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Nuclear Weapons Facts

• Nine nations have nuclear weapons, with the overwhelming majority of them (almost 90%) held by Russia and the United States.
 
• Nuclear-armed nations possess roughly 10,000 nuclear weapons. Over 2,000 of these weapons are on high alert and can be used on short notice.
 
• Many nuclear weapons have explosive power equal to 100,000 tons or more of dynamite. This is more than five times as destructive as the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
 
• Even a single nuclear weapon, if used against a city or similar populated area, could kill hundreds of thousands of people. Radioactive nuclear fallout would also cause devastating environmental damage.
 
• Current conflicts and tensions among countries that possess nuclear weapons, such as the United States, Russia, China, and North Korea make nuclear war a real danger today.

Steps Towards Peace

• The international Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which bans these weapons, entered into legal force in 2021. Seventy-three states are currently party to the treaty.[3]
 

• The Back from the Brink Campaign is advocating to take nuclear weapons off high alert, remove the president’s sole authority to use the weapons, and take other steps to reduce the danger of nuclear war.
 

• A resolution currently before the U.S. Congress (H.Res 77) calls on the United States to adopt measures similar to the Back from the Brink Campaign’s steps to reduce the danger of nuclear war.

Signs of Danger, Signs of Hope

Despite the need to abolish nuclear weapons before a catastrophe occurs, recent events show we are moving in the opposite direction:
 

The United States is currently pursuing a program to update the US nuclear arsenal at a cost of an estimated $1.7 trillion over 30 years.
 

Nevertheless, alternatives are possible. During the Cold War, American and Russian nuclear arsenals were enormous, vastly larger than they are today: each nation had tens of thousands of nuclear weapons.
 

Political changes and arms control negotiations over the past 30 years have reduced both nations’ nuclear arsenals to roughly half of what they were during the Cold War.
 

If we could achieve such a dramatic reduction in the past, why not further dramatic reductions in the future?
 

We do not have to be locked into a situation where arms races and eventual nuclear catastrophe are inevitable. We can end the menace of nuclear weapons. Let’s begin the vital work of doing so.