‘Terrifying and timely, this is a book everyone should read and heed’ – George Monbiot
‘Urgent, gripping and sobering, Six Minutes to Winter is a hair-raising wake-up call’ – David Wallace-Wells
‘Powerful and insightful. Although many have forgotten about nuclear weapons, we shouldn’t’
– 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.
Published 8 May 2025. Buy direct from the publisher Bloomsbury Sigma
Review in the Washington Post, published 12 May 2025.
Extracts in the Daily Mail, published in two parts. Part 1: “New York is vapourised in a nuclear strike. The President has six minutes to decide to end the world. This is the horror when he makes the choice – and it’s now terrifyingly likely” (26 April 2025).
Part 2: “Why you should pray for death in nuclear war: The sun blotted out. Endless winter. And cannibals rule as the human race starves. MARK LYNAS’s meticulously researched book reveals all-too-near horror” (27 April 2025)
Mushroom Cloud Over Manhattan: What Would Happen in the First Few Hours of Nuclear War – extract in LitHub (12 May 2025)
Why nuclear war, not the climate crisis, is humanity’s biggest threat, according to one author – the Guardian (15 June 2025)
