Infotext
This map layer with a timeline shows the time sequence of the number of nuclear weapons, in five categories, for the years 1946 to 2018.
Example of how to read the map:
In 1980, the United States and Russia possessed more than 13,000 nuclear weapons each, Great Britain between 450 and 600, France and China between 200 and 450 nuclear weapons.
This graph shows the number of decommissioned nuclear weapons compared to the maximum and current stock of the nuclear powers.
Sources:
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FAS - Federation of American Scientists
The Federation of American Scientists was founded in 1945 as a think tank intent on fostering the civilian use of nuclear energy and on protecting humanity of a nuclear war. Regular publications critically describe current nuclear developments and address the issue of nuclear weapons from a global and country-specific perspective. They offer information on nuclear weapons holdings classified according to strategic and non-strategic nuclear weapons, reserves of nuclear weapons, the stockpile of nuclear weapons and the full inventory of each country. They also provide information on which countries have the technical means to develop nuclear weapons in the near future.
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Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
The magazine "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist" was first published in 1945. Today, every two months, the influential online version that reports on current and broad nuclear topics is released. These topics comprise nuclear energy, nuclear weapons, international treaties and nuclear terrorism, amongst others. As concerns figures on the holdings of nuclear weapons, one must be aware that this source only provides information on the military holdings of the United States while information on Russian nuclear weapons also include decommissioned nuclear weapons. This results in a major difference in weapons holdings between the United States and Russia.
