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Speaker 1: Also media.

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Speaker 2: Oh, welcome back to Behind the Bastards. Robert got of

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Speaker 2: a sect me edition. These part tools and to celebrate

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Speaker 2: you kidding, give a sectimy. We're talking about mutually assured

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Speaker 2: nuclear destruction and the bastards who ensured that it was

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Speaker 2: in fact mutually assured global destruction. If one of two

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Speaker 2: countries ever got two pissed at each other.

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Speaker 3: Is this here? No skin in the game episode?

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Speaker 2: That's right, baby? Oh wow? Ok, yeah, that's why you

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Speaker 2: should give me control of the nukes, because I'm gonna

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Speaker 2: use them. But just on the Great Lakes. We just

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Speaker 2: had the anniversary of the Edmund Fitzgerald's tragic sinking. You know,

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Speaker 2: there's no better time than to remind people that this

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Speaker 2: doesn't have to continue. We could stop the Great Lakes tomorrow.

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Speaker 3: The Pearl Harbor of the Midwest.

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Speaker 2: That's right, that's right. I have heard people comparing it

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Speaker 2: to nine to eleven and then wondering why there's not

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Speaker 2: like a really good nine to eleven song, And I

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Speaker 2: think that is a good question. Wow, we just got

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Speaker 2: a bunch of Lee Greenwood. Shit. You know, where's where's

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Speaker 2: the Edmund Fitzgerald of nine to eleven?

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Speaker 3: All right? I'll tell you a terrible embarrassing fact. I

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Speaker 3: lived in New York City on nine to eleven.

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Speaker 2: I didn't know that.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I happened to be inside while the towers fell.

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Speaker 2: But I'm sure he had something more important to day.

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Speaker 3: I sure went from some towers to some smoke. But

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Speaker 3: the goth band I was in, I wasn't the songwriter.

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Speaker 3: I did a lot of the synthesizers and programming. We

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Speaker 3: wrote a song about nine to eleven, and I didn't

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Speaker 3: realize it until months later that our song Gone from

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Speaker 3: the Sky was.

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Speaker 2: About nine eleven.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, anything and the no, the uh, the hook at

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Speaker 3: the end was dear God or Lord, where are you now?

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Speaker 3: Just over and over again, and this like super bass

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Speaker 3: voice that the singer had sick.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's I don't know, you know, we should have

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Speaker 2: a good song. There is a good song about mutually

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Speaker 2: assured nuclear destruction, and maybe we'll play it at the

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Speaker 2: end of these episodes. It's Tom Lair's all go together

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Speaker 2: when we go. It's like a joyous song about like look.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, like on the beach, but like a beach party.

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Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, yes, Uh, there will be no am when

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Speaker 2: you see that. ICBM we will all go together when

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Speaker 2: we go. H Okay, miss in the sky. Now, that's

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Speaker 2: a great song, Margaret, that's a great that's a happier song.

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Speaker 2: That's about one side getting destroyed. Good song, good IRA song.

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Speaker 2: About the time Kadafi gave them sam missiles. I think,

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Speaker 2: oh man.

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Speaker 3: I will say that the thing you're saying about how

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Speaker 3: bombing does it really work? I think this is true

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Speaker 3: for terrorism too.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: I mean people have done a lot of it, and

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Speaker 3: I don't know that it's done.

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Speaker 2: It's I think it works actually really well. I mean

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Speaker 2: Osama bin Laden got what he wanted pretty much, which

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Speaker 2: is the continuing collapse of the United States. You can

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Speaker 2: you can trace that to nine to eleven. The IRA

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Speaker 2: largely got a lot of there. I mean, Northern Ireland's

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Speaker 2: still part of the British Commonwealth, but they got a

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Speaker 2: lot of stuff. I think, as data said in star

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Speaker 2: Trek's and Next Generation, terrorism can be a very effective strategy. Look,

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Speaker 2: that's not my conclusion, that's data from star Trek's conclusions.

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Speaker 2: Is Android take it up with him, you know. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: so talking of of terrorists and look, there's I don't

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Speaker 2: want this to come out as and this is sometimes

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Speaker 2: the way it sounds saying that like strategic bombing did

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Speaker 2: nothing in World War Two and that it was no

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Speaker 2: part of the German defeat. Right, that's not accurate. But

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Speaker 2: as we'll discuss what du Hay is claiming, what a

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Speaker 2: lot of the people believe is that strategic bombers and

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Speaker 2: a powerful enough air force render everything else unnecessary. And

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Speaker 2: that's only true in the context of nuclear war, and

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Speaker 2: even then it's not really true because subs are pretty

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Speaker 2: important and ground based missile launches, so it's not really

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Speaker 2: true with that right anyway, There's this group called the

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Speaker 2: bomber Mafia that Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book on that

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Speaker 2: had some terrible takes. But these are the guys who

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Speaker 2: are like advocating for the massive and expanded use of

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Speaker 2: like saturation bombing on civilian targets, you know. And Arthur Harris,

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Speaker 2: Bomber Harris and Curtis LeMay on the American side, are

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Speaker 2: two very prominent members of this group. Like many American officers,

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Speaker 2: Curtis LeMay came from humble origins. He is not a sir,

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Speaker 2: very different from his counterpart in the RAF. He was

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Speaker 2: born in nineteen oh six in Columbus, Ohio. His father

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Speaker 2: was a handyman who I'm going to guess had some

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Speaker 2: sort of maybe he was drinking. He's not stablely employed.

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Speaker 2: He is not able to keep the family fed. Right.

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Speaker 2: It's one of those kind of situations, and as a result,

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Speaker 2: LeMay grows up poor. His first job was, in Eric

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Speaker 2: Schlosser's words, shooting sparrows for a nickel each to feed

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Speaker 2: a neighbor's cat. So much backstory in that sentences the.

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Speaker 3: Most Midwest that shit I've ever heard to beat his cat.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, his mother, Curtis LeMay's mother was a servant and

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Speaker 2: the most stable earner during his childhood.

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Speaker 3: Uh wasn't shooting sparrows. I'm really shocked by this. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that didn't keep the family going. Uh. Le May

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Speaker 2: had to change schools in state several times. He was

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Speaker 2: always the new kid, and he was seldom fit in.

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Speaker 2: Schlosser describes him as shy, awkward, and bullied, and as

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Speaker 2: a way of fighting back against both kind of the

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Speaker 2: bullies and just the life he was born into. I

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Speaker 2: think having this father figure he doesn't have a shit together,

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Speaker 2: ma May becomes incredibly self disciplined. Right, This is sort

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Speaker 2: of his like defense mechanism. He is an excellent student.

