increasing threat of a nuclear strike, as Russian leader Vladimir Putin ratchets up the rhetoric over UK support of the resistance in Ukraine.Faced with the stark reality of nuclear war, it’s hard to know how any of us would react, but one team of scientists has a pretty good idea. Researchers from the Biocomplexity Institute at Virginia Tech in the US have created detailed models of populations around the world, feeding in data from mobile phones, satellites and social media to build “synthetic populations” that behave just like the real thing.The models aren’t based on any specific person, but on groups of “average people” that behave in the same way real populations do.“They’re not you, they’re not me, they’re people in aggregate,” explains researcher Chris Barrett.
