April 17, 2026

Is Nuclear Winter Actually a Possibility or Just Pseudoscience?

48 minutes

As horrific as a nuclear war would be in the immediate, a common idea is

that the real troubles for humanity, and the world, would actually

occur in the long aftermath, triggering what is now commonly known as

nuclear winter- a nightmarish scenario in which atmospheric temperatures

would drop dramatically, crops would fail, and widespread famine,

disease, and unrest would follow, leading to a catastrophic reduction in

the global population, or even the end of human civilization. But just

what is ‘nuclear winter’ anyway? Who came up with it, and is it actually

a real possibility, or just some scientists with way too much time on

their hands and a news media who loves them some good doomsday

scenarios, whether they are valid possibilities or not.

Well, put on your gas mask and lead-lined underwear as we dive into the

controversial history and science of one of the most frightening

doomsday scenarios ever conceived.

Surprisingly, the first published suggestion that a nuclear war could

alter the global climate appeared not in an official scientific

publication, but rather in fiction. In the post-apocalyptic short story

Tomorrow’s Children by American science fiction writer Poul Anderson,

first published in the March 1947 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, a

team of scientists hunt down mutated humans in the wake of a nuclear

war. At one point, the story’s protagonist High Drummond observes that:

“Winter lay heavily on the north, a vast grey sky seeming frozen solid

over the rolling white plains. The last three winters had come early and

stayed long. Dust, colloidal dust of the bombs, suspended in the

atmosphere and cutting down the solar constant by a deadly percent or

two. There had even been a few earthquakes, se off in geologically

unstable parts of the world by bombs planted right. Half of California

had been ruined when a sabotage bomb started the San Andreas Fault on a

major slip. And that kicked up still more dust. Fimbulwinter, thought

Drummond bleakly. The doom of the prophecy.”

Anderson later adapted this story into a full-length novel titled

Twilight World, first published in 1961. The same phenomenon also

appears in Christopher Anvil’s short story Torch, published in the April

1957 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. In this story, a Soviet

nuclear ballistic missile test in Siberia accidentally sets fire to an

oil field, releasing large amounts of oily soot into the atmosphere that

blots out the sun and triggers a global ice age.

The term Fimbulwinter or “mighty winter” in Anderson’s original 1947

story is drawn from Norse Mythology, and refers to a series of three

particularly harsh winters preceding Ragnarök, the apocalyptic battle of

the Gods that will destroy and cleanse the world. While the origins of

any mythological concept are hard to pin down, it has been speculated

that Fimbulwinter may have been inspired by the Volcanic Winter of 536,

in which a series of simultaneous volcanic eruptions ejected vast

amounts of particulates - especially sulfur dioxide - into the upper

atmosphere. They lingered there for years, blocking out the sun’s rays

and causing global temperatures to drop by as much as 2.5 degrees

Celsius or 4.5 degrees. As Roman historian Precopius recorded:

“And it came about during this year that a most dread portent took

place. For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the

moon, during this whole year, and it seemed exceedingly like the sun in

eclipse, for the beams it shed were not clear nor such as it is

accustomed to shed. And from the time when this thing happened men were

free neither from war nor pestilence nor any other thing leading to

death.”

Author: Gilles Messier

Host / Editor: Daven Hiskey

Producer: Samuel Avila

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