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Speaker 2: He works constantly when he's not at school, and this

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Speaker 2: leads him to feel quote cut off from normal life

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Speaker 2: because he never has time for a childhood. He's just

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Speaker 2: kind of like working constantly and very concerned from an

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Speaker 2: early period with serious things. Right, he does not get

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Speaker 2: to be a kid. Too many kids have experience during

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Speaker 2: the fucking Great Depression, and today it's a bummer and

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Speaker 2: it's not gonna make him a better person. He does

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Speaker 2: save enough money to pay his way through Ohio State,

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Speaker 2: where he studies civil engineering. He goes to school every

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Speaker 2: day and works at a steel mill at night, usually

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Speaker 2: until two or three in the morning, at which point

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Speaker 2: he will sleep for a couple of hours and then

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Speaker 2: go back to school. That's his college experience.

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Speaker 3: Fuck yeah, so yeah, lots of people only sleep a

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Speaker 3: couple hours of the night at college, but for very different.

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Speaker 2: Different reason this has this kid's life is relentless. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: he graduates. He joins the Air Corps in nineteen twenty nine.

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Speaker 2: By this point, he has developed a love of hy

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Speaker 2: adrenaline activities. He likes to drive race cars, you know,

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Speaker 2: as a hobby, and he becomes a skilled pilot, But

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Speaker 2: he differentiates himself from many young officers because everyone wants

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Speaker 2: to be a fucking pilot. It is. It's still the

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Speaker 2: cool job in the Air Force. But by this point

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Speaker 2: planes are really new, you know, it's really cool, and

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Speaker 2: most young officers want to be fighter pilots because that's

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Speaker 2: the sexiest job than and now there's not really any

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Speaker 2: sexier job than fighter pilot. I'm sorry, you.

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Speaker 3: Get to be an ace?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly who else gets to be an ace? One

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Speaker 2: of the things that differentiates LeMay from his colleagues is

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Speaker 2: that he wants to be a bomber pilot. He is

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Speaker 2: from the beginning not interested in fighter aircraft, he think,

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Speaker 2: and this is part and partly because he knows that

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Speaker 2: bombing is where the future is at now. I don't

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Speaker 2: know precisely when Curtis encountered General do Hayes's theories. I

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Speaker 2: don't know if he read his nineteen twenty one book

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Speaker 2: or if he was. It was just kind of like

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Speaker 2: cultural osmosis. Everyone is talking about do hay and strategic bombing,

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Speaker 2: you know, when you're in like the Air Force cadet school, right,

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Speaker 2: and so he just encounters a lot of that way yeah.

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Speaker 3: Everyone, I know it's always talking about DeMay and strategic bombing. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 3: in a non legally actionable way.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we all love strategic bombing. It's it's

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Speaker 2: become like the popular all the cool kids are talking

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Speaker 2: about how many tons of bombs you need per square

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Speaker 2: acre in an urban environment to really, you know, clean

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Speaker 2: out the cities. Now the late generals thing. I can

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Speaker 2: say this about do Hay's impact on LeMay. It's influential

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Speaker 2: enough that during Vietnam, and for an idea of how

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Speaker 2: long this guy is in the field, LeMay is running

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Speaker 2: the US Air Force in Asia from World War II

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Speaker 2: to the start of Vietnam. He will name his strategy

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Speaker 2: for bombing North Vietnam the genteel dou Hay Plan. That's

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Speaker 2: like the nickname. Everyone refers to it as like, so

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Speaker 2: this is like the polite version of dou Hay's plan.

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Speaker 2: We're not going to kill quite as many civilians as

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Speaker 2: do Hay.

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Speaker 3: What have That's I only know a little bit about

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Speaker 3: bombing in Vietnam, and it didn't describe it.

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Speaker 2: He's not in charge of the whole time, but he

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Speaker 2: does get us started on a specific foot. As we'll

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Speaker 2: talk about. So LeMay becomes a bomber pilot in nineteen

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Speaker 2: thirty seven. By this point, he had already decided he

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Speaker 2: believed long rage bombing was the future of air power.

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Speaker 2: He became one of the best navigators in the country

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Speaker 2: and was stationed in Hawaii, where his career moved quickly.

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Speaker 2: Curtis became a relentless advocate of constant training and preparation.

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Speaker 2: He earned the nickname old iron Pants as a result. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: that's that's what is. That's what is, like the kind

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Speaker 2: of lovingly his crews call him when.

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Speaker 3: We're going down that tattooed on his knuckles or his

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Speaker 3: pant iron pants. Never mind, that doesn't.

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Speaker 2: Yeah unfortunately, Yeah, thing you consider knuckles when they give

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Speaker 2: nicknames out. When World War Two started, he was a

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Speaker 2: major in command of a B seventeen flying fortress unit.

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Speaker 2: Curtis was quickly transferred into the eighth Air Force, and

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Speaker 2: he served under General Eker. This is the guy who

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Speaker 2: was wrong the Churchill about B seventeens not eating fighter escorts. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: a barrel Eker e A K E R.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, like getting a little bit out, not.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, or like without the bee. Yeah. When he arrived

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Speaker 2: in Europe. This you. When LeMay arrived in Europe, the

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Speaker 2: US strategy, different from the British strategy, was daylight bombing raids.

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Speaker 2: LeMay's first big move was to point out that the

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Speaker 2: way the pilots were flying was getting them killed. Not

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Speaker 2: the Daylight Party couldn't do anything about that. But the

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Speaker 2: standard strategy among US bomber pilots was to zigzag to

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Speaker 2: avoid anti aircraft fire. This caused your bombs to be

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Speaker 2: really off target because she's zigzagging. May and the attitude

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Speaker 2: was that like, well, if you're just flying straight, there's

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Speaker 2: only a limited period of time in which you really

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Speaker 2: low that you're super vulnerable to anti aircraft fire. And

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Speaker 2: if you're just going straight, it's a death sentence. You're

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Speaker 2: just marching directly into the enemy guns. And LeMay argued, no, no, no,

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Speaker 2: flying straight is way safer because it's faster. You're out

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Speaker 2: in half the time. Zigzagging doesn't do all that much

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Speaker 2: to protect you, but getting out of there faster does.

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Speaker 2: So just going straight and then getting out of the

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Speaker 2: fucking death zone as quickly as you can is the

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Speaker 2: best way for us to do this. And he created

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Speaker 2: a new type of formation for bomber aircraft based on

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Speaker 2: this that was optim that was supposed to like basically

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Speaker 2: keep them with the optimal distance to offend each other

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Speaker 2: with their guns. Now, everything about this new tactic was

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Speaker 2: controversial among his pilots, and the way that LeMay stifled

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Speaker 2: any disagreement was promising to fly in the lead plane,

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Speaker 2: which was the one that would be in the most

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Speaker 2: danger if his theory was wrong. Right, So he'd be like.

