72 minutes. Five billion people

 Have Australia and New Zealand come up with a new strategy to encourage migration to their countries? Slogan, we are te safest places to be in the aftermath of a nuclear war?

There have been several recent MSM pieces about a possible nuclear war. The latest comes from The MailOnline, 16 May, which carries an article titled, ‘Nuclear war expert reveals what would really happen after an atomic blast - and the safest part of the world to live.’ Although featured on the front online web page the article is listed under the Femail section which is presumable aimed specifically at women readers.

‘A nuclear war expert who claims we are getting closer to atomic warfare says it would take 72 minutes to wipe out five billion people if the worst comes to pass.

Annie Jacobsen said: 'If a nuclear exchange happens - and we're talking strategic ballistic missiles - it will not stop until the world ends and we are talking about in seconds and minutes not in days and weeks and months.'

'An ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) travels from one continent to the next in roughly 30 minutes carrying a nuclear warhead to strike a target.

She said: 'On top of the initial flash of thermonuclear light which is 180 million degrees, which catches everything on fire in a nine mile diameter radius; on top of the bulldozing effect of the wind and all the buildings coming down and more fires igniting on top of the radiation poisoning people to death in minutes and hours and days and weeks, if they happen to have survived, on top of all of that, each one of these fires creates a mega fire that is 100 or more square miles and so.'

The author said if the world went into nuclear war you would 'want to die instantly' because 'there is no more law and order.'

She said: 'There's a quote from Nikita Khrushchev, the first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he said: '"After nuclear war the survivors would envy the dead".

'Who's left? It's man returning to the most primal, most violent state as people fight over the tiny resources that remain, and by the way they're all malnourished, everybody's sick and most people have lost everything and everyone they know. How's that going to feel?'

If nuclear war did break out Annie said the safest place to be would be in Australia or New Zealand because of the agricultural resources.

She said: 'Agriculture would fail and when agriculture fails people just die and on top of that you have the radiation poisoning because the ozone layer will be so damaged and destroyed that you can't be outside in the sunlight and so people will be forced to live underground - fighting for food everywhere except in New Zealand and Australia.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-13420801/Nuclear-war-expert-wipe-billions.html

Nevil Shute in his 1957 novel On the Beach has the population of those countries eventually succumbing to the spread of radiation southwards.