While they have thankfully never been used during a shooting war, nuclear-powered submarines carrying nuclear-tipped missiles are the most deadly weapons mankind has ever devised. In some cases—as in the case of the Ohio-class submarine during the height of the Cold War—even a single vessel could reduce as many as 288 city-sized targets into radioactive ash in less than 30 minutes. Indeed, these vessel and their payloads could end human civilization in less time than it takes to order a pizza if a third world war were to break out.
In this article, we have picked five of the most capable nuclear-armed submarines that are either in service or will soon enter service. Older vessels such as the Soviet Union’s massive Project 941 Akula—known in the West as the Typhoon—are not included because those vessels have been largely retired and dismantled. Only Dmitriy Donskoy remains in service with the Russian Navy as a test vessel stripped of her ballistic missile armament.