Yes, Bugs Can Survive A Nuclear War, But Which? Scientists Weigh In

As the war in Ukraine following Russia's invasion of the country drags on, Russian President Vladimir Putin has recently escalated threats of using a nuclear weapon.

If a nuclear war did occur, it's possible that many insect species would survive the blasts, experts told Newsweek.

Corrie Moreau, a professor of anthropod biosystematics and biodiversity at Cornell University said that at the site of a nuclear explosion "really nothing would survive."

But she noted that around its periphery "the animals that do well with disturbance and often hide underground and in tight crevices would probably survive and would also be the first to recolonize the blast site."

These species include ants, cockroaches, rats "and eventually predators like spiders and coyotes," she wrote in an email to Newsweek.

"But it is difficult to know what the long term impacts of the radiation would be on those animals and how this would ripple up the food chain. We really have to hope we do not see this experiment play out," Moreau added.

In an interview with Newsweek on Friday, Douglas Tallamy, a professor of entomology and wildlife ecology at the University of Delaware, said that insects are "good at handling radiation," and would likely survive a nuclear explosion. But they may not be able to survive in the long term, if their habitats and food sources are impacted.

He mentioned an experiment he conducted on lace bugs in which he wanted to "irradiate males" to make them sterile for an experiment.

"We did, but we had to really clobber them to get even temporary sterility and then they'd grow out of it," Tallamy said. "So, doses that would kill a human just barely made these lace bugs sterile."

But while he said many insects would likely survive a nuclear bomb, they would also need a healthy environment in the wake of the explosion.

"They probably would survive the initial blast, but they need a complete food web," Tallamy said.

"After that they need a viable environment, and that's probably what would be destroyed. So they probably die secondarily, but not in the first wave," Tallamy added.

Earlier this month, in an interview with Newsweek, another entomology addressed that myth that cockroaches would be particularly equipped to survive a nuclear war.

He noted that cockroaches are less affected by radioactivity than mammals, but noted that this is the case for most insects.

"Insects have slow cell cycles, and cells are prone to radiation damage when they are dividing. As insect cells divide less frequently than mammalian cells, they are less likely to be affected by a sudden blast of radiation as they are less likely to be caught dividing," Paul Eggleton, an entomology researcher at London's Natural History Museum told Newsweek.

"As for food, there would be a lot of dead vertebrates about, and cockroaches will feed on anything. They are robust and voracious. So, they may do well, but it's not because they are specially able to deal with radiation. If all the vertebrates died out, leaving just the insects, then the world would go on, biologically, much the same," he added.