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Speaker 3: I kind of like this guy.

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Speaker 2: I mean, no, he's there's a lot about him that's likable,

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Speaker 2: especially here.

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Speaker 3: Hyland would love this man. Probably did love this man.

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Speaker 2: I believe Hyland was very much felt positively towards LeMay,

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Speaker 2: and his men love him because he's this kind of guy.

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Speaker 2: He'll have these ideas that are sometimes really dangerous, and

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Speaker 2: but he'll be like, I'll be in the first plane.

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Speaker 2: Like you can't say, I'm not just telling you guys

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Speaker 2: to do something like he is. He is leading from

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Speaker 2: the front, which is the thing you can do in

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Speaker 2: the Air Force that's not really possible in most other

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Speaker 2: branches at this point, not to the extent that LeMay

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Speaker 2: is doing it. Right, you know, another guy who's doing

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Speaker 2: basically the same thing as LeMay. Around this period of time,

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Speaker 2: actor James Stewart, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Jimmy Stewart actually

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Speaker 2: becomes a general and is like deeply involved in our

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Speaker 2: air strategy and Korea too. He's he's arguably one of

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Speaker 2: the highest body count like actors that has ever existed,

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Speaker 2: like like a list actors. He's not the only one

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Speaker 2: in contention, by the way.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, there's that Specops guy who's in Lord of the Rings.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean I'm talking about like

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Speaker 2: bomber pilots, and in terms of bodies, yeah, you have

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Speaker 2: a whole crop of these guys in World War Two

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Speaker 2: who are like big time actors and then like quit

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Speaker 2: to fly, be seventeens or whatever. It is a crazy

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Speaker 2: thing to have happened. Just imagine that if like we

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Speaker 2: had like a five year period where everyone had to

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Speaker 2: go to war and you're like, yeah, Timothy Chalamay killed

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Speaker 2: six thousand people. Yeah, yeah, just the most body stacked

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Speaker 2: by it.

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Speaker 3: Billie Eilish would lead from the front, That's all I say.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, I don't think the Rock serves, but Billie Eilish

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Speaker 2: for sure does.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I think he does it.

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Speaker 2: John Wayne, I mean he's like sixties in his fifties,

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Speaker 2: he shouldn't be going to war. Yeah. Anyway, LeMay's ideas work,

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Speaker 2: and they'd work well enough to have become sop for

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Speaker 2: all American bomber crews. In the theater, LeMay I talked

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Speaker 2: about that Reagansburg mission in the first episode to destroy

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Speaker 2: that ball bearing plant. LeMay is in charge. He is

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Speaker 2: the guy flying in lead for the Reagansburg mission, right, the.

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Speaker 3: One that's sixty out of three hundred and sixty.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, yeah, which leads us to something that we'll discuss.

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Speaker 2: But like, yeah, in that mission, there's so many people

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Speaker 2: die that the eighth test to curtail all their missions

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Speaker 2: for five months until they get fighter escorts. And this

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Speaker 2: brings about LeMay's second big success. Because of how many

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Speaker 2: crews are dying. Leadership, notice that flights are starting to

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Speaker 2: have a high abort rate. Pilots are pulling back and

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Speaker 2: aborting the mission before they get into the kill zone.

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Speaker 2: Robert McNamara, future Secretary of Defense for the most of

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Speaker 2: the Vietnam War, came to believe that this abort rate

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Speaker 2: was caused by cowardice, which he defined as pilots not

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Speaker 2: wanting to die because their CEO had fucked up. McNamara

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Speaker 2: credits LeMay with ending the abort problem. Quote, he was

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Speaker 2: the finest combat commander of any service I came across

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Speaker 2: in war. But he was extraordinarily belligerent, many thought brutal.

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Speaker 2: He got the report, he issued an order, he said,

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Speaker 2: I will be in the lead plan on every mission.

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Speaker 2: Any plane that takes off will go over the target,

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Speaker 2: or the crew will be court martialed. The abort rate

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Speaker 2: dropped overnight. Now that's the kind of commander he was

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Speaker 2: so seeing like the upsides and the downsides of this man.

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Speaker 2: He's like, not a lot of sympathy for Creus, not

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Speaker 2: wanting to die because somebody decided they don't need fighter escorts.

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Speaker 3: Yeah right, you know I read that other really good

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Speaker 3: book about this by Joseph Heller.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so you can both see. I can see

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Speaker 2: why so many people admired him, and why he was

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Speaker 2: so beloved, especially by the people directly above him, and

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Speaker 2: why he was poppular with his cruise. And also, this

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Speaker 2: is a man who's got a dangerous brain. This is

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Speaker 2: a man who is really okay with people dying for principles, right,

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Speaker 2: And this is a man who has no trouble baking

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Speaker 2: human death into his operation plans, which is necessary in

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Speaker 2: the military at some level. Yeah, but he's maybe better

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Speaker 2: at it than you want someone to be maybe, right.

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Speaker 3: Oh, okay, I can see where this might go further

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Speaker 3: based on the subject of these weeks. Yep, uh huh.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And it was one of those things US bomber

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Speaker 2: Cruise suffered like a fifty percent killed in action rate

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Speaker 2: during this period of time. It's a very dangerous job,

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Speaker 2: and LeMay also has a reputation for being really dedicated

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Speaker 2: to his men's safety within like the degree that was possible,

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Speaker 2: which doesn't say as much objectively about how his plans

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Speaker 2: made men safer, and more how he made men feel

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Speaker 2: right like this, and there's a degree of like personal

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Speaker 2: skill here. You know, of all the officers in these episodes,

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Speaker 2: had you been in the military at the time, LeMay

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Speaker 2: is probably the guy you would have wanted to serve under,

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Speaker 2: not for logical reasons, but because that seems to have

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Speaker 2: been how his men felt about him. Right. Yeah. Now,

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Speaker 2: At the same time, his instincts made him perhaps the

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Speaker 2: worst possible guy to wind up with the job that

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Speaker 2: he gets, because he is the dude who directs the

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Speaker 2: formation of our grand nuclear strategy. He winds up in

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Speaker 2: charge of the Strategic Air Command. Correct fifty to fifty,

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Speaker 2: so that's good.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: LeMay is a guy who, from the start of his

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Speaker 2: career wants to reduce war to long range bombing. And

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Speaker 2: this is a guy who has shattered by the time

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Speaker 2: he's in charge of the Strategic Air Command. His sanity

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Speaker 2: is shattered because of what he's seen in World War Two.

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Speaker 2: You talked about the mission where everybody died. This is

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Speaker 2: a guy who has watched cities burn from the position

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Speaker 2: of setting them on fire. And he is a guy

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Speaker 2: who has repeatedly walked headfirst into a situation where thirty

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Speaker 2: to fifty percent of us are gonna die. Maybe you know,

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Speaker 2: like he's done that so much that he has during

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Speaker 2: like as a result of what happens to him in Europe,

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Speaker 2: his face gets paralyzed. It's Bell's palsy. He gets an

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Speaker 2: attack of Bell's palsy, and his face is completely paralyzed

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Speaker 2: after this point, so he like can't smile or show emotion.

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Speaker 3: To his least favorite things before that anyway, his.

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Speaker 2: Face is frozen forever. So he choose a cigar constantly

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Speaker 2: to hide the effects, to like animate his face so

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Speaker 2: it doesn't creep people out.

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Speaker 3: Like that's some, Like that's some, Like the world is

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Speaker 3: better fiction than fiction.

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Speaker 2: Exactly If you wrote this guy, people will be like,

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Speaker 2: this is not really a believable much. But no, he

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Speaker 2: was a he's a real ass dude. So he was

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Speaker 2: not the kind of man who could have read an

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Speaker 2: analysis of the Regensburg attack on that ball bearing place

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Speaker 2: that said, well, this didn't work and like maybe some

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Speaker 2: of our assumptions are wrong and a lot of guys

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Speaker 2: died for no good reason because like, we didn't execute

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Speaker 2: this as well as we could have. This was a

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Speaker 2: guy who was going to go to his grave believing

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Speaker 2: that area bombing not only worked, but it was the

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Speaker 2: only way to win a war. Right. He is basically

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Speaker 2: always convinced that do Hay was mostly right. And the

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Speaker 2: problem with this is that he hadn't been, as we

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Speaker 2: have discussed. And this is not just Robert, you know,

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Speaker 2: old left wing radical Robert saying that the strategic bombing

355
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Speaker 2: guy was that Reagansburg was a failure. Bernard Brodie of

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Speaker 2: the Rand Corporation would later conclude in a study of

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Speaker 2: dou Hay's theories in World War Two. If one disregards

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Speaker 2: for a moment the overall visions and considers only specific

359
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Speaker 2: assertions and theses, one has to conclude in World War

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Speaker 2: Two that do Hay proved wrong and almost every salient

361
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Speaker 2: point he made to assert the reverse, as is often done,

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Speaker 2: is to engage in propaganda, not analysis, and that's just

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Speaker 2: impossible to argue against. Bombing alone did not destroy the

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Speaker 2: third right. Its capacity to wage war was degraded, not

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Speaker 2: just through bombing, but through a mix of air, ground,

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Speaker 2: and naval warfare. Like there's a lot of well, after

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Speaker 2: nineteen forty four, while we were strategically bombing German cities,

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Speaker 2: their war production finally collapsed, and it's like we were

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Speaker 2: also taking a lot of territory from them, like they

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Speaker 2: were losing ground to other things were happening, and the

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Speaker 2: air power played a role in us being able to

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Speaker 2: take ground. But it's a much more complicated picture than

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Speaker 2: do Hay and his advocates are making. It was not

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Speaker 2: just strategic long range bombing, and that's what do Haye

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Speaker 2: was saying, right, You can't just say, well, bombing was

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Speaker 2: a useful part of the overall no, no, no, that's not

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Speaker 2: what do Hay was claiming. And all of these air

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Speaker 2: Force guys are going to be arguing for the rest

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Speaker 2: of their careers. All we need is an air force, right,

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Speaker 2: that's a big part of this.

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Speaker 3: Is this the bomber mafia.

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Speaker 2: They're just like, yeah, this is like and their descendants

383
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Speaker 2: that this is a big thing for the next half

384
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Speaker 2: a century and longer, and like air Force arguing that

385
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Speaker 2: we don't really need as much of the other stuff

386
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Speaker 2: because air force handle it can it can fix every problem,

387
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Speaker 2: right and in war, through war, we don't get what

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Speaker 2: we want through just bombing people. Right.

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Speaker 3: Well, what you and I learned is that you could

390
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Speaker 3: throw bombs at most problems and that would help alleviate

391
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Speaker 3: the problems, but you also need someone with a spiked stick.

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Speaker 2: Yes, we did learn that in our Pathfinder game that

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Speaker 2: we played on the It could Happen Here book Club

394
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Speaker 2: special weekend episodes that you can listen to right now, folks. Yeah,

395
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Speaker 2: So it's also kind of worth noting that a lot

396
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Speaker 2: of these strategies to like, well, all we need to

397
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Speaker 2: do is bomb these cities and that'll destroy x amount

398
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Speaker 2: of factories and that will destroy German military production. It

399
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Speaker 2: assumes an enemy, and this will later be a problem

400
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Speaker 2: with our plans for nuclear war. They're always built assuming

401
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Speaker 2: an enemy who doesn't adapt or change as we do

402
00:19:43,200 --> 00:19:46,400
Speaker 2: things to them, because like Germans, yeah, we knock out

403
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Speaker 2: some factories, so they decentralize their factories and they make

404
00:19:50,520 --> 00:19:53,240
Speaker 2: them less vulnerable to bombing, so that they're assembling things

405
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Speaker 2: in pieces and each individual's target is less important to

406
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Speaker 2: the whole. Right, there's a bunch of the that with

407
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Speaker 2: like manufacture of a bunch of different material, and German

408
00:20:03,640 --> 00:20:06,520
Speaker 2: air defenses remained pretty good until late in the war.

409
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Speaker 2: Like dou Hay is just really wrong on all of

410
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Speaker 2: this stuff. Now, by nineteen forty five, over in the

411
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Speaker 2: Pacific theater, similar lessons had been learned visa VI the

412
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Speaker 2: wisdom of dou Hay's theories. Japan's bold air attack at

413
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Speaker 2: Pearl Harbor had been a tactical success, but number one

414
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Speaker 2: was not long range strategic bombing. These were planes that

415
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Speaker 2: got there on aircraft carriers as part of a naval attack.

416
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Speaker 2: It was pretty important to the overall thing, and it

417
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Speaker 2: didn't knock the US out famously as a combatant. It

418
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Speaker 2: really really just kind of pissed us off.

419
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Speaker 3: You know, yeah, were we going to join the war anyway?

420
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Speaker 3: Do you think I mean.

421
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Speaker 2: We FDR really wanted to. I's for one thing. Germany

422
00:20:46,040 --> 00:20:49,280
Speaker 2: getting involved wasn't a necessity. Hitler declared war on US

423
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Speaker 2: once Japan. We declared war in Japan, right, and he

424
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Speaker 2: didn't really need to go all out on Japan's behalf.

