to coastal areas away from the freezing continental temperatures or
looked at people changing their diets away from grain-fed beef to direct consumption of the
grain, thereby greatly extending reserves of food.

No extinctionfallout, ozone, fires, and nuclear winter and warming are all wrong
Dept. of Mathematics, Faculty of Science, Australian National University, Journal of Peace Research, No 4,
http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/82jpr.html)
(a) Global fallout. The main effect of long-term fallout would be to increase the rate of cancer and
genetic defects by a small percentage. Tens of millions might be affected worldwide over a period of many decades, but this
would provide no threat to the survival of the human species.[6]
(b) Ozone. Nuclear war would cause an increase in ultraviolet light from the sun which reaches the earth's surface, due to reductions in
stratospheric ozone caused by its catalytic destruction by nitrogen oxides produced in nuclear explosions. This would increase the
incidence of skin cancer (which is mostly non-lethal) and possibly alter agricultural productivity,
but would be most unlikely to cause widespread death.[7]
(c) Fires. Extensive fires caused directly or indirectly by nuclear explosions would fill the lower atmosphere in the northern hemisphere with so
much particulate matter that the amount of sunlight reaching the earth's surface could be greatly reduced for a few months. If this occurred during the
northern spring or summer, one consequence would be greatly reduced agricultural production and possible widescale starvation.[8]
(d) Climatic changes. Such changes might be caused, for example, by injection of nitrogen oxides or particulate matter into the upper
atmosphere. The more calamitous possibilities include a heating trend leading to melting of the polar ice caps, the converse
possibility of a new ice age, and the changing of climatic patterns leading to drought or unstable
weather in areas of current high agricultural productivity.[9] The rate of impact of such climatic change is likely to
be sufficiently slow - decades, or years in some cases - for the avoidance of the death of a substantial
portion of the world's population through climatic change.

Even the worst possible nuclear war would leave 90% of the worlds population
unhurthuge areas would not be effected
To summarise the above points, a major global nuclear war in which population centres in the US, Soviet Union, Europe
and China ware targeted, with no effective civil defence measures taken, could kill directly perhaps 400 to
450 million people. Induced effects, in particular starvation or epidemics following agricultural failure or economic breakdown,
might add up to several hundred million deaths to the total, though this is most uncertain.

Such an eventuality would be a catastrophe of enormous proportions, but it is far from extinction. Even in the most
extreme case there would remain alive some 4000 million people, about nine-tenths of the world's
population, most of them unaffected physically by the nuclear war. The following areas would be relatively
unscathed, unless nuclear attacks were made in these regions: South and Central America, Africa, the Middle East,
the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, Australasia, Oceania and large parts of China. Even in
the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere where most of the nuclear weapons would be
exploded, areas upwind of nuclear attacks would remain free of heavy radioactive
contamination, such as Portugal, Ireland and British Columbia.
Many people, perhaps especially in the peace movement, believe that global nuclear war will lead to the death of
most or all of the world's population.[12] Yet the available scientific evidence provides no basis for
this belief. Furthermore, there seem to be no convincing scientific arguments that nuclear war could
cause human extinction.[13] In particular, the idea of 'overkill', if taken to imply the capacity to kill everyone on earth, is highly
misleading.[14]

ARSENAL SIZE

The Robock et al studies assume 5,000 megatons are used and produce 150
teragrams of smokethats 95% of the total world arsenal which means its only
credible with a US-Russian war using 100% of current arsenals
We do not conduct detailed new studies of the smoke and dust emissions from nuclear attacks here. Rather, we chose emissions based
on previous studies so as to make our results comparable to them. Toon et al. [2007] point out that cities around the world have grown in
the past 20 years, so that we would expect smoke emissions to be larger than before for the same targets. We encourage new analyses of the exact
amount of smoke that would result, but it is beyond the scope of this paper. Roughly 150 Tg would be emitted by the use of the
entire current global nuclear arsenal, with 5000 Mt explosive power, about 95% of which is in
the arsenals of the United States and Russia (Table 2), and 50 Tg would be emitted by the use of 1/3 of the current nuclear
arsenal.

But we wont use them all and some wont detonate
Dept. of Mathematics, Faculty of Science, Australian National University, Current Affairs Bulletin, December,
http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/82cab/index.html)
What fraction of the 11,000Mt would be exploded in a major nuclear war? This is hard to assess, but almost certainly much will not
be exploded. Both the United States and the Soviet Union place a high priority on targeting their
opponent's military forces, nuclear forces in particular. A sizable fraction of nuclear arsenals is
likely to be destroyed before use (attacks on nuclear submarines, airfields, missile silos), be unavailable for use
(submarines in port, missiles cut off from communications) or fail to perform properly.[47] One estimate is that one sixth to
one third of superpower arsenals will be used, depending on whether the war occurs suddenly or builds up gradually.[48]

US first strike will succeed
LIEBER AND PRESS 2006 (Keir A. Lieber, the author of War and the Engineers: The Primacy of Politics Over Technology, is
Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame.Daryl G. Press, the author of Calculating Credibility: How Leaders Assess
Military Threats, is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, The Rise of US Nuclear Primacy, Foreign Affairs,
March/April, http://www.dartmouth.edu/~dpress/docs/Press_Rise_US_Nuclear_Primacy_FA.pdf)
For almost half a century, the worlds most powerful nuclear states have been locked in a military stalemate known as mutual assured
destruction (mad). By the early 1960s, the nuclear arsenals of the United States and the Soviet Union had grown so large and sophisticated that
neither country could entirely destroy the others retaliatory force by launching first, even with a surprise attack.
Starting a nuclear war was therefore tantamount to committing suicide.
During the Cold War, many scholars and policy analysts believed that mad made the world relatively stable and peaceful because it induced great
caution in international politics, discouraged the use of nuclear threats to resolve disputes, and generally restrained the superpowers behavior.
(Revealingly, the last intense nuclear stando, the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, occurred at the dawn of the era of mad.) Because of the nuclear stalemate,
the optimists argued, the era of intentional great-power wars had ended. Critics of mad, however, argued that it prevented not great-power war but the
rolling back of the power and influence of a dangerously expansionist and totalitarian Soviet Union. From that perspective, mad prolonged the life of an
evil empire.
This debate may now seem like ancient history, but it is actually more relevant than everbecause the age of mad is nearing an
end.Today, for the first time in almost 50 years, the United States stands on the verge of
attaining nuclear primacy. It will probably soon be possible for the United States to destroy the long-range nuclear
arsenals of Russia or China with a first strike. This dramatic shift in the nuclear balance of power stems from a
series of improvements in the United States nuclear systems, the precipitous decline of Russias
arsenal, and the glacial pace of modernization of Chinas nuclear forces. Unless Washingtons policies change
or Moscow and Beijing take steps to increase the size and readiness of their forces, Russia and Chinaand the rest of the worldwill live in the shadow
of U.S. nuclear primacy for many years to come.

No nuclear winter150 teragrams of smoke is the key threshold
Figures 5 and 7 also show temperature and precipitation time series for the 50 Tg case for the Iowa and Ukraine locations. The effects
here are approximately half those of the 150 Tg case. While these temperature responses are not
cold enough to be classified as nuclear winter, they would still be severe and unprecedented.

