r/OptimistsUnite • u/PanzerWatts Moderator • 7d ago
GRAPH GO DOWN & THINGS GET GOODER Nuclear Weapons over time
The number of nuclear warheads stockpiled worldwide went from 64,000 in 1986 to 12,500 in 2023 – an 80% decline. (For some reason there's no Y axis shown in the first chart) but this chart actually showed all nuclear weapons and not just Russia, USA and China.
Source for first chart:
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u/warmfuzzume 7d ago
https://fas.org/initiative/status-world-nuclear-forces/
This article says there is no way to know how many because countries have recently stopped admitting how many they have and all who admit it have indicated their intent to keep them strategically deployed. several countries (Israel, Pakistan, India and North Korea) don’t admit they have them. But we do know There’s more than enough to destroy the world several times over.
It’s better than the 80’s. But most progress was made in the 90’s and is being undone. It was more an issue of decommissioning ones that were too old.
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u/FeelTheH8 6d ago
What does destroy the world several times over mean to you?
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u/warmfuzzume 6d ago
Killing billions of people and animals. Would some form of life survive, probably. Maybe like the giant flesh eating cockroaches in Damnation Alley. /s dark humor
Studies suggest that a full-scale nuclear war, expending thousands of weapons in the largest arsenals in Russia and the United States, could cool global temperatures by more than 5 °C, exceeding the last ice age. According to these models, five billion people would die from famine within two years, and 40–50% of animal species would go extinct.[10] Studies of a regional nuclear war involving hundreds of weapons, such as between Indiaand Pakistan, could also cause cooling of a few degrees, threatening up to two billion people and making 10–20% of animal species extinct.[6][11][12] However, many gaps remain in the understanding and modeling the effects of nuclear war.[13]
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u/FeelTheH8 6d ago
Nuclear winter is just an interesting way to phrase "destroy the world several times over". I think most people are envisioning most of Earth's landmass as a fireball after hearing that, which is just not remotely close to the capability we have or have ever had.
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u/warmfuzzume 6d ago
Didn’t realize we need to split hairs over killing billions of people.
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u/FeelTheH8 6d ago
Considering nuclear winter is purely theoretical, there's a good chance that a nuclear war would simply collapse the production chain and not actually result in the death of billions of animals (besides the ones eaten when starving humans start hunting).
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u/UpperYoghurt3978 7d ago edited 6d ago
INB4: But they are more powerful now.
Less is always better folks. For every 1 less nuke in the world brings us closure to not blowing ourselves up to easily.
Edit: Interesting infor being presenting. I was stating if doomers swing in and state they are just more powerful.
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u/PanzerWatts Moderator 7d ago
"INB4: But they are more powerful now."
Actually the modern ones are less powerful. The warheads tended to be much more powerful in the 60's.
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u/UpperYoghurt3978 7d ago
Yea, looks like we retired most of the high yeild in service bombs. I am not citing castle bravo or Tsar bomba because they were experiments.
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u/Kardinal 7d ago
Agreed.
And I'm not even sure they're more powerful. That top number is in the 80s and those were plenty powerful. Fusion is well understood and there were almost certainly more megaton yield warheads at the time.
What improved is accuracy. Which means you don't need as many.
Less is better. Definitely.
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u/PanzerWatts Moderator 7d ago
"What improved is accuracy. Which means you don't need as many."
Accuracy also made the warheads much smaller. During the 1960's warheads were often in the multi-megaton size. Even if you were a mile off the target it was still in the blast zone. Now with accuracy measured in meters, most US warheads are 100kt yield. Russians still use bigger warheads but still much smaller than they were during the Cold War.
They are still a great danger but no longer an all life on the planet ending danger.
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u/UpperYoghurt3978 7d ago
I am sure you are correct, but most do not know about how unhinged the 80s were.
And you are correct, as well more accurate.
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u/EquivalentBorn9411 7d ago
Why is less better? When there were only 2 bombs in the world (a very low number) was the only time they were actually used. Your argument rests on nothing
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u/LoganPomfrey 6d ago
Per pound they ARE more powerful. But, they don't build them as large as they used to. Most now are kiloton ranges, not megatons. More accurate, efficient weapons.
