Annie Jacobsen: uncertainty

Transcript context

…— India would retaliate and take out equivalent parts of Pakistan, and then China would twist Pakistan’s arm, and we and Russia would twist India’s arm. I think that would be the end of it. It would be terrible. Millions of people would die, but I don’t think it would escalate beyond that. Is that wrong? What I just said was, what I am aware of and wrote the book about is, what happens if the United States gets involved? I would have to really put my mind on that scenario to discern what the outcome would be. I don’t know necessarily if America would get involved. It doesn’t seem to me that there would be a reason. Now, what I am familiar with is understanding the effects of, let’s say, a 200-nuclear-weapons exchange between those two nuclear-armed countries, and what would happen to the soot that would loft into the atmosphere and block out the sun, impacting all of us. That’s a different conversation. But that’s why we would get involved. It’s one reason of many, right?…

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