Will there be a nuclear war and what would happen?

RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin has threatened a nuclear “special alert”.

The Kremlin has suggested that comments from Foreign Secretary Liz Truss sparked this high alert.

PA:Press Association

HMS Vigilant is one of the UK’s four nuclear capable submarines[/caption]

Will there be a nuclear war?

President Putin announced he would be putting his nuclear forces onto a special alert.

The UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace told the BBC: “We will not do anything to escalate in that area, we will not do anything to feed any miscalculation – we take it very, very seriously.

“But at the moment this is a battle of rhetoric that President Putin is deploying.”

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has flown to Eastern Europe for discussions with NATO.

There are currently peace talks underway on the Belarusian border between Russia and Ukraine with the hopes of a ceasefire.

Nuclear weapons have only been used once in history, to attack two Japanese cities during World War II.

The United States bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, killing upwards of 126,000 people.

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What would happen in a nuclear war?

The full extent of all out nuclear war is unknown but believed to be wide reaching and catastrophic.

Any city that was hit with a nuclear blast would be completely destroyed and millions would be killed.

There are also likely to be long term side-effects of the fallout.

Widespread radiation sickness could impact survivors and surrounding wildlife.

Temporary, or possibly permanent, loss of technology due to electromagnetic waves is another possibility.

Expert also warn of a nuclear winter caused by the nuclear blast reducing the worldwide temperature by 7°C for several years.

In short it would be a worldwide disaster, collapsing civilisations of both the target nation and those around it.

Who has nuclear weapons?

There are eight nations who have nuclear weapons but not all of these are classed as nuclear-weapon states.

Russia is one of these nations under the Treaty of the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), as is the United Kingdom.

Other nuclear capable countries are:

• France
• China
• The United States
• Pakistan
• India
• North Korea
• Israel

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