Today, nine nations possess several thousand nuclear weapons, posing a unique existential threat to people everywhere. Many hundreds of them are maintained on high alert, ready for use within minutes.

They are in missile silos, aboard aircraft and on submarines patrolling the oceans at all times. Some can travel thousands of kilometres, across continents, to reach their targets.

[FACT]

fact-nuclear-weapons

[/FACT]

Most have vastly greater explosive yields than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the dawn of the nuclear age. The largest ones are equal in force to more than a million tonnes, or one megaton, of the conventional chemical explosive TNT.

Even so-called “tactical” nuclear weapons, which are intended for use in the battlefield, can have explosive yields 20 times that of the Hiroshima bomb.

A single nuclear-armed submarine can carry a dozen or more ballistic missiles, each equipped with several nuclear warheads, with a combined capacity to destroy over a hundred cities.