Estimated nuclear warhead stockpiles
What you should know about this indicator
- Stockpiles include warheads assigned to military forces, but exclude retired warheads queued for dismantlement.
- Retired warheads are only included in the global total.
- The exact number of countries' warheads is secret, and the estimates are based on publicly available information, historical records, and occasional leaks.
- Warheads vary substantially in their destructing power.
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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 nuclear warhead stockpiles”, part of the following publication: Bastian Herre, Pablo Rosado and Max Roser (2024) - “Nuclear Weapons”. Data adapted from Federation of American Scientists. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-warhead-stockpiles [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:
Federation of American Scientists (2023) – with minor processing by Our World in DataFull citation
Federation of American Scientists (2023) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Estimated nuclear warhead stockpiles” [dataset]. Federation of American Scientists, “Estimated Global Nuclear Warhead Inventories” [original data]. Retrieved December 12, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-warhead-stockpiles