Nuclear war expert revealed safest part of the world to live as Russia sends chilling threat to strike 23 UK locations

Global tensions are at a higher point than is entirely comfortable at the moment, driven in large part by Russian bluster to other countries over its frustration at having an impotent invasion of Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin reckoned his invasion would be done and dusted in about three days, but instead his armies have become bogged down and more than three years later, Russia has not gained much ground.

With its armies embarrassed by Ukraine on the battlefield, Russia has been looking for some way to work out its frustrations and it seems one of its favourite ways to do this is by threatening the UK.

Putin's propagandists enjoy going on about how they're going to bomb the UK, and recently, they claimed they had 23 locations marked out for potential bomb strikes.

Russia's not doing well in Ukraine, but they do have a lot of nuclear weapons (Oleg Elkov/Getty Images)

Tensions between Russia and NATO are running high, particularly after a spate of incidents where Russian aircraft have violated the airspace of NATO countries. Given that Russia is stuck in Ukraine, a conventional war between them and NATO seems very unlikely to go Putin's way but Russia is sitting on their trump card, the largest nuclear arsenal in the world.

Hanging over all like the sword of Damocles is the dreaded nuclear button, and if it's ever pressed that would probably be the end of the world.

Where is the safest part of the world if Russia launches nuclear weapons?

Investigative journalist Annie Jacobsen, author of Nuclear War: A Scenario, has identified the safest part of the world in case you'd prefer to avoid the prospective apocalypse.

That's one fine looking place to hopefully not die in a nuclear apocalypse (Nazar Abbas Photography/Getty Images)

You'd best hope you're a Lord of the Rings fan, because the top spot to survive a nuclear winter is good old New Zealand which has the advantage of largely being out of the way of everywhere else.

The expert named it and Australia as the best places to hunker down for a different reason though, and that's the after-effects of the bombs being dropped.

For those not caught in the initial blast, they'll then have to contend with everything going the way of Threads and trying to eke out a living in an irradiated hell-hole which will make it difficult to grow crops or rear livestock.

Why is this the safest part of the world in case of nuclear attacks?

Not if you come from a land down under, or just adjacent to it, as Jacobsen described the ecological impact of a nuclear winter on the survivors of the bombs.

"Most of the world, certainly the mid-latitudes would be covered in sheets of ice... places like Iowa and Ukraine would be just snow for 10 years," she told the Diary of a CEO podcast.

"Agriculture would fail, and when agriculture fails people just die.

Yeah, that doesn't look too bad (Getty Stock)

"On top of that you have the radiation poisoning because the ozone layer will be so damaged and destroyed that you couldn't be outside in the sunlight - people will be forced to live underground fighting for food everywhere except in New Zealand and Australia."

Painting a very gloomy picture of nuclear war, not that it's really possible to be optimistic about it, she reckons that within the first 72 minutes about 60 percent of the world's population could be wiped out.

All in all, it would be better for everyone not to have a nuclear war, but if you want to move to New Zealand then we're not going to stop you as it's apparently very nice there.