World Nuclear Stockpile Report

It is interesting to see that these kinds of statistics are available online to the general public; it would not surprise me however to hear that the actual numbers are higher. From the report:

"The exact number of nuclear weapons in global arsenals is not known; each country guards these numbers as closely held national secrets. Experts and several governments have proposed a global inventory of all weapons and stockpiles of weapons materials as a necessary first step towards securing weapons from theft or diversion and towards the eventual elimination of these weapons."

"What is known, however, is that more than a decade and a half after the Cold War ended, the world's combined stockpile of nuclear warheads remain at unacceptably high levels. Of the more than 23,300 in the best expert estimates, more than 8,190 warheads are considered operational, of which approximately 2,200 U.S. and Russian warheads are on high alert, ready for use on short notice."

"These estimates are compiled and maintained by Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists and Robert Norris of the Natural Resources Defense Council (both with support from Ploughshares Fund) and are based on publicly available information and occasional leaks."

Source: www.ploughshares.org...



The report concludes that the data was updated May 6, 2010

Why we insist on stockpiling such vast quantities of these unusable weapons is another puzzle sane people will never be able to understand.
The culture of paranoia and suspicion which the leaders and military subscribe to, has more to do with their retention of control, that with any sane and rational thought about the numbers of these wmds.
Its all getting beyond the tipping point.

There have been reports recently of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal being much higher.

www.nytimes.com...

I would imagine they are generally alot higher than officially stated, particularly in the case of Israel.

Lots of money down the toilet.

i am not sure of the exact cost of a nuclear weapon but does anyone think it would have been possible to house every homeless person living on this earth with the money spent by every nation combined on nuclear weapons.

reply to post by stirling


Accually nuclear munitions are quite stable

Originally posted by joejack
reply to post by stirling

 

Accually nuclear munitions are quite stable

Thank you for your response, and all the responses so far. Could you elaborate a little more on that;
I didn't see an introductory thread for you, so not sure if you are addressing that
from a scientific, military or just general observation viewpoint? obviously that info is not required, just curious, and welcome to ATS!