These five submarines could obliterate the entire planet. Nuclear-powered submarines with nuclear-tipped missiles are the deadliest weapons mankind has ever created, although they have mercifully never been employed in a shooting conflict. Even one ship could sometimes turn as many as 288 city-size targets into radioactive ash in less than 30 minutes, as was the case with the Ohio-class submarine during the height of the Cold War. If a third global war were to start, these ships and their payloads could wipe out human civilization faster than you could order a pizza.
In this video, we highlight five of the most powerful nuclear-armed submarines that are either operational or will be short. Older ships, such as the enormous Project 941 Akula of the Soviet Union, known as a typhoon in the West, are not featured because they have been mainly decommissioned and disassembled. Only the test vessel Dmitri Donskoy, which is no longer equipped with ballistic missiles, is still in use with the Russian Navy. Here are five submarines that have the power to instantly murder billions of people.
1) Ohio class ballistic missile submarine
The fourteen ballistic missile submarines and four cruise missile submarines of the US Navy are all members of the nuclear-powered Ohio class. The Ohio-class boats are the largest submarines ever constructed for the US Navy, each displacing 18,750 tonnes submerged. The ballistic missile submarine of the Ohio class is capable of transporting 24 UGM 133 Trident to d5 submarine-launched ballistic missiles, each of which is capable of carrying up to 12 W 88 475 kiloton thermonuclear warheads.