At last week’s conference on “Nuclear Proliferation”, which was organized by the Student Initiative of the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna, I had the pleasure of participating at a workshop on nuclear disarmament. Among other issues, the workshop participants dealt with the (medical, environmental, and social) effects of a nuclear exchange and emphasized necessity to approach the topic from perspectives beyond military and politics in order to make people aware of the dangers posed by nuclear weapons.

Today, I came across an articles covering the environmental effects of nuclear weapons:

Robock, Alan, and Owen Brian Toon. “Local Nuclear War: Global Suffering.” The Scientific American (January 2010): 74-81. (download the article)

A barrage of nuclear attacks between the U.S. and Russia could plunge the earth into nuclear winter, but regional conflicts could do the same. India and Pakistan, long at odds, have more than 50 nuclear warheads apiece; if each country dropped that many bombs on cities and industrial areas, the smoke from fires would stunt agriculture worldwide for 10 years. (p.  77)

Steven Starr has an op-ed at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, in which he also references other reports on the issue.

UPDATE (March 19) -  Today, I incidentally found the following books on the effects of nuclear weapons. The latter two can be accessed at the section on Nuclear Weapons Effects at AtomicArchive.com.

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Environment. London: Taylor & Francis, 1977.

Glasstone, Samuel, and Philipp Dolan. The Effects of Nuclear Weapons. 3rd ed. Washington, DC: US Department of Defense, 1977.

The Effects of Nuclear War. Washington, DC: Office of Technology Assessment, 1979.

I would like to collect articles, reports, etc. on the effects of nuclear attacks – so if you know any, please share it with me in a posting below. Thanks!

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