A World Wide Blood Bath A Nuclear War's Worst-Case Scenario Thermonuclear War

America is preparing for a nuclear conflict right now with Russia and China and Others as the government recently secretly raised the DEFCON alert in preparation for World War 3. A nuclear holocaust, also known as a nuclear apocalypse, nuclear Armageddon, or atomic holocaust, is a theoretical scenario where the mass detonation of nuclear weapons causes globally widespread destruction and radioactive fallout. Such a scenario envisages large parts of the Earth becoming uninhabitable due to the effects of nuclear warfare, potentially causing the collapse of civilization and, in the worst case, extinction of humanity and/or termination of all biological life on Earth. In the 80 years since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the world has often come frighteningly close to all-out thermonuclear war – near-misses and accidents abound in the history of nuclear weapons. What if the world does not remain this lucky? As geopolitical tensions escalate around the world, and nuclear powers “modernize” their arsenals with new technologies, nuclear war appears more likely than ever — the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ clock is as close to “doomsday” as it has ever been. What would the worst-case scenario, an all-out thermonuclear exchange, look like? And how can the world’s nations and international organizations work together to prevent such a war from breaking out?

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TEOTWAWKI (The End of the World as we Know It). Zombie Apocalypse. EMP (Electro-magnetic pulse). Nuclear War. Great Depression. Economy Collapse.

Scary, scary stuff. However, these scenarios don’t require that much more preparation than being prepared for traffic jams and power outages, they just require being prepared for a much longer timeframe.

Living Without Power - There are several scenarios that could result in either long-term or permanent loss of electrical power. A solar flare or EMP could destroy the electronics in everything from watches to vehicles. I hope this scenario never takes place in our lifetime – I know I would miss the dishwasher, washing machine, hot running water for showers and the ease of cooking on a stove. Without power, our world and lifestyles would change dramatically. It’s something worth thinking about. How would your family survive without power?

Skills - There are several skills that you can learn now that can be helpful not just in a long-term survival situation, but in our current lifestyle – cooking from scratch, gardening, woodworking, ham radio knowledge, gunsmithing, herbal medicines and sewing, among others. If there was a long-term power outage, you may be able to barter skills and services for foods and goods. Many of us would be working just to get enough food to take care of our families and you would need skills that aren’t dependent on the power grid. Having books on hand on these topics is a good idea in case you don’t learn the skills you want before an emergency situation happens.

Long-term thinking - Let’s look harder at gardening. In a long-term power outage, you will probably want to try and grow your own food. Learning to garden takes time. I am in my second year of gardening and am learning new things every time I go check on the garden. It’s a skill you have to actively do to learn. I have learned about heirloom seeds and how to save certain kinds of seeds. I need to learn how to save other seeds, crop rotation, cross pollination and what to plant together (or not). Not to mention the different diseases and pests that come every year! We can change out our garden every year to learn something new and then if the time ever comes, we know and can depend on our garden, not just hope the seeds we have on hand will grow. In addition to growing, we learn how to preserve food either by freezing, canning or dehydrating so we know how we can store it.

Medical Considerations - As I mentioned in the article about supplies, a basic first-aid kit is a must for any family to have and is especially important for long-term survival. Some people make extensive kits by using a tackle box. Another important thing to have on hand is important prescriptions. Work with your doctor to let him know that you would like to keep a month’s worth of your prescription on hand for emergencies. It would also be good to research other options for treating conditions without medication, such as with essential oils or herbs and plants (there are some options for diabetes).

Books, books and more books - In a world without power, all the information we now have at our fingertips will be gone. Books and the knowledge they contain will become valuable. Think about building up a reference library for things you would want to know. Old cookbooks have recipes with basic ingredients and less reliance on kitchen gadgets. We have an encyclopedia set so I could still teach our children if they couldn’t go to school. I keep classics on hand and look for books on gardening and medical treatments when I go to used book sales. It doesn’t require a lot of money to start up a personal reference library these days – you just need the space.

Besides reference books, reading books that present people in these kind of long-term survival situations (dystopian) can help you grasp how serious they can be and what kind of things you need to have and do to survive.

Remember, being prepared is not about worrying, it’s about facing the future with confidence. If you have any specific questions or topics you want covered, leave me a message in the comments below.

DEFCON is an alert system used by the US military that has 5 different levels, with level 1 being the most critical. The last time the alert level was raised as high as this was on September 11, 2001.

Express.co.uk reports:

Now website DEFCON warning system claim it has been upgraded again in a terrifying revelation – and could be a sign nuclear war with the US is imminent.

While there are currently no imminent threats to the US, it claimed the situation is “fluid and can change rapidly.”

However it also highlighted the dying relationship between the US and Russia, citing concerns of all-out warfare between the bitter rivals.

A statement posted on its website read: “Tensions between Russia and the United States have reached levels beyond the cold war in the recent week.

“The situation between Russia and the United States is extremely fluid at the moment. In all likelihood as dynamic as at times during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

“At this time, the DEFCON Warning System feels that an increase to DEFCON 3 would be a prudent move.”

