If a nuclear war were ever to break out, it probably wouldn’t last long. For a few days, perhaps a week, nuclear weapons would be fired between several countries and catastrophic losses would be swift. But what happens next?

For decades researchers have been modeling the after-effects of nuclear conflict. One of the most globally devastating outcomes from a nuclear war is the possibility of a prolonged climactic cooling event referred to as “nuclear winter.”

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“In a nuclear war, bombs targeted on cities and industrial areas would start firestorms, injecting large amounts of soot into the upper atmosphere, which would spread globally and rapidly cool the planet,” researchers explain in a new study. “Such soot loadings would cause decadal disruptions in Earth’s climate, which would impact food production systems on land and in the oceans.”

Read more: New Atlas