Estimated explosive power of nuclear weapons deliverable in first strike
What you should know about this indicator
- A "megaton" is the explosive energy released by one million tons of TNT. For comparison, the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 0.015 and 0.021 megatons, respectively.
- An equivalent megaton is a way of making the explosive energy of different warheads comparable. It weighs small warheads — in this case those with at most one megaton — more than large ones, because they are relatively more destructive.
- The exact number of countries' warheads is secret, and the estimates are based on publicly available information, historical records, and experts' estimates.
- The warheads included here are strategic ones — those designed for use away from the battlefield, such as against military bases, arms industries, or infrastructure.
- Only those strategic warheads are included that could be deployed — those that could be carried by ballistic missiles, bombers, and submarines in one strike.
Related research and writing
More Data on Nuclear Weapons
Sources and processing
This data is based on the following sources
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Citations
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To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:
“Data Page: Estimated explosive power of nuclear weapons deliverable in first strike”, part of the following publication: Bastian Herre, Pablo Rosado, and Max Roser (2024) - “Nuclear Weapons”. Data adapted from Suh. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260304-094028/grapher/estimated-megatons-of-nuclear-weapons-deliverable-in-first-strike.html [online resource] (archived on March 4, 2026).How to cite this data
In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:
Suh - The Strategic Nuclear Forces Dataset v2.0 (2023) – with major processing by Our World in DataFull citation
Suh - The Strategic Nuclear Forces Dataset v2.0 (2023) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Estimated explosive power of nuclear weapons deliverable in first strike” [dataset]. Suh, “The Strategic Nuclear Forces Dataset v2.0” [original data]. Retrieved March 31, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260304-094028/grapher/estimated-megatons-of-nuclear-weapons-deliverable-in-first-strike.html (archived on March 4, 2026).Download
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Download the data shown in this chart as a ZIP file containing a CSV file, metadata in JSON format, and a README. The CSV file can be opened in Excel, Google Sheets, and other data analysis tools.
Data API
Use these URLs to programmatically access this chart's data and configure your requests with the options below. Our documentation provides more information on how to use the API, and you can find a few code examples below.
Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/estimated-megatons-of-nuclear-weapons-deliverable-in-first-strike.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=falseMetadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/estimated-megatons-of-nuclear-weapons-deliverable-in-first-strike.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=falseExcel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/estimated-megatons-of-nuclear-weapons-deliverable-in-first-strike.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests
# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/estimated-megatons-of-nuclear-weapons-deliverable-in-first-strike.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})
# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/estimated-megatons-of-nuclear-weapons-deliverable-in-first-strike.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()R
library(jsonlite)
# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/estimated-megatons-of-nuclear-weapons-deliverable-in-first-strike.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/estimated-megatons-of-nuclear-weapons-deliverable-in-first-strike.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/estimated-megatons-of-nuclear-weapons-deliverable-in-first-strike.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear