It’s been more than 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Cold War, and a slump in sales of Sting’s songs about nuclear armageddon.

The easing of tensions between east and west were marked by a number of treaties to limit the proliferation of nuclear weapons. While the nuclear powers retained the ability to obliterate human civilisation several times over, it at least reduced the chances of someone tripping over, knocking a button and starting something.

Those were the good old days, when everyone with nukes pretty much agreed that anyone else with nukes would see an attack coming, and the return fire would assure that everybody lost.

But since then, nuclear weapons have become harder to track. So-called ‘rogue states’ crave nuclear arsenals for defence or prestige; bitter rivals Pakistan and India now face off across a border with their fingers poised over their respective nuke buttons.

There are also long-standing fears that terrorist groups might gain nuclear material through corrupt contacts, or by paying the right price to the right cowboy in the Wild West that sprang up in parts of the former Soviet Union.

Australia doesn’t possess nuclear weapons, but the American bases on our soil form a key part of the USA’s nuclear early warning system. There’s no evidence of Australian uranium being used in nuclear weapons, but in the event of a nuclear arms race, them rocks sure would come in handy.

So where exactly are the world’s nuclear weapons stockpiled? Who’s got them – and who are they pointed at? The Project targets those questions tonight.

(Nobody tell Sting.)