Motherboard: “As best anyone can tell, there are 12,512 nuclear weapons in the world. But the world of nuclear deterrence is one of secrets and threats.”
“Deterrence, the idea that no one will attack you if you have a nuclear weapon, relies on the threat being ambiguous. But scientists and other experts dedicated to reducing that ambiguity work to count the warheads using open-source sources of information such as satellite imagery so the rest of the world can get a better, if imperfect, idea of how many world-ending weapons are out there.
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