Russian citizens have been encouraged to find bomb shelters and gas masks today, as state-sponsored infomercials on television gave out guidelines on how people should prepare for a nuclear attack.

President Vladimir Putin meanwhile has ordered the evacuation of 40 million people in a military drill.

He also transferred nuclear-capable Iskander ballistic missiles to one of its strategic Baltic regions last week, in what officials claim was part of regular military manoeuvres.

However many world leaders fear the moves are being carried out in preparation for war.

The conspiracy theory site warned citizens to prepare for any potential conflict, saying: “This is a very sensitive situation which has the potential to spiral out of control.

“It is recommended that all citizens learn the steps to be taken in the event of nuclear war.”

Theorists have even claimed a move to DEFCON 2 is being muted, based on Putin’s call for Russians to return home.

Though the threat of war seems to be rising, the DEFCON level indication reported by the website is only speculation. The US military do not share the actual DEFCON status with the public for obvious security reasons.

Even a limited nuclear war could kill a third of world’s population, study shows. As escalating tensions among the United States, Russia and China revive old fears of nuclear war, some researchers are warning that even a limited-scale exchange between such nations as India and Pakistan could have catastrophic consequences for global food supplies and trigger mass death worldwide.

A nuclear conflict involving less than 3% of the world’s stockpiles could kill a third of the world’s population within two years, according to a new international study led by scientists at Rutgers University. A larger nuclear conflict between Russia and the United States could kill three-fourths of the world’s population in the same timeframe, according to the research published Monday in Nature Food.

“It’s really a cautionary tale that any use of nuclear weapons could be a catastrophe for the world,” said climate scientist and study author Alan Robock, a distinguished professor in Rutgers’ Department of Environmental Sciences.

The findings come at a time when — 30 years after the end of the Cold War — the threat of a nuclear holocaust may be greater now than it ever was.

Recently, U.K. National Security Advisor Stephen Lovegrove argued that the breakdown in dialogue between nations, as well as the loss of safeguards that had been created between nuclear superpowers decades ago, has plunged the world into “a dangerous new age.” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has also warned that “the prospect of nuclear conflict, once unthinkable, is now back within the realm of possibility.” Although Robock and others have previously projected that nuclear war would result in tremendous disruption to the climate and food supplies, the recent study marks the first time that researchers have calculated the potential extent of the famine that would result and how many people would die.

The detonation of even just a small fraction of the world’s nuclear weapons would spark massive firestorms that would rapidly inject sun-blocking soot into the atmosphere, touching off a sudden cooling of the climate, the researchers theorized.

Researchers used climate models to calculate how much smoke would reach the stratosphere — where no precipitation occurs to wash it away — and how this would change temperature, precipitation and sunlight. Then they calculated how these changes would affect the production of various crops, as well as how fish would respond to changes in the ocean.

As a result, they projected that tens of millions of immediate fatalities in the war zone would be followed by hundreds of millions of starvation deaths around the globe.

That’s without taking into account the effects of increased ultraviolet radiation on crops due to the destruction of the ozone layer caused by the heating of the stratosphere, Robock said. Such an effect, which researchers hope to quantify in future studies, would likely worsen the results, he said.

“In my opinion, our work is an existential threat to nuclear weapons — it shows you can’t use nuclear weapons,” Robock said. “If you use them, you’re like a suicide bomber. You’re trying to attack somebody else but you’ll die of starvation.”

The data is being released on the heels of a growing consensus among experts that the threat of nuclear war is greater than it’s ever been, said Ira Helfand, immediate past president of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.

“The general public needs to understand the enormity of the danger we face, the immediacy of the threat and the urgency of eliminating these weapons before they eliminate us,” he said.

Most of the scenarios the researchers considered involved a hypothetical nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan, which they believe is the most likely region where such a conflict could erupt, Robock said. The two countries have fought in four wars and still have frequent border skirmishes.

If India and Pakistan were to each target urban centers in the opposing country with 250 100-kiloton nuclear weapons, which they are believed to possess, about 127 million people in South Asia would be killed by explosions, fires and radiation, the study found. An estimated 37 million metric tons of soot would be injected into the atmosphere, sending temperatures across the planet plunging by more than 5 degrees Celsius, a range last experienced during the Ice Age, according to earlier research by Robock and others. Food production would consequently collapse, with the number of calories available from major crops and fisheries falling by up to 42% and the resulting famine killing over 2 billion people worldwide, according to the most recent study.

In the event of a larger war between the U.S. and Russia, which together are believed to hold more than 90% of the world’s nuclear stockpile, an estimated 5 billion out of 6.7 billion people worldwide would die, according to the research.

But any of the nine nuclear-armed nations, which also include China, North Korea, France, Israel and the United Kingdom, have enough firepower at their fingertips to cause immense worldwide suffering and death, with soot rising into the sky and touching off a domino effect of catastrophic cooling and famine, the study suggests.

