Nature: Nuclear war between two nations could spark global famine

Tyner

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Nature: Nuclear war between two nations could spark global famine

by Tyner

Aug 15 20221 min read 1

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Existential riskNews relevant to effective altruismNuclear winterNuclear security

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This is a linkpost for https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02219-4

Here is a link to the full scientific article:
https://rdcu.be/cTHKJ

This article describes the modeling of an international, multi-disciplinary team that attempted to find the impact for human food consumption under various nuclear war scenarios. This being published in one of the most well-known journals could increase the awareness and interest in this sort of scenario forecasting.

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Phil Tanny2y-2

A simpler analysis might be helpful for those who aren't intellectual professionals.

We can reasonably guess it would only take about 50 nukes to destroy America's largest cities.
This would likely collapse the food distribution system, resulting in widespread starvation.
How long could the average citizen survive on the food that they currently have on hand. For most people the answer will be, not very long.
Uncontrollable chaos begins not with hunger and starvation, but at the moment that a critical mass of people realize that they are not going to be able to replenish their food supplies by legal means.