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
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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 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 November 5, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-warhead-stockpiles