(ORDO NEWS) — Experts have found that the public in some Western countries is not taking the prospect of a “nuclear winter” seriously enough, given the many global risks.
Ask the public in the US and UK if they’re afraid of a nuclear winter and you’ll probably get a few rolled eyes and a few chuckles.
A report produced by the Cambridge Center for Existential Risk Research (CSER) found that very few of the 3,000 people surveyed online were aware of the various threats of nuclear winter, including just 1.6 percent in the UK who were aware of academic research. on this issue, and only nine percent of US respondents recalling nuclear winter beliefs that were part of the cultural milieu in the 1980s.
“In 2023, we will face a higher risk of nuclear conflict than we have seen since the early eighties,” said CSER senior fellow Paul Ingram.
“However, little is known or discussed by the public about the unimaginably terrible long-term effects of nuclear war on the planet and the population of the planet.”
The public in the US and UK knows much less about the consequences of nuclear winter than they should.
The threat of a large-scale nuclear exchange is usually described in terms of destroyed cities and mass deaths in nuclear explosion zones or from subsequent exposure, but the threat of nuclear winter is just as catastrophic.
This will greatly reduce global temperatures and deprive staple crops and plants of the sunlight they need to grow, leading to massive crop failures and famine around the world.
Nuclear deterrence through the threat of mutually assured destruction only works if the public and politicians are aware of the consequences of a nuclear exchange. According to the report, the threat of a nuclear exchange is higher than in the past 40 years.
“Of course, it is unpleasant to think about large-scale disasters,” Ingram said: “But decisions must take into account all the potential consequences in order to minimize the risk.
Any stability within the framework of nuclear deterrence is undermined if it is based on decisions that are unaware of the worst consequences of the use of nuclear weapons.”
In the least devastating scenario from the poll, which used just 0.1 percent of the US and Russian nuclear arsenals, nuclear winter could result in up to 225 million deaths.
Fictitious near-future news reports (dated July 2023) of Russia‘s use of nuclear weapons were presented to members of the public in the US and UK to gauge whether the public would want to see the West strike back.
The survey showed half of the respondents (750 each in the US and UK) an infographic outlining the effects of nuclear winter before showing them news stories, while an equal-sized control group was shown only news stories.
When the infographic was not shown first, the researchers found that more respondents wanted the West to respond with nuclear weapons: 20.7% and 24.4% of men in the US and UK, respectively, and 14.1% and 16.1% of women in the UK. respectively.
If respondents had been shown the infographic first, support for nuclear retaliation dropped by about 16 percent in the US and 13 percent in the UK, with the effect even more pronounced for respondents who support the political party that leads the US and UK governments (Democrats in the US and Conservatives in the UK).
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