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ARSENAL OF THE APOCALYPSE

n the margins of the dramatic situation in Ukraine, the possibility of nuclear war has been opened up again, and with recurrent statements from the leaders of the Russian Federation and the USA, as well as with the announced ‘suspension’ of the so-called START treaty, the media have analyzed the danger of a potential nuclear escalation. In addition to current wars and other small and large-scale dangers, along with the population of eight billion people, there are 13,080 warheads present on the planet.

The arsenal of the apocalypse, which humans have made in the course of the last 75 years, includes a wide variety of devices of various destructive powers, from small, tactical, fission bombs with a few tens of thousands of tons, i.e. kilotons (such as the ones launched on Hiroshima and Nagasaki), the ones of hundred kilotons and whole region annihilators – thousand times stronger, fusion, hydrogen bombs which release energy equivalent to the explosion of 50 megaton capacity of TNT explosive (this was the strength of an explosive device detonated in 1961 – the Soviet Tsar bomb).

According to the data of the Arms Control Association (ACA), around 90 % of the current nuclear arsenal belongs to the two greatest nuclear powers – the USA and the Russian Federation. The remaining seven nuclear powers are as follows: China, Great Britain, France, Pakistan, India, North Korea and Israel. China has the largest number of warheads, around 350, but all countries together have less than 1,300 warheads.

Despite grave circumstances due to the war in Ukraine, the world is nowadays less endangered by nuclear weapons than during the Cold War. The total number of nukes is currently at least five times lower than in the early 1980s. The nuclear arsenal has shrunk due to the ban on nuclear tests above ground, but above all, thanks to the long-term effect of the initial Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) concluded in 1968, as well as to seven successive agreements on the nuclear weapon control which two super-powers have signed in the meantime.

The most recent New START treaty, which was extended to five more years, limits the number of nuclear warheads that could be strategically deployed to 1,550. These days, Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced that Russia, as stated precisely, “will not apply, but will not withdraw” from the START treaty. The reasons behind this are the former dispute on mutual control and the war in Ukraine itself.

What the consequences will be of this move remains to be seen in the following months, but it is not likely it would lead, despite the tensions, to a renewal of nuclear tests or even the use of bombs. However, it cannot be argued that it has not bumped up the risk of ‘nuclear exchange.’ The arsenal that big powers have at their disposal for this is not to be trifled with.

According to the figures provided before the onset of the Ukraine conflict, from November 2021, the Russian Federation has the largest number of warheads in the world – as many as 6,257. According to the Treaty, there are 1,760 retired or waiting to be dismantled, 4,497 that are kept in strategic reserve and 1,458 that are strategically deployed. On its side, the USA has 5,550 nuclear warheads, out of which there are 1,800 waiting to be decommissioned, 3,750 kept in reserve and 1,389 that are strategically deployed.

In most analysis, rattling nuclear weapon is explained by the desire to raise the stakes in Ukraine and strengthen the negotiation position, however, if there is something that is not wisecracking, that is nuclear warheads. Things are obviously terrifying enough without a nuclear war, but one should never forget that we cannot even begin to conceive something so traumatic as a nuclear war.

S.B.

Photo: Trinity test, 1945. – Berlyn Brixner / Los Alamos National Laboratory – Wikimedia

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