I have 2 question on nuclear bombs.?

Question

The first is how many nuclear bombs are on the planet right now, i hear it was 60,000 but i'm not sure,the second if you add all the nuclear bombs up to one singer bomb how many megatons would it be.

Answer 1

As to how many...there were tens of thousands for both the U.S. and S.U. There were fewer than that for secondary nuclear powers like the U.K. and France.

Understand, many if not most of the weapons were not "bombs," they were packed in reentry vehicles (RV) that rode on ICBMs, IRBMs, and FBMs, which are various kinds of rocket. Bombs are typically dropped from aircraft.

The strategic weapons tended to be in the 350 KT range for the RV's on the U.S. side. The S.U. side had a little bit more, around 500 KT as I recall. Some bombs on both sides reached as high as 1 MT (1,000 KT).

In addition to the tens of thousands bombs and RV's, there were also the tactical nukes, which could be shot from cannons. Because of collateral damage issues, these tactical nukes tended to be small...around 10 KT or so. And the U.S. and S.U. also had 10 KT or so antisubmarine depth charges and torpedoes. Their numbers were in about 1,000 or so each nation.

Although 60,000 nukes sounds a bit high, I would put them at about 40,000 altogether (strategic and tactical), your number is certainly in the ballpark. Also, these figures are for circa 1970s while the cold war was still hot. After the fall of the Soviet Union, many weapons have been dismantled. Thus, the numbers are much smaller now...maybe half of the cold war era.

I think we could guesstimate an average of about 1/10 MT per weapon. So, putting them all together, you'd have 4,000 MT world wide. The 1/10 MT per weapon might seem small, but keep in mind there are a lot of tactical nukes with 10 KT warheads or even less that are folded into the average.