How bloody conflict 4,000 miles away could spark nuclear Armageddon killing billions

While the West is focused on how close , the .

In April, suspected Islamist Pakistani militants shot dead 22 Indian tourists holidaying in the Baisaran valley, which is now pushing India and Pakistan - both - to the brink of a nuclear confrontation. The gunmen are said to have prowled through the group of tourists, picking off any individual unable to recite Islamic verses. It's being viewed by Indians as the worst massacre since the 2008 Mumbai bombings.

India's security services are also being blamed for failing to realise the looming threat as the public outcry for retribution continues to grow. Indian national identity and foreign policy expert Dr Manali Kumar said the relations between the two countries are at a critically low point and "just short of war". However, any overt acts of war would see a swift response from Pakistan, which would likely push the two sides into an escalating conflict that would be impossible to reverse once started.

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India has an active army of 1.2million, with an additional 250,000 individuals split between the navy and air force, while Pakistan has less than 700,000 - but experts believe the two sides are far more evenly matched than it would seem.

Defence experts say that Pakistan could still "inflict significant damage and cause massive casualties", according to the MailOnline.

Where the most concerning comparison comes is when looking at the nuclear arsenals of each country. Both Pakistan and India are understood to have around 170 warheads heads each, according to the Arms Control Association. While India has agreed to a "no first use" nuclear pact", Pakistan does not adhere to the same moral restriction.

And if the apocalypse did happen in South Asia, 125 million people would be dead in a matter of days, researchers warned back in 2019.

India has accused Pakistani nationals - said to be members of the same "Army of the Righteous" terror group responsible for Mumbai - of carrying out the April 22 killing spree. Pakistan has denied involvement, and has already warned it would respond to any military aggression on the basis of "baseless and concocted allegations".

The reason India has conflated the Pakistani government with the terror group is that they are said to have links to Pakistan's Inter-Services-Intelligence (ISI) agency.

In the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in 2019, researchers said that there would be "tens of millions" of immediate victims if a nuke was launched in South Asia. It would have devastating environmental impacts, causing famines that could affect billions of people across the .

"The direct effects of this nuclear exchange would be horrible; the authors estimate that 50 to 125 million people would die, depending on whether the weapons used had yields of 15, 50, or 100 kilotons," the article read.

"The ramifications for Indian and Pakistani society would be major and long-lasting, with many major cities largely destroyed and uninhabitable.

"Smoke and radioactive particles would 'spread globally within weeks... cooling the global surface, reducing precipitation and threatening mass starvation."