Even if theres full-scale nuclear winter, their authors admit that wont cause
extinction
While it is important to point out the consequences of nuclear winter, it is also important to
point out what will not be the consequences. Although extinction of our species was not ruled
out in initial studies by biologists, it now seems that this would not take place. Especially in
Australia and New Zealand, humans would have a better chance to survive. Also, Earth will not be
plunged into an ice age. Ice sheets, which covered North America and Europe only 18,000 years ago and were more than 3-km
thick, take many thousands of years to build up from annual snow layers, and the climatic disruptions would
not last long enough to produce them. The oxygen consumption by the fires would be
inconsequential, as would the effect on the atmospheric greenhouse by carbon dioxide
production. The consequences of nuclear winter are extreme enough without these additional effects, however.

U.S.-RUSSIA WAR KEY

US-Russian nuclear war is the only extinction risk
FRUMKIN AND HELFAND 2012 (Howard Frumkin, MD, DrPH, School of Public Health, University of Washington; Ira
Helfand, MD, Physicians for Social Responsibility, A Prescription for Survival: Prevention of Nuclear War, American Journal of Preventive Medicine,
March, Science Direct)
The arsenals of India and Pakistan are of particular concern given their sizeapproximately 80 warheads eachand the
ongoing tension between these two states. Recent studies have shown that if only 100 of the weapons in their combined arsenals were
used in a war targeting population centers, 20 million people would die in the first few hours in the firestorms that would engulf the great cities of
the subcontinent, and vast areas would be contaminated with deadly radioactive fallout. In addition, the firestorms would loft some 5 million tons of
soot and dust into the upper atmosphere, dropping temperatures across the globe an average of 1.25 C and reducing precipitation worldwide, with
both these effects lasting up to a decade. [16] and [17] There have been no detailed studies yet on the effect of this climate disruption on agriculture and
human nutrition, but there is reason to fear that it could cause a global famine of historic proportions.
The increasing danger posed by the proliferation of nuclear weapons has prompted a growing group of senior defense experts to call for urgent new
steps to eliminate nuclear weapons. In January of 2007 Henry Kissinger, George Schultz, William Perry, and Sam Nunn declared: Reassertion of the
vision of a world free of nuclear weapons and practical measures toward achieving that goal would be, and would be perceived as, a bold initiative
consistent with America's moral heritage. The effort could have a profoundly positive impact on the security of future generations.18
Still, it is not the arsenals of these new nuclear powers that pose the greatest danger. Ninety-
five percent of the nuclear weapons in the world today remain in the arsenals of the U.S. and
Russia. Even under the New START Treaty, they are each allowed to keep 1550 deployed strategic nuclear weapons, thousands
of nondeployed weapons, and all of their nonstrategic warheads. A 2002 study showed that if only 300 of the weapons in the
Russian arsenal were targeted at U.S. cities, 70 to 100 million people would die. In addition, the attack
would destroy the communications and transportation networks and the rest of the social infrastructure on which modern
societies depend. Over the following months, the majority of the population not killed in the initial attack would die of starvation, exposure,
and disease. The U.S. counterattack on Russia would cause the same level of devastation there.19
As in the case of a regional nuclear war in South Asia, the direct effects of this large-scale nuclear war would be only a small part of the picture. If the
full strategic arsenal allowed under New START were drawn into the conflict, the resulting firestorms in the U.S. and Russia
would loft more than150 million tons of debris into the upper atmosphere. In a matter of days,
temperatures would plummet across the globe by an average of 8 C. In the interior regions of North America and Eurasia,
temperatures would fall as much as 30 C. In the temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere there
would not be a single day free of frost for 3 years. [20] and [21] Agriculture would stop, and
ecosystems would collapse. The vast majority of the human race would starve to death, and it is possible that homo sapiens
could become extinct.

Only US-Russia war causes extinction
I should emphasize that this is not a question of preventing "proliferation". The weapons that pose the danger of nuclear
winter are the existing big arsenals. It is these that need most urgently to be eliminated. A war between Pakistan
and India with the arsenals they are believed to have at present, or the use of the few weapons that a "rogue state" might make
clandestinely, would be a regional disaster of the most terrible magnitude; but it would not cause nuclear winter.

Only US-Russia war causes extinction
BOSTROM 2002 (Nick, PhD, Professor of Philosophy at Oxford, Existential Risks: Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related
Hazards, Journal of Evolution and Technology, Vol. 9, No. 1 (2002), http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html)
A much greater existential risk emerged with the build-up of nuclear arsenals in the US and the USSR.
An all-out nuclear war was a possibility with both a substantial probability and with consequences that might have been persistent enough to qualify as
global and terminal. There was a real worry among those best acquainted with the information available
at the time that a nuclear Armageddon would occur and that it might annihilate our species or
permanently destroy human civilization.[4] Russia and the US retain large nuclear arsenals that could be used in a future
confrontation, either accidentally or deliberately. There is also a risk that other states may one day build up large nuclear arsenals. Note however that a
smaller nuclear exchange, between India and Pakistan for instance, is not an existential risk, since
it would not destroy or thwart humankinds potential permanently. Such a war might however be a local terminal risk for the cities most likely to be
targeted. Unfortunately, we shall see that nuclear Armageddon and comet or asteroid strikes are mere preludes to the existential risks that we will
encounter in the 21st century.

A2: FALLOUT

Fallout wont cause extinction
Yet in spite of the widespread belief in nuclear extinction, there was almost no scientific support for such a possibility. The scenario of the book
and movie On the Beach [2], with fallout clouds gradually enveloping the earth and wiping out all life, was
and is fiction. The scientific evidence is that fallout would only kill people who are immediately
downwind of surface nuclear explosions and who are heavily exposed during the first few days. Global
fallout has no potential for causing massive immediate death (though it could cause up to millions of cancers
worldwide over many decades) [3]. In spite of the lack of evidence, large sections of the peace movement have left unaddressed the question of whether
nuclear war inevitably means global extinction.

No impact to fallout
By the time stratospheric fallout reaches the earth, its radioactivity is greatly reduced. For example,
after one year, the time typically required for any sizable amount of fission products to move
from the northern to the southern stratosphere, the rate of decay will be less than a hundred
thousandth of what it was one hour after the blast. It is for this reason that stratospheric fallout does not have the
potential to cause widespread and immediate sickness or death.

Fallout is survivable
An authoritative report on the effect of ionising radiation, called Beir III,[14] concludes that exposure of the whole body to 100 millisieverts will result
in an increase in the naturally occurring cancer death rate of 0.5 per cent to 1.4 per cent, and 50 to 750 additional serious genetic disorders per million
live births. An average exposure of 20 millisieverts from delayed fallout from a nuclear war could,
according to these figures, cause 600,000 to 1,700,000 additional cancer deaths and 40,000 to 600,000
additional genetic defects, manifested over a period of 50 years or more. Figures on risks of cancer and genetic
defects from exposure to ionising radiation used by the International Commission on Radiological Protection[15] for radiation protection purposes lie
within the range of uncertainty specified by the Beir report. If the effects of carbon-14 over many thousands of years are included, these figures should
be doubled.

No extinction from fallout
Previous nuclear explosions have injected an estimated 5 tonnes of plutonium into the
atmosphere.[22] No one knows what effect this is having on human health. One of the highest estimates of the
consequences is by John Gofman, who thinks 950,000 people worldwide may die of lung cancer as a result of this
plutonium, over a period of many decades.[23] A 4000Mt nuclear war could cause the release of ten
times as much plutonium, some 50 tonnes, with ten times the consequences. Large nuclear
power reactors contain an average inventory of perhaps 300 kilogrammes of plutonium. If it is
assumed that all the plutonium from 20 large reactors - more than one tenth of the world total -
were dispersed in a 4000Mt nuclear war, this would add another six tonnes of plutonium to the total
released into the atmosphere. This would be about one tenth the amount directly released by the nuclear explosions themselves.
The cancers and genetic defects caused by global fallout from a nuclear war would only appear
over a period of many decades, and would cause only a small increase in the current rates of
cancer and genetic defects. The scientific evidence clearly shows that global fallout from even
the largest nuclear war poses no threat to the survival of the human species. Nevertheless, the fact that
hundreds of thousands or millions of people who would suffer and die from global fallout cannot be ignored. Furthermore, many more people than this
would die from exposure to fallout in the immediate vicinity of nuclear explosions.

