• Question: What is a nuclear winter ?

    Asked by reaganbrien to Ben, Dave, Ed, Sam, Susana on 24 Jun 2013. This question was also asked by harrythehuman.
    • Photo: David Briggs

      David Briggs answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      A nuclear winter is a term used to describe what the earth might look like after a full scale nuclear war.

      If a nuclear war ever kicked off, the many nuclear explosions and the following fires and smoke would surround the planet with dust, soot, and ash. This soot etc would block the sunlight out – and this lack of sunlight would cause the temperatures around the planet to drop (i.e. like a winter), and plant life would start to die back because of lack of light for photosynthesis.
      If plants started to die, oxygen levels might start to fall, and then animal life might start to die off as well.

      Something like this is thought to be what killed the dinosaurs off – only instead of a nuclear war, there was an asteroid impact that causes all the dust and fires.

      Not nice.

    • Photo: Sam Horrell

      Sam Horrell answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      Exactly as David said it is the predicted effect detonating a few nuclear bombs would have on our environment. These effects would be particularly bad if bombs were detonated on cities as there would be lots more smoke and ash coming off all the buildings.

      It’s predicted that temperatures could drop below freezing even in summer, which would be a big problem for our crop production. We should definitely try and avoid this at all costs.

    • Photo: Benjamin Hall

      Benjamin Hall answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      A sort of ‘post-apocolyptic’ scenario we envisage would happen after a large nuclear war.

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