Only 30 companies worldwide are involved in the creation of nuclear weapons, cluster munitions and/or landmines. Yet a significant number of popular funds invest in these companies. Happily there are still a large number of funds that are relatively unconnected with the creation of these inhumane and indiscriminate weapons, which means you can start investing in a beneficial future for all.

Worried about certain weapons more than others? Check the boxes below to search by funds specific to each, and click on the weapons to learn more about them.

Cluster Munitions

Landmines

Nuclear Weapons

Scroll below for responsible investment options.

Divestment helps stigmatize, which played a key role, for example, in ending Apartheid in South Africa. Divestment pressure persuaded Lockheed Martin to stop making Cluster Munitions and, in 2015, it persuaded one of only two remaining landmine producing companies, Singapore Technology and Engineering, to stop. And the companies below are the 30 companies still making cluster munitions, landmines, and nuclear weapons. Ready to stigmatize? (Hover over each logo to see what weapons the companies make.)

Now that you know what you’re invested in and which companies you want to avoid, how do you choose alternative funds? Remember above where we said there are lots of alternative options? Get ready to start scrolling! The list below includes all of the funds that have absolutely no connection to weapons-producing companies, and further down are funds that aren’t directly invested in the weapons-producing companies you care about, but they still have indirect investments. Click on any of the funds to visit their websites, or just pass this list on to your financial advisor or planner for their help narrowing down where you want to put your money.

How much are nuclear weapons really worth? Is upgrading the US nuclear arsenal worth $1.2 trillion – in the hopes of never using it – when that money could be used to improve lives, create jobs, decrease taxes, or pay off debts? How far can $1.2 trillion go if it’s not all spent on nukes?

The application below helps answer those questions. Click on the icons on the left to ‘shop’ for items to add to your cart. See something you want to add? Just click on the title, and it will automatically be placed in your cart. To view your items or make changes, click on the shopping cart. From there, you can increase or decrease the amount of money allotted to each. If you want to maintain deterrence, but don’t support the whole upgrade, then just don’t spend all of the money – whatever is left over can be what you think nuclear upgrades are worth. When you’re done, click on the shopping cart, and share on social media to let your voice be heard!

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The National Security Archives recently published a declassified list of U.S. nuclear targets from 1956, which spanned 1,100 locations across Eastern Europe, Russia, China, and North Korea. The map below shows all 1,100 nuclear targets from that list, and we’ve partnered with NukeMap to demonstrate how catastrophic a nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia could be. If you click detonate from any of the dots, you can see how large an area would be destroyed by the bomb of your choice, as well as how many people could be killed.

Even though today’s nuclear targets list is classified, it probably doesn’t look dramatically different. The United States still has about 1,900 nuclear warheads deployed on missiles and bombers (with thousands more on reserve), ready to be launched at a moment’s notice and able to hit their targets within 30 minutes. This unstable situation is extremely risky and has repeatedly come close to triggering nuclear war by accident. Moreover, many of today’s hydrogen bombs are hundreds of times more powerful than the two atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If a nuclear war were to break out today, nuclear winter might kill most people on Earth.

This leads to an important question: Just how many nuclear weapons do we actually need? Seven of the nine nuclear nations have determined that deterrence requires fewer than 300 nuclear weapons, and none of them have been attacked. Yet, not only do the United States and Russia each have approximately 7,000 nuclear warheads — accounting for 90% of the world’s arsenal – both countries are currently escalating the situation, making massive investments to enhance their arsenals with more accurate and lethal nuclear weapons. Many military analysts agree that the U.S. and Russia could easily meet their deterrence needs with much fewer nuclear weapons. Even the Pentagon has stated that the U.S. needs no more than 1,000 nukes to deter a nuclear attack. But don’t take their word for it: play with the map yourself and see just how destructive nuclear weapons can be!

1100 Nuclear Targets, Radioactive Fallout, and Weather

While the maps above show a general radius of nuclear destruction, weather patterns would play a role in how many people would be affected by nuclear fallout. Given that weather can change day to day, if we drop a nuclear bomb near a border in one country on the wrong day, innocent people in a neighboring country could also suffer the effects of radioactive fallout. How far and in which direction the radioactive materials travel would depend on the size of the bomb and the local weather. In the following graphics, Alex Wellerstein simulates two terrifying possibilities (We recommend viewing the following slideshows in the full-screen option to more easily see where the radioactive material will travel.):

1) What would have happened if all 1,100 nuclear targets were struck by a nuclear weapon of a given size on April 29, 2016?

In this slideshow, the bombs grow larger, and the nuclear fallout spreads farther from the target in a direction that’s dictated by the local weather patterns. Note that this slideshow doesn’t yet show the effect of nuclear winter: if enough smoke from nuclear fires rises high into the stratosphere, it can spread across our planet and trigger a decade-long mini-ice-age and farming collapse, potentially killing most of Earth’s 7 billion people.

2) How would the direction of radioactive fallout change if the bombs were dropped on three different days?

In this case, we use weather data from April 29, April 30 and May 1 of 2016 to see how the direction of nuclear fallout changes if 100 kt bombs were dropped on the 1,100 nuclear targets (typical bombs today are many times more powerful). Different weather patterns would send nuclear fallout in different directions on each day. Pay close attention to countries like Germany, Denmark and Finland, which could get hit with radioactive fallout if the nuclear targets were struck on the wrong day.

In the media

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