Graphing it Out

I deciphered a graph showing the relaionship between the year and the amount of nuclear weapons the U.S. and U.S.S.R. produced from the year 1945 and 2002. Obviously the Soviet Union didn't exist by 2000 so this graph shows how the amount of nuclear weapons decreased when the U.S.S.R. turned into Russia. This graph tells so much about the harsh times our world was in. As the Cold War went on, nuclear weapons increased dramaticly right after World War II until the mid 1960s right after the Cuban Missle Crisis occured. After the 60s the amount of nuclear weapons decreased slowly until 2002 and now Russia only contains a nominal amount of weapons for communism is out of the way. In this graph, you can really tell how fear was a large part in both countries, one country would go up with their amount in nuclear weapons, and the other country would follow. This is very valid information because it is the data that has been collected over decades and put into one report. This graph can help people understand how serious the Cold War was because even though there really wasn't too much fighting, there was a lot of threats and buildup of very serious weapons.
We can learn a lot from graphs like these because they tell us so much about our history and the way our governments acted out. We can fix our mistakes and act differently if something like this ever happens again.

NRDC's Nuclear Program,"Figure of US and USSR/Russian Nuclear Stockpile, 1945-2002",
11.22.02, <http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/nudb/datainx.asp>