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Catastrophic risk, mapped and sourced

End of the World

How nuclear arsenals, today's wars, artificial intelligence and pandemics could end it, and how close the last 120 years have come. Every number links to its source.

85 seconds to midnight, the closest the Doomsday Clock has ever been23
12,187
nuclear warheads in 20261
3,912
deployed on strategic missiles and at bomber bases1
−83%
since the 1986 peak of 70,3001
9
nuclear-armed states1

The scenarios below are illustrative sequences drawn from published studies, not predictions. Highlighted map areas are regions, not target lists.

Who has what

Nine states hold an estimated 12,187 nuclear warheads. Russia and the United States hold 85.8% of them.1

Warheads (area) Active war Flashpoint, no current war
Deployed strategic Deployed non-strategic Reserve Retired, awaiting dismantlement

Why one exchange sets the scale. The US and Russia hold 85.8% of all warheads; add the UK and France and it's 90.7%, matching the "more than 90%" Xia et al. model for a war between the US, its allies and Russia.15 However a third world war starts, its scale depends on whether those arsenals are used.

Table view
StateDeployed strategicDeployed non-strategic ReserveMilitary stockpileTotal inventory
Russia 1,796 0 2,604 4,400 5,420
United States 1,670 100 1,930 3,700 5,042
China 34 n.a. 586 620 620
France 280 n.a. 10 290 370
United Kingdom 120 n.a. 105 225 225
India 0 n.a. 178 190 190
Pakistan 0 n.a. 170 170 170
Israel 0 n.a. 90 90 90
North Korea 0 n.a. 60 60 60
Total (FAS) ~3,912~100 ~5,733~9,745 ~12,187

Federation of American Scientists, 20261

  • FAS's table is internally inconsistent by 12 warheads: India shows 0 deployed and 178 in reserve against a stockpile of 190, and the deployed-strategic column sums to 3,900 against a stated total of ~3,912. Values are shown exactly as published.
  • FAS's narrative text gives 12,321 warheads at the beginning of 2026; its table totals ~12,187. The table is used here.
  • Retired = total inventory minus military stockpile: intact warheads awaiting dismantlement.

Flashpoints

  • Russia–Ukraine (Active war, 24 Feb 2022): Full-scale war since February 2022. Russia holds the world's largest arsenal (FAS 2026).↗
  • Iran (Active war, 28 Feb 2026): US and Israel at war with Iran. A Pakistan-mediated ceasefire (8 Apr 2026) has been violated by both sides; fighting continues intermittently. Iran has no nuclear weapons.13
  • India–Pakistan (Flashpoint, no current war, May 2025 clashes): Two nuclear-armed states fought a short conflict in May 2025.↗
  • Taiwan Strait (Flashpoint, no current war, no war): No war. CSIS wargamed a conventional Chinese invasion 24 times; a US–China clash would be the first between nuclear powers.7
  • Korean Peninsula (Flashpoint, no current war, armistice since 1953): North Korea holds an estimated 60 warheads (FAS 2026).↗

The Doomsday Clock, 1947–2026

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' measure of how close humanity is to self-destruction. It was furthest from midnight in 1991, at 17 minutes, and has never been closer than it is now.32

Table view
YearTime to midnight
19477 minutes
19493 minutes
19532 minutes
19607 minutes
196312 minutes
19687 minutes
196910 minutes
197212 minutes
19749 minutes
19807 minutes
19814 minutes
19843 minutes
19886 minutes
199010 minutes
199117 minutes
199514 minutes
19989 minutes
20027 minutes
20075 minutes
20106 minutes
20125 minutes
20153 minutes
20172 min 30 s
20182 minutes
2020100 seconds
202390 seconds
202589 seconds
202685 seconds

Settings as listed by Wikipedia3

120 years of close calls

Pandemics, weapons, wars, treaties and AI, 1918–2026. The last ten years take up more than half the width. Select any event for details and its source.

Select an event on the timeline.

