Saturday, February 18, 2017

Atomic numbers...

I'm not talking about the count of protons in the nucleus of an atom, which defines a chemical element in the periodic table, but I'm simply talking about the world's nuclear arsenal. Nine countries are thought to possess nuclear weapons, including North Korea, the new member of the club.
While both the USA and Russia have significantly reduced their inventory (which would be more than enough to destroy the planet several times over), America reached a peak of more than 30,000 in the mid 60s and the former Soviet Union broke the 40,000 mark in the late 80s.

Today Russia and the United States are believed to have about 7,000 weapons each, with about a quarter of these deployed, and most of the rest in reserve or set aside for destruction. I came to think about these spooky stats as I realized how insane and unpredictable both Putin and Trump are...

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