Although it’s not possible to test the theory directly, there are real-world analogues, Robock said. Massive wildfires in British Columbia in 2017 and in Australia in 2019 and 2020 pumped smoke into the stratosphere, a finding confirmed by satellite observations. The sun then heated the smoke particles, lofting them five to 15 miles farther into the atmosphere, he said. “By lofting them up higher, it increases their lifetime and they get blown around the world before they fall out,” Robock said. “It’s the same process we modeled in our nuclear winter simulation with a lot more smoke.” The researchers’ modeling was able to predict the effects of these fires, giving them more confidence the models would also be accurate when it came to predicting the effects of nuclear detonation, he said.

Edward Geist, a policy researcher at Rand Corp., said that the relatively recent discovery that wildfires can loft smoke into the stratosphere bolsters the researchers’ theory. They are doing the world a service by drawing attention to nuclear war’s potential effects, he said.

Still, there is a debate about the extent to which solar lofting would occur with nuclear detonation, Geist said. Although it’s certainly possible it would occur in a city attacked by nuclear weapons, that doesn’t necessarily mean it would happen simultaneously in every city that is attacked, as the paper assumed, he said.

“The big question is, you have a nuclear war of a certain size, how much of this smoke ends up in the upper atmosphere?” Geist said. “You can make a plausible case for both — very little will end up there, all the way out to, we’ve got to assume it basically all ends up there, which is what [these] sorts of papers do.”

He pointed out that a 2018 paper by researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory also modeled a hypothetical conflict between India and Pakistan and concluded that previous research by Robock and others had overestimated how much soot would be produced, how high the smoke would reach and how dramatically the climate would change as a result.

Robock, however, disputes those findings. The Los Alamos researchers chose an area of suburban Atlanta to represent a dense city in India or Pakistan and failed to include in their modeling atmospheric processes such as cloud formation that would carry air upward, he argued. Robock said they also assumed winds that blew too strong and ran their simulation for too short a time.

“They had a number of assumptions, all of which made the effects much less,” he said.

A 2020 paper by researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory also considered the India-Pakistan scenario and concluded there were uncertainties. Although the team projected that an exchange of 100 15-kiloton nuclear weapons would cool the climate if densely populated urban areas were to ignite, they projected there would be little to no effect on the climate if fires were limited to suburban areas.

In contrast, the Rutgers-led study assumes that the countries would target each others’ cities, where fuel concentrations are densest and the climatological effects would be most dramatic, Geist said. But Pakistan has said that if it were to use nuclear weapons against India, it would use tactical nuclear weapons to stop a conventional invasion, not to attack cities wholesale, he said.

“It really comes down to how much stuff do you burn, how much of it ends up being smoke and how much of that smoke ends up in the upper atmosphere, and how much real plausibles for nuclear wars translate into that,” Geist said. “We really don’t know, and hopefully we don’t find out.”

Although there’s a popular notion that nuclear weapons will never be used because they are so powerful that their destructiveness is a deterrent, that’s wishful thinking, Helfand said. That they have not yet been deployed is simply a matter of chance.

“We do know what’s going to happen if these weapons stay around,” he said. “Sooner or later our luck is going to run out.”

How Nuclear War Would Affect Earth Russia's invasion of Ukraine has brought the threat of nuclear warfare to the forefront again. A new study published today in AGU Advances shows how a full-scale nuclear war would cool the planet and disrupt the planet's oceans, with dire consequences for humanity.

The study's lead author LSU Department of Oceanography & Coastal Sciences Assistant Professor Cheryl Harrison and coauthors ran multiple computer simulations to study the impacts of regional and larger scale nuclear warfare on the Earth's systems given today's nuclear warfare capabilities.

The researchers simulated what would happen to the Earth's systems in a full-scale global war, with the U.S. and Russia using 4,400 Hiroshima-sized 100-kiloton nuclear weapons to bomb cities and industrial areas. They also simulated what would happen in a regional nuclear conflict, like India and Pakistan detonating about 500 100-kiloton nuclear weapons on the Asian continent.

In all of the researchers' simulated scenarios, nuclear firestorms would release soot and smoke into the upper atmosphere that would block out the Sun resulting in crop failure around the world. In the first month following nuclear war, average global temperatures would plunge by about 13 degrees, a larger temperature change than in the last Ice Age.

"It doesn't matter who is bombing whom. It can be India and Pakistan or NATO and Russia. Once the smoke is released into the upper atmosphere, it spreads globally and affects everyone," explains Harrison. Weeks later, lower temperatures would reduce the growing season of plants and shift weather patterns, with disastrous effects on global crop production. An estimated 1 to 2 billion people could face starvation.

Ocean temperatures would drop quickly and would not return to their pre-war state even after the smoke clears. As the planet gets colder, sea ice expands blocking major ports in the Northern Hemisphere, including Beijing, Copenhagen and St. Petersburg. The sea ice would spread into normally ice-free coastal regions blocking shipping across the world's oceans making it difficult to get food and supplies into some areas.

The sudden drop in light and ocean temperatures, especially from the Arctic to the North Atlantic and North Pacific oceans, would kill the marine algae, which is the foundation of the marine food web, essentially creating a famine in the ocean. This would halt most fishing and aquaculture.

