Unless you’ve been living under a rock since January, you know Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to have gone crazy. He invades Ukraine with about two-thirds of the army he needs to do the job during the mud season. Armored columns pushing toward Kyiv stuck on the roads getting shot to Hell and Gone, Russian mortars and rockets destroying apartment buildings, Russian soldiers defecting and discarded equipment, pulled away by Ukrainian farmers in their John Deeres and used against the invaders. Where does it end?

Not with nukes! At least, probably not. Russia has them. Putin has publicly huffed about their use. Four days after invading Ukraine, Russian nuclear forces were put on alert. Who decides, four days into an invasion with no sign of nuclear threat, to stand up the largest nuclear arsenal in the world? A crazy man?

Maybe.

Let’s look into the nuclear arsenal Putin has decided to put into play.

As of September 2021, Russia has 1,458 strategic nuclear warheads deployed throughout their nuclear rocket forces. These warheads are mounted on InterContinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM), strategic bombers, and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM). The operative word in the previous statement is “deployed” warheads. These are the ones ready to fire at the push of a button. According to television, anyway.

That “deployed” number is significant because it does not show the true horror: Russia has near 6,000 STRATEGIC warheads in reserve, ready to upload to ICBMs, AGMs, submarine launch cruise missiles, or even nuclear-armed torpedoes. Now, the US maintains a similar posture, with nearly 1,400 “deployed” nukes and another 5,500 in reserve, but we’re the good guys, right?

So the difference between deployed and reserve ought to be obvious.  Deployed, means ready to go and reserve means it would take a week or so to fit the warheads to the rockets, fuel them and then test them. Believe it or not, nuclear arsenals are pretty expensive in terms of upkeep and manning. Each missile silo we operate in the U.S. requires at least three crews to operate, maintain and protect them 24hours a day, 7 days a week.

August 9, 1945, was the second and last time nuclear weapons have been used in anger. Seventy-seven years have passed since the United States used nuclear weapons against an enemy state. Seventy-seven years have passed since a decision was made to kill an estimated 80,000 people in one fell swoop. We were the “good guys” then, true, but tens of thousands still died.