alternatehistory.com

During the Cold War the USSR spent billions creating engineered, highly virulent and antibiotic resistant bioweapons. At its peak in the 1980s they were able to produce 20 TONS of engineered smallpox ANNUALLY with thousands more tons of plague, anthrax, tularemia, glanders, marburg, Q fever and other biological horrors. They had hundreds of ICBM warheads loaded with these diseases plus bombers and planes equipped with spray tanks all intended for use against the US and its allies in the case of nuclear war.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_biological_weapons_program

My question is if nuclear war broke out in the mid 80s when the USSR and the US were at their peak in terms of megatonnage how much damage in terms of deaths would the additional Soviet use of bioweapons cause?

How far would the resulting pandemics have spread?

Would they be just as deadly as the nuclear missiles?
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