All events as a list
  1. Pandemics 1918 influenza pandemic. At least 50 million deaths worldwide, about 675,000 in the United States (CDC).10
  2. Weapons & tests Trinity: the first nuclear explosion. The United States tests the first nuclear device, in New Mexico.↗
  3. Wars & crises Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The only uses of nuclear weapons in armed conflict, on 6 and 9 August 1945.↗
  4. Doomsday Clock Doomsday Clock created: 7 minutes. Set by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.3
  5. Weapons & tests Soviet Union's first test. RDS-1, at Semipalatinsk.↗
  6. Weapons & tests United Kingdom's first test. Operation Hurricane, off the coast of Western Australia.↗
  7. Weapons & tests First hydrogen bomb. Ivy Mike, a US thermonuclear test at Enewetak Atoll.↗
  8. Doomsday Clock Clock at 2 minutes. Set by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.3
  9. Weapons & tests France's first test. Gerboise Bleue, in the Algerian Sahara.↗
  10. Weapons & tests Tsar Bomba. The largest nuclear explosion ever, a Soviet test over Novaya Zemlya.↗
  11. Wars & crises Cuban Missile Crisis. A 13-day US–Soviet confrontation over missiles in Cuba.↗
  12. Weapons & tests China's first test. Test 596, at Lop Nur.↗
  13. Arms control Non-Proliferation Treaty opens for signature. The NPT, in force from 1970, becomes the core of the non-proliferation regime.↗
  14. Weapons & tests India's first test. Smiling Buddha, at Pokhran.↗
  15. Wars & crises Soviet false alarm. Soviet early warning reports US missile launches; duty officer Stanislav Petrov judges it a false alarm.↗
  16. Wars & crises Able Archer 83. A NATO exercise that parts of the Soviet leadership may have mistaken for preparations for a real attack.↗
  17. Weapons & tests Global stockpile peaks. About 70,300 warheads worldwide (FAS).1
  18. Doomsday Clock Clock at 17 minutes, the furthest ever. Set by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.3
  19. Arms control START I signed. Caps each side at 6,000 strategic nuclear warheads.↗
  20. Wars & crises Norwegian rocket incident. A scientific rocket triggers Russian early-warning alerts; Yeltsin's nuclear briefcase is activated.↗
  21. Weapons & tests India's Pokhran-II tests. India conducts a series of nuclear tests in May 1998.↗
  22. Weapons & tests Pakistan's first tests. Chagai-I, weeks after India's tests.↗
  23. Pandemics SARS emerges. A new coronavirus emerges in Guangdong, China, and spreads internationally.↗
  24. Weapons & tests North Korea's first test. Its first nuclear test.↗
  25. Pandemics H1N1 declared a pandemic. WHO declares the swine flu outbreak a pandemic.↗
  26. AI & cyber Stuxnet uncovered. Malware that sabotaged Iranian centrifuges; delivered by USB drive, crossing an air gap.22
  27. Wars & crises Russia annexes Crimea. The start of the Russia–Ukraine conflict.↗
  28. Pandemics West African Ebola epidemic. The most widespread Ebola outbreak in history, 2013–2016.↗
  29. Arms control Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons adopted. Adopted at the UN; no nuclear-armed state signs it.↗
  30. Weapons & tests North Korea's sixth test. Its sixth nuclear test, claimed as a hydrogen bomb.↗
  31. AI & cyber Chatham House: nuclear systems vulnerable to cyberattack. Data manipulation, jamming and spoofing could feed decision-makers false information.19
  32. Arms control INF Treaty ends. The US withdraws from the 1987 ban on intermediate-range missiles.↗
  33. Doomsday Clock Clock moves to 100 seconds. Set by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.3
  34. Pandemics COVID-19 declared a pandemic. WHO characterises the outbreak as a pandemic.↗
  35. AI & cyber SIPRI: AI and nuclear risk. AI could fail or be misused in ways that trigger inadvertent escalation to nuclear war.20
  36. Arms control Prohibition Treaty enters into force. 90 days after its 50th ratification.↗
  37. Wars & crises Russia invades Ukraine. A full-scale invasion, eight years after the annexation of Crimea.↗
  38. Pandemics WHO: 14.9 million excess deaths. WHO's estimate of the full death toll associated with COVID-19 in 2020–2021, well above reported deaths.8
  39. Arms control Russia suspends New START. Russia suspends its participation in the treaty.↗
  40. AI & cyber US and China: humans decide on nuclear use. Both leaders affirm the need to keep human control over the decision to use nuclear weapons.21
  41. Wars & crises India–Pakistan conflict. Strikes and counter-strikes between two nuclear-armed states.↗
  42. Wars & crises Twelve-Day War. Israel and Iran fight a 12-day war.↗
  43. Wars & crises US strikes Iran's nuclear sites. Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan are hit.↗
  44. AI & cyber First large-scale AI-executed cyberattack. A state-sponsored group used an AI agent against about 30 targets; AI performed 80–90% of the campaign.18
  45. Doomsday Clock Clock at 85 seconds, the closest ever. Set by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.3
  46. Arms control New START expires. The last treaty limiting US and Russian strategic forces lapses.↗
  47. Wars & crises 2026 Iran war begins. The US and Israel launch hundreds of strikes on Iran.13
  48. Wars & crises Iran war ceasefire, repeatedly violated. A Pakistan-mediated ceasefire; both sides violate it and fighting continues intermittently.14

If it goes nuclear: the escalation, start to finish

A 96-second film of the published model of a US–Russia nuclear war, from today's flashpoints through the tactical, strategic and city phases to nuclear winter. Launch and impact points are random positions within regions, not targets.