A2: NUKE WINTER

Even the newest scientific data doesnt support nuclear winter
SEITZ 2011 (Russell, served as an Associate of The Center for International Affairs and a Fellow of the
Department of Physics at Harvard. He is presently chief scientist at Microbubbles LLC, Nuclear winter was and is
debatable, Nature, 7 J U LY 2011, vol 475)
Alan Robocks contention that there has been no real scientific debate about the nuclear winter concept is itself
debatable (Nature 473, 275276; 2011). This potential climate disaster, popularized in Science in 1983, rested on
the output of a one- dimensional model that was later shown to overestimate the smoke a nuclear
holocaust might engender. More refined estimates, combined with advanced three-dimensional
models (see go.nature.com/ kss8te), have dramatically reduced the extent and severity of the
projected cooling. Despite this, Carl Sagan, who co-authored the 1983 Science paper, went so far as to
posit the extinction of Homo sapiens (C. Sagan Foreign Affairs 63,75-77; 1984). Some regarded this
apocalyptic prediction as an exercise in mythology. George Rathjens of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology protested: Nuclear winter is the worst example of the
misrepresentation of science to the public in my memory, (see go.nature.com/yujz84) and
climatologist Kerry Emanuel observed that the subject had become notorious for its lack of
scientific integrity (Nature 319, 259; 1986). Robocks single-digit fall in temperature is at odds with
the subzero (about -25C) continental cooling originally projected for a wide spectrum of nuclear
wars. Whereas Sagan predicted darkness at noon from a US-Soviet nuclear conflict, Robock
projects global sunlight that is several orders of magnitude brighter for a Pakistan-India conflict
literally the difference between night and day. Since 1983, the projected worst-case cooling
has fallen from a Siberian deep freeze spanning 11,000 degree- days Celsius (a measure of the
severity of winters) to numbers so unseasonably small as to call the very term nuclear winter
into question.

Even nuke winter believers think the models are uncertain and extinction wont
happen
Some may be suspicious of computational climate modeling, because of limitations in the
methods, ordinary issues with false positives and exaggerated effects in statistical sciences, and
because of the possibility of political bias: the threat of nuclear winter is said to have played an
important role in bolstering nuclear disarmament efforts, so there may be an incentive to
exaggerate it. Also, a high profile prediction that burning oil fields in the Gulf War would cause
severe cooling was not realized as particles were unable to reach the upper atmosphere (the recent computer
models conclude that the oil fires were too small, while burning cities could be large enough).
I asked independent climate scientists and some in the effective altruism movement, who were confident in the basic
effect, although not necessarily precise magnitudes of any particular paper. However, well-structured replications
might help to control for publication bias.
I also asked the authors of the recent major papers about the risk of human extinction from
severe nuclear winter, which I discussed in a previous post. They argue that outright extinction is very
unlikely, even in the face of billions of deaths, because humanity has survived past volcanic
eruptions with greater climatic effects, because the effects would not be uniform across the
world, and because various food sources would remain practicable (fishing, greenhouses, etc).
Some would survive, and face the challenge of rebuilding civilization. Permanent failure in that task
would turn horrific global catastrophe into an existential one. As I noted in the linked post, however, we should
regress somewhat from such extremely low estimates based on past calibration data and model uncertainty.

Nuke winter wont happen even if the theory is correctarsenals have changed
DUNNING 2011 (Brian, Computer Scientist and award-winning science writer/blogger, Nuclear War and Nuclear Winter, Skeptoid #244,
Feb 8, http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4244)
Other cataclysmic events have proven that the nuclear winter scenario is not at all far-fetched. The eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the
Philippines, also in 1991, threw some 17 million tons of particulates into the upper atmosphere that caused global temperatures to drop by about a
degree for several months. Sunlight dropped by 10%. This temperature drop did not, however, have any long-term effect on
agriculture.
Pinatubo was only a blip compared the the K-T extinction event of some 65 million years ago, when a theorized
asteroid hit us with one hundred million megatons of destructive force, lighting virtually the entire world on fire. The evidence of this is called the K-T
boundary, a layer of clay found all around the world. Sunlight was reduced by 10-20% for ten years, which caused a massive cascading extinction of
species from plants to herbivores to carnivores.
But we shouldn't expect anything like this to happen from a nuclear war. Times continue to
change, including the nature of warfare. Nations no longer stockpile the megaton class weapons
popular in the 1950s and 1960s; typical yields now are a fraction of a megaton. The United States'
conventional capability is now so good that it can effectively destroy an entire nation's ability to
wage large-scale war overnight, using only conventional weapons. But that doesn't mean the nuclear forces are no
longer needed. Should a superpower strike first against the United States with nuclear weapons, the response would more than likely be nuclear,
bringing Mutually Assured Destruction into play. But what about a small nation striking first? What about nukes in the trunks of cars parked in major
cities? In the modern era, it's much less clear that any superpower would necessarily have anyone
to shoot back at.
Increasingly, non-superpower nations are building nuclear stockpiles. India and Pakistan might get into it with one another. Israel's foes might surprise
it with nuclear weapons. Who knows what North Korea and Iran might do. Smaller regional nuclear wars remain a very real possibility. According to
the worst-case estimates in the TTAPS papers, about one million tons of smoke would be expected from the fires resulting from each nuclear strike. And
these smaller regional nuclear combats are expected to use about 50 nuclear weapons (compare this to 150 nuclear weapons for a broader global
nuclear war). Thus, today's most likely nuclear scenario would be expected to produce climate effects
similar to three Pinatubo events, according to the worst estimates, and still many orders of
magnitude less than the K-T extinction.
And so, while the nuclear winter scenario is a good prediction of the effects of a worst-case scenario, when all the variables are at their least favorable,
the strongest probabilities favor a much less catastrophic nuclear autumn; and even those
effects depend strongly on variables like whether the war happens during the growing season. A
bomb in Los Angeles might result in history's worst firestorm, while a bomb in the mountains of Pakistan might create no fires at all. The simple fact is
that there are too many unpredictable variables to know what kind of climate effects the smoke
following nuclear fires will produce, until it actually happens. Obviously we're all very mindful of the many terrible implications of
nuclear combat, and if it ever happens, the prospect of a nuclear autumn will likely be among the least of our concerns. The physicist Freeman Dyson
perhaps described it best when he said "(TTAPS is) an absolutely atrocious piece of science, but I quite despair of setting
the public record straight... Who wants to be accused of being in favor of nuclear war?"

Nuclear winter wont cause extinction
The latest stimulus for doomsday beliefs is 'nuclear winter': the blocking of sunlight from dust raised by nuclear explosions and smoke from
fires ignited by nuclear attacks. This would result in a few months of darkness and lowered temperatures, mainly in the
northern mid-latitudes [5]. The effects could be quite significant, perhaps causing the deaths of up to several hundred million more people
than would die from the immediate effects of blast, heat and radiation. But the evidence, so far, seems to provide little basis
for beliefs in nuclear extinction. The impact of nuclear winter on populations nearer the equator,
such as in India, does not seem likely to be significant. The most serious possibilities would result from major ecological
destruction, but this remains speculative at present.