Oceans take longer to recover than land. In the largest U.S.-Russia scenario, ocean recovery is likely to take decades at the surface and hundreds of years at depth, while changes to Arctic sea ice will likely last thousands of years and effectively be a "Nuclear Little Ice Age." Marine ecosystems would be highly disrupted by both the initial perturbation and in the new ocean state, resulting in long-term, global impacts to ecosystem services such as fisheries, write the authors.

"Nuclear warfare results in dire consequences for everyone. World leaders have used our studies previously as an impetus to end the nuclear arms race in the 1980s, and five years ago to pass a treaty in the United Nations to ban nuclear weapons. We hope that this new study will encourage more nations to ratify the ban treaty," said co-author Alan Robock, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University.

The authors note that volcanic eruptions can show at a smaller scale what could happen after a nuclear war. Throughout history, large eruptions and the clouds of particles they erupted into Earth's atmosphere have had similar negative impacts on the planet and civilization.

"We can avoid nuclear war, but volcanic eruptions are definitely going to happen again. There's nothing we can do about it, so it's important when we're talking about resilience and how to design our society, that we consider what we need to do to prepare for unavoidable climate shocks," Harrison said. "We can and must however, do everything we can to avoid nuclear war. The effects are too likely to be globally catastrophic." A full-scale nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia would see global food systems obliterated and over 5 billion people die of hunger
In his starkest assessment yet, U.S. president Joe Biden has declared that the world is the closest it has come to nuclear catastrophe in 60 years and so it comes as no surprise that many of us are worried.

“We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis,” he said.

“[Putin is] not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons because his military is, you might say, significantly underperforming.”

And it’s true in the sense that Putin and his officials have threatened nuclear weapons against the U.S. and allies in pursuit of its invasion of Ukraine.

As dark and depressing as the prospect of nuclear war is, it is natural to be curious about its potential. A global study led by Rutgers climate scientists estimates post-conflict crop production.

Lead author Lili Xia, an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers, and co-author Alan Robock, a distinguished Professor of climate science in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University have built upon past research to determine what would happen if there was a nuclear war.

We must prevent a nuclear war from ever happening

“The data tell us one thing: We must prevent a nuclear war from ever happening,” comments Robock.

Xia, Robock and colleagues have calculated how much sun-blocking soot could be ignited, as a result of nuclear weapons. The researchers determined soot dispersal for a variety of war scenarios – from smaller India-Pakistan wars to a large U.S.-Russia war. They based the destruction on the size of each country’s nuclear arsenal.

So, what would happen if there was a nuclear war?
Even under the smallest nuclear scenario, say a localised war between India and Pakistan, the destruction would be immense. The global average caloric production would decrease by 7% within five years of the conflict.

Global average caloric production would decrease by about 90%

The team also tested what would happen in the event of U.S. Russia nuclear conflict. In this instance, global average caloric production would decrease by about 90% three to four years after the fighting. Severe crop declines in mid-high latitude nations
Crop declines would be the most severe in the mid-high latitude nations. This includes major exporting countries such as Russia and the U.S.

Declining crops could lead to export restrictions and cause severe disruptions in places dependent on imports such as Africa and the Middle East.

The research team predicted that these changes would induce a catastrophic disruption of global food markets.

In fact, a 7% global decline in crop yield might not sound like much, but its impact would be astronomical. It would exceed the largest anomaly ever recorded since the beginning of Food and Agricultural Organization observational records in 1961.

And under the largest war scenario – a war between the U.S. and Russia – more than 75% of the planet would be starving within two years.

The team considered whether using crops fed to livestock as human food or reducing food waste could offset caloric losses in the immediate aftermath of a nuclear war, but concluded that the savings were minimal under the large injection scenarios.

“Future work will bring even more granularity to the crop models,” Xia said.

The ozone layer would be destroyed by the heating of the stratosphere

“For instance, the ozone layer would be destroyed by the heating of the stratosphere, producing more ultraviolet radiation at the surface, and we need to understand that impact on food supplies.”

Nuclear weapons must be banned
Robock attests that researchers already know how dangerous a nuclear war would be. A nuclear attack of any size would obliterate global food systems and kill billions of people in the process.

The only solution, is to ban nuclear weapons, explains the professor: “If nuclear weapons exist, they can be used, and the world has come close to nuclear war several times.

Banning nuclear weapons is the only long-term solution

“Banning nuclear weapons is the only long-term solution. The five-year-old UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has been ratified by 66 nations, but none of the nine nuclear states. “Our work makes clear that it is time for those nine states to listen to science and the rest of the world and sign this treaty.”

How Far Away Would You Need to Be to Survive a Nuclear Blast? It's been nearly 80 years since two nuclear bombs were detonated over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing at least 129,000 people, and causing devastating, long-term health effects.

To date, those are the only instances of nuclear weapons being used for warfare, but the reality is there are roughly 12,700 warheads remaining in the world today. So, what would happen if nuclear war broke out tomorrow?

Don't panic – this is just a hypothetical. But in the video below, the team from AsapSCIENCE breaks down the science of nuclear bombs to predict how likely you'd be to survive. Let's just say, in the case of a nuclear blast, you would want to be wearing white.

First, let's get this out of the way – there is no clear-cut way to estimate the impact of a single nuclear bomb, because it depends on many factors, including the weather on the day it's dropped, the time of day it's detonated, the geographical layout of where it hits, and whether it explodes on the ground or in the air.