425
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Speaker 2: I'd say that was probably a mistake, but he was

426
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Speaker 2: pretty pretty arrogant at that point in time. Yeah, maybe

427
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Speaker 2: we would have gotten involved with Like again, FDR really

428
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Speaker 2: wanted to, so I guess that's probably the smart money,

429
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Speaker 2: as he would have figured some way out. But but

430
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Speaker 2: this is the way Harbor figure out. Yeah, we Japan

431
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Speaker 2: didn't need to do a Pearl Harbor and it didn't

432
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Speaker 2: help them right now, they did a Pearl Harbor. This

433
00:21:18,280 --> 00:21:21,320
Speaker 2: is again to get back to how the same logic

434
00:21:22,119 --> 00:21:24,719
Speaker 2: that could really fuck us in terms of a global

435
00:21:24,800 --> 00:21:27,720
Speaker 2: nuclear war that kills everybody is part of why I

436
00:21:27,720 --> 00:21:30,200
Speaker 2: think it's reasonable to fear that is the same logic

437
00:21:30,240 --> 00:21:32,760
Speaker 2: has repeatedly gotten humans in trouble in the past. The

438
00:21:32,840 --> 00:21:35,440
Speaker 2: logic behind the attack at Pearl Harbor is the US

439
00:21:35,560 --> 00:21:38,600
Speaker 2: is already fucking with us. Right by by throttling our

440
00:21:38,640 --> 00:21:41,320
Speaker 2: access to stuff like fuel, They're going We're going to

441
00:21:41,359 --> 00:21:43,919
Speaker 2: wind up fighting them anyway. It's inevitable, and so we

442
00:21:43,960 --> 00:21:46,919
Speaker 2: need to launch a first strike to stop their capacity

443
00:21:47,040 --> 00:21:50,600
Speaker 2: to hurt us, you know, Like it's the it's the

444
00:21:50,640 --> 00:21:54,160
Speaker 2: same logic, right that, well, we have fight, some sort

445
00:21:54,160 --> 00:21:56,359
Speaker 2: of conflict is inevitable, so we might as well hit

446
00:21:56,400 --> 00:21:58,120
Speaker 2: them first. It's our only chance to survive.

447
00:21:58,560 --> 00:22:00,960
Speaker 3: And I like, it's a weird comparison to this, Like

448
00:22:01,119 --> 00:22:03,480
Speaker 3: I spent a while kind of hanging out more on

449
00:22:03,520 --> 00:22:07,240
Speaker 3: the streets when I was younger, and the idea that

450
00:22:07,400 --> 00:22:09,560
Speaker 3: like the way to survive the sort of like rough

451
00:22:09,560 --> 00:22:11,720
Speaker 3: and tumble life of living under bridges or whatever is

452
00:22:11,720 --> 00:22:15,399
Speaker 3: to like strike first is entirely incorrect. That is like

453
00:22:16,000 --> 00:22:21,000
Speaker 3: absolutely how everyone would like instead, Like I think about

454
00:22:21,000 --> 00:22:22,600
Speaker 3: this time, you know, like because like you know, sometimes

455
00:22:22,640 --> 00:22:24,800
Speaker 3: when you're outside, people like randomly, drunkenly try to fight

456
00:22:24,840 --> 00:22:28,680
Speaker 3: you or something, right, and it's like literally learning I'm

457
00:22:28,720 --> 00:22:31,760
Speaker 3: not advocating passivism here, but literally learning. If someone just

458
00:22:31,880 --> 00:22:33,320
Speaker 3: is looking for a fight and they punch you and

459
00:22:33,359 --> 00:22:40,600
Speaker 3: you ignore them, that ends it, at least in my experience. Right,

460
00:22:41,400 --> 00:22:43,280
Speaker 3: But as soon as actually trying to destroy you. You have

461
00:22:43,359 --> 00:22:46,280
Speaker 3: to do something. So that's just like the whole concept. Sorry,

462
00:22:46,320 --> 00:22:48,119
Speaker 3: I'm just like thinking a lot about this. Is it

463
00:22:48,200 --> 00:22:51,680
Speaker 3: scales up next into guns and then into nukes or yeah,

464
00:22:51,680 --> 00:22:52,720
Speaker 3: you know, wars or whatever.

465
00:22:53,160 --> 00:22:54,959
Speaker 2: The part of the problem with this kind of logic

466
00:22:55,119 --> 00:22:59,760
Speaker 2: is that it's logic that's true. Sometimes we've seen it

467
00:22:59,800 --> 00:23:04,720
Speaker 2: be true sometimes right like the sometimes being from the

468
00:23:04,720 --> 00:23:06,960
Speaker 2: Cold War up to the present moment, the strategy of

469
00:23:06,960 --> 00:23:10,520
Speaker 2: deterrence has worked, right, But that doesn't mean it always

470
00:23:10,560 --> 00:23:14,560
Speaker 2: will right because nothing, No, there's no one strategy that

471
00:23:14,600 --> 00:23:17,840
Speaker 2: fits every scenario. And the problem is with nukes you

472
00:23:17,840 --> 00:23:20,720
Speaker 2: don't really have you don't have room to do the

473
00:23:20,800 --> 00:23:25,280
Speaker 2: less fucked up apocalyptic scenario that's not really an option.

474
00:23:26,880 --> 00:23:29,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, you just take part of the problem. If you

475
00:23:29,080 --> 00:23:31,359
Speaker 3: take one nuke on the nose as a country, you

476
00:23:31,400 --> 00:23:34,320
Speaker 3: can survive that. But then it's like it just what

477
00:23:34,400 --> 00:23:36,679
Speaker 3: is It just destroys the deterrence effect and so then

478
00:23:36,720 --> 00:23:38,399
Speaker 3: everyone's like, all right, well, it's like free game on

479
00:23:38,480 --> 00:23:39,439
Speaker 3: nuk in you or whatever.

480
00:23:39,800 --> 00:23:41,879
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, you know that's what the country would say.

