Russia’s Nuclear Weapons May Be Useless
Nuclear physics may have rendered Russia’s atomic threat hollow.
Putin seems to be on a nostalgia trip and is desperately trying to relive his Cold War days. Not only has he sparked a deadly war to try and reclaim the old Soviet state of Ukraine, but he is also throwing nuclear threats at the West left, right, and centre. In fact, these nuclear threats are why NATO hasn’t been able to support Ukraine’s independence as much as they want to, given that they can’t risk starting a global nuclear war that could wipe out humanity as we know it. Fortunately, thanks to a quirk of nuclear physics, there is a chance that Putin’s nuclear weapons have been rendered useless. But how? And what does this mean for Ukraine and NATO?
To fully understand why Russia’s nuclear weapons might be a dud, we first need to understand what type of nuclear weapons Russia has.
Russia has the largest nuclear arsenal in the world, with 4,447 active strategic nuclear weapons and 1,912 tactical nuclear weapons in reserve (all of which are ready to be rolled out quickly). The difference between these two types of weapons is surprisingly small, but they have a massive impact on how they are used and the logistics surrounding them. Strategic nuclear weapons are what you might consider a “typical” nuclear weapon, i.e…
