Check out CNN’s Opinion article written by PSR national’s past president, Dr. Ira Helfand, bringing to light the great danger of the thousands of nuclear weapons already in existence. Please take a look at Dr. Helfand’s report, Nuclear Famine: Two Billion People at Risk? in which he talks about the global impacts of limited nuclear war on agriculture, food supplies and human nutrition. 

A nuclear threat far greater than Iran

By Ira Helfand
December 10, 2013

Editor’s note: Ira Helfand is co-president of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and a past president of the organization’s U.S. affiliate, Physicians for Social Responsibility. He is the author of the report “Nuclear Famine: Two Billion People at Risk?”

(CNN) — The world is focused on forging a durable agreement to prevent Iran from developing a single nuclear weapon. While critically important, these efforts ignore a far greater danger: the thousands of weapons that already exist.

There are today more than 17,000 nuclear warheads, an ongoing existential threat to human survival that has largely been ignored since the Cold War ended two decades ago. And, unlike Iran, there are no comparable negotiations under way to deal with these far more dangerous arsenals.

In fact, the humanitarian consequences of even a limited nuclear war, such as a conflict in South Asia between India and Pakistan, involving just 100 Hiroshima-size bombs — less than 0.5% of the world’s nuclear arsenal — would put 2 billion people’s lives and well-being at risk.

The local effects would be devastating. More than 20 million people would be dead in a week from the explosions, firestorms and immediate radiation effects. But the global consequences would be far worse.

Continue reading the full editorial at CNN Opinion