NukeExpo - an engaging exhibit area and panels with leading experts - will present a substantial body of research on the humanitarian consequences and the complex risks associated with nuclear weapons.

 

The scholarship is based on empirical analysis of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the effects of nuclear testing, close-calls and accidents, and nuclear doctrine and decision-making. It is also based on modelling and simulations of what could happen, for example assessments of the risk of nuclear war in a much-changed global technological and political context, the human fatalities and environmental effects of nuclear war, and the social effects of the detonation of a single nuclear bomb. Further simulations include the capacity of national and international humanitarian and health agencies to respond to nuclear use, and scenarios for food production in nuclear winter scenarios.

 

Policy and decision makers must be fully aware of the catastrophic humanitarian consequences that any use of nuclear weapons, let alone a nuclear conflict, would cause.The humanitarian consequences and risks associated with nuclear weapons warrant urgent consideration, given that:

 

• Nuclear war would be a catastrophe with cascading consequences that potentially scale all the way to the collapse of human civilisation.

• The risk of nuclear war is non-zero, becoming more complex, and claims to be able to manage and control that risk are illusory.

 

As leading humanitarian organizations, the organizers of NukeEXPO hope to contribute to increasing awareness among policy and decision makers working within health, emergency care, disaster preparedness and sustainable development, so that we together can face the facts, prepare for the unthinkable, prevent suffering and reduce the existential threat posed by nuclear weapons.