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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, NOVEMBER 23, 1983
PAGE 9
could cause a "harsh nuclear winter" with temperatures dropping
as much as 25 degrees centigrade [55 degrees Fahrenheit J in in
Tancl"a:rea� tne report said, adding that many areas could b�sub
Ject to continuous snowfall, even in summer. If the nuclear ex
change occurred in spring or summer, virtually all crops would be
killed in the Northern Hemisphere.
Many animals would die of
thirst because surface waters would be frozen over in the
interior of continents, the report said.
"Contrary to the conclusions reached in most earlier studies," it
said, "nuclear war probably would have a major impact on climate
lasting for several years." Because radioactive debris in huge
quantities, an estimated 225 million tons over a few days, would
be carried through the atmosphere, exposure
to
radioactive fall
out would be much more widespread than predicted by current esti
mates, the report said.... Contrary to previous studies, which
have assumed that the Southern Hemisphere would suffer relatively
minor consequences from a nuclear exchange by the superpowers,
this study says "rapid interhemispheric mixing" of dust and smoke
could subject the Southern Hemisphere to "massive injections of
nuclear debris:-1'
Tropical forests and other tropical life
systems, unable to cope with suddenly lowered temperatures, might
be severely damaged or destroyed, the report warned.
"It is clear that the ecosystem effects alone resulting from a
large-scale thermonuclear war would be enough to destroy civili
zation as we know it in at least the Northern Hemisphere," the
researchers said, adding that there might be no human survivors.
A report on the same findings appeared in the November 7 NEWSWEEK:
One billion people killed before the mushroom cloud even dissi
pates...an equal number doomed to slow, agonizing deaths.
And
then the nuclear war claims its next victim: planet Earth.
Months� twilight shroud the globearid temperatures plunge 55
degrees, killing nearly all plant life. The ecological systems
that once supported the earth become so devastated, says
ecologist George Woodwell of the Marine Biological Laboratory in
Woods Hole, Mass., that "the potential effects extend even to the
extermination of Homo sapfens. ...
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In the 5,000-megaton scenario being presented by Cornell's Carl
Sagan, the intense heat from the blasts would set off firestorms,
in which the very air is so hot that everything flammable
ignites.
Sweeping over large areas of the world, the storms
would burn both stored chemicals and those used in construction
and manufactured products.
The air would fill with the poison
fumes of carbon monoxide, dioxins and cyanides, threatening sur
vivors
and producing an
acidic
rain that would make today's look
distilled.
The holocaust could also heat soils enough to kill
dormant see"'a's";'
says biologistPaur - Ehrlich
of
Stanto"ra
University, and with them one of the few hopes for making the
earth bloom again soon. Furthermore, with air around a nuclear
fireball heated to more than 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, photo
chemical smog would form.
Once in the stratosphere, it would
destroy some 50 percent of the ozone layer, the thin band of gas