2. Russia
Number of warheads: Active 1,790, Reserve 5510, total 7,300
Delivery method: Nuclear triad
The first use of nuclear weapons in 1945 left the entire world in shock, but none as much as Stalin and the Soviet Union leadership. Suddenly, their perceived superiority in Europe over the capitalists’ forces disappeared, and USSR frantically started exploring the ways of obtaining this new weapon. In charge of the project was infamous NKVD commissioner and Stalin’s favorite executioner Lavrentiy Beria. The efforts of Soviet scientists were greatly aided by the espionage and many Manhattan Project secrets found their way into the hands of Andrei Sakharov and Igor Kurchatov, leading Soviet physicist tasked by Beria with the development of the nuclear weapon. In 1949, just four years after it started, the Soviet program produced first test bomb. And now, let’s see the number one in our list of countries with nukes.
