Where Are the World's Nuclear Weapons?

by Tamim Ansary

Recently someone asked me which countries have nuclear bombs, and how many
they all have.

I was surprised to realize I didn't know. And yet I've spent most of my life
actively worried about powerful states with big bombs. I was born three
years after the nuclear bomb was first detonated and four years before the
first thermonuclear bomb was perfected. By the time I could read, I already
knew the world could end at any moment. People my age are aptly called
boomers; the Armageddon Generation would fit too.

We saw nuclear Armageddon as a possibility based on two facts:

a.. The world was divided into two hostile camps
b.. Each side possessed enough nuclear bombs to destroy life on Earth
Once the nuclear exchange started, we were given to understand, we'd all be
dead in about an hour. Even in the old days, I didn't know exactly how many
bombs anyone had--just that it was some multiple of enough-to-kill-everyone.
What else mattered?

The forgotten fear