Read the sequence as text, with sources

  1. Where we are

    Russia, the largest nuclear power, is at war in Ukraine; the US and Israel, both nuclear-armed, are at war with Iran; India and Pakistan fought in May 2025; and New START, the last treaty limiting US and Russian strategic forces, expired in February 2026. The Doomsday Clock stands at 85 seconds, the closest it has ever been.23131

  2. 1 · A war crosses the nuclear threshold

    Princeton's PLAN A simulation models a US–Russia war that escalates in phases. It opens with a tactical phase: battlefield nuclear weapons. Shown here on a European front, the most direct route from today's war in Ukraine.4

  3. 2 · Strategic exchange

    The strategic phase follows. Counterforce targeting goes after an adversary's military assets: missile silos, bomber bases, submarine home ports and command-and-control sites.411

  4. 3 · Cities

    The final phase targets cities: countervalue targeting, aimed at civilian populations. PLAN A estimates more than 90 million people dead and injured within the first few hours.412

    90+ million dead and injured in the first few hours4

  5. 4 · What the first count leaves out

    PLAN A's figure counts acute deaths only. Its authors note it would be significantly increased by deaths from nuclear fallout and other long-term effects.4

  6. 5 · Nuclear winter

    City fires loft soot into the stratosphere. A war between the US, its allies and Russia could inject more than 150 Tg; above 5 Tg, livestock and fisheries can't make up for lost crops in almost any country. Xia et al. estimate more than 5 billion could die.5

    5+ billion could die as food supplies collapse5

Other paths to the same place

Flashpoint, no current war

India–Pakistan

If India uses 100 strategic weapons on urban centres and Pakistan 150, fatalities could reach 50 to 125 million. Xia et al. estimate more than 2 billion people could die worldwide from the climate effects of such a war.65

Flashpoint, no current war

China–Taiwan

CSIS ran a conventional invasion wargame 24 times; in most runs the US, Taiwan and Japan defeated the invasion, at high cost. A direct US–China clash would be the first between nuclear powers. None of the sources used here models a US–China nuclear exchange.7

Active war

Iran

Iran has no nuclear weapons; FAS lists nine nuclear-armed states and Iran is not one. Its war matters to this map as a trigger involving two nuclear-armed states, the US and Israel.113

The AI path

The published concern isn't an AI pressing the button. Launch safeguards are designed against any single actor, human or otherwise. It's an AI corrupting the picture of the world that the humans with the button then act on.

  1. AI is already an attacker

    In November 2025 Anthropic reported a state-sponsored group using an AI agent against about 30 targets. AI performed 80–90% of the campaign, the first documented large-scale cyberattack executed without substantial human intervention.18

  2. Systems built before this threat

    Chatham House found nuclear weapons systems were designed when computing was in its infancy, with weak points in human error, design flaws and the supply chain. Isolation is not absolute: Stuxnet crossed an air gap on a USB drive.1922

  3. The danger is a false picture

    Safeguards target the lone actor: in the US, the two-person rule exists to prevent accidental or malicious launch by a single individual, and permissive action links block unauthorized arming. The risk Chatham House documents is corrupted inputs: data manipulation and spoofing that leave decision-makers relying on false information. 1983 and 1995 show how close a false warning can come, and neither was an attack.232419

  4. Failure or misuse can escalate a crisis

    SIPRI warns that AI could fail or be misused in ways that trigger an accidental or inadvertent escalation of a crisis or conflict into nuclear war.20

  5. The last safeguard is a person

    In November 2024 the US and China affirmed that humans must keep control over the decision to use nuclear weapons. If that holds, a Petrov-style human judgement is the final check.21

If that last safeguard fails, this path joins the escalation ladder at the strategic exchange.

Pandemics

The other way a modern catastrophe spreads: no launch decision, just a virus and air travel.

