Drell Lecture 2026 | The Science of Nuclear Winter: What We Know and What We Don't Know about the Consequences of a Nuclear War

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Media: please reach out to cisacevents@stanford.edu mailto:cisacevents@stanford.edu About the Event Estimates of fatalities in a nuclear war range from none to Earth's population. We can confidently state if there is never a nuclear explosion, there will be no fatalities. But what is the most probable loss? Fatalities from explosions in populated areas could be in the hundreds of millions, exceeding those from fallout radiation by a factor of ten. However, fatalities from environmental changes and the breakdown of society, which together may collapse global agriculture, could exceed those from blast by another factor of ten, approaching the population of the planet. Fatalities from blast, burns and prompt radiation are relatively easy to compute, but those from environ…

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