But, generally speaking, there are some predictable stages of a nuclear bomb blast that can affect the likelihood of your survival. (You can also explore this chilling interactive to find out how a nuclear blast would spread through the area where you live.)

As the video above explains, approximately 35 percent of the energy of a nuclear blast is released in the form of thermal radiation. Since thermal radiation travels at approximately the speed of light, the first thing that will hit you is a flash of blinding light and heat.

The light itself is enough to cause something called flash blindness – a usually temporary form of vision loss that can last a few minutes.

The AsapSCIENCE video considers a 1 megaton bomb, which is 80 times larger than the bomb detonated over Hiroshima, but much smaller than many modern nuclear weapons.

For a bomb that size, people up to 21 km (13 miles) away would experience flash blindness on a clear day, and people up to 85 km (52.8 miles) away would be temporarily blinded on a clear night.

Heat is an issue for those closer to the blast. Mild, first-degree burns can occur up to 11 km (6.8 miles) away, and third-degree burns – the kind that destroy and blister skin tissue – could affect anyone up to 8 km (5 miles) away. Third-degree burns that cover more than 24 percent of the body would likely be fatal if people don't receive medical care immediately.

Those distances are variable, depending not just on the weather, but also on what you're wearing – white clothes can reflect some of the energy of a blast, while darker clothes will absorb it.

That's unlikely to make much difference for those unfortunate enough to be at the center of the explosion, though.

The temperatures near the site of the bomb blast during the Hiroshima explosion were estimated to be 300,000 degrees Celsius (540,000 degrees Fahrenheit) – which is roughly 300 times hotter than the temperature bodies are cremated at, so humans were almost instantly reduced to the most basic elements, like carbon.

But for those slightly farther away from the center of the blast, there are other effects to consider aside from heat. The blast of a nuclear explosion also drives air away from the site of the explosion, creating sudden changes in air pressure that can crush objects and knock down buildings.

Within a 6-km (3.7-mile) radius of a 1-megaton bomb, blast waves would produce 180 metric tons of force on the walls of all two-story buildings, and wind speeds of 255 km/h (158 mph). In a 1-km (0.6-mile) radius, the peak pressure is four times that amount, and wind speeds can reach 756 km/h (470 mph).

Technically, humans can withstand that much pressure, but most people would be killed by falling buildings.

If you somehow survive all of that, there's still the radiation poisoning to deal with – and the nuclear fallout. AsapSCIENCE touches on this in the video above, but the ongoing effects on the planet are longer-lasting than you might expect.

For example, a simulation study published in 2019 found that a nuclear war between the United States and Russia would plunge Earth into a nuclear winter within days, due to the levels of smoke and soot released into the atmosphere.

We also know that radioactive particles can travel remarkably far; a recent study found that remnants of radioactive carbon from Cold War nuclear bomb tests have been found all the way down in the Mariana Trench, the deepest point of the world's oceans.

Again, all of this is hypothetical – there are international treaties in place to stop the spread and use of nuclear weapons, so we hope you never need to know any of this information for real.

However, to find out more about the current state of nuclear weaponry in the world, including the scale of the bombs, you can visit the Nuclear Notebook at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

How many survivors would be left after a global nuclear war?
Twenty years ago, in year 2029, World War III happened. Everyone nuked everybody else. More specifically, India and Pakistan nuked each other, the US, England, and France fired everything they had at Iran, Russia, and China, and those countries responded in kind. Iran, who had developed nukes in secret, also launched a nuke at Israel, who responded by nuking all of their neighbors, who had declared war on them in the confusion. North Korea fired a single nuclear missile, but it crashed into the ocean and sank without detonating.

In addition, most countries that didn't have nukes, but were aligned with the nuclear nations contributed their conventional armies to the war as well. Many of these countries were then nuked. Major cities, of course, were the first targets, but fallout was blown by the wind and poisoned much of the surrounding areas. The fallout from thousands of nuclear explosions also entered the atmosphere and ocean, spreading in predictable patters with the currents and tides.

Nobody wins this sort of war, of course, but surely someone somewhere has survived. There are over seven billion people on Earth, and, assuming they aren't all poisoned by fallout, some of them must be in places that are at least somewhat sheltered from a global nuclear war. After counting deaths from radioactive fallout and climate imbalances in the years after the war, how many people have survived, and where are the survivors?

Projecting worldwide from this document, we can estimate that under a billion people would die as a direct result of the weapons or the fallout. The current arsenals are just too small, and even with full-scale buildups for the next 15 years, it's hard to imagine even a return to peak cold war levels.

It's even unclear whether a full-blown nuclear winter would indeed ensue. There would certainly be massive amounts of dust and soot pushed into the stratosphere, both from the initial blasts and from the massive raging fires that would follow them. Those would lead to short term cooling, but it's unclear that that would be enough to trigger a full nuclear winter as the anti-nuclear scientists (with an understandable and commendable interest in furthering their pro-peace agenda) would have had us believe.

