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We Have Enough Nuclear Bombs to Kill EVERYONE 2.6 Times

A 10 kiloton nuclear weapon can kill 1.32 million people.  The 15,000 nuclear weapons globally could cause 19,500 megadeaths.

A 10 kiloton nuclear weapon can kill 1.3 million people. However, a more awesome way to put it would be to say it can cause 1.3 megadeaths.

There are 15,000 nuclear weapons in the world. The US and Russia accounting for nearly 90 percent of that total.

So, theoretically, 19,500 megadeaths (or 19.5 gigadeaths) could be produced by our current arsenal.  There are 7.5 billion people in the world.  Hence, it should be possible to kill everyone on the planet 2.6 times.

As of 2017, the US has an estimated 4,018 nuclear weapons in either deployment or storage. So the US would be capable of killing 5.2 billion people.  That leaves 2.3 billion people that we’d still need to kill.  However, if we killed everyone in Russia first, we could steal their bombs and kill everyone on the planet 2.6 times.

Between 1940 and 1996, the U.S. spent $8.63 trillion on nuclear weapons development.

Questions For YOU!

  • How many nuclear bombs should we have? 
  • How likely are we to be killed by a foreign power than by a disease like cancer or Alzheimers? 
  • How much should we be spending on research to cure diseases relative to building more nuclear weapons? 

Please let me know in the comments!

Sources

  1. http://www.askamathematician.com/2010/01/q-would-it-be-possible-to-kill-all-of-earths-life-with-nuclear-bombs/
  2. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081102114242AA71te2
  3. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389×183859
  4. https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ie=UTF-8&ion=1#hl=en&safe=off&sclient=psy-ab&q=how+many+warheads+would+it+take+to+kill+everyone&oq=how+many+warheads+would+it+take+to+kill+everyone&gs_l=hp.3…1354.36694.1.37105.41.25.9.4.4.1.184.2567.17j8.25.0.les%3B..0.0…1c.1.SrxWj2Sm_PU&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&fp=9ab7bdb26321ca5d&ion=1&biw=1179&bih=891
  5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_the_United_States#United_States_strategic_nuclear_weapons_arsenal
  6. https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
  7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_projected_death_tolls_from_nuclear_attacks_on_cities