Test your knowledge on nukes

Answer: 13,000

There are approximately 13,000 nuclear weapons around the world. While this number is lower than it was during the Cold War—the peak number was roughly 70,000–most modern nuclear weapons are significantly more destructive than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Answer: 80 times more powerful

Modern nuclear weapons can be up to 80 times more powerful than the bombs used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They also have more powerful delivery systems that can fly faster than the speed of sound. A nuclear weapon launched from a submarine or missile silo in Russia could reach the United States within 10-30 minutes and vice versa.

Answer: 9

Nine countries have nuclear weapons: China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Over the years, 29 countries have explored developing nuclear weapons, but activists and leaders have so far been successful in limiting the number of countries that have nukes to nine.

Answer: The President

The president alone can authorize the use of a nuclear weapon (“sole authority”). While the president can decide to consult advisors, additional approvals (i.e., from Congress) are not required. There are no checks and balances on nuclear war.

Answer: False

There’s no such thing as a “small-scale” or “limited” nuclear war. Scientists estimate that less than 1% of the world's global nuclear arsenals (about 100 Hiroshima-sized weapons or even fewer of today’s more powerful weapons) is enough to cause planetary catastrophe. While you might avoid the immediate blast effects, the fires produced by the weapons would send so much smoke and soot into the atmosphere that sunlight around the world would be diminished for years, resulting in a sudden drop of global temperatures and precipitation that would cause widespread crop failures and devastate ecosystems. A global famine would follow, killing potentially billions of people. This is known as “nuclear winter.”