Daily Times

Indian planners must realise that even if most of these bunkers remain intact and by some miracle, the population reacts to a nuclear warning siren calmly and rationally, the chance that a sizeable chunk of the population will reach these shelters in due time is limited.

Even if these bunkers manage to save thousands, if not mere hundreds, of people from being turned to radioactive ash, what would these survivors return to? Pakistan and India will target each other’s major cities and bombard them with waves of primary, secondary and tertiary strikes. The resulting firestorms and radioactivity will destroy any prospect of rebuilding the infrastructure or carrying on the war. Even the best-laid continuity of government plans cannot escape absolute destruction at the hands of the frenzied atom.

Some pseudo-scholars with YouTube channels like to present a rosier picture of the war between Pakistan and India where India’s south will remain “untouched” by the nuclear holocaust on the account of Pakistan lacking the range to hit India further inland.

What these pseudo-scholars fail to understand is that nuclear weapons have many and everlasting direct and indirect consequences. To fathom the dangerous nature of India’s gambit, one need only read the paper titled, “In a Dark Time: The Expected Consequences of an India-Pakistan Nuclear Exchange” by Louis Rene Beres. The author effectively illustrated that unless strict control and responsibility are practised by both sides, the situation could easily spiral out of control. Beres ominously stated, “It is important that all pertinent decision-makers fully understand the stakes. Should India and Pakistan engage in nuclear exchanges, either by calculation or by inadvertence, the survivors would surely envy the dead.” Those conclusions are supported by the models, created by Michael Mills, a researcher at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research.

The model demonstrates even a limited exchange of nuclear weapons will have terrible ramifications for both countries as well as the world. Mills said that these weapons are so devastating that they will destroy the ecosystem and climate cycle of the world. A gigantic ash cloud will hang in the atmosphere at a level where no rain ever occurs. This cloud of radioactive dust and dirt launched by the sheer explosive force of a nuclear exchange will cause a “Nuclear Winter” and destroy the earth’s ability to grow crops. Therefore, the worst and most perpetual famine in history will cause the extinction of the world’s population. Animals won’t survive, no crops will ever grow.

Trees will become charred fossilised husks, and the earth would be inhospitable to life.

As for those Southern Indian troops, India thinks they will be able to deploy, well, they can forget about that too. Even the most ambitious and resourceful commander can’t imagine deploying men to a front that just doesn’t exist anymore, fighting a war for a nation, which has gone dark and now remains but a footnote in history books no one will ever live to read.

Imagine this diligent and motivated commander ordering his men to cross the rivers of fire, molten slag and steel to get to this glorious front so he can win a victory for the Hindutva. I doubt such a crazy human being exists. All vehicles, electronic systems, utilities and factories will be rendered inoperable due to the Electromagnetic Pulse that follows each nuclear explosion. Clocks will freeze and forever be the witnesses of history, testifying when the world stood still and saw its death descend from the skies.

Cities in both countries will become pools of molten lava ravaged by unending firestorms. All exposed water sources such as flowing rivers and reservoirs will evaporate and any rain that might occur will bring with it radiation and death. The few underground springs that will survive immediate evaporation will be irradiated and will go deep into the earth spreading the poison to every spring and chunk of soil they touch. Highways will be littered with burning hulks of cars stuck in panicked traffic jams encapsulating the skeletal corpses of the millions that will panic and attempt to run from their destruction at the hands of Mr Modi’s Hindutva.

Those unfortunate people who do manage to survive this ensuing hell and weather the immediate storm in nuclear bunkers won’t be able to live inside those bunkers forever. Resupplying water and air filtrations are major energy and resource consuming challenges that can only be accomplished when a highly industrialised society continues to exist. Once this society becomes a mere chapter of human history, so does the prospect of these shelter-borne people surviving a nuclear holocaust. To see a plausible imagining of such a holocaust one can simply stare at the masterful and terrifying works of Chelsey Bonestell depicting the moments and aftermath of a fictional nuclear attack on New York City by the USSR. The works are scary enough to strike sense into the most hardcore nuclear war enthusiasts.

Cities in both countries will become pools of molten lava ravaged by unending

If Modi cannot see the proverbial strokes on the canvass then he must be made to see by the committee of nations. Now more than ever, merely paying lip service to the Kashmir issue and India’s general attitude towards engaging in meaningful dialogue with Pakistan is not only a crime against the people of the sub-continent but a crime against the whole of humanity. Modi’s ever-increasing belligerence and his appetite for military adventurism point to a man with a twisted and dangerous mind. It is high time the great powers saw Narendra Modi’s penchant for engaging in an ill-conceived campaign of 5th generation war against Pakistan and his willingness to engage in behaviour that is against the norms of International Law have seriously undermined the stability and security of the Indian Sub-continent. The United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union must relegate economic interests to the back burners for just a little while and rein Modi’s India in.

The madness of Modi must be checked by not only the international community but also by responsible and rational Indians who don’t wish the world to end itself in a fireball of extremist hate. Modi’s distinct lack of remorse for his role in the Gujarat Muslim massacres and his penchant for dehumanising certain sections of Indian society harken to the dark days of Adolph Hitler’s rule. Hitler dehumanised Jews and Gypsies and led the German state machinery to commit mass murder on a scale unparalleled in history. He also invaded every country he could reach thinking that no consequences would follow. Hitler’s legacy remains a black mark that even the modern, vibrant and progressive Germany has struggled to remove. However, the damage done by Hitler was not too permanent. Thankfully he could not deploy nuclear weapons. He only managed to pelt the world from time to time with various chemical weapons due to crippling embargoes and the constant bombing of Germany’s industrial hubs. But in today’s nuclear world the luxury of allowing such crackpots to play their hand to their natural conclusions is unacceptable. The ramifications of such inaction will challenge the survival of the human race.

Therefore, it is imperative that either the UN Security Council tutors Modi on what M.A.D means or simply tell the Indian delegation of what afflicts the PM’s office in India, a rather unsightly touch of madness that will only be checked through effective economic sanctions and military embargoes. It is important to enforce these measures until India comes to the table with positive intent to resolve its outstanding issues (especially the Kashmir issue) with Pakistan in a civilised and fruitful manner. Otherwise, I fear the dreaded atomic holocaust will indeed take place. When and how exactly, is anyone’s ones guess, but I can be certain about one thing, that the actions of Narendra Modi will be the force behind every finger that pushes the dread red button, committing the world to be cleansed by atomic fire.

I will conclude my arguments by leaving the readers with a poignant quote by US President Dwight E. Eisenhower “You cannot have this kind of war, there just aren’t enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the ground.”

The writer is a practising lawyer, based out of Multan, whose studies have a special focus on Blockchain Technology, legal and public policy