‘Two countries’ would survive if nuclear war that could kill ‘five billion in days’ began

Knowing which countries might not be affected by nuclear war might be handy information to know, just in case things go quite badly wrong.

It's a very chaotic and dangerous world at the moment what with Russia invading Ukraine, the US and Israel firing missiles at Iran and their retaliation on various places along with all manner of other dangerous things.

We don't know what will happen next, only that more people are going to die and the possibility of further escalation is on the table and the final, most catastrophic option looms over all.

Nuclear war that wipes out the planet is unlikely to happen soon as nuclear-armed powers aren't at war with each other but just in case that changes bestselling author Annie Jacobsen, who penned the cheery-sounding book Nuclear War: A Scenario, has said only two countries would survive, New Zealand and Australia.

Speaking on the Diary Of A CEO podcast, Jacobsen painted a grim picture of what a global nuclear war would do as she said around five billion people would be dead within the first 72 minutes.

You might want to stay out of it over here (Getty Stock Photo)

With most of the Earth's population dead and the land scorched in nuclear fire she said one of the consequences would actually be a mini-ice age.

She said: "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.

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

"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."

She worked with climate expert Professor Brian Toon who told her only two countries in the world would be able to 'sustain agriculture', so if you wanted to head to Australia or New Zealand that'd be the place to go.

It's not just to avoid the bombs, it's also so you can actually eat afterwards (Getty Stock Photo)

Everyone thinks about where not to be for the bombs, but there's all the living afterwards to come assuming you want to make it through that.

That's also assuming nobody lobs a nuke or 10 in their direction, they are geographically out of the way and might be able to avoid an exchange of nuclear weapons.

They're also without nuclear weapons themselves, so you'd hope nobody's going to be firing on them to try and stop them from launching.

Other countries considered safer in the event of a catastrophic global conflict include the likes of Iceland, Switzerland, Tuvalu, South Africa and Chile.

Basically, you want somewhere out of the way of the countries that do have nuclear weapons, but it comes back to the point that you'll need somewhere that can still sustain agriculture for afterwards, otherwise all the survivors will starve.