However, the disruptions to the world economy, health facilities and food supply chains would prove far deadlier. With most of the population in the developed world dependent on continuing food supplies, such large scale devastation could bring down supply chains and cause starvation in many areas.

Nonetheless, people are resourceful, especially when hungry, and the survivors would be quick to adapt and, in many cases, rally around the flag rather than decay into mini warlord estates.

All in all, I can't imagine more than a third of the world population being wiped out by a total, all-out nuclear exchange. Unless we bring in anti-matter devices, that is... I would first point out that a completely accurate number is probably impossible. There are too many different kinds of nukes, too many possible locations, and too many possible variables (wind patterns, weather changes, etc) to really give you a great number.

Check out this fun little calculator for a good indication of casualties and deaths. It gives you a listing of all possible explosive types, all possible locations, and even calculates fallout in a radius from the site.

That said, there are a few places to note that will "safe" in regards to direct blasts, and will have minimal fallout damage to worry about:

Arctic and Antarctic Outposts

This site says that between 1-4000 people live on Antarctica during the year varying from season to season. There is no reason to suspect that any country would target scientific research bases to nuke, so these individuals would survive. Same goes for the Arctic. However, these individuals may end up being stranded and cut off from being able to leave the arctic and may die anyway.

Bunkers turned Residences

With the current doomsday mindset in 2015, it doesn't take any great stretch of the imagination to assume that many more wealthy individuals will take advantage of purchasing sheltered real estate. I can't guesstimate the exact number, but it could be upwards of 500+ people, as we have no exact numbers on how many bunkers exist and how many are being turned into residences.

Underground Facilities

Search results for this are overwhelmingly conspiracy theorists claiming there are thousands upon thousands of underground facilities so that they can "cull" the outside population at will. However, there are legitimate military facilities, as well as scientific ones, such as those studying the earth's crust, volcanologists, and drill sites, which would be secure from initial explosion, though the occupants within would probably suffer fallout damage once they left the facility.

Rural Areas

Nuclear attacks will target military installations first, followed by centers of government, followed by population centers. It's true that the death toll from these areas will number in the billions. However, according to The World Bank, almost 70% of the world's population lives in rural areas. These areas will not be targeted directly by blasts, but will likely suffer the effects of fallout.

3rd World Countries and Conflict Zones

Countries denoted by the UN to be 3rd World Countries, or disputed areas that are technically not countries at all, will not have nuclear capabilities. It is possible that nuclear capable countries MIGHT target these areas, especially if they are disputed, but the truth is most of the rest of the world will ignore these. Statistics say that the residences of 3rd world countries number almost 3 billion.

All in all, you could be looking at anywhere from a few hundred million survivors to a shockingly high 3 billion. Deaths in the first few months will be staggering, but it's important to note that the real threat is radiation poisoning, which will end up killing a huge chunk of survivors if they aren't careful. However, you do have the benefit of most of the survivors living in rural agricultural zones. As long as nuclear winter and radiation do not poison the soil they will be able to continue to subsist off the land. Not that this is part of your question, but should be noted in the ultimate death toll. I had started writing a novel on that theme but then quit it in the middle. When we talk about an exhaustive (no weapons are left unfired), the outcome is more disastrous than you would expect it to be ...

The Subcontinent (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh)
Pakistan would be wiped out of existence with 80% population dead. India would lose nearly 30% of its population in the first wave, but the collapse of government, electricity and gas systems destruction, factories and production units would be rendered dysfunctional. Health services would be primarily overcrowded and then completely destroyed as hysterical people raid hospitals and steal medicines. With winds the fallout would be propagated to far flung areas too. Considering the high poverty and low education rates of Indian suburbs, the deaths in the 2nd phase would be most frightening and horrific. After 1 year, nearly 50% of the population would be dead. After 3 years, only ~5% would survive. These too, would be ghosts of their former self. Ghastly, psychologically destroyed, scared, hysterical and cannibalistic.

China
Considering that most of the missiles coming to China would be American, and then considering the vast area and population of this country, there are major chances of more survivals here. With all major cities wiped out and government collapsed, the survivors would be found in high altitude rural regions (Shaolin and Wudan mountains) and the Tibetan plateau. The Chinese have an amazing level of unity and discipline, so there are major chances that functional local units would survive together. With lots of game and soil available for agriculture, China would have ~10% survivors after 3 years. However a central government would be missing and China would be thrown back to warring period.

Russia
Same as China, but considering its even larger area and much smaller population, there would be considerable more survivors here.

USA
There would be a surprisingly high number of survivors here, considering how many people are already stockpiled and ready for such a catastrophy. However, with all cities razed or evaporated, the survivors would mainly be found in rural areas. I cannot say how many people would die in the first phase (considering USA's missile defense program and whatnot) but the second phase would be horrible. Every survivor would be at daggers drawn against every other survivor. Small groups of coordinating survivors might exist, but after a period of 3 years, most of the survivors would have killed each other, instead of having died of war.

