Source: https://fas.org/issues/nuclear-weapons/status-world-nuclear-forces/

Tool: Tableau

Now add in a coefficient of maintenance.

Is this graph stacked or did Russia always have a much bigger stockpile? Looks like it's stacked, but if the aim is to compare the two then that's not the best option.

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What is this maintenance you speak of??? If no one touches them there’s nothing to fix!

And megatonne-age because they're not equal, you can't compare all atomic weapons on principle.

There's a website that allows you to point at a map and it shows you the different effects of differing sizes of the bombs and it gets really dark really fast.

maintenance of the delivery system

It's stacked.

‘‘Twas a joke.

Most ICBMs are in the same size range. Those massive bombs you can bring up in the simulations are extremely wastful and not commonly used.

It’s stacked. This way it really emphasizes how many warheads there were in the world in total during the Cold War era

They did seem a bit overkill,

when you can evaporate the entire city of L.A. with one tsar bomb its just kind of jarring to think one bomb can just do that much raw damage, of course I guess you could do the same with a lot of its smaller counter larts just as if not more efficiently.

Yes, but that makes it pretty much impossible to compare Russia and NATO. Plus, it should be clearly labeled that this is stacked.

You could have three lines (Russia, NATO, and total) and the result would be much clearer and more useful.

Using 7 smaller warheads in a pattern across the city is a lot more efficient. Also the Tsar bomb was just physically too large to even fly to LA. Its just a dick measuring bomb.

PS: The Tsar Bomb design was twice as destructive as the one they actually detonated. They replaced the uranium tamper with lead in the test bomb to reduce fallout.

I'd caution against using out-of-the-box predictive modelling for basically anything. Tableau can't see the future.

I don’t think precise comparison is the point here anyway

We are on r/dataisbeautiful. The whole point of this sub is good data presentation. OP posted a super basic graph that is incompletely labeled and doesn't even allow us to compare the two things it shows, when it would be trivial to make it better. Why make excuses for this?

Tbh once you have a certain amount there is a point of diminishing returns.

Why would you choose a stacked chart? So often on this sub it’s the opposite of beautiful data

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One US submarine cam obliterate Russia. 160 warheads, each of which can do severe damage to a city. The Russians would just flood the skies with ICBMs and we’d only stop a few.

It's enough to destroy life on earth multiple times over either way. doesn't even matter if it's stacked anymore.

"Not commonly used."

Not used... At all. Lol. Unless there's been a nuclear war they've done a good job hiding for over half a century.

Ok, not commonly BUILT.