[Zigurd]

There are many fewer weapons available for an impromptu nuclear war, and despite the horror that I think many readers here underestimate, that reduction is a Very Good Thing. The problem is that the nuclear explosives may have been taken apart to some extent, but they can also be put back together.

The nuclear arsenal is predominantly hydrogen bombs, and they are insanely powerful. The Hiroshima bomb was 16 kilotons. A W-87 and W88 warheads are a bit under half a megaton, or roughly 30X more powerful. The W-78 is about 350kilotons, about 20X larger. The B-83 bomb lets you dial in just how spectacular you want a return to neolithic life to be, all the way up to 1.2 megatons, about 70X larger than the Hiroshima bomb. There are fewer than 250 cities with over 1M population. With just the ready US arsenal you could blanket most of the populated parts of the planet.

In 1967 the US maintained an arsenal of about 30,000 (!!!!!) nuclear weapons. You have to wonder. Now the stockpile is about 4500 and about 1500 are deployed and ready at a moment's notice.