
Nuclear weapons: Explosion over Bikini Atoll Photograph: U.S. Department of Energy-Nevada/Corbis
Latest data on how many nuclear weapons there are in the world shows that – even with some being dismantled – there are still 23,574. So between the US, Russian, China, North Korea and the other nuclear powers, we can be destroyed many times over
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Counting nuclear weapons is a bit like counting votes – a lot depends on who is doing the counting, and how.
The disarmament treaty currently being negotiated between the US and Russia applies to deployed strategic warheads, along with their delivery systems, but that leaves out most of the weapons both countries are sitting on.
