Aerospace & Defense Abolishing Atomic Arms Can Avert War That Kills Billions, Experts Say By Kevin Holden Platt ,
Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Kevin Holden Platt writes on space defense, SpaceX, ISS, Space War I Follow Author Aug 16, 2026, 12:21am EDT --:-- / --:-- This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more . This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more . As Russia threatens nuclear strikes on Ukraine and its Western backers, potentially foreshadowing a doomsday war, leading American arms scholars say it’s becoming urgent to rapidly abolish nuclear weapons worldwide to protect the globe’s eight billion citizens. (Photo by © CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images) Corbis via Getty Images As Russia’s Commander-in-Chief threatens nuclear strikes on Ukraine and its Western backers, potentially foreshadowing a doomsday war, leading arms scholars in the U.S. say it’s becoming urgent to rapidly abolish nuclear weapons worldwide to protect the globe’s eight billion citizens.
Scientists creating increasingly sophisticated computer models to simulate an intercontinental nuclear war, in incredible real-time detail, are now predicting that a full-scale ICBM battle between the Russia and the United States could kill billions of people, more than half the world’s populace.
Sharon Weiner, one of the top American scholars on nuclear conflicts and their projected casualty tolls, told me in an interview that a cascade of nuclear clashes that her team at Princeton University simulated, based on the equally armed superpowers’ real-world nuclear arsenals and battle plans and likely order of bombings - of military citadels and then cosmopolitan cities - would kill or injure more than 90 million people in just the first few hours.
But that would be just the beginning of a chain reaction of catastrophes that would circle the Earth and shoot into the heavens, she says.
Nuclear firestorms would wipe out anyone across the vast periphery of a ground zero, but would also blast colossal mushroom clouds of soot into the stratosphere, blocking out most sunlight for years and triggering a “nuclear winter” that wipes out crops across the Northern Hemisphere.
After a thermonuclear World War III, a nuclear winter would descend on the Earth, triggering massive starvation, say American scientists (Photo by Planet Observer/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) Universal Images Group via Getty Images MORE FOR YOU As cities criss-crossing America and Russia are set ablaze, Weiner says, their rising ashes would add to this weapons-triggered ice age, which might stretch out for more than a decade.
The destruction of the ozone layer would allow hazardous ultraviolet radiation to rain down on the planet, adding to the series of climate cataclysms that would threaten civilization and most life on Earth.
A pre-eminent expert on nuclear weapons and strategic battle plans stretching from Moscow to Washington, Weiner is a professor at American University in Washington and a visiting scholar at Princeton University.
In a remarkable series of books and articles on potential atomic warfare of the future she’s authored, Wiener also sketches out strategies to head off that future, including universal adoption of the United Nations’ Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons , and a worldwide, lightning-paced disarmament program.
Activists heading the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which won the Nobel Peace…