481
00:23:41,880 --> 00:23:45,200
Speaker 2: It would be political suicide probably for whatever party didn't

482
00:23:45,240 --> 00:23:47,399
Speaker 2: respond with a nuke, you know, if you're talking from

483
00:23:47,440 --> 00:23:51,080
Speaker 2: the US standpoint, if they got nuked, but also being

484
00:23:51,200 --> 00:23:54,119
Speaker 2: willing to take a hit is the only way to

485
00:23:54,240 --> 00:23:57,040
Speaker 2: stop the doom luke that kills everybody. Yeah, and that

486
00:23:57,119 --> 00:24:00,880
Speaker 2: also that also predisposes you're just having one nuke at you, right,

487
00:24:00,960 --> 00:24:03,600
Speaker 2: which is the most like and I think one of

488
00:24:03,600 --> 00:24:06,679
Speaker 2: the things that does scary most is not and this

489
00:24:06,720 --> 00:24:10,040
Speaker 2: is something that could easily turn into the apocalyptic scenario,

490
00:24:10,400 --> 00:24:12,680
Speaker 2: but something that starts as like and this is kind

491
00:24:12,720 --> 00:24:16,680
Speaker 2: of what the book Nuclear War Jacobson thea Like talks about.

492
00:24:16,680 --> 00:24:20,480
Speaker 2: But like, essentially you get like a nuclear January sixth, right,

493
00:24:21,000 --> 00:24:24,800
Speaker 2: one nuke goes up, gets launched at or goes off

494
00:24:24,840 --> 00:24:28,200
Speaker 2: in one country because of some sort of like weird

495
00:24:28,600 --> 00:24:33,240
Speaker 2: stupid fuck up that isn't going to be repeatable necessarily,

496
00:24:33,280 --> 00:24:36,600
Speaker 2: Like it's easy to learn from. You could stop subsequent ones,

497
00:24:37,080 --> 00:24:38,960
Speaker 2: but in the immediate wake of the fuck up, this

498
00:24:39,119 --> 00:24:42,040
Speaker 2: precedent is set that number one, there's a really high

499
00:24:42,119 --> 00:24:44,919
Speaker 2: chance that it just immediately leads to everyone shooting everything

500
00:24:44,960 --> 00:24:48,320
Speaker 2: because like nobody has perfect data on what's happening. They

501
00:24:48,359 --> 00:24:50,400
Speaker 2: just know that like a nuke has gone off, and

502
00:24:50,960 --> 00:24:55,240
Speaker 2: everyone gets so like, if the country that gets nuked

503
00:24:55,520 --> 00:24:57,760
Speaker 2: is becomes convinced any point they're under attack, they have

504
00:24:57,760 --> 00:24:59,879
Speaker 2: about six minutes to choose to launch all of the

505
00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:02,000
Speaker 2: missiles or not right. Right, That's how it works for

506
00:25:02,080 --> 00:25:05,040
Speaker 2: a US president. It's no different as far as we

507
00:25:05,080 --> 00:25:10,720
Speaker 2: know really for Russia's president. Right, if that nuke goes

508
00:25:10,760 --> 00:25:14,119
Speaker 2: off anywhere, you're going to have like six minutes to

509
00:25:14,280 --> 00:25:17,520
Speaker 2: figure out do I end the world over this or not?

510
00:25:18,280 --> 00:25:18,520
Speaker 3: Right?

511
00:25:19,359 --> 00:25:21,760
Speaker 2: And that's probably bad for us.

512
00:25:22,240 --> 00:25:24,440
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's a bad system. I'm just gonna

513
00:25:24,440 --> 00:25:25,680
Speaker 3: go ahead and say.

514
00:25:25,920 --> 00:25:28,560
Speaker 2: Probably one person in any country shouldn't get to make

515
00:25:28,600 --> 00:25:30,760
Speaker 2: that call. Probably no one should have to make that

516
00:25:30,840 --> 00:25:33,520
Speaker 2: call in six minutes. But that's the reality of the

517
00:25:33,640 --> 00:25:36,080
Speaker 2: of the technical reality of the systems we built. They

518
00:25:36,119 --> 00:25:40,960
Speaker 2: don't have a lot of wiggle room, which is a problem.

519
00:25:41,080 --> 00:25:43,040
Speaker 3: I'm glad I'm not the one in charge of designing

520
00:25:43,040 --> 00:25:43,480
Speaker 3: the system.

521
00:25:43,520 --> 00:25:48,880
Speaker 2: To be clear, No, Sophie is, and that's why it act.

522
00:25:48,880 --> 00:25:49,399
Speaker 3: She works for me.

523
00:25:49,480 --> 00:25:52,240
Speaker 2: Behind the Bastards has the most powerful nuclear deterrent of

524
00:25:52,280 --> 00:25:53,560
Speaker 2: any podcast in the game.

525
00:25:53,800 --> 00:25:55,840
Speaker 1: You know, damn straight motherfuckers.

526
00:25:55,960 --> 00:25:58,920
Speaker 2: If the if the Pods save guys launch an ICBM,

527
00:25:59,160 --> 00:26:01,040
Speaker 2: we can have a level one hundred missiles in the

528
00:26:01,080 --> 00:26:02,399
Speaker 2: air in under six minutes.

529
00:26:03,000 --> 00:26:05,800
Speaker 3: This is why there's that new cool Zone media podcast,

530
00:26:06,160 --> 00:26:08,119
Speaker 3: The Bastards Behind Behind the Bastards.

531
00:26:08,600 --> 00:26:12,200
Speaker 2: Wow, how did Robert assemble the most powerful nuclear arsenal

532
00:26:12,280 --> 00:26:13,280
Speaker 2: in the podcasting game?

533
00:26:13,640 --> 00:26:15,960
Speaker 3: And Sophie The answer, Sophie, we all have.

534
00:26:16,040 --> 00:26:18,800
Speaker 2: The answer is Sophie bribed a guy at Fort Leonard Wood. Yeah,

535
00:26:19,320 --> 00:26:29,840
Speaker 2: and it was surprisingly easy. Anyway, here's ads. We're back

536
00:26:30,520 --> 00:26:34,000
Speaker 2: and we're talking about where we are in nineteen forty five. Right,

537
00:26:34,840 --> 00:26:39,520
Speaker 2: We've been fighting the Japanese military for several years now.

538
00:26:39,960 --> 00:26:44,160
Speaker 2: There's been this like really brutal island hopping campaign, several

539
00:26:44,200 --> 00:26:47,280
Speaker 2: massive naval engagements, and it's led to a situation my

540
00:26:47,320 --> 00:26:49,639
Speaker 2: g oh yeah, which part of it?

541
00:26:50,080 --> 00:26:52,679
Speaker 3: He was a submariner in the oh sassific.

542
00:26:52,800 --> 00:26:53,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, that sounds like it sucked.

