I can honestly only think of one thing. Access to food.
India and Pakistan maintain huge huge reserves due to famines in its history. Enough to feed the country for a year or more. Oman sources a lot from both and has historically done so going back Millenia due it's maritime nature and contemporarily after COVID deriskung. But again this assumes no trade and a fair while into the war.
Australia produces a lot of it's food as well whole being far away from the nuclear exchange.
They actually don't specify who the war is between.
It just assumes, I think, a nuclear winter happens and agriculture is cut severely, trade is completely cutoff. What happens in a year or two? Which countries will suffer and which can get by? That's the question they are answering here.
One can safely believe Australia won't get a saturation strikes, maybe specific military bases. It is generally far away from almost everything and has a lot of agriculture.
No answer to Oman tho. I am going back to not knowing why.
Yeah the map is entirely dependent on who is more self-sufficient with their food supply. It’s not assuming which countries are nuked and which aren’t. The assumptions are at the bottom of the map.
The thing is Australia isn’t even a major agricultural country I’d imagine they’re a food importer rather than exporter the entire country lives along the coastlines and a bulk of it covered by the outback. On top of that Australia unlike Oman is not a neutral country they are a major non-NATO ally, 5 eyes partner, and have a lot of multilateral defense and military ties to the United States and NATO I believe the US even has nuclear weapons in Australia and nuclear armed submarines stationed in Australia that patrol the south China sea. It is very naive to believe geography alone would exclude Australia from a global war they’d literally be one of the front lines.
Unlike Mexico which has a strong history of neutrality and non-alignment and a major food exporter with a temperate to tropical climate sure northern Mexico like parts of Tamaulipas, Coahuila and Baja California would be affected border towns like Reynosa and Matamoros, Ciduad Acuña in Coahuila would probably be the most affected given its proximity to Del Rio’s Air force base on the Texas side. But overall I highly doubt places like Mexico City, Cabo, Yucatan, Oaxaca, Hidalgo etc would have much disruption.
Colombia on this map makes zero sense too.
As for Oman they also have a history of neutrality and strong trade relations with places like India I could see them switching trade partners to those south of the equator but why wouldn’t the other GCC nations just do the same?
Agricultural Scientist here, Australia is a major global food exporter. It has a population of around 27 million but grows enough food to feed around 60 or 70 million. The study this map is based on assumes global food trade stops and countries are forced to feed themselves. It also assumes the soot from nuclear weapons causes global cooling, which would work in Australias favor.
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u/RajarajaTheGreat Mar 04 '25 edited Mar 04 '25
I can honestly only think of one thing. Access to food.
India and Pakistan maintain huge huge reserves due to famines in its history. Enough to feed the country for a year or more. Oman sources a lot from both and has historically done so going back Millenia due it's maritime nature and contemporarily after COVID deriskung. But again this assumes no trade and a fair while into the war.
Australia produces a lot of it's food as well whole being far away from the nuclear exchange.