do you have any idea how many nuclear weapons we have on ready for launch status meaning they're forward deployed meaning they can be launched in seconds or minutes from the president's order we have 1,770 the numbers change a little bit every year Russia has 1,674 that says nothing about the thousands more in storage that we have ready to you know that would could be pulled out so we have approximately 5,000 each why do we need that many nuclear weapons you must be asking yourself we need that many because they have that many and they need that many because we have that many guess what the number was at the all-time high which was in 1986 10,000 70,000 70,000 70,000 wow there was one point in 1957 this bomb went off in 1952 at one point we were building on average five nuclear weapons a day