Observational evidence disproves nuclear winter
Stratospheric dust from a nuclear war seems unlikely to cause such climatic change. In 1883 the
volcanic eruption at Krakatoa deposited some 10 to 100 thousand million tonnes of dust in the
stratosphere, and the 1963 Mt Agung eruption about half as much. These injections seem to
have caused a minor cooling of the surface temperature of the earth, at most about half a degree
Celsius, lasting a few years, with no long term consequences. A nuclear war involving 4000Mt
from present arsenals would probably deposit much less dust in the stratosphere than either the
Krakatoa or Mt Agung eruptions.[38]

City burning and sun blockage are deliberate lies by soviet scientists to demoralize
Americans
KEARNY 2003 (Cresson, scientist recruited by Nobel Prize Laureate and Manhattan Project Scientist Eugene Wigner as researcher for civil
defense Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Nuclear War Survival Skills, http://www.oism.org/nwss/s73p904.htm)
Soviet propagandists promptly exploited belief in unsurvivable "nuclear winter" to increase fear
of nuclear weapons and war, and to demoralize their enemies. Because raging city firestorms are needed to inject
huge amounts of smoke into the stratosphere and thus, according to one discredited theory, prevent almost all solar heat from reaching the ground,
the Soviets changed their descriptions of how a modern city will burn if blasted by a nuclear
explosion.
Figure 1.6 pictures how Russian scientists and civil defense officials realistically described - before the
invention of "nuclear winter" - the burning of a city hit by a nuclear weapon. Buildings in the blasted area for
miles around ground zero will be reduced to scattered rubble - mostly of concrete, steel, and other nonflammable materials - that will not burn in
blazing fires. Thus in the Oak Ridge National Laboratory translation (ORNL-TR-2793) of Civil Defense. Second Edition (500,000 copies), Moscow,
1970, by Egorov, Shlyakhov, and Alabin, we read: "Fires do not occur in zones of complete destruction . . . that are characterized by an overpressure
exceeding 0.5 kg/cm2 [- 7 psi]., because rubble is scattered and covers the burning structures. As a result the rubble only smolders, and fires as such do
not occur."
Firestorms destroyed the centers of Hamburg, Dresden, and Tokyo. The old-fashioned buildings
of those cities contained large amounts of flammable materials, were ignited by many thousands
of small incendiaries, and burned quickly as standing structures well supplied with air. No
firestorm has ever injected smoke into the stratosphere, or caused appreciable cooling below its
smoke cloud.

Nuclear winter is just propagandascientific studies were manipulated for
political reasons and dissenters were intimidated into silence
defense Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Nuclear War Survival Skills, http://www.oism.org/nwss/s73p904.htm)
The theory that smoke from burning cities and forests and dust from nuclear explosions would cause worldwide freezing
temperatures was conceived in 1982 by the German atmospheric chemist and environmentalist Paul Crutzen, and continues to be
promoted by a worldwide propaganda campaign. This well funded campaign began in 1983 with televised scientific-political
meetings in Cambridge and Washington featuring American and Russian scientists. A barrage of newspaper and magazine articles followed, including a
scaremongering article by Carl Sagan in the October 30, 1983 issue of Parade, the Sunday tabloid read by millions. The most influential
article was featured in the December 23,1983 issue of Science (the weekly magazine of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science): "Nuclear winter, global consequences of multiple nuclear explosions," by five scientists, R. P. Turco, O. B. Toon, T. P. Ackerman,
J. B. Pollack, and C. Sagan. Significantly, these activists listed their names to spell TTAPS, pronounced "taps," the bugle call proclaiming "lights
out" or the end of a military funeral.
Until 1985, non-propagandizing scientists did not begin to effectively refute the numerous
errors, unrealistic assumptions, and computer modeling weakness' of the TTAPS and related "nuclear winter"
hypotheses. A principal reason is that government organizations, private corporations, and most
scientists generally avoid getting involved in political controversies, or making statements likely
to enable antinuclear activists to accuse them of minimizing nuclear war dangers, thus
undermining hopes for peace. Stephen Schneider has been called a fascist by some disarmament supporters
for having written "Nuclear Winter Reappraised," according to the Rocky Mountain News of July 6, 1986. Three days later, this paper, that until
recently featured accounts of unsurvivable "nuclear winter," criticized Carl Sagan and defended Thompson and Schneider in its lead editorial, "In Study
of Nuclear Winter, Let Scientists Be Scientists." In a free country, truth will out - although sometimes too late to effectively counter fast-
hittingpropaganda.
Effective refutation of "nuclear winter" also was delayed by the prestige of politicians and of
politically motivated scientists and scientific organizations endorsing the TTAPS forecast of
worldwide doom. Furthermore, the weakness' in the TTAPS hypothesis could not be effectively
explored until adequate Government funding was made available to cover costs of lengthy,
expensive studies, including improved computer modeling of interrelated, poorly understood
meteorological phenomena.

A2: EARTH EXPLODES

The earth cannot explode and Chalko is a fraud
THOMPSON 2001 (Tim, Physicist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory focusing on atmospheric physics, astronomy, and astrophysics, June
8, http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=10&t=000329)
Highly unlikely to be worthy of consideration outside of the "lunatic fringe". The author, Tom J. Chalko,
is on the staff of the dynamics and Vibration group in the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, of the University of Melbourne. I
assume that his background is in mechanical engineering. However, he is also billed as "Head of the Geophysics Division" of
"Scientific Engineering Research P/L, which certainly apears to belong to Chalko in its entirety,
and may be nothing more than an extension of himself. It is significant that his position as a
"geophysicist" appears to be one invented by himself. He is also evidently the founder of "Thiaoouba Prophecy and The
Freedom of Choice", which lists among Chalko's accomplishments "The Amazing bioresonant Chakra Shirt. You can also explore the
mysteries of self healing, astral travel and levitation. It would appear that Chalko may be a less
than totally reliable source of scientific arguments over the explodeability of the Earth.
But, of course, we are obliged to consider the argument as well as the source. In this case, the webpage is only a summary or introduction. So I followed
the link at the bottom and downloaded the paper in PDF format. The alleged justification is given as a mathematical argument, so that much of the
paper will not be accessible to those who don't at least recognize the basics of applied calculus.
As one might expect, it's a bogus argument. The premise is an alleged proof that there is a minimum
possible size for the central solid core of the Earth, but it's based on the false premise that the
core must remain at all times in equilibrium at the center. Furthermore, the argument that the
central equilibrium is unstable is based on the false condition that the pressure gradient and
gravitational forces act in opposition, but they do not. A solid core displaced from the center sees only
restoring forces, and thus cannot be forced from its position as Chalko tries to show. And, if that
weren't enough, the viscosity of the liquid outer core and relatively sold mantle are ignored,
which is a fatal flaw in any analysis of the dynamic behavior of the core. And, if even that were
not enough, there is no thermodynamic analysis at all. How can one argue that the Earth's
interior will "overheat" if one does not even consider basic thermodynamics?
The sun irradiates the Earth's surface to the tune of roughly 1370 Watts per square meter (W/m^2). Climate related changes in radiative forcing are on
the order of 1 W/m^2. The average outward geothermal flux is about 0.06 W/m^2. It is hard to see how a change in radiative forcing at the surface, on
the order of 1/1000 would seriously affect the already miniscule heat flow from the Earth. In any case, a proper treatment of the thermal conditions at
the surface, and throughout the Earth is required to make definitive statements, but there is no attempt at such in Chalko's paper.
The other issue is whether or not a planet can "explode". As is the case for any explosion, one
must demonstrate the presence of an energy source, and a process that can generate energy very
much faster than it can be dissipated through radiative of hydrodynamic means. No such source
has ever been identified for the Earth or any other planet. There are vague references to radioactive material and
fission explosions in various "exploding planet" hypotheses (such as Tom van Flandern's), and evidently Chalko makes the same vague argument (or
shall we call it "hope"?). It is just "handwaving", as we say in the science biz.
My conclusion is that the argument is very bad, and that the source is not trustworthy.

