Nuclear weapon effects
Nuclear Winter
A hypothesized severe global cooling caused by soot from urban firestorms following a large-scale nuclear war.
Nuclear-winter models project that hundreds of city-burning detonations would loft millions of tons of soot into the stratosphere, blocking sunlight for years and dropping global temperatures by 5–10 °C. The result would be widespread crop failure and famine. Even a regional nuclear war (e.g., India–Pakistan) is modeled to cause significant cooling.