DiaNuke.org

Rutgers University | If the United States and Russia waged an all-out nuclear war, much of the land in the Northern Hemisphere would be below freezing in the summertime, with the growing season slashed by nearly 90 percent in some areas, according to a new study. Indeed, death by famine would threaten nearly all of the Earth’s 7.7 billion people, according to the research.

As we look back on the past year, one issue that abruptly came into focus was nuclear weapons. On the one hand, North Korea aggressively tested new weapons and both Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump threatened catastrophe; on the other, we have a new United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and a Nobel peace prize to the Australian-founded organisation the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear weapons.

The past 12 months were proof that the threat of nuclear weapons persist in the post Cold War world. However, when nuclear threats need not be broadcast over Red Square, but merely typed over Twitter, it seems arms control procedures have failed to keep up.

All efforts to resolve the elevated nuclear tensions in the Korean Peninsula should be subject to extreme caution, due to the potential of massive collateral damage of death, destruction, radiation and environmental collapse.