A2: OZONE LOSS

Their ozone loss arguments are obsolete and theres no new data
Because the soot associated with a nuclear exchange is injected into the upper atmosphere, the stratosphere is heated and stratospheric circulation is
perturbed. For the 5-Tg injection associated with a regional conflict, stratospheric temperatures would remain elevated by 30 C after four years.68
The resulting temperature and circulation anomalies would reduce ozone columns by 20% globally, by 2545% at middle latitudes, and by 5070% at
northern high latitudes for perhaps as much as five years, with substantial losses persisting for an additional five years.7 The calculations of
the 1980s generally did not consider such effects or the mechanisms that cause them. Rather, they
focused on the direct injection of nitrogen oxides by the fireballs of large-yield weapons that are
no longer deployed. Global-scale models have only recently become capable of performing the
sophisticated atmospheric chemical calculations needed to delineate detailed ozone-depletion
mechanisms. Indeed, simulations of ozone loss following a SORT conflict have not yet been
conducted.

Ozone argument is wrong
The next effect to which beliefs in nuclear extinction were attached was ozone depletion. Beginning in the mid-1970s, scares about stratospheric ozone
developed, culminating in 1982 in the release of Jonathan Schell's book The Fate of the Earth [4]. Schell painted a picture of human
annihilation from nuclear war based almost entirely on effects from increased ultraviolet light at
the earth's surface due to ozone reductions caused by nuclear explosions. Schell's book was greeted with adulation rarely observed in any field. Yet by
the time the book was published, the scientific basis for ozone-based nuclear extinction had almost entirely
evaporated. The ongoing switch by the military forces of the United States and the Soviet Union
from multi-megatonne nuclear weapons to larger numbers of smaller weapons means that the
effect on ozone from even the largest nuclear war is unlikely to lead to any major effect on
human population levels, and extinction from ozone reductions is virtually out of the question [3].

No extinction from ozone
Calculations made in the mid-1970s assuming large nuclear arsenals with many high-yield
explosions concluded that reductions of ozone could reach 50 per cent or more in the northern
hemisphere, with smaller reductions in the southern hemisphere.[30] But since the number of
high-yield weapons in present nuclear arsenals is now smaller, much less oxides of nitrogen would be deposited in the stratosphere
by nuclear war than assumed in earlier calculations, and so significant ozone reductions are unlikely.[31]

No impact to UV-B
If significant ozone reduction did occur, the most important direct effect on humans would be
an increase in skin cancer. However, this is seldom lethal, and could be avoided by reducing
exposure to sunlight. Potentially more serious would be effects on crops.[32] Some of the important grains, for example, are sensitive to uv.
Whether the net effects on crop yields would be significant is hard to estimate. But whatever the reduction in ozone, ozone
levels would return pretty much to normal after a few years.[9] It seems unlikely that in the
context of a major nuclear war the changes in uv alone would be of serious concern. In
particular, the threat of human extinction raised by Jonathan Schell in The Fate of the Earth,[33] based mostly on effects of
increased uv from ozone reduction, seems very small indeed.

UV-B wont blind people or animals
It is sometimes claimed that nuclear war could destroy ozone to such an extent that humans and
animals would be blinded by excess uv. Even if large numbers of high-yield weapons were exploded, this possibility seems very unlikely
except for a contribution to snow blindness in the far north. Stratospheric ozone can never be completely removed, but
at most reduced greatly. Even if a 50 per cent or more reduction in ozone occurred - and as noted this
seems improbable with present nuclear arsenals - protection from uv for humans could be
obtained from sunglasses or just ordinary glasses, which absorb uv. For animals, the following considerations are relevant.
Ozone levels vary considerably from place to place and from time to time, both seasonally and
daily (sometimes by up to 50 per cent). Sunlight at the equator typically passes through only half
as much ozone as at the mid-latitudes, yet animals at the equator are not known to go blind
more often than elsewhere. Furthermore, most ozone reductions from a nuclear war would be in
the mid and high latitudes, where ozone levels are higher to start with and where the 'path
length' of sunlight through ozone is increased due to its oblique angle of incidence. But this does not
mean complacency is warranted, as the concerns of John Hampson illustrate.

Ozone depletion is a mythbetter studies disprove it
defense Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Nuclear War Survival Skills, orig. published 1987, http://www.oism.org/nwss/s73p904.htm)
Facts: Large nuclear explosions do inject huge amounts of nitrogen oxides (gasses that destroy ozone) into the stratosphere. However, the
percent of the stratospheric ozone destroyed by a given amount of nitrogen oxides has been
greatly overestimated in almost all theoretical calculations and models. For example, the Soviet and
U.S. atmospheric nuclear test explosions of large weapons in 1952-1962 were calculated by Foley and
Ruderman to result in a reduction of more than 10 percent in total ozone. (See M. H. Foley and M. A. Ruderman,
'Stratospheric NO from Past Nuclear Explosions", Journal of Geophysics, Res. 78, 4441-4450.) Yet observations that they cited
showed no reductions in ozone. Nor did ultraviolet increase. Other theoreticians calculated
sizable reductions in total ozone, but interpreted the observational data to indicate either no
reduction, or much smaller reductions than their calculated ones.
A realistic simplified estimate of the increased ultraviolet light dangers to American survivors of
a large nuclear war equates these hazards to moving from San Francisco to sea level at the
equator, where the sea level incidence of skin cancers (seldom fatal) is highest- about 10 times
higher than the incidence at San Francisco. Many additional thousands of American survivors might get skin cancer, but
little or no increase in skin cancers might result if in the post-attack world deliberate sun
tanning and going around hatless went out of fashion. Furthermore, almost all of today's
warheads are smaller than those exploded in the large- weapons tests mentioned above; most
would inject much smaller amounts of ozone-destroying gasses, or no gasses, into the
stratosphere, where ozone deficiencies may persist for years. And nuclear weapons smaller than 500 kilotons
result in increases (due to smog reactions) in upper tropospheric ozone. In a nuclear war, these
increases would partially compensate for the upper-level tropospheric decreases-as explained by Julius S.
Chang and Donald J. Wuebbles of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

A2: HURTS OCEANS

Oceans will recover quickly from nuclear war
OSTERBERG 1983 (Charles, Ecological Research Division, U.S. Department of Energy, Nuclear War and the
Ocean, in Wastes in the Ocean Volume 3, p. 422)
The scenario calls for a nuclear exchange involving 5 x 10
9
tons (5000 megatons) of TNT-equivalent with nuclear warheads
falling on all cities of the world greater than 100,000 population, plus assorted military targets.
Much of the close-in fallout from bombs landing on targets along the east coast of the United States, plus debris from
destroyed nuclear power plants, will fall into the ocean. This chapter focuses on the resulting impact on the near-
shore ocean off the eastern coast of the United States. Surprisingly, radiation is a relatively minor stress to
the biota, both in the short term and over the long term. This is because the ocean has a third dimension,
depth, which permits radionuclides to distribute themselves vertically, thus diluting their impact on
marine organisms. Another reason is the seawater itself which, because of its density, absorbs much of the
radiation, thus reducing the external dose to organisms. Finally, uptake of fission products is minimal
both because of the isotopic dilution and because organisms have no metabolic need for these
heavier radioactive elements. The major killer, in the short term, along with shock and heat, is the mud, which clogs
the gills and smothers both plants and animals. A longer-term threat is the reduced light to the surface of the ocean
because of dust, photochemical smog, and smoke from the burning cities and forests. Once that subsides, the
clearing skies will allow increased ultraviolet radiation to penetrate into the ocean, causing some
hardships, for the radiation is expected to increase due to the reductions in the ozone caused by the blast. Though
some of these bomb-induced changes will stress the ocean, perhaps greatly if some fears are realized, the ocean
should survive. Recovery will occur much more quickly than on land because of the many
processes that cleanse the ocean.

