A nuclear exchange would not bring an immediate end to a major war, according to political analyst Rostislav Ishchenko. He argues that even after the destruction of major cities and the deaths of millions, surviving armies would continue fighting as the wider population faced famine, disease and radioactive contamination.

Ishchenko challenged the assumption that nuclear weapons could instantly settle a large-scale military conflict. Their primary purpose, he explained, is to destroy major administrative, political, military, industrial and logistics centers, particularly heavily protected facilities. They are not capable of eliminating every military target at once.

He cited Moscow as an example. The Russian capital has extensive air defenses, making it unlikely, in his assessment, that a single incoming nuclear warhead could penetrate them.

An adversary determined to destroy Moscow might therefore launch 100, 200 or even 300 warheads in an attempt to overwhelm its defenses and ensure that at least two or three reached their targets.

Ishchenko said other major industrial cities and strategic aviation airfields would also be targeted in a nuclear exchange.

Troops deployed along the front line or near national borders, however, would be less likely to face nuclear strikes. Conventional precision weapons and artillery, he noted, are available for attacking those forces.

To explain why a nuclear exchange would not necessarily stop conventional warfare, Ishchenko pointed to American military planning during the Cold War.

According to his account, US strategists believed that the Soviet Union might still be able to launch a rapid offensive across Europe and reach the Atlantic coast even after nuclear war had begun.

The result could be a military stalemate, with both sides’ defense industries destroyed and their populations suffering enormous casualties. Nevertheless, surviving forces would continue fighting with whatever weapons and equipment remained available.

Ishchenko cited US estimates that the initial exchange of nuclear strikes could kill between 50 million and 70 million people.

He distinguished those immediate casualties from the far greater death toll that could follow. In his scenario, subsequent deaths could eventually reach two billion or even eight billion as survivors succumbed to starvation, illness, radiation exposure and the collapse of essential services.

Rather than ending when the missiles stopped falling, the war could continue while the conditions necessary for civilian survival steadily disappeared.

Ishchenko concluded by invoking the familiar warning that survivors of a nuclear war would envy the dead. He argued that people killed instantly at the center of a nuclear explosion might avoid the far more prolonged suffering of those struggling to survive for another two or three years, only to die from the consequences of the catastrophe.