India & Pakistan

While the West is focused on how close Vladimir Putin is to pushing the red button, the real threat of Armageddon could be brewing in South Asia. In April, suspected Islamist Pakistani militants shot dead 22 Indian tourists holidaying in the Baisaran valley, which is now pushing India and Pakistan – both nuclear-armed countries – to the brink of a nuclear confrontation. The gunmen are said to have prowled through the group of tourists, picking off any individual unable to recite Islamic verses. It’s being viewed by Indians as the worst massacre since the 2008 Mumbai bombings. Both Pakistan and India are understood to have around 170 warheads heads each, according to the Arms Control Association. While India has agreed to a “no first use” nuclear pact”, Pakistan does not adhere to the same moral restriction. And if the apocalypse did happen in South Asia, 125 million people would be dead in a matter of days, researchers warned back in 2019. In the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in 2019, researchers said that there would be “tens of millions” of immediate victims if a nuke was launched in South Asia. It would have devastating environmental impacts, causing famines that could affect billions of people across the world. “The direct effects of this nuclear exchange would be horrible; the authors estimate that 50 to 125 million people would die, depending on whether the weapons used had yields of 15, 50, or 100 kilotons,” the article read. “Smoke and radioactive particles would ‘spread globally within weeks… cooling the global surface, reducing precipitation and threatening mass starvation.”