Nuclear war wont cause human extinction or destroy the oceans
Ocean, in Wastes in the Ocean Volume 3, p. 462) This evidence is modified for gender equity
It is reassuring to know that both the U.S. National Academy of Sciences report (U.S. NAS, 1975) and the
real-world data from Enewetak and Bikini agree. The oceans will survive the holocaust, the tides
will continue in their constant movements, and the seas creatures, great and small, will continue in their
mysterious ways. Whether man will be around to walk along the beaches and breathe deeply of the salt air and
wonder about these mysteries is another question. But man [humanity] is among the most ingenious and
adaptable animals and should not be underestimated, as the sea should not. Like the
sea,[humanity] man is resilient.

No ecological damageradioactivity wont damage plankton and levels decrease
higher in the food chain
Ocean, in Wastes in the Ocean Volume 3, p. 440-442)
Despite the rapid decay plankton collected from the troubled waters were intensely radioactive, much
more so than an equal volume of water. However, the distribution of plankton is patchy and sparse, and
water in the ocean is abundant so that, even though the organisms were thousands of times more radioactive
per unit weight than the water, most of the radioactivity was in the water. Plankton had high levels of
radionuclides with short t , such as 239Np, quickly succeeded by 58Co and 140Ba-140La (Lowman, 1960) (Table
19.3). these were not assimilated but passed rapidly through the gut, causing no apparent damage to
either the plankton or their predators. The fecal pellets combined many smaller fallout particles,
inadvertently picked up while feeding, in the larger package of fecal material which accelerated transit to the bottom
(Osterberg et al., 1963). And in the process of of feeding, the plankton were gradually removing the
particles, hastening the clearing of the waters (Table 19.4).
Fishes that survived did not pick up many of the fission products other than those that adhered to their
external surfaces or were in the digestive tracts of the smaller organisms they fed on. These radionuclides were
not absorbed in the gut to any extent but passed quickly through to join the rain of material headed
toward the bottom.
Most radionuclides, though concentrated by phytoplankton (Table 19.5), are reduced in passing up
the food chain. So, while phytoplankton and zooplankton may be very radioactive, the small
organisms that eat the plankton will have less radioactivity, the small fishes that feed on them
will have even less, and the bigger predacious fishes even less (Osterberg et al., 1964). This is because
most of these animals discriminate against, and therefore do not concentrate, these
radionuclides from their food or water and most fission products are not vital to life processes. At
each step of the food chain the reduction in concentration is repeated (Table 19.6). For instance,
although the tuna or swordfish may have more radioactivity than the water from which it was taken, it will be much
less per unit of weight than the plankton at the bottom of the food chain. Bowen et al. (1971) sum this up: Lower
trophic levels of the seas are likely to have greater concentrations of radioactivity than higher trophic levels.

Nuclear winter wouldnt destroy the oceancoastal areas are key to biodiversity
and theyd survive
In the absence of solar insolation, because of nuclear war, the ice would not melt in the Arctic,
and that would be detrimental to the ocean. The phytoplankton would be unproductive, and the animals of the
sea, which all depend on this first link of the food chain, would starve. Likewise, failure of the summer un to establish
a thermocline in deeper temperate waters would cause many viable phytoplankton cells to sink into the depths and to
be lost.
However, this would not be true in shallow coastal waters. Viable cells would be present and
would respond to whatever light there was. This is important because the coastal zone is much
more productive than the open ocean. Vast areas of the sea would escape the worst of the thick
smoke and smog. Parts of the Gulf of Mexico and much of the southern hemisphere, where large
cities are scarce and where there is less land mass, would receive nearly normal insolation. Also
with the air being only 2% as viscous as water so that particles fall out quite rapidly, and the troposphere
cleansed by rain and snow, it seems unlikely that many of the larger particles would remain
airborne for long.
As for the smaller particles in the stratosphere, it is hard for me to believe that they would absorb
enough sunlight to kill a resilient ocean. So, although the mud would be the initial killer, the greatest long-
term threat would be from a large reduction in sunlight from the dust, smoke, and smog. But, though hard
pressed, the ocean would survive.

Marine organisms resist radiation and polar regions would survive a nuclear war
which allows pockets of life to repopulate the ocean
So while the dose to organisms would be greatly increased by fallout settling to the bottom, it is doubtful that many
benthic organisms would be greatly affected. The few laboratory studies made so far indicate that marine
organisms are much less sensitive to radiation than man. But the biggest reason is that the deep ocean
would be far downwind from the close-in fall out pattern and would receive mostly small
particles. Since the mean depth of the ocean is 3800 m, and given the slow settling rate and the
rapid decay rate of fallout particles, gross contamination of the deep ocean bottom is unlikely.
Even if bottom organisms proved vulnerable and were universally killed in all exposed areas of
the ocean, pools of life would remain. Sheltered from fallout, increased UV, and falling soil and
debris by the thick layers of ice, organisms beneath the polar caps would escape. In fact none of
the polar regions is close enough to presumed targets to be expected to receive any close-in
fallout, even in ice-free areas, although in due time they would be subject to long-term fallout. Although not every
one agrees recruitment from these pockets of life could repopulate the deep oceans, there are not too
many obstacles to prevent it. Even a the equator, the temperature of deep bottom water in near 0
o
C.
And deep currents, though weak, do exist.

UV-B radiation wouldnt destroy ocean life
Thus it does not appear that increased UV would be as serious a problem to organisms in the
ocean as it would be for land plants and animals. This is particularly true since the bomb blasts would carry up
much soil and dust into the air, reducing the intensity of the sunlight and increasing the
turbidity in the ocean. This would decrease the UV light reaching into the ocean more than it
would the longer wavelengths, thus compensating for the decrease in ozone. Marine organisims might then
have more of a problem because of too little light, rather than having too much UV light. However, the residence
times of dust and smoke in the atmosphere are shorter than the recovery time of the ozone layer, which means
increased UV light might become a more serious problem later on, after the smoke and dust clear.
But, since the nuclear bombs in this scenario were all exploded near the ground, input of the oxides of
nitrogen into the stratosphere would not be expected to be great. Therefore no major depletion
of the ozone is anticipated. Although UV-B light would increase somewhat, it would not pose a
serious threat to the ocean.
Burns were seen on some fishes after the nuclear tests in the Pacific, but they would be less
common in our scenario. At Enewetak and Bikini the combination of air bursts above the ocean,
clear tropical waters, and shallow reefs led to more organisms with burns than would be
expected from ground shots on our east coast. Here the large angle of incidence, with more
energy reflected from the surface and less penetrating into the depths coupled with our murky
coastal waters, would minimize the effects.

