Earth in Flames: How an Asteroid Killed the Dinosaurs and How We Can Avoid a Similar Fate From Nuclear Winter

[Alan Robock]

Dear Colleagues,

Brian Toon and I have just published our new book, Earth in Flames: How an Asteroid Killed the Dinosaurs and How We Can Avoid a Similar Fate From Nuclear Winter.  We hope that with the upcoming report from the U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, to be released on June 25, https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/45265_06-2025_public-report-release-independent-study-on-potential-environmental-effects-of-nuclear-war , that the world will be reminded of the dangers of continuing to maintain nuclear arsenals, and provide motivation for more countries to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

You can purchase our book at https://www.amazon.com/Earth-Flames-Asteroid-Dinosaurs-Similar/dp/0197799701/ref=sr_1_1

Here is a description:  Sixty-six million years ago an asteroid as large as Mt. Everest hit what is now the Yucatan Peninsula at a speed ten times faster than the fastest rifle bullet. Debris from the impact blew into space, re-entered the atmosphere as a swarm of shooting stars that burned the global forests and grasslands, leaving behind a thin global layer containing rock from the asteroid and from Mexico, and smoke from the fires. This layer marks one of the greatest extinctions in Earth history including not just dinosaurs, but also fish, plankton, ammonites, and plants making up about 75% of the known species. The major culprits in these extinctions are loss of sunlight due to absorption by the smoke and decade-long ice age temperatures.
     A nuclear war with just a few hundred of the world's 12,000 nuclear weapons targeted on densely populated cities could plunge Earth into the same types of conditions that the dinosaurs experienced. Even a war between India and Pakistan could kill 1 to 3 billion people from starvation due to agricultural failure, while 6 billion people might starve following a war involving Russia, NATO, and the U.S.
     The book describes how the dinosaurs died, and how their deaths parallel what might happen to people after a nuclear war. The book reflects on the odds of future asteroid impacts, how to stop them, and ends with what the readers personally and together can do to prevent a nuclear war, so that humans don't end up like the dinosaurs.

You can read the prologue at https://academic.oup.com/book/59891/chapter/511930013?guestAccessKey=622efd0e-f164-4106-b85d-117a07c22ebc

We hope you like the book.

Alan Robock

Alan Robock, Distinguished Professor
   Editor, Reviews of Geophysics (Impact Factor 25.2)
Department of Environmental Sciences         Phone: +1-848-932-5751
Rutgers University                            E-mail: rob...@envsci.rutgers.edu
14 College Farm Road          https://people.envsci.rutgers.edu/robock
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551                 ☮ @alanrobock.bsky.social

Read our book: Earth in Flames: How an Asteroid Killed the Dinosaurs
and How We Can Avoid a Similar Fate From Nuclear Winter
by Owen Brian Toon and Alan Robock

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