Canada
Initially, a lot of survivors, considering almost no country would bomb this town. But the 2nd phase effects and the results of massive conventional weapons bombing would be immense. Fallout carried by winds, the (functional) death of USA and the lack of food imports would cause large scale casualties. Furthermore, fallout would be condensing in this country in the form of arctic snowfall and rains. Most of the deaths would be in 2nd phase. These people would die a slow death of hunger and the gradual exhaustion of health services. Almost all of the population would be wiped out after 5 years, except those where climate is warm enough to allow sustainable agriculture.

Australia And New Zealand
Considering how detached they stay from controversial politics, probably nobody would be interested in nuking these pacifists. If these countries go in-fighting however, that is a different story. Even in this case, at most 40% of the population would be erased, with the remainders having enough soil for agriculture and game for hunting. These folks would survive fine, I would say, unless a few "stray missiles" find themselves landed on these lands and detonating.

The Arabian Peninsula
These lot would take the wrath of an infuriated israel and having only fat, clumsy sheikhs and nothing else (except oil wells) in their regions, they would be quick to die of hunger and government collapse. With no import of food, it would be scary to see the fat sheikhs in their lofty palaces, surrounded by gold, dying of hunger ...

Islands
All islands with large enough area and small enough population for sustainable agriculture would survive. However, the islands mainly depending on seafood would die a slow, horrible death as they eat infected seafood and get infected themselves.

Africa And South America
Now this is where things start getting interesting! With no country interested in bombing these ghettos, the deaths would all result of conventional warfare. If all countries invade each other with all force, most of the armies would be wiped out and there would be a large number of civilian casualties. But once the warring factions are rubbed out of existence, the survivors would actually thrive. What with extremely fertile land and what with plenty of game, Africa would become the paradise for survivors and all survivors of the globe would dream of reaching this place. I would dare say 80% of African population would survive ... unless somebody out there gets sadistic and flies a few shots at South Africa, in which case fallout would be dispersed continent-wide, through winds and rains.

South America would survive too. Considering that they have immensely fertile soil, very cooperative peoples, lots of game and nobody would be interested in nuking these folks.

Aggregate
There would be survivors everywhere. However, with no electricity, gas or production lines running, they would be pushed to a lifestyle at least 500 years ago, if not pre-civilization times. In-fighting between survivors for food and medicines would be common in all areas where government has collapsed. Third world people would be affected mostly due to lack of supplies while 1st world citizens would be psychologically crippled due to the destruction of their high-end lifestyle and low survivor instincts. Islands, Australia and most notably, Africa would be survivor heavens where humanity and civilization might survive.

The 2029 timeframe makes this difficult to answer.

Consider the concept of virtual nuclear arsenals -- if the global situation deteriorates, many industrialized countries could decide to go nuclear.
If Iran becomes a nuclear power, Saudi Arabia might want to respond in kind. Can they? They got plenty of money. Who is next?
That being said, the US and Russia have reduced their arsenals well below cold-war levels. What you describe sounds as if the southern hemisphere will get off lightly, including South America, Africa, and Australia. Things to worry about are:

Climate effects of nuclear war.
Fallout and toxic effects.
Secondary effects from the disruption of interconnected industry.
My guesstimate is millions to hundreds of millions of survivors.
A lot of this comes down to how bad the nuclear winter would be.

There's no doubt billions would survive the war itself. I would also expect billions to die in the chaos that follows--with the infrastructure busted people are pretty much thrown back onto local resources--but we live in such an integrated world that that is basically impossible. Consider my own location: If it's summer it's basically impossible for me to get to any location with any meaningful food production under my own power. If the roads won't pass vehicles that's it. (And that's not counting the fact that trying to haul enough water to survive the trip would just get me attacked anyway.)

What really matters is what's left to rebuild with. If the skies are black you have total crop failure & loss of livestock. There won't be a lot left to loot (expect the cities to burn), soon you'll reach a state where only the preppers have food--and they won't be able to hold onto it against the starving masses.

In the US's stockpile of nuclear weapons the amount of radiation released directly by the bombs has become quite small. If detonated carefully it's estimate that 800-1000 detonations might lead to a world wide increase of cancer of about 1 person per year - nuclear bombs do not need to be dirty. However, I imagine that in this scenario we can assume at least one party would try to maximize damage by making the detonations as dirty as possible. They would do this by detonating the bombs close to the ground to increase the amount of fallout.

Several people mentioned that military targets will likely be the first struck. I'd like to refine that a bit:

Opposing military nuclear capabilities will be the first struck along with command, control, communications, and intelligence gathering (this includes civilian governments) for the nuclear forces.
After attempting to wipe out the opposing country's nuclear second
strike capabilities, they will likely switch to conventional military forces AND war fighting capabilities - such as manufacturing.
If the opposing country is able to launch a retaliatory strike and you have nuclear weapons which survive it, then you may switch to civilian population centers.
Meaning if you live in a city that makes warships or jet engines, you'll be toast whether they get to the population centers or not.

People living in rural areas do not need the population centers as much as the population centers need the rural areas (at least they don't need them as urgently). I imagine many of the rural survivors will do "ok" for several years. The problem of course is that generally speaking population centers also tend to be manufacturing centers. As things wear out, people in rural areas won't have the ability to replace their technological goods.

