Estimated number of nuclear warheads deliverable in first strike
What you should know about this indicator
- 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.
Sources and processing
This data is based on the following sources
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Citations
How to cite this page
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 number of nuclear warheads 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://ourworldindata.org/grapher/estimated-nuclear-warheads-deliverable-in-first-strike [online resource]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 number of nuclear warheads deliverable in first strike” [dataset]. Suh, “The Strategic Nuclear Forces Dataset v2.0” [original data]. Retrieved December 11, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/estimated-nuclear-warheads-deliverable-in-first-strike