The nuclear arsenal Trump currently controls includes some 1,700 deployed nuclear warheads, most of them with an explosive force of 100 to 800 kilotons, six to 50 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. If used in a large-scale attack on Russia, they could kill more than 100 million people in the first afternoon. And a Russian counterattack would kill at least that many here in the United States.

Those who survived the initial fires and explosions would find themselves living in a wasteland that we cannot imagine. None of the things we need to keep ourselves alive would be available. There would be no electric grid, no cell phones, no internet, no food distribution system, no system for distributing gasoline or natural gas or heating oil, no law and order. And in the months following the initial attacks most of those who survived those attacks would also die—from starvation, epidemic disease, radiation sickness, and exposure to the elements.

The disaster would not be confined to the US and Russia. The smoke from burning cities in both countries would loft enormous quantities of smoke into the upper atmosphere, blocking out the sun and dropping temperatures across the planet an average of 18°F. In the interior regions of North America and Eurasia temperatures would drop 45-50°F, food production would plummet, and the vast majority of the human race would starve. In the first two years alone, three-quarters of humanity—6 billion people—would die.