What nuclear war looks like from space

Nuclear winter visualizations made by Prof. Max Tegmark using state-of-the-art simulation data from these science papers:
* Lili Xia, Alan Robock, Kim Scherrer, Cheryl Harrison, Benjamin Bodirsky, Isabelle Weindl, Jonas Jägermeyr, Charles Bardeen, Owen Toon & Ryan Heneghan, 2022, published in Nature Food
* Joshua Coupe, Charles Bardeen, Alan Robock & Owen Toon 2019, J. of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres,124, 8522–8543
* Owen Toon, Charles Bardeen , Alan Robock, Lili Xia, Hans Kristensen, Matthew McKinzie , R. Peterson, Cheryl Harrison, Nicole Lovenduski & Richard P. Turco 2019, Sci. Adv. 5: eaay5478
* Alan Robock, Luke Oman & Georgiy L. Stenchikov 2007, J. Geophys. Research 112, D13107

Special thanks to Chuck Bardeen for data and Meia Chita-Tegmark for editing!

Social Media Links:

[paulgermano]

Watching the black smoke slowly cover Earth in the simulation is very haunting. It's not only the massive loss of life but also many achievements in science, technology, art, etc, being lost.

[JETZcorp]

I'd like to see, for context, what the Mt Tambora eruption looks like in these simulations, and how it compares to the various nuclear war scenarios. That was a severe event that lead to the Year Without a Summer, causing crop failures and a lot of hunger. I'd like to see the "Tambora" used as the unit of measure for debris cloud winter scenarios, whether from nuclear war, or from other potential big volcanoes like Yellowstone.

[andrealively]

This is terrifying. And such a powerful reminder of why it is so imperative to make sure it never happens. Aside from sharing this video, what else can we do to make sure this outcome never happens?

[lolmao]

Something that should be included in your next paper on nuclear war... What about people turning to cannibalism to survive from starvation? Seems to me a lot of people would do that as they have in the past. Stories of parents eating their kids or the elderly are plentiful in chinese history.

[uniteserve]

Good Simulation. Appreciate your efforts. This will help people take nuclear conflict seriously.

[jakrispy]

It would be cool if one day, the Fallout series would show what it was like for astronauts to see the Great War from space

[melissatopscher]

Thank you Max! This is illuminating and horrifying. It's time to stop putting our incredible human potential toward fighting each other.

[franksudia]

According to the voice over, the animation shows a view of the Earth as seen from the Sun, and we see the stars passing to the right behind the spinning Earth, so presumably it's 1 day per turn of the globe. However, apart from this there's no indication of how long the simulation covers, and most of us are familiar with animations having unrealistic speeds. Please add a time odometer that asserts the elapse of time, such as Day 01, 02, etc., and then speed it up to months / years to show the duration aloft, which is no way shown by the video itself. Thx

[anthonyaguirre]

Amazing work Max! The for those who lost count of the turnings of the Earth, how long a period does this simulation cover?

[dob]

Thank you!
This video needs to be shared more and more.

[TheB]

U.S led NATO and UN should remember the detrimental consequences of such a war and steer clear of any sort of armed conflict. This is the last thing anyone would want now.

[gab]

This is scary. But since it's a simulation, there should be a time clock to show us how long that black soot spreads out.

[IMANVANRULER]

It's nice that we can at least watch our demise on YouTube beforehand

[jpaulhull]

Genius video Max. More effective than a short fast moving illustration of a nuclear winter.

[MrMarcosema]

This is considering only one cloud in the north, the coriolis effect along the equator would plit whatever gets close to the equator into two clouds, maintaining one cloud north and the other one south, the equator will remain clean and will be mostly spared

[thetruthchannel]

This is one of the best videos on the net. One thing more. This round of nukes has LOTS more power and unknowns than the two war crimes of the 40s. Blow a hole in ozone

[XxnosmanXx]

Our beautiful planet destroyed in minutes by governments we put in power to protect us.

[computationalpsychiatry]

i posted this in a group and someone respond made this comment. I dont have much details to respond. "yea..i see people have modelled..but to be honest i am sceptical about these things..main thing being when you compare with natural events such as tsunami/volcanoes the amount of energy is just gigantic...like last dinosaur extinction energy was 100 teraton equivalent of tnt..and even if we scale down by orders of magnitude, the nukes are nowhere near to that...the largest that we have tested is 50 megaton..then there was recent tonga volcano eruption that was 18 MT and didnt cause much generic damage.. also i see the firestorms part..but it doesnt reach much till stratosphere, , only then it would remain for too long...what reaches stratosphere is the material from the initial blast..and firestorms happen later...we have been having wildfires all over the world always...so not sure...maybe it will happen and numbers are right but i am sceptical".

[lingdatang]

maun botswana, australia, new zealand, uruguay, chile not affected (at first, but AUS and NZ at least are gonna get it later). Comes from scientific data

[BasicName]

Human kind knows the consequences yet still puts their hand in the fire.