In 1945 America dropped one of the earliest nuclear bombs ever made on Hiroshima. That bomb had a blast power of around 12 kilotons, killed 75,000+ people instantly(not counting the 10s of thousands who would die in the fallout) and decimated 5 square miles of the city. At the height of the Cold War, the Russians test detonated a warhead that had a blast power of 50 megatons, around 4000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It destroyed every building within 35 miles of the blast site and was hot enough to cause third degree burns over 60 miles from the blast site.

While none of the bombs currently in active arsenals have that kind of blast power, there are just under 15,000 active nuclear warheads in the world right now. 15,000. Human beings could wipe the face of the earth clean in a matter of minutes. A couple of hours, a touch of mutually assured destruction, and there’s almost nothing left alive on the planet.

Nuclear weapons are not a fucking joke. Of those 15,000 nukes in the world, the US owns around 6,800. No one person should have the power to control launching them alone, not in any reasonable world, but the president of the United States does. The secretary of defense must verify that the president gave the order but has no power to veto it. That’s it. That’s all of the checks on the presidents ability to launch our nukes.

We’ve elected a man who tweets at other world leaders comparing our bombs to theirs like they are dicks. Seriously. This man has the power to destroy the entire world and there are no failsafes or checks in place to stop him. Just a little something to help you sleep at night.