A Nuclear War Would Starve the Planet
CYBER
00:00
Is There a Nuclear Winter?
Dr. Allen: I know that this idea of nuclear winter is based on decades of research. Can you kind of give us the origin story of when we figured out that it's going to inject a lot of soot in the atmosphere, these nuclear weapons? Sure. The Swedish Journal Ambio in 1982 commissioned a special issue on what would the world be like after nuclear war. They invited Paul Crootsen and John Burks to write a paper on atmospheric chemistry. And they said this would have a huge impact on agriculture. But they didn't even talk about how temperature would change because they didn't understand the processes by which the smoke would get lofted up into the stratosphere. So
Transcript
Play full episode
