Nuclear Arsenals: the decline is over
The world's nuclear stockpile is 83% below its 1986 peak — and has stopped falling. Most of the recent decline was a dismantlement queue draining, and five of the nine nuclear-armed states are at their all-time maximum today.
The world holds 82.7% fewer nuclear warheads than it did at the 1986 peak — 70,374 then, 12,187 now. That is the fact everyone reaches for, and it is correct.
It is also finished. The count has barely moved since 2023, and the usable military stockpile — the warheads actually assigned to forces — bottomed out around 2017 and has risen since, to about 9,745. The gap between the two figures is a dismantlement queue: warheads retired from service but not yet taken apart. That queue peaked above 12,000 in the mid-2000s, larger than the entire world stockpile today, and is now down to roughly 2,400. So a large part of what the famous falling line has measured for two decades is an accounting backlog draining out, on decisions taken in the 1990s — and it is nearly empty.
Underneath, the composition inverted. The two Cold War arsenals are flat. Five of the nine nuclear-armed states hold their largest-ever stockpile right now, China's up 77% in six years. And the legal scaffolding went last: New START expired on 5 February 2026 with nothing to replace it — the constraint disappeared after the decline had already stopped, not before.
Every figure here is an estimate of a state secret, and a warhead count is not a measure of destructive power: yields vary by orders of magnitude and today's stockpile is composed very differently from 1986's. Data: Federation of American Scientists, Estimated Global Nuclear Warhead Inventories (2026), via Our World in Data (CC BY).
The two that did the reducing
The whole decline, in two lines. The United States peaked at 31,255 in 1967 — nineteen years before the world did, because the Soviet Union kept building. The USSR peaked at 40,159 in 1986. Today: 3,700 and 4,400, falls of 88% and 89% from their own peaks. Together they held 90.2% of the world's warheads in 1986 and 66.5% now.
Since 2017 the drawdown has stopped: the US is down 122 warheads over nine years and Russia is up 100. New START expired on 5 February 2026 with no successor, so for the first time since 1972 there is no negotiated ceiling on either arsenal, and no verification regime.
@andrewdun · 1h ago
Five of the nine hold their largest-ever arsenal today
Everyone except the US and Russia. China, India and North Korea are at their all-time maximum in 2026; Pakistan and Israel are level with theirs. Only the two European arsenals have shrunk — the UK from 500 (1973) to 225, France from 540 (1991) to 290 — and both have been flat for years.
China is the only arsenal moving fast: 350 in 2020 to 620 in 2026, up 77% in six years. Everyone else's growth is in the tens. That single line is most of the reason the world total has stopped falling.
These are estimates of state secrets. Only the US, UK and France have ever published stockpile figures; Israel has never acknowledged an arsenal at all, and North Korea's is inferred from fissile-material production.
@andrewdun · 1h ago
One country built them and gave them up
South Africa reached six devices by 1989 and was back to zero in 1990, acceding to the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1991. It is the only entity in this dataset that ever built a nuclear arsenal and then dismantled it by choice.
It needs its own panel for a mundane reason that is also the point: six warheads are invisible on any axis that fits China's 620, let alone Russia's 40,000. The only case of complete voluntary disarmament in history is a rounding error on the chart of the thing it disarmed from.
@andrewdun · 1h ago
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Total global nuclear warhead inventory. From 6 in 1945 to a peak of 70,374 in 1986, and 12,187 today — a fall of 82.7%. It is the most cited fact in the field and it is true.
Two things it does not say. First, this line counts retired warheads still queued for dismantlement — OWID's metadata is explicit that they appear only in the global total, which is why the country panels below do not sum to it. Second, it has stopped moving: 12,512 (2023), 12,121 (2024), 12,241 (2025), 12,187 (2026). The Federation of American Scientists puts the usable military stockpile at 9,745 and the retired queue at 2,442 — down from a queue of over 12,000 in the mid-2000s. Most of the fall on this chart since then has been that backlog draining, and it is nearly empty.
@andrewdun · 1h ago