Overview
- Scientists publishing in Nature model a full-scale exchange using roughly 12,000 warheads and project a nuclear winter with around five billion fatalities.
- The analysis and expert commentary identify Australia and New Zealand as the locations most likely to remain broadly habitable with some food production.
- Author Annie Jacobson says hundreds of millions would die in initial fireballs, with survivors facing collapsed agriculture, radiation risks and desperate competition for food.
- The study is being invoked as tensions escalate, with reports of missile strikes involving the US, Israel and Iran, UAE interceptions of missiles bound for Israel, and Taliban action against nuclear-armed Pakistan.
- The UK has begun evacuation flights from the region and plans to deploy destroyer HMS Dragon to reinforce defenses near the Akrotiri base after an Iranian drone strike.