It might sound silly to think that a nuclear war between the United States and Russia would be anything but the apocalypse, but for scientists studying climate and atmosphere, the changes such a conflict could bring to our planet are a worthy subject of study.

Now, a new paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres corroborates decade-old estimates and confirms that if the U.S. and Russia started throwing nukes around, nuclear winter would indeed follow. The study stops short of declaring a nuclear war the end of mankind, but given the study’s findings, it certainly seems like the writing is on the wall.

For their study, the team of researchers from Rutgers University, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and the University of Colorado used an updated climate model to show how a nuclear conflict between the…