• A study highlights the risks facing the world's population in the event of a nuclear conflict, even on a local scale.
• For example, even the minimal use of small warheads between India and Pakistan could ultimately result in 2 billion deaths.
• For now the ceasefire in Kashmir is holding, but calls for denuclearisation are growing louder.

A ceasefire that appears to be holding for now, but is not yet a permanent peace. The tensions along the border between India and Pakistan — the two Asian nuclear powers with a long-standing rivalry over the disputed territory of Kashmir — continue to keep the entire region on edge following the attacks of 6 and 7 May, when India launched Operation Sindoor in response to an alleged attack on Indian citizens the previous April. But in truth, should the conflict resume and escalate in the worst possible scenario, a substantial portion of the planet ought to be concerned. Much as is the case whenever two nuclear powers come into direct confrontation.

The Nuclear Famine report by IPPNW (International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War), published in 2022, demonstrates how even a "limited" nuclear war would have catastrophic effects on a global scale, with consequences far beyond the direct conflict. The most extreme scenario outlined in the report is that of a full-scale nuclear war between the United States and Russia — a catastrophic reprise of the Cold War — resulting in 5 billion deaths, or three out of every four people on earth. A hypothesis that currently seems rather remote, although a prolonged Russian aggression in Ukraine could open up unforeseeable scenarios.

The sudden flare-up of the ever-latent tensions in Kashmir, however, has turned the spotlight squarely on the India-Pakistan axis: Delhi and Islamabad are, as noted, two of the world's leading nuclear powers. As Francesco Vignarca, campaigns coordinator at Rete Pace Disarmo, recalls in his book Disarmo nucleare, published by Altreconomia, "the government of New Delhi currently possesses 164 nuclear warheads and has land, sea and air nuclear capabilities, while Islamabad currently holds 70, but at an extremely high growth rate that could reach 220–250 warheads by 2025".

India and Pakistan, tensions to watch closely

A potential nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan — often considered a "limited" scenario in terms of geographic scale and arsenals involved — is regarded as a "medium-severity" example that would nonetheless have catastrophic global consequences: according to the study cited, the detonation of just 250 warheads of 100 kilotons each — totalling less than 3 per cent of the world's nuclear arsenal — would cause not only tens of millions of immediate casualties (approximately 100 million, according to estimates), but the death by starvation of more than 2 billion people within the following two years.

The reason is straightforward: fires in cities would generate tens of millions of tonnes of soot, blocking out the Sun, lowering global temperatures by as much as 5.5°C and triggering a collapse in crop yields "unprecedented in modern history", according to the study. A global risk, one that would not be confined to South Asia: the hardest-hit regions would in fact be the world's major agricultural areas, including the United States, Europe, China and Russia, thousands of kilometres away. In a cooled world, with atmospheric ozone severely depleted and food reserves halved, the very survival of modern civilisation would be called into question.

Greater Boston PSR @gb_psr

𝕏

The heightened situation between India and Pakistan puts the world at risk of nuclear war. Even more of a reason to engage our legislators in action to prevent it. See @IPPNW's statement here:

peaceandhealthblog.com/2025/05/07/int…

#preventnuclearwar #nuclearweaponsabolition #docsspeakout

♥ 4 7 mag 2025 · Apri su X →

A catastrophe to be averted through disarmament

For this reason, IPPNW immediately called for an immediate ceasefire in South Asia following the first wave of cross-border attacks by India and Pakistan. "A conflict between these two nuclear-armed states carries the risk of a catastrophic nuclear conflict," said executive director Michael Christ. And given the current ceasefire, "the world may be lucky and dodge the nuclear bullet again, but we cannot keep playing nuclear roulette in this way. The only way to ensure we don't stumble into a nuclear holocaust is to eliminate these weapons before they eliminate us."

IPPNW has urged all nations to join the nearly 100 states that have already signed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and to commit now, while engaged in that process, to never using their nuclear arsenals. But the reality is far less reassuring than what is written on paper: the nuclear threat is frequently brandished by Vladimir Putin's Russia, as well as by North Korea in another smouldering conflict further to the East, while India's nuclear weapons, Vignarca explains, "remain firmly under civilian control and an elaborate command-and-control mechanism exists to prevent accidental or unauthorised use"; not so, however, for Pakistan, which "unlike India, has not declared a no-first-use policy and has instead chosen to emphasise smaller battlefield, or 'tactical', nuclear weapons to counter India's larger and superior conventional forces". Not to mention that "the details of Pakistan's nuclear weapons procedures are unknown, but in April 2019 the BBC revealed footage in which the then Prime Minister, Imran Khan, was supposedly accompanied by a black briefcase containing the warhead codes".

As Vignarca himself asks in his book, "can we trust the command-and-control chain of two countries like India and Pakistan? Do we really believe it guarantees peace rather than posing a grave danger by allowing nuclear arsenals to be managed by two armies that are fighting each other in Kashmir (with China, another nuclear power, now seemingly keen to join the standoff) and with recent incidents that have also involved the civilian population?"