50M+
deaths in the 1918 influenza pandemic10
7.1M
COVID-19 deaths reported to WHO, through Aug 20269
14.9M
excess deaths, 2020–2021 alone (WHO estimate)8

How COVID-19 reached the world

Each country lights up on the day it first reported a case to WHO. (That's the reporting date; the first infection came earlier.)9

Reported cases by this date First reported in the last 7 days

Reported deaths vs. the real toll

By the end of 2021 countries had reported 5,474,110 COVID-19 deaths to WHO. WHO's estimate of excess deaths over the same two years is 14.9 million, about 2.7× as many.9815

Where the uncounted deaths were

Excess deaths minus reported deaths, 2020–2021, by country. India alone accounts for 45.2% of the gap. The United States reported most of its deaths; China, under its zero-COVID policy, had fewer deaths than normal in these two years.169

China's count fell apart later. In Dec 2022–Jan 2023, after zero-COVID ended, China reported 39,491 COVID-19 deaths to WHO. A peer-reviewed estimate puts excess deaths among people 30 and over at 1.87 million (95% CI 0.71–4.43 million), about 47× the reported figure.917

Table view: excess vs. reported deaths, 2020–2021
CountryExcess (WHO mean)95% interval Reported to WHOShare of global gap
India 4,734,516 3,315,582 to 6,479,563 481,080 45.2%
Indonesia 1,067,865 806,815 to 1,343,849 144,094 9.8%
Russia 1,093,165 1,066,970 to 1,119,372 308,860 8.3%
Mexico 612,370 600,709 to 623,852 303,822 3.3%
Pakistan 302,777 115,560 to 516,627 28,921 2.9%
Egypt 284,786 269,208 to 299,221 21,727 2.8%
Philippines 228,941 221,039 to 236,622 51,504 1.9%
Iran 295,532 289,300 to 301,922 131,572 1.7%
South Africa 246,802 238,343 to 254,532 91,061 1.7%
United States 968,425 925,436 to 1,013,269 819,055 1.6%
United States 968,425 925,436 to 1,013,269 819,055 1.6%
China -52,105 -66,218 to -37,102 5,699 -0.6%

Explore: how an outbreak grows

Susceptible Infected now Recovered or dead

A toy SIR model with a 7-day infectious period, no vaccines and no reinfection. It shows the dynamics, not a forecast.

Sources

Retrieved 3 October 2026. Every claim is checked against its source by tests/verify_sources.py.

  1. Status of World Nuclear Forces 2026 Federation of American Scientists
  2. Doomsday Clock Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
  3. Doomsday Clock (history of settings) Wikipedia
  4. PLAN A Princeton Science & Global Security
  5. Global food insecurity and famine from reduced crop, marine fishery and livestock production due to climate disruption from nuclear war soot injection Xia et al., Nature Food 3 (2022)
  6. Rapidly expanding nuclear arsenals in Pakistan and India portend regional and global catastrophe Toon et al., Science Advances 5 (2019)
  7. The First Battle of the Next War: Wargaming a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan Center for Strategic and International Studies (2023)
  8. 14.9 million excess deaths associated with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021 World Health Organization (5 May 2022)
  9. WHO COVID-19 global daily data (reported cases and deaths) World Health Organization
  10. 1918 Pandemic (H1N1 virus) US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
  11. Counterforce Wikipedia
  12. Countervalue Wikipedia
  13. 2026 Iran war Wikipedia
  14. 2026 Iran war ceasefire Wikipedia
  15. The WHO estimates of excess mortality associated with the COVID-19 pandemic Msemburi et al., Nature 613 (2023)
  16. Global excess deaths associated with COVID-19, modelled estimates (by country) World Health Organization (May 2023)
  17. Excess All-Cause Mortality in China After Ending the Zero COVID Policy Xiao et al., JAMA Network Open (2023)
  18. Disrupting the first reported AI-orchestrated cyber espionage campaign Anthropic (13 Nov 2025)
  19. Cybersecurity of Nuclear Weapons Systems: Threats, Vulnerabilities and Consequences Unal & Lewis, Chatham House (2018)
  20. Artificial Intelligence, Strategic Stability and Nuclear Risk SIPRI (2020)
  21. Readout of President Biden's meeting with President Xi Jinping (16 Nov 2024) The White House (archived)
  22. Stuxnet Wikipedia
  23. Two-person rule Wikipedia
  24. Permissive action link Wikipedia

Timeline events link to their own sources, most of them Wikipedia articles, in the event list above.