People in population centers who survive will be the most likely to suffer and die. since the destruction of so much infrastructure will likely stop the transportation of essentials like food and water to them. People who live in areas which can't normally support large numbers people (such as Southern California & Arizona) will also be at tremendous risk.

People in rural areas that are near such locations could also be at risk as the starving swarms of city dwellers spread out and attempt to get what they need. I generally guess that locations within a 3 day hike of a major city should expect casualties in excess of 50% due to starvation, exposure, and thirst (depending upon season, weather, and other factors).

I think the real answer is that no one knows.

Exactly where would bombs be targeted? Would they be concentrated on military targets or would one or more participants be trying to maximize civilian casualties? Would one side or another succeed in preventing an enemy from delivering its weapons, for example by bombing missile bases before they can launch, intercepting missiles in flight (SDI, etc), or through sabotage?

How reliable are the world's nuclear weapons? How many missiles would blow up on the launch pad, fail to detonate on the target, etc? Is that a tiny percentage or would it be a lot? I read once -- don't have a citation on this -- that the U.S. has NEVER successfully launched a missile from a missile silo. Because launching from a silo would destroy the silo, and they're too expensive to destroy for a test.

Only 2 atom bombs have ever been used in actual war, so there's little empirical evidence to go on. (Not that I'm saying that I wish there was more empirical evidence!) Almost all we have is theory and extrapolation. That's all well and good, but real life experience routinely shows that such theoretical predictions are often wrong. That's why scientists do experiments rather than constructing a computer simulation and then declaring the question closed.

For example, after the Chernobyl nuclear accident -- and I'm not saying that that was a nuclear explosion, just that it was empirical evidence on the effects of release of radioactivity -- after Chernobyl many were predicting that there would be huge numbers of dead, horrible mutations, etc, with some serious estimates running in the millions. I remember at the time experts appearing on the U.S. media discussing how long until the "radiation cloud" reached the U.S. and what we could do to protect ourselves. The actual casualty count ended up 31 direct deaths, perhaps as much as 6000 indirect deaths from radioactive contamination. And that last is disputed and hard to prove either way. The reality is that we did not see millions of people falling over dead. Scientists are studying statistics looking for anomalies.

Will there really be a "nuclear winter"? How many cancers, etc, will be caused by fallout? How much damage will there be to the ability of the ecosystem to produce crops? There's lot of theory and speculation but little hard evidence.

Clearly there would be massive casualties in places actually targeted by nuclear missiles. If major cities are targeted, the immediate casualties would surely be at least tens of millions, possibly hundreds of millions.

Some number of people will retreat to well-stocked bomb shelters. Unless the effects literally destroy the world -- all life is wiped out and the Earth is totally poisoned -- they'll wait out the worst and then emerge to rebuild. I don't know if anyone has statistics on the capacity of such bomb shelters. There are a fair number of "survivalists" in the U.S. who live in remote areas and have built shelters and stocked them with supplies. (Most people laugh at them now as a bunch of crazies, but when the bombs start falling, who'll be laughing then, huh?)

(I read an article a while back on how the U.S. government has shelters for government officials so essential services can be resumed as quickly as possible. One of the agencies listed as having space in these shelters was the Consumer Products Safety Commission. And I wondered: would that really be a priority after a nuclear war? Like, the country has been wiped out. Tens or hundreds of millions are dead. The survivors crawl out of the shelters and attempt to rebuild. Someone tries to repair a damaged tractor so he can get some food production going. And immediately an inspector from the Consumer Products Safety Commission shows up. Do these parts that you made out of scrap metal meet U.S. government standards? Do they conform to the original manufacturer's specifications? Do you have a certificate from an authorized testing lab showing that this equipment has been de-radiated? No? I'm sorry, sir, we cannot allow you to operate such unsafe machinery.)

People living in rural areas, and especially in remote areas, will likely survive. Someone mentioned people at Antarctic research stations as likely survivors. Same could be said for people in northern Canada, most of South America and Africa, Pacific Islands, etc. I'm hard pressed to think of a scenario where anyone is going to fire a nuclear missile at Rwanda or Tuvalu.

I think that as a large-scale global nuclear war starts to develop, many or the majority of the military commanders in operational control will refuse to fire. They have children and grandchildren. They have long and well-informed study of the real effects, both primary and secondary, of a nuclear conflict.

Humans form local communities much faster and more easily, with more commitment than they do city-states or nations. These communities will pool knowledge of all kinds to enhance survival, even in the individualistic U.S.A. In fact, I think that will occur most probably and powerfully in the United States and similar countries, since they currently have a more well-developed sense of individual empowerment, patriotism and manifest destiny than any other people in the world, even in these latter days. Do not rely on their mass media to gauge the character of the citizens of the United States since it is controlled by very few and the very biased. Get to know the people themselves and then make an assessment. I think that the survival rate in other developed countries will be similar, but I think that the recovery back to a technological society will be much faster for the USA then anywhere else. This is also partially due to the increasingly high level of survival preparedness in America due not to nuclear fears but to fears of a Nazi police state or to economic debt collapse. And they will still have their weapons intact which will not decrease, but increase the likelihood of restoration of local law in the earliest days after the war.

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