More likely, as people became desperate with hunger, survival instincts would take over. Armed individuals or marauding bands would raid and pilfer whatever supplies and stores still existed. Those fortunate individuals who had the means would hoard their resources and soon become the victims of the crazed behavior of starving and desperate survivors who would ransack warehouses and attack individual homes.
Law enforcement would not exist, and many would be killed in the fighting between those trying forcefully to obtain possession of food and those trying to protect their own homes, families, and food supplies.
A reduction in average temperature by even 1°C at the Earth’s surface because of the absorption of solar energy by soot and dust in the atmosphere would shorten the growing season in northern latitudes and markedly reduce or prevent maturation and ripening of grains that are the staple of human diets.
But the debates that have been heard are not of whether a nuclear winter would occur but how many tens of degrees the temperature would be reduced and for how long. During most of the growing season, a sharp decline in temperature for only a few days may be sufficient to destroy crops. The lack of rain that has been predicted after nuclear winter settles in would contribute to crop failures. Since most of the wheat and coarse grains are grown in the temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere, which would be the zones most affected by a nuclear winter, it is evident that a nuclear war, especially during the spring or summer, would have a devastating effect on crop production and food supplies for years.
After the atmospheric soot and dust finally clear, the destruction of the stratospheric ozone would allow an increase in hard ultraviolet-B (UV-B) rays to reach the Earth’s surface. In addition to the direct harmful effects to the skin and eyes of humans and animals, these hard ultraviolet rays would be damaging to plant life and would interfere with agricultural production. If the oxides of nitrogen increase in the troposphere, there may occur an actual increase of ozone at the lower levels of the atmosphere. Ozone is directly toxic to plants.
There would likely be a deterioration of the quality of the soil following a nuclear war. The death of plant and forest coverage because of fire, radiation, the lack of fertilizers, and the probable primitive slash-and-burn agricultural practices of survivors would leave the soil vulnerable to erosion by wind and rain.
Water supplies would be seriously reduced after a nuclear war, especially if there is a corresponding collapse of the electrical grid. Dams and large irrigation projects may cease to function. Reduced rainfall, which is predicted in some models of the climatic effects of a nuclear war, would interfere with agricultural productivity. If freezing temperatures actually were to occur during the warm season, surface waters would be frozen and unavailable.
Radioactive fallout would contaminate reservoirs and surface waters with long-lived radioactive isotopes, primarily strontium-90, which has a half-life of twenty-eight years, and cesium-137, which has a half-life of thirty-three years. These elements in the groundwater would soon be taken up by plants and would enter the food chain. Eventually they would become concentrated in humans; the strontium would accumulate in bones and the cesium in cytoplasm, where they would contribute to the long-term burden of radioactivity in survivors.
Not only would food be scarce, but it would likely be unsanitary as well. The destruction of sanitation, refrigeration, and food-processing methods, especially in the remaining urban areas or population centers, would result in the contamination of food by bacteria, particularly by enteric pathogens. Spoiled meat, carrion of domestic animals and even human corpses are likely to be eaten by starving persons, as has happened in major famines in the past. Pathogens to which civilized man has lost resistance would be acquired from foods and water contaminated by excreta and flies, other insects, and rodents, which would likely proliferate in the aftermath of nuclear war.
But the hunger and starvation would not be limited to the combatant countries alone, or even to just the Northern Hemisphere. It would truly be a global occurrence. Even without the spread of the possible climatic effects of a nuclear winter to the Southern Hemisphere, millions would die of starvation in noncombatant countries. Today a large portion of food exports goes to parts of the world where millions of people suffer from undernutrition and hunger.
It is evident that hunger and starvation would decimate the survivors of a major nuclear war. Millions of deaths would result not only among survivors in the warring nations but throughout the world. The developing countries, in fact, would possibly be the main victims of this famine, as their populations may not be reduced as immediately as would those in the combatant countries. Starvation would be essentially global.
My initial research into this topic began with a book written in the early eighties by Paul Ehrlich and Carl Sagan titled The Cold and The Dark: The World after Nuclear War. This book was a record of a conference held in 1983 during which the scientists introduced the world to the concept of nuclear winter. For the first time, world leaders took note of the climatic and atmospheric consequences of nuclear winter as well as the profound effect it would have on all living things on Earth.
Forty years later, their warnings have been acknowledged, but one has to ask, have we done all we can to avoid a nuclear holocaust?
WHAT’S COMING NEXT FROM BOBBY AKART?
OTHER WORKS BY AMAZON CHARTS TOP 25 AUTHOR BOBBY AKART
Perfect Storm (a standalone disaster thriller)
Black Gold
Black Swan
Black Flags
First Strike
Armageddon
Whiteout
Devil Storm
Desolation
New Madrid Earthquake (a standalone disaster thriller)
Odessa Reborn
Odessa Rising
Odessa Strikes
Virus Hunters I
Virus Hunters II
Virus Hunters III
The Shift
The Pulse
The Collapse
The Flood
The Tempest
The Pioneers
Discovery
Diversion
Destruction
Apocalypse
Haven
Anarchy
Minutemen
Civil War
Hellfire
Inferno
Fallout
Survival