Horrific timeline of what would happen in the days, months and years after America is nuked
- READ MORE What would happen if America is nuked
Forests and cities burning uncontrollably worldwide. Rivers and lakes frozen and poisoned by rotten corpses and radiation.
The few humans who did survive revert back to hunter-gatherers as agriculture collapses, while blinded, sterile survivors fight for scraps in the ruins.
These are the dystopian scenes laid out in a new book that takes a detailed look into how modern civilization would fall apart following a nuclear attack.
Annie Jacobsen's Nuclear War: A Scenario, published in March, is based on exclusive interviews with world-leading scientists and nuclear winter experts.
They describe how, in the days following the launch of multiple nuclear weapons around the globe, radioactive soot would fill the air for months, causing temperatures in the US to plunge around 40F, making farming impossible.
By the time the smoke clears, the ozone layer would be so depleted that the sun's rays would cause deadly burns.
A nuclear war would destroy cities and towns, crushing buildings and large structures and creating wildfires
Experts predict a global nuclear war would see 360million people dead almost instantly after the bombs hit - but Jacobsen’s book makes it clear that these fatalities would be just the beginning. Her sources say 5billion would die in the first 72 minutes alone.
She wrote: 'Most won’t make it more than a few steps from where they happen to be standing when the bomb detonates. They become what civil defense experts referred to in the 1950s, when these gruesome calculations first came to be, as "Dead When Found."'
For those who don't die instantly, survivors face a barren land, wildfires, frozen terrains, radiation exposure, no food, widespread ruin and disease.
Minutes after nuclear bombs launch: The US is crippled
In Jacobsen's book, she writes of a fictitious scenario that sees North Korea fire intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) at the United States.
After detecting the launch, the US responds by initiating its own nuclear attack by sending missiles over Russia to North Korea.
Russia then orders its own nuclear attack on the US and allied nations.
Thousands of huge fireballs begin to hit American cities and towns, and in each location, buildings and monuments collapse and asphalt melts.
Cities are obliterated. Power grids and nuclear plants melt down, cutting off electricity and energy and releasing radioactive materials into the air.
Tens of millions of people die almost instantly.
The United States is crippled.
Hours after ICBMs make impact: Raging fires burn forests and towns
Wildfires break out across the northern hemisphere and nearly everything burns in America, including cities, crops and forests. Rings of fire stretch from 100 to 200 miles from each nuclear ground zero.
Buildings are set aflame, which releases airborne toxins from its materials. Burning insulation and fiberglass spew cyanides, vinyl chloride, dioxins and furans.
These chemicals damage organs and the nervous system, leading to cancer, neurological symptoms and death.
Forest fires rage in the Western states, with radioactive fallout killing conifers, and creating fuel for future fires.
And with the water supply across the country compromised, there is nothing to fight the flames with, leaving them to burn freely across America.
Days after the attacks: Radioactive mushroom clouds fill the air
Radioactive dust will rain down over any survivors, sickening and killing them
Radioactive products from mushroom clouds including Strontium-90, iodine-131, tritium, cesium-137, plutonium-239 poison the environment.
These damage DNA and have been linked to cancers, retinal and skin chemical burns, bleeding, coma and death.
Whoever has lived past the initial fallout begins to die from radiation sickness and poisoning, which cause nausea, vomiting, fever, dizziness, disorientation, bloody vomit and diarrhea, internal bleeding and infections.
The high exposure to radiation in such a short period of time causes the insides of people’s bodies to liquefy as their blood vessel lining decays.
The few who survive will suffer chromosomal damage, blindness and sterility.
Weeks after nuclear war breaks out: Soot blankets the atmosphere
In the weeks following the ICBM launches, supplies of natural gas, coal in the Earth's crust and peat bogs - dense wetlands of decayed vegetation - are still burning uncontrollably.
As cities and forests are engulfed in flames around the world, approximately 330billion pounds of soot is released into the upper troposphere and stratosphere - the lowest and second-lowest layers of Earth's atmosphere, respectively.
The heavy soot blocks the sun's rays and the planet's temperatures drastically fall, setting Earth up for a nuclear winter.
Months after missiles hit: Nuclear winter descends on the planet
Climatologist Alan Robock said: 'The density of soot would reduce global temperatures by roughly 27 degrees Fahrenheit. In America, it would be more like a drop of 40 degrees Fahrenheit, slightly less near the oceans.'
The idea of ‘nuclear winter’ first came to the world’s attention in an article by scientist Carl Sagan in 1983.
The first scientific paper explaining the idea was dismissed by the Defense Department who called it Soviet disinformation - but newer information reveals many in the nuclear weapon complex knew it was a real risk.
Scientists at the Defense Nuclear Agency wrote there would be ‘atmospheric trauma’ and ‘serious potential for severe consequences’ after a nuclear exchange.
The sun’s warming rays are reduced by 70 percent and temperatures plunge, with the United States and Europe among the worst affected areas.
In central American states, the temperature will not rise above freezing for years.
The lack of sun kills much of the planet's vegetation and animal life.
The idea of ‘nuclear winter’ first came to the world’s attention in an article by scientist Carl Sagan in 1983
Decades after the fallout: Humans forced back to hunter-gatherers
Prolonged freezing temperatures and lack of sunlight reduces rainfall by 50 percent, killing off crops worldwide.
The surviving humans return to a hunter-gatherer state, with millions starving to death and survivors killing each other for the limited food supplies. Humans must scavenge for roots, insects and the few sources of uncontaminated water.
Lakes are frozen under deep sheets of ice, and other water supplies are poisoned by chemicals from industrial facilities.
Years into the fallout, as the world finally unfreezes, millions of thawing corpses poison the water supplies and survivors along coastlines find filter-feeding shellfish have been killed off by radiation or are now too radioactive to eat.
After thousands of hydrogen bombs rain down on the US, the ozone layer will no longer be able to shield the Earth from the sun's powerful rays
Several more years later, the soot has settled and the ozone layer has now lost 75 percent of its shielding power. This will allow the sun's strong rays to reach Earth without any filter, leading to deadly sunburns.
A 2021 study on 'Extreme Ozone Loss Following Nuclear War' predicted that levels of UV-B would become ‘hazardous to life.'
Survivors would be forced into caves and hollows to shelter.
Humans would also face plagues, with insects multiplying and thawing corpses forming a fertile breeding ground for disease.
Insects are well-placed to survive nuclear war, studies have shown, and as the world warms, insect-borne illnesses will ravage a population of humans without antibiotics or medications.
Future civilizations may never understand how ours met its end
Thousands of years after nuclear bombings: All evidence of today's civilization is erased
Albert Einstein famously said about nuclear war: 'I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.'
Even as temperatures return to pre-war conditions, the humans of the future, still living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, may never know anything about the people that came before them - the ones who met their demise at the hands of nuclear weapons.
Jacobsen said they may never discover any trace of today's civilization, and all knowledge of the past will be gone.
She wrote: 'With time, after a nuclear war, all present-day knowledge will be gone. Including the knowledge that the enemy was not North Korea, Russia, America, China, Iran, or anyone else vilified as a nation or a group.
'It was the nuclear weapons that were the enemy of us all. All along.'
