Six Minutes to Winter: Nuclear War and How to Avoid It

Mark Lynas

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Book cover for Six Minutes to Winter: Nuclear War and How to Avoid It
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Book cover for Six Minutes to Winter: Nuclear War and How to Avoid It
Image for variant 9781399410502

Six Minutes to Winter: Nuclear War and How to Avoid It

Six Minutes to Winter: Nuclear War and How to Avoid It

Mark Lynas

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Description

'Terrifying and timely ... a book everyone should read and heed' - George Monbiot
'Urgent, gripping and sobering ... a hair-raising wake-up call' - David Wallace-Wells
'Powerful and insightful. - Charles Oppenheimer

The world is currently closer to superpower conflict than at any time since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. World War III is a real possibility, and with 12,000 warheads in the arsenals of more than half a dozen countries, we are standing on a nuclear knife edge.

Despite receiving very little attention, nuclear war is a far greater threat to humanity's immediate survival than climate change. While climate heating threatens humanity over many decades, nuclear war could destroy civilisation in just a few hours. A major missile exchange would mean months of near-total darkness, followed by a decade-long global nuclear winter that would destroy most life on Earth. Virtually everyone would starve in the resulting worldwide famine, and there would be no reliable refuge.

We are sleepwalking to Armageddon. There are no mass marches, no COPs, no nuclear Greta. But the climate experience teaches us that ignoring a problem is no solution, and that a worldwide mobilisation can work. Six Minutes to Winter presents an unflinching view of the nuclear nightmare, but also describes how weapons can be taken off hair-trigger alert and ultimately abolished altogether. If human civilisation is to survive long term, we have no alternative.

About the Author

Mark Lynas is the author of five major works of popular science; his climate book Six Degrees won the 2008 Royal Society prize and was translated into 22 languages. He has written for the Guardian, New York Times and Washington Post, and appeared in the films Pandora's Promise and The Island President. He has co-authored peer-reviewed scientific papers on climate change, misinformation, GMOs and vaccines, and is policy lead at the worldwide pro-science environmental campaign network WePlanet.

Critical Reviews

"Gripping, terrifying and timely, this is a book everyone should read and heed." --George Monbiot

"Staggering, necessary ... Six Minutes to Winter is Lynas's way of smashing the alarm button ... Lynas closes Six Minutes to Winter on this resonant ceremony - so right in its moral soundness and so neat in its poetic symmetry that it made me weep." --Washington Post

"The world is shadowed by the risk of nuclear winter, but we tell ourselves it's already spring and the terrifying prospect has passed. It hasn't. Urgent, gripping, and sobering, Six Minutes to Winter is a hair-raising wake-up call." --David Wallace-Wells

"A powerful and insightful reminder of the immense responsibilities that come with modern technology. Although many have forgotten about nuclear weapons, we shouldn't" --Charles Oppenheimer

"Lynas' fearsome yet humane clarion call should trigger a new era of nuclear disarmament. This should be the opening read of the Heads of Nuclear States book club. Pulverizing physics react with Mark Lynas' poetic soul to deliver a book of unmatched power." --Tom Heap

"Six Minutes to Winter offers morbidly compelling descriptions of exactly what it would be like if the Eastern seaboard were hit by a full-on nuclear attack and guess what: it's not great." --Literary Hub

"'An unflinching look into the most terrifying threat facing humanity. Everyone needs to know the story Lynas is telling'." --Oliver Bullough, author of Moneyland

"Of no surprise to anyone who has read his previous books, Mark Lynas gives a rigorous but understandable overview of one of humanity's biggest threats. Before we can stop nuclear war we need to wake up to the reality of what could happen. Mark Lynas shows us how. Ignore it at your own peril." --Hannah Ritchie, author of Not the End of the World

"Moving seamlessly between vivid narrative and sober-minded explanation, Lynas delivers a powerful warning of the continued threat of nuclear disaster. If any book can puncture our passivity towards one of the greatest threats to humanity, it is Six Minutes to Winter." --Yascha Mounk

Publishing Information

Publisher: Bloomsbury SIGMA
Pub date: 2026-07-14
Length: 304 pages

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