543
00:26:54,200 --> 00:26:56,520
Speaker 3: Oh yeah. He's a torpedoman. And literally the fact that

544
00:26:56,560 --> 00:26:59,919
Speaker 3: I exist is an accident of he stepped on a

545
00:27:00,240 --> 00:27:03,240
Speaker 3: college application while repairing torpedoes on an island, and he

546
00:27:03,320 --> 00:27:05,439
Speaker 3: filled it out and he sent it out and then

547
00:27:05,440 --> 00:27:06,840
Speaker 3: they were like, yeah, all right, we're gonna send you

548
00:27:06,880 --> 00:27:09,920
Speaker 3: to co be an engineer. And then his submarine didn't

549
00:27:09,920 --> 00:27:14,160
Speaker 3: come back after he left, so he who it fell

550
00:27:14,200 --> 00:27:16,280
Speaker 3: to the bottom of the sea. It's never been recovered.

551
00:27:16,359 --> 00:27:17,760
Speaker 3: No one ever knows what happened to it.

552
00:27:18,160 --> 00:27:21,159
Speaker 2: And probably fine then I'm sure they're probably around a

553
00:27:21,160 --> 00:27:21,879
Speaker 2: farm up state.

554
00:27:22,160 --> 00:27:27,400
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, all of his old buddies. Yeah. Anyway, yeah,

555
00:27:27,640 --> 00:27:28,680
Speaker 3: South Pacific.

556
00:27:28,560 --> 00:27:33,000
Speaker 2: South Pacific. So by nineteen forty five, you know, we've

557
00:27:33,080 --> 00:27:35,720
Speaker 2: gone through a version of the same lessons that all

558
00:27:35,760 --> 00:27:38,679
Speaker 2: of these guys learn in Europe, which is that a

559
00:27:38,680 --> 00:27:41,560
Speaker 2: lot of what Douhey had said it doesn't really work out, right,

560
00:27:42,480 --> 00:27:45,040
Speaker 2: we can't just bomb our way out of this. Naval

561
00:27:45,080 --> 00:27:47,600
Speaker 2: power is important, and in fact, the aviation that's most

562
00:27:47,600 --> 00:27:50,520
Speaker 2: influential in the early stage of the Pacific campaign or

563
00:27:50,520 --> 00:27:53,800
Speaker 2: not long range bombers, it's navy tactical aircraft, right, because

564
00:27:53,800 --> 00:27:56,080
Speaker 2: that's a lot of these naval engagements come down to

565
00:27:56,600 --> 00:28:00,639
Speaker 2: our carrier group finds their carrier group, and we fucking

566
00:28:00,760 --> 00:28:03,240
Speaker 2: killed the shit out of them with planes. But they're

567
00:28:03,240 --> 00:28:06,399
Speaker 2: not doing like long range strategic bombing. You know, this

568
00:28:06,560 --> 00:28:11,600
Speaker 2: is like really close combat in aeronautical terms, and it's

569
00:28:11,680 --> 00:28:14,800
Speaker 2: pretty fucked up, and there's still a lot of work

570
00:28:14,840 --> 00:28:17,120
Speaker 2: for infantry, right, No, matter how much, because we are

571
00:28:17,200 --> 00:28:20,760
Speaker 2: bombing these islands like Okinawa, and we're shelling them before

572
00:28:20,800 --> 00:28:23,080
Speaker 2: we send in ground troops. But no amount of bombing

573
00:28:23,119 --> 00:28:26,160
Speaker 2: and shelling is sufficient to clear all of the infantry out.

574
00:28:26,240 --> 00:28:29,080
Speaker 2: Soldiers are able to you know, they've got these bunker

575
00:28:29,160 --> 00:28:31,720
Speaker 2: networks that the Japanese Army has built. These are sufficient

576
00:28:31,840 --> 00:28:34,200
Speaker 2: enough that like we're not able to bomb them out

577
00:28:34,280 --> 00:28:38,520
Speaker 2: right the future and past of war, right, tunnels always

578
00:28:38,600 --> 00:28:43,160
Speaker 2: work really well. And this is again it's more refutation

579
00:28:43,240 --> 00:28:45,000
Speaker 2: of this. All we need are bombers, Like, no, you

580
00:28:45,120 --> 00:28:47,880
Speaker 2: keep needing to send an infantry with fucking knives to

581
00:28:47,920 --> 00:28:50,880
Speaker 2: clear guys out right, we haven't made the fucking knife

582
00:28:50,960 --> 00:28:54,720
Speaker 2: obsolete by nineteen forty five, like we're not doing everything

583
00:28:54,760 --> 00:29:00,000
Speaker 2: with bombers. Duhey and his advocates had been irrationally optimistic.

584
00:29:01,240 --> 00:29:04,600
Speaker 2: So that said, by like early nineteen forty five, we've

585
00:29:04,920 --> 00:29:08,680
Speaker 2: isolated the Japanese home islands. And Colonel Rassioni and his

586
00:29:08,800 --> 00:29:12,240
Speaker 2: piece summarizes the success of strategic bombing prior to nineteen

587
00:29:12,280 --> 00:29:15,960
Speaker 2: forty five of Japan's heartland. Quote General Hansel commanding and

588
00:29:16,000 --> 00:29:18,720
Speaker 2: directing bombing attacks on Japan and still unaware despite his

589
00:29:18,800 --> 00:29:22,320
Speaker 2: extensive European experience that precision bombing was a myth, attempted

590
00:29:22,320 --> 00:29:25,640
Speaker 2: to use it to destroy Japan's military industrial capacity. After

591
00:29:25,720 --> 00:29:29,080
Speaker 2: three months of intensive precision operations, his B twenty nine

592
00:29:29,120 --> 00:29:32,480
Speaker 2: bomber force had destroyed none of the designated high priority targets,

593
00:29:32,640 --> 00:29:36,400
Speaker 2: a failure that brought about his dismissal. Right, three months

594
00:29:36,440 --> 00:29:40,440
Speaker 2: of precision bombing, the Air Force is not able to

595
00:29:40,480 --> 00:29:43,040
Speaker 2: destroy any of their high value industrial targets. Right, it

596
00:29:43,160 --> 00:29:46,080
Speaker 2: just doesn't work. So they bring in Curtis LeMay. And again,

597
00:29:46,160 --> 00:29:48,960
Speaker 2: LeMay is neither of these guys. Both these guys are.