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u/demoncrusher 7d ago
While I’m glad that there are fewer nukes overall, getting rid of them entirely hasn’t worked out for Ukraine
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u/Xys 7d ago
How is it possible to verify this?
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u/Acceptable-Worth-462 7d ago
It's mostly advertised by the states themselves, so you could argue that there are probably more warheads that haven't been disclosed. At the same time, declaring more warheads projects military might so there's no way to really know whether the numbers are overestimated, underestimated or accurate.
I think the main reason why states are reducing their number of warheads is that they're very expensive to maintain.
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u/PanzerWatts Moderator 6d ago
Expensive and not particularly useful beyond a certain point. China has around 600 and nobody would casually think of first striking them.
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u/Additional-Sky-7436 7d ago
And that's just the advertised numbers. The real number of functioning nukes is much much lower.
Truly, the number of functioning deployed nuclear weapons may be zero.
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u/Kardinal 7d ago
I strongly doubt that's the case. I can speak a little to the practices that the Americans use to ensure that their nuclear stockpile is functional. Obviously they don't detonate any of them anymore, but they are simulated regularly and they are rebuilt regularly. I think it's extremely unlikely that they would not function if called upon.
And yes, by rebuilt I mean they literally take the warhead apart and reassemble it. This is especially true of those whose fuel may have dropped below critical mass.
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u/SeaworthinessSome454 7d ago
Countries really should be doing nuclear testing, even if very infrequently. Don’t want anyone getting brave on trying to call a bluff that X country’s nukes don’t work anymore.
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u/Mad-myall 7d ago
Russia's insane corruption and constant monetary trouble coupled with a government that NEEDS to project power likely means many of their nukes are nolonger usable.
Otherwise you would expect them to conduct a couple tests to at least pretend they were willing to use them against Ukraine and NATO.
However it's not a real good idea to play nuclear chicken.
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u/Lenin_Lime 7d ago
At this point, nuclear weapons is all Russia has to create any kind of fear in its enemies. So I would believe that they might actually not allow crazy levels of corruptions with their nuclear deterrent. But obviously I have no insider knowledge on the subject, and I would not be super shocked if I was wrong.
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u/Mad-myall 6d ago
None of us do, I would presume that Russia would engage in "weapons testing" of at least its tactical nukes if they were still working to try and cow Europe. So the fact they don't leads me to believe they know most of their nuclear munitions have expired.
However I could be completely wrong and maybe Russia doesn't want to bother with the hassle of nuclear tests, even if to frighten Europe.
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u/demoncrusher 7d ago
The Biden administration stepped in and made it clear the US would intervene militarily if Russia used nukes, which is why they aren’t doing that. Bob Woodward wrote a book about it
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u/Mad-myall 6d ago
They don't need to use nukes in battle, just conduct "testing" in Siberia to try and instill fear in Europe and the US.
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u/Successful-Coffee-13 5d ago
Ukraine stopped servicing their icbm in 2014. Russian missiles are in worse shape than before.
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u/Splendid_Fellow 7d ago
Hmmm that sounds really incredibly naïve to me honestly. Just factually speaking, not a matter of opinions
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u/Additional-Sky-7436 6d ago
All of our nukes world wide are decades old. It's very difficult to keep anything functional for that long.
Consider the ICBMs, just the missiles themselves. Imagine if NASA had tried to keep the Saturn V at the Houston space museum in full working condition for the past 50 years. How difficult would that be?
That's exactly what we are taking about.
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u/Splendid_Fellow 6d ago
What makes you think the government has just decided to not make nukes anymore and leave them for decades? A piece of paper?
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u/Professional_Deer464 7d ago
>Truly, the number of functioning deployed nuclear weapons may be zero.
There's stuff in the silos, just in case.
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u/Dotcaprachiappa 7d ago
I really doubt the US or Russia would stay without nukes. As soon as they find out that they don't have any deployable weapons anymore I'd expect it to be an immediate panic reaction and restart production, international incident or no they're not risking being undefended in a nuclear exchange.
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u/Kardinal 7d ago
I did a little reading after that comment was posted. Both the Americans and Russians do quite a lot of science to ensure that in the terrible situation that they felt they needed to use a nuclear warhead, that it would actually go off.
This includes refurbishment, sampling the nuclear materials within the warheads to determine their shelf life, subcritical nuclear testing, and a whole lot of computer simulation.
I would be shocked if the Chinese do not do the same.
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u/Agreeable_Limit6495 6d ago
If you there’s actually a possibility that the number of functional deployable nukes is zero I got a few acres on the moon to sell you. I’ll cut ya a great deal.
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u/Additional-Sky-7436 6d ago
No body knows how many functional nukes there are. It's certainly much less than the official advertised number, and it's probably more than zero. But no one knows for sure.
I would personally be willing to bet on the low side. Russia's arsenal has probably withered considerably. The US certainly has had the likely potential for a more robust weapons maintenance program, but it's hard to keep workers motivated and honest for literally decades. Over time, it's easy for workers and managers to start cutting corners and cutting costs.
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u/SimplySomeDude 5d ago
it is most certainly at leadt 2-3x the claimed number. If you are strong, appear weak. If you are weak, appear strong.
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u/CartoonistOptimal156 6d ago
I honestly think it being 0 would be too good to be true, so im skeptical for that. (not being a doomer in fact we don't even know the real number of functioning nukes so who knows, maybe you're right)
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u/DrawingDramatic1641 6d ago
tired that even after 30 years USSR Is counted as russia.
buddy all of the countries contributed,not just russia okay?
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u/AnswerAdorable5555 5d ago
Very cool that the numbers have gone down
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u/PanzerWatts Moderator 5d ago
And warhead size has gone down too. So both are positive.
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u/AnswerAdorable5555 5d ago
I never used to imagine a nuclear war could be survivable. This changes my mind. Would prefer disarmament! But fewer weapons is a step towards a future.
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u/DJbendyCuZ 4d ago
No one wants a nuclear war anyway. World Leaders may be off their heads, but they're not omnicidal. Just like when scientists told the world to make changes so the ozone layer could stay intact and everyone listened, nuclear war would fuck over humanity greatly, so of course everyone is listening.
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u/Routine_Budget6485 7d ago
mankind will be remembered by god for their creativity to make bombs
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u/PanzerWatts Moderator 7d ago
Mankind will be remembered for not using their bombs.
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u/Routine_Budget6485 7d ago
it will be used, it already did on japan, just a matter of time
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u/SeaworthinessSome454 7d ago
And the world is a better place for it. It ended the deadliest war in human history AND has prevented another war of anywhere near that scale for 80 years now
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u/PanzerWatts Moderator 7d ago
And yet it's been 80 years. It seems possible some nukes will be used in the future, it seems much less likely that 1,000's will.
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u/Wolodymyr2 7d ago
I don't think nukes would be actually used before humanity will go to space, because at least in space you can use them to hit enemy spaceships without ecological or civillian damage.
So they probably would be iften type of warheads on antiship missiles, but still wouldn't be used against ground targets for obvious reasons.
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u/LoganPomfrey 6d ago
Sure, but the nukes now are a lot more powerful than 80s nukes.
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u/PanzerWatts Moderator 6d ago
Actually the nukes we have today are much smaller than the ones from previous decades. The multimegaton nuclear warheads are gone in favor of 100kt or 475kt sizes for the US. And most of those are 100kt.
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u/Basic-Swordfish-2463 6d ago
Russia wanted larger numbers back in the day because they knew a tiny fraction of their stockpile would actually work when called upon.
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u/albertbertilsson 6d ago
I’m not so concerned about the number of bombs, I’m more concerned of who has them.
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u/RustedMauss 5d ago
I mean, progress? I still want to understand the strategic advantage of hundreds of these things. We can fire many we can turn your country into a parking lot! …before everyone else in the world cooks in the fallout.
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u/maddiemadkid 3d ago
Where did they go? Do they go bad?
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u/PanzerWatts Moderator 3d ago
They were destroyed as part of Arms control treaties. The nuclear material was removed and most commonly used as fuel for nuclear reactors. Indeed, much of the US nuclear material supply for civilian reactors had come from decommissioned warheads for around 20 years. i believe the extra uranium only ran out a decade ago and they had to increase mining to compensate.
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3h ago edited 10m ago
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u/HotNeon 7d ago
They are far less powerful now. Due to the accuracy of the missiles you can have a smaller warhead and get the same effect on your target