What country has the most nuclear weapons?
Data Scavenger Hunt
Find answers to the following questions using the visual above:
As of 2022, how many countries possessed nuclear weapons?
As of 2022, what country listed above had the most nuclear weapons?
About how many nuclear weapons did the world possess at the time of peak nuclear weapons?
Explain which country that owns nuclear weapons listed above worries you the most.
Describe the overall trend in the number of nuclear weapons since 1986.
Big Brain Questions
Answer these questions by yourself using your brain and the links below:
When I was in high school the world had approximately 60,000 nuclear weapons. At school we would practice nuclear attack drills and would “duck and cover” under our desks - about the same as getting out an umbrella for a category 5 hurricane. We were really worried about nuclear war! Do most high school students worry about nuclear war?
The US is not currently directly fighting Russia. But we are on opposite sides of the expanding war in Ukraine where the United States has already directed more than $75 billion in assistance to Ukraine. Explain how likely it is that the war in Ukraine could eventually escalate to the use of nuclear weapons?
On August 6, 1945, during World War II (1939-45), an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion immediately killed an estimated 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Has any country ever used nuclear weapons in a war?
The shockwave and heat that the detonation of a single nuclear weapon creates can end the lives of millions of people immediately, but an even larger danger is nuclear fallout. Radioactive dust from the detonating bombs rises up into the atmosphere and spreads out over large areas of the world from where it falls down and causes deadly levels of radiation. The nuclear winter that would follow a large-scale nuclear war is expected to lead to temperature declines of 20 or even 30 degrees Celsius (60–86° F) in many of the world’s agricultural regions causing a ‘nuclear famine’. The world’s food production would fail and billions of people would starve. Do you believe nuclear weapons should be outlawed?
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), Effective: 22 January 2021, bans the use, possession, testing, and transfer of nuclear weapons under international law. The United States has not signed this treaty. Explain whether the U.S. should sign the treaty.
Write and Discuss
Take ten minutes to write about the question at the top of the page and then discuss with your classmates.
Act on your Learning
Contact the White House and let them know whether they should sign The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Get Creative
Read the timeline of “close calls” with nuclear weapons below* and create your own imaginary “close call” to accompany the list.
Learn More*
Check out all these incredible maps, tables, and graphs about nuclear weapons from Our World in Data.