598
00:29:49,040 --> 00:29:53,040
Speaker 2: Both Hansel and LeMay are advocates of strategic bombing. Hansel

599
00:29:53,120 --> 00:29:55,760
Speaker 2: is just saying it has to be tactical, it has

600
00:29:55,800 --> 00:29:58,280
Speaker 2: to be like, you know, precision bombing. Sorry, and LeMay

601
00:29:58,360 --> 00:30:00,440
Speaker 2: is saying, nah, you just got to fuck up everything, right,

602
00:30:00,880 --> 00:30:04,000
Speaker 2: And his job is basically esque direct this air war

603
00:30:04,080 --> 00:30:06,800
Speaker 2: to break the back of the Japanese without US needing

604
00:30:06,840 --> 00:30:09,320
Speaker 2: to actually send in ground troops to invade the Home Islands,

605
00:30:09,560 --> 00:30:12,040
Speaker 2: and he embarks on the most terrible bombing campaign of

606
00:30:12,040 --> 00:30:15,400
Speaker 2: World War Two. As Rassioni describes, it was General Curtis

607
00:30:15,480 --> 00:30:18,120
Speaker 2: LeMay who put duhayes theories to the ultimate test, all

608
00:30:18,160 --> 00:30:21,360
Speaker 2: of Japan's major cities except for Hiroshima and Nagasaki were

609
00:30:21,360 --> 00:30:25,600
Speaker 2: burned out with conventional weapons. LeMay starts his job commanding

610
00:30:25,600 --> 00:30:28,080
Speaker 2: the air war against Japan. He is the youngest general

611
00:30:28,120 --> 00:30:30,200
Speaker 2: in US history. He gets the rank at age thirty

612
00:30:30,240 --> 00:30:33,400
Speaker 2: six after his work in Europe. The fire bombing of

613
00:30:33,440 --> 00:30:36,840
Speaker 2: Tokyo is his idea, like that is his plan entirely,

614
00:30:37,240 --> 00:30:39,840
Speaker 2: and when he takes the job he tells his deputies

615
00:30:40,120 --> 00:30:43,280
Speaker 2: Japan will burn if I can get fire on it.

616
00:30:44,040 --> 00:30:47,080
Speaker 2: And the book Commander Control Schlosser writes LeMay was involved

617
00:30:47,080 --> 00:30:49,240
Speaker 2: in almost every aspect of the plan, from selecting the

618
00:30:49,240 --> 00:30:52,560
Speaker 2: mix of bombs magnesium for high temperatures, napalm for splatter,

619
00:30:52,800 --> 00:30:55,360
Speaker 2: to choosing a bomb pattern that could start a firestorm.

620
00:30:55,800 --> 00:30:59,080
Speaker 2: He is very nuts and bolts as a commander, he

621
00:30:59,160 --> 00:31:02,840
Speaker 2: is the personal architect. This is his great work is

622
00:31:02,880 --> 00:31:05,640
Speaker 2: the fire bombing of Tokyo, and he plans it to

623
00:31:05,840 --> 00:31:10,960
Speaker 2: like the most intimate degree. Perission's article, LeMay studied the

624
00:31:10,960 --> 00:31:14,080
Speaker 2: mission reports and reconnaissance photographs, realized that the Japanese had

625
00:31:14,080 --> 00:31:16,280
Speaker 2: almost no air defense left, and sent three hundred and

626
00:31:16,360 --> 00:31:19,760
Speaker 2: twenty five pilots loaded with jellied gasoline fire bomb clusters

627
00:31:19,880 --> 00:31:22,320
Speaker 2: over Tokyo in the early hours of March tenth, nineteen

628
00:31:22,400 --> 00:31:25,200
Speaker 2: forty five. You're going to deliver the biggest firecracker the

629
00:31:25,280 --> 00:31:27,840
Speaker 2: Japanese have ever seen, he told his crews. As he

630
00:31:27,880 --> 00:31:31,400
Speaker 2: waited impatiently for the bombers to return, he confided to McElway,

631
00:31:31,400 --> 00:31:34,160
Speaker 2: who's like his adjutant, Basically, in a war, you've got

632
00:31:34,160 --> 00:31:36,000
Speaker 2: to keep at least one punch ahead of the other

633
00:31:36,040 --> 00:31:38,200
Speaker 2: guy all the time. A war is a tough kind

634
00:31:38,200 --> 00:31:40,720
Speaker 2: of proposition. If you don't get the enemy, he gets you.

635
00:31:41,080 --> 00:31:43,320
Speaker 2: I think we've figured out a punch he's not expecting

636
00:31:43,360 --> 00:31:46,800
Speaker 2: this time, and the mission was a success. The US

637
00:31:46,840 --> 00:31:50,360
Speaker 2: Strategic Bombing Survey estimated that quote probably more persons lost

638
00:31:50,400 --> 00:31:52,880
Speaker 2: their lives by fire at Tokyo in a six hour

639
00:31:52,960 --> 00:31:55,360
Speaker 2: period than at any time in the history of man.

640
00:31:56,000 --> 00:31:58,920
Speaker 2: More than ninety thousand civilians are killed and roughly a

641
00:31:58,960 --> 00:32:01,680
Speaker 2: million are made homeless in a one night of bombing.

642
00:32:02,360 --> 00:32:06,520
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, wait a second woo.

643
00:32:07,920 --> 00:32:11,000
Speaker 2: Uh LeMay continues to order more fire bombings after this,

644
00:32:11,160 --> 00:32:13,720
Speaker 2: consuming hundreds of thousands of men, will, women and children

645
00:32:13,760 --> 00:32:16,560
Speaker 2: with flames and the fact that we need to keep

646
00:32:16,600 --> 00:32:20,000
Speaker 2: doing this maybe is a sign that, like some of

647
00:32:20,040 --> 00:32:24,440
Speaker 2: your attitudes about bombing aren't as accurate as you'd want.

648
00:32:24,560 --> 00:32:27,520
Speaker 2: Certainly do Hay has been proven wrong by a pretty

649
00:32:27,560 --> 00:32:30,880
Speaker 2: grand factor. But like German will didn't break until Hitler

650
00:32:30,880 --> 00:32:33,840
Speaker 2: shot himself, and the Japanese are still We just incinerated

651
00:32:33,880 --> 00:32:37,080
Speaker 2: their entire capital from the sky. We killed more human

652
00:32:37,120 --> 00:32:39,240
Speaker 2: beings in an hour than have ever been killed in

653
00:32:39,360 --> 00:32:42,840
Speaker 2: history in a similar period of time, probably, and they're

654
00:32:43,000 --> 00:32:48,080
Speaker 2: they're still swinging. Uh. Maybe maybe we've got some assumptions

655
00:32:48,080 --> 00:32:51,000
Speaker 2: here that aren't entirely correct. Now, that is not how

656
00:32:51,040 --> 00:32:53,480
Speaker 2: anyone thinks. One of the men planning these raids with

657
00:32:53,560 --> 00:32:56,719
Speaker 2: LeMay was a close subordinate of his General Thomas Sarsfield.

658
00:32:56,800 --> 00:32:59,440
Speaker 2: Power is literally general power. Yes, he has a g

659
00:32:59,600 --> 00:33:03,200
Speaker 2: I Joe name, and General power is going to help

660
00:33:03,280 --> 00:33:06,200
Speaker 2: to build the nuