It’s been a busy time for nuclear weapons-related news—between President Trump’s alleged confusion about and denouncement of the New START arms reduction treaty with Russia on Friday, the White House’s subsequent assurances that the president understands the treaty, and North Korea’s missile launch test over the weekend.

The people behind the “Doomsday Clock,” have declared that the world is “two and a half minutes to midnight.” That’s the closest we’ve allegedly been to Armageddon since 1953, when both the U.S. and Soviet Union first possessed thermonuclear weapons.

A graph from HumanProgress.org might help put the current fearful commotion in perspective.

The U.S. has 4,000 nuclear warheads stockpiled and Russia has 4,490, according to the Federation of American Scientists, a group devoted to arms reduction, as of their latest data update on January 31st of this year.

How dangerous is a single warhead? That varies. The most powerful one ever made, the Soviet Tsar Bomba, detonated in a remote area in 1961, created a fireball with a radius of nearly two miles, and a thermal radiation blast able to cause third-degree burns within a radius of almost 50 miles. North Korea’s most powerful warhead tested to date, in contrast, would cause third-degree burns within a radius of less than 2 miles. (If you’re curious about exactly how much of your hometown a warhead would destroy, there’s an app for that).

The graph shows that the U.S. and Russia still have enough warheads to wage a deadly nuclear conflict, but the situation is a far cry from how things stood during the Cold War. The U.S.S.R.’s number of warheads peaked at 40,149 in 1986; the U.S.’s peaked earlier, at 31,255 warheads in 1967. In other words, Russia’s stockpile of warheads today is 11% of what the U.S.S.R.’s was at its peak. The U.S.’s stockpile is 13% of what it was at its peak.

The tension between the two great nuclear powers is also far lower today than it was in the days of constant nuclear drills for schoolchildren accompanied by inane videos. As my colleague Ted Galen Carpenter put it, President Trump has repeatedly “angered advocates of a new Cold War against Russia,” through his eagerness to cooperate with Moscow. (However, he has also pointed out that the recent spat over New START might signal a change in the president’s attitude towards Russia).

No one can predict the future, but a little historical perspective suggests that the threat of a nuclear apocalypse is farther than the Doomsday Clock’s hands claim.

You can explore data on the other nuclear powers’ stockpiles (excluding secretive North Korea) here.

The first appeared in Cato at Liberty.

With the Russians occupying Crimea and eastern Ukraine, ISIS beheading innocents in Iraq and Syria, and Taliban resurgent in Afghanistan, it sure feels like the world is, to quote Donald Trump, “a mess.” Indeed, many politicians and military leaders have stated that the world has never been as dangerous as it is today.

As my Cato colleague Christopher Preble chronicled, “In February 2012 Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declared, ‘I can’t impress upon you [enough] that in my personal military judgment, formed over 38 years, we are living in the most dangerous time in my lifetime, right now.’ One year later, he upped the ante: ‘I will personally attest to the fact that [the world is] more dangerous than it has ever been.’ …Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified in early 2014 that he had ‘not experienced a time when we’ve been beset by more crises and threats around the globe.’ …Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), born before World War II, explained in July 2014 that the world is ‘in greater turmoil than at any time in my lifetime.'”

True enough, there are many troubles in the world and far too many lives are lost due to senseless violence. But, let’s keep matters in a proper perspective. Since the end of the Cold War, wars have become rarer. International conflicts are way down, though civil wars and armed conflicts have been on the uptick. Moreover humanity’s destructive potential–while still considerable–has been declining. Consider that in 1986, the Soviet Union had over 40,000 nuclear warheads, while the United States’ nuclear arsenal peaked in 1967 at over 31,000 warheads. Last year, both countries’ nuclear arsenal contained less than 5,000 warheads each.

British, French and Israeli stockpiles are lower than they used to be, though Chinese, Pakistani and Indian stockpiles are increasing. And while today it is still possible for a terrorist group to detonate a dirty bomb in a Western metropolis, a world-ending nuclear Armageddon is no longer a daily threat.

Truth is that by yesteryear’s standards, Americans are safer. Even ISIS–that most brutal of terrorist organizations–does not pose a serious, let alone existential, threat to the United States. The fact that we do not feel safe may well be a result of the world becoming “smaller” due largely to the revolution in communication technology, rather than deterioration of America’s security.