Nuclear war fears are at their highest for more than 40 years, and one former CIA agent claims there are two regions of the world that will be spared if the worst comes to the worst

A former CIA spy has claimed two regions in the world will be spared should a devastating nuclear war begin - and neither of them are Europe.

Nuclear war fears are at their highest since the 1980s when the Cold War had people around the world crossing their fingers and hoping for the best. The USA and Israel began their aerial bombardment of Iran almost three weeks ago, and since then the world has been on high alert.

While it is difficult to say whether anywhere would be truly safe in the event of a nuclear explosion, ex-CIA agent Andrew Bustamante claimed two parts of the world would be spared.

According to Andrew, it's all to do with which countries possess nuclear weapons and which parts of the world will find themselves out of the firing line. There are currently nine nations who have nuclear capabilities – the USA, Russia, China, the UK, France, North Korea, India, Pakistan and Israel.

Speaking on Steven Bartlett's Diary of a CEO podcast, the former CIA intelligence officer said: "When I look at this map, I think there are lots of places that are safe in the event of a nuclear conflict.

"Especially if you consider traditional nuclear conflict, which is going to come from the nine states that are nuclear capable.

"In large parts you're going to see two centres of the map, firing at each other. So South America is going to get spared, Africa is going to get spared, Europe is going to be absorbing bad winds depending on what the trade winds look like."

Andrew went on to say that south-east Asia and Australia are going to be "largely spared", depending on what Pakistan and India do with their nuclear weapons.

With the tension ramping up in the escalating conflict between the USA and Iran, the former CIA operative claims his primary concern is not the nuclear factor but what will come after nuclear weapons are detonated.

He reckons it will give an opportunity for African and South American warlords to run riot. But his fears were quickly shot down by national security journalist Annie Jacobsen who thinks he is underestimated the grave danger to all humans, even if they are not directly impacted by nuclear missiles.

She said: "One of the components that you left out are the fires that will be burning after the nuclear detonations. The fires burning are what lifts the soot, which causes a nuclear winter.

"If you look at the climate modelling, even a small nuclear war between India and Pakistan is enough to cause a mini-nuclear winter.

"There will be no African warlords because they will starve as well. There will be no resetting any of these governments in my understanding.

"I don't think it's a reset at all unless a reset is us going back to our hunter-gatherer state from 12,000 years ago trying to figure out how to evolve again. I don't think it's an extinction level event, I think it's a near extinction level event."

Former CIA agent Andrew ended on a fatalistic note. He said his training taught him there was only one course of action if a nuclear weapon "went off above your head".

He said: "When I lived underground in a silo, we knew that if a nuclear weapon went off, above your head - take your life while you can. Because trying to survive what's left behind is going to be worse.

"Dying as your organs melt is far worse than shooting yourself in the head today. That might sound terrible, but it's not like the movies and the TV shows. Nobody wants to try to live through that."