A Reddit user compiled data from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations (UN), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as well as other declassified sources, to create a simulation that predicts how many lives would be lost in a nuclear war between Russia and NATO countries if the Ukraine conflict escalated further.

“The goal of this simulation is to provide a visualisation of the global consequences of a nuclear war between the Russian Federation and NATO member states,” according to the post.

Its creator warns, however, that the results have been greatly simplified without sacrificing a “realistic” representation of “the outcome of a nuclear war.”

How many people would die?

The simulation concluded that Russia is most likely to start a nuclear war “based on recent geopolitical events,” rather than simply providing a statistical outtake on the damage of nuclear wars.

Russia has a population of 145,934,462 people, while NATO countries have a total population of 944,255,670 people. The simulation focused on three distinct stages: nuclear war, nuclear fallout, and nuclear winter.

According to the simulation, just three hours of nuclear war results in the deaths of 21,000,000 people. NATO countries would lose 86,151,321 lives in 24 hours, while Russia would lose 91,893,667 lives, bringing the total global casualties to 178,044,988.

In the second stage – nuclear fallout – approximately 186,457,901 people would have died worldwide, creating dangerous conditions for humans. By the end of the third stage, known as the nuclear winter (10 months after the war), approximately 548,739,330 people would have died as a result of the nuclear war (and fallout) between NATO and Russia, with the majority of casualties occurring in Russia, Europe, and North America.

As the simulation’s creator aptly put it, the lesson to be learned here from this data is that “no country on Earth will be safe in the event of a nuclear war.”