Nuclear winter wont kill plankton
This conclusion that the ocean might be particularly vulnerable is not believed unanimously.
There are reasons to think that the oceans might survive several months of darkness. In fact the
polar oceans show that they can survive several months of darkness. Phytoplankton prosper
under the ice and snow at fairly low light levels, although they need some light for photosynthesis. G.
Saunders (personal communication) has shown that on Frains Lake in Michigan winter production (carbon
fixation) was as high as summers even though only 5% of the ambient light penetrated the ice and
snow to reach the surface of the water.

No genetic damage to the ocean
As Templeton et al. (1971) point out, most of our concern for genetic effects relates to humans. After all, each human
life is sacred, and genetic damage is not repairable in an individual. It is repairable, however, in large
populations where natural selection of the fittest and best determines who lives. In the ocean,
where it is often eat or be eaten, the lives of individuals are not important as long as the population
flourishes. That does not mean that there will not be any genetic defects from the radiation, but
that selection tends to eliminate them. Furthermore the vastness of the ocean quickly dilutes the
radioactivity, and the ability of seawater to screen out radiation plus the apparent ability of
marine organisms to cope with high doses of radioactivity throughout their evolution combine
to indicate that genetic changes will be minimal. Deep marine organisms are not thought to be any more
sensitive to radiation than other creatures in the sea. Furthermore no abnormalities in marine organisms
have been reported in monitoring activities at those places where nuclear wastes have been
dumped into the ocean over a period of many years.

A2: GENETIC DAMAGE

No genetic damage
Myth: Most of the unborn children and grandchildren of people who have been exposed to
radiation from nuclear explosions will be genetically damaged will be malformed, delayed victims of nuclear war.
Facts: The authoritative study by the National Academy of Sciences, A Thirty Year Study of the Survivors qf Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, was published in 1977. It concludes that the incidence of abnormalities is no
higher among children later conceived by parents who were exposed to radiation during the
attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki than is the incidence of abnormalities among Japanese
children born to un-exposed parents.
This is not to say that there would be no genetic damage, nor that some fetuses subjected to large radiation doses would not
be damaged. But the overwhelming evidence does show that the exaggerated fears of radiation
damage to future generations are not supported by scientific findings.

A2: FOOD CONTAMINATION

No impactjust peel your apples
Facts: If the falloutparticles do not become mixed with the parts of food that are eaten, no harm is
done. Food and water in dust-tight containers are not contaminated by fallout radiation. Peeling
fruits and vegetables removes essentially all fallout, as does removing the uppermost several
inches of stored grain onto which fallout particles have fallen. Water from many sources -- such
as deep wells and covered reservoirs, tanks, and containers -- would not be contaminated. Even
water containing dissolved radioactive elements and compounds can be made safe for drinking
by simply filtering it through earth, as described later in this book.

A2: TURNS WARMING

Nuclear war climate effects are short termwarming outweighs
Complementary to temperature change is radiative forcing, the change in energy flux. Figure 3b shows how nuclear soot changes the radiative forcing at
Earths surface and compares its effect to those of two well-known phenomena: warming associated with greenhouse gases and the 1991 Mount
Pinatubo volcanic eruption, the largest in the 20th century. Since the Industrial Revolution, greenhouse gases have increased the energy flux by 2.5
W/m2. The transient forcing from the Pinatubo eruption peaked at about 4 W/m2 (the minus sign means the flux decreased). One implication of the
figure is that even a regional war between India and Pakistan can force the climate to a far greater degree than the
greenhouse gases that many fear will alter the climate in the foreseeable future. Of course, the durations of the forcings
are different: The radiative forcing by nuclear-weapons-generated soot might persist for a
decade, but that from greenhouse gases is expected to last for a century or more, allowing time
for the climate system to respond to the forcing. Accordingly, while the Ice Agelike
temperatures in figure 3a could lead to an expansion of sea ice and terrestrial snowpack, they
probably would not be persistent enough to cause the buildup of global ice sheets.

A2: NEVER RECOVER

We would eventually recover
On the plus side, key technological and other knowledge could survive a catastrophe, embodying
enormous value. Modern strains of plants and animals, the result of centuries of selective
breeding, would also provide a substantial advantage. Active efforts could be made (and some
have been) to preserve these goods. Metals have already been extracted from the Earth,
providing abundant supplies for recycling.
On the negative side of the ledger, one of the larger considerations is the depletion of fossil fuels and other non-
renewable resources that do not remain in recyclable form. Advanced renewable energy sources are technologically
challenging, and reliance on alternatives such as biomass and hydropower could be a significant challenge. Humans
might also worsen the environment in a lasting way technologically, for example through extensive global warming,
controlled through geoengineering which would lapse after the collapse of civilization (climate effects should
eventually dissipate so this is not necessarily fatal, but this would allow time for other natural changes to arise).
Artificial organisms might make the environment more dangerous.
Some degree of increased challenge might be met simply with slower growth and higher prices
for scarcer resources (e.g. for energy) but it is conceivable that some social dynamic would lastingly
stall development. My own take is that this is possible but seems quite unlikely given the availability of
(inferior) renewable or recyclable substitutes for most non-renewable resources, and frequent
independent discovery of innovations in history. So I would currently guess that the risk of permanent
drastic curtailment of human potential from failure to recover, conditional on nuclear war
causing the deaths of the overwhelming majority of humanity, is on the lower end. [Efforts are
underway at the FHI to interview economic historians, growth economists, and other area experts on this question.]

A2: U.S.-RUSSIA WAR

Even US-Russian arsenals wont cause extinctiontheyll only target each other
Myth: Overkill would result if all the U.S. and U.S.S.R, nuclear weapons were used meaning not only that the two superpowers have more than
enough weapons to kill all of each other's people, but also that they have enough weapons to exterminate the human race.
Facts: Statements that the U.S. and the Soviet Union have the power to kill the world's population
several times over are based on misleading calculations. One such calculation is to multiply the
deaths produced per kiloton exploded over Hiroshima or Nagasaki by an estimate of the number of kilotons in either side's
arsenal. (A kiloton explosion is one that produces the same amount of energy as does 1000 tons of TNT.) The unstated assumption
is that somehow the world's population could be gathered into circular crowds, each a few miles
in diameter with a population density equal to downtown Hiroshima or Nagasaki, and then a
small (Hiroshima-sized) weapon would be exploded over the center of each crowd. Other misleading
calculations are based on exaggerations of the dangers from long-lasting radiation and other
harmful effects of a nuclear war.

A2: ANY USE BAD

Low warhead numbers minimize the impact
The overwhelming bulk of nuclear explosive power resides in the arsenals of the two nuclear
superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. In 1960 this explosive power totalled perhaps 60,000Mt. But due to the trend noted
above, present arsenals total about 11,000Mt: about 3,500Mt for the United States and 7,500Mt for the Soviet Union.[46] While the trend to larger
numbers of smaller warheads increases the potential area destroyed by nuclear weapons, the reduction in total megatonnage
reduces the potential global effects. This is especially the case since the clouds from nuclear
explosions of 1Mt or less are unlikely to rise high into the stratosphere, reducing stratospheric
fallout and effects on ozone.

A2: YUDKOWSKY/UNDERESTIMATE

Psychological biases cause overestimation
Here I outline a number of possible reasons for exaggeration of the effects of nuclear war and
emphasis on worst cases. While the importance of most of these reasons may be disputed, I feel it is necessary to
raise them for discussion. The points raised are not meant to lay blame on anyone, but rather to help ensure that
peace movement theory and strategy are founded on sound beliefs. By understanding our motivations and emotional
responses, some insight may be gained into how better to struggle against nuclear war.
(a) Exaggeration to justify inaction. For many people, nuclear war is seen as such a terrible event,
and as something that people can do so little about, that they can see no point in taking action on peace
issues and do not even think about the danger. For those who have never been concerned or taken action on
the issue, accepting an extreme account of the effects of nuclear war can provide conscious or unconscious
justification for this inaction. In short, one removes from one's awareness the upsetting topic of nuclear war, and
justifies this psychological denial by believing the worst.
This suggests two things. First, it may be more effective in mobilising people against nuclear war to describe the
dangers in milder terms. Some experiments have shown that strong accounts of danger - for example, of smoking[17]
- can be less effective than weaker accounts in changing behaviour. Second, the peace movement should devote less
attention to the dangers of nuclear war and more attention to what people can do to oppose it in their day-to-day
lives.
(b) Fear of death. Although death receives a large amount of attention in the media, the consideration of
one's own death has been one of the most taboo topics in western culture, at least until recently.[18]
Nuclear war as an issue raises the topic insistently, and unconsciously many people may prefer
to avoid the issue for this reason. The fear of and repression of conscious thoughts about
personal death may also lead to an unconscious tendency to exaggerate the effects of nuclear
war. One's own personal death - the end of consciousness - can be especially threatening in the
context of others remaining alive and conscious. Somehow the death of everyone may be less
threatening. Robert Lifton[19] argues that children who learn at roughly the same age about both personal death
and nuclear holocaust may be unable to separate the two concepts, and as a result equate death with annihilation,
with undesirable consequences for coping individually with life and working collectively against nuclear war.
Another factor here may be a feeling of potential guilt at the thought of surviving and having
done nothing, or not enough or not the right thing, to prevent the deaths of others. Again, the idea that
nearly everyone will die in nuclear war does not raise such disturbing possibilities.
(c) Exaggeration to stimulate action. When people concerned about nuclear war describe the threat to others,
in many cases this does not trigger any action. An understandable response by the concerned people is to expand the
threat until action is triggered. This is valid procedure in many physiological and other domains. If a person does not
heed a call of 'Fire!', shouting louder may do the trick. But in many instances of intellectual argument this procedure
is not appropriate. In the case of nuclear war it seems clear that the threat, even when stated very conservatively, is
already past the point of sufficient stimulation. This means that what is needed is not an expansion of the threat but
rather some avenue which allows and encourages people to take action to challenge the threat. A carefully thought out
and planned strategy for challenging the war system, a strategy which makes sense to uncommitted people and which
can easily accommodate their involvement, is one such avenue.[20]
(d) Planning and defeatism. People may identify thinking about and planning for an undesirable
future - namely the occurrence and aftermath of nuclear war - with accepting its inevitability (defeatism) or
even actually wanting it. By exaggerating the effects of nuclear war and emphasising the worst
possible case, there becomes no post-war future at all to prepare for, and so this difficulty does
not arise.
The limitations of this response are apparent in cases other than nuclear war. Surely it is not defeatism to think about
what will happen when a labour strike is broken, when a social revolution is destroyed (as in Chile) or turns bad (as in
the Soviet Union), or when political events develop in an expected though unpleasant way (as Nazism in the 1920s
and 1930s). Since, I would argue, some sort of nuclear war is virtually inevitable unless radical changes occur in
industrialised societies, it is realism rather than defeatism to think about and take account of the likely aftermath of
nuclear war. An effective way to deal with the feeling or charge of defeatism is to prepare for the political aftermath of
nuclear war in ways which reduce the likelihood of nuclear war occurring in the first place. This can be done for
example by developing campaigns for social defence, peace conversion and community self-management in ways
which serve both as preparation to resist political repression in time of nuclear crisis or war, and as positive steps to
build alternatives now to war-linked institutions.[21]
(e) Exaggeration to justify concern (I). People involved with any issue or activity tend to
exaggerate its importance so as to justify and sustain their concern and involvement. Nuclear war
is only one problem among many pressing problems in the world, which include starvation, poverty, exploitation,
racial and sexual inequality and repressive governments. By concentrating on peace issues, one must by necessity give
less attention to other pressing issues. An unconscious tendency to exaggerate the effects of nuclear war has the effect
of reducing conscious or unconscious guilt at not doing more on other issues.
Guilt of this sort is undoubtedly common, especially among those who are active on social issues
and who become familiar with the wide range of social problems needing attention. The irony is
that those who feel guilt for this reason tend to be those who have least cause to feel so. One politically effective way to
overcome this guilt may be to strengthen and expand links between anti-war struggles and struggles for justice,
equality and the like.
(f) Exaggeration to justify concern (II). Spokespeople and apologists for the military
establishment tend to emphasise conservative estimates of the effects of nuclear war. They also are
primarily concerned with military and economic 'survival' of society so as to confront further threats to the state. One
response to this orientation by people favouring non-military approaches to world order and
peace is to assume that the military-based estimates are too low, and hence to exaggerate the
effects and emphasise worst cases. The emotional underpinning for this response seems to be something like
this: 'if a militarist thinks nuclear war will kill 100 million people and still wants more nuclear weapons, and because I
am totally opposed to nuclear war or plans for waging it, therefore nuclear war surely would kill 500 million people or
everyone on earth.'
This sort of unconscious reasoning confuses one's estimate of the size of a threat with one's
attitude towards it. A more tenable conclusion is that the value structures of the militarist and the peace activist
are sufficiently different to favour very different courses of action when considering the same evidence. The
assumption that a given item of information will lead to a uniform emotional response or conclusion about its
implications is false. The primary factor underlying differences in response to the threat of nuclear
war is not differences in assessments of devastation, but political differences.

NOTHING CAUSES EXTINCTION

Nothing causes extinction
BEACH 2014 (Justin, writer at the Huffington Post, Stop Worrying, Humans Aren't Going Extinct Any Time
Soon, June 6, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-beach/human-extinction_b_5457038.html)
In 2014 there are more nuclear weapons than ever, but we don't really talk about them very much. Instead
we talk, primarily about the possibility of human extinction due to climate change, food
shortages, ocean acidification or, occasionally, super-volcanos or comet collisions.
All of these things are possible, and all of them are very unlikely to cause the extinction of humanity.
Given our current population, if something killed 99.99 per cent of the human population,
700,000 people would survive and those people would have the knowledge necessary to make
drinking water safe, create sanitation systems, advanced communication systems, make
medicines, transportation systems and generate electricity.
During the 20th century, we experienced the dust bowl and the great depression, two world
wars, worldwide pandemics, numerous genocides and still managed to triple our population and
double life expectancy in 100 years. We are a resilient species. It is likely that, by the end of this
century, we'll inhabit a second planet and vastly increase our life expectancy rather than face
extinction.

Even if extinction was possible, no single impact could do it
TONN 2005 (Bruce, Futures Studies Department, Corvinus University of Budapest, Human Extinction
Scenarios, www.budapestfutures.org/downloads/abstracts/Bruce%20Tonn%20-%20Abstract.pdf)
The human species faces numerous threats to its existence. These include global climate change, collisions
with near-earth objects, nuclear war, and pandemics. While these threats are indeed serious, taken
separately they fail to describe exactly how humans could become extinct. For example, nuclear
war by itself would most likely fail to kill everyone on the planet, as strikes would probably be
concentrated in the northern hemisphere and the Middle East, leaving populations in South
America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand some hope of survival. It is highly unlikely that
any uncontrollable nanotechnology could ever be produced but even it if were, it is likely that humans
could develop effective, if costly, countermeasures, such as producing the technologies in space or destroying
sites of runaway nanotechnologies with nuclear weapons. Viruses could indeed kill many people but
effective quarantine of healthy people could be accomplished to save large numbers of people.
Humans appear to be resilient to extinction with respect to single events.

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