Whereas since the height of the Cold War, the United States and Russia have dismantled more than 50,000 nuclear warheads, but 14,500 of these weapons still exist and pose an intolerable risk to human survival; Whereas 95 percent of these weapons are in the hands of the United States and Russia and the rest are held by seven other countries: China, France, Israel, India, North Korea, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom; Whereas the use of even a tiny fraction of these weapons could cause worldwide climate disruption and global famine—for example, a limited nuclear war in south Asia involving just 250 Hiroshima-sized 15 kiloton warheads could result in 52,000,000 direct fatalities, loft 37,000,000 tons of soot into the upper atmosphere, and cause climate disruption across the planet, cutting food production and putting an estimated 930,000,000 people worldwide at risk of death due to famine over two years; Whereas according to scientific studies and models, a large-scale nuclear war could kill hundreds of millions of people directly and cause unimaginable environmental damage and catastrophic climate disruption by dropping temperatures across the planet to levels not seen since the last ice age; under these conditions much of humanity might face starvation and humans might even be at grave risk as a species; Whereas despite assurances that these arsenals exist solely to guarantee that they are never used, there have been many occasions when nuclear armed states have prepared to use these weapons, and war has been averted only at the last minute; Whereas the current nuclear weapons policies of the United States do not inherently prevent their use; Whereas in the 2003 documentary, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara , former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara said, when describing the Cuban Missile Crisis, It was luck that prevented nuclear war —yet the nuclear policy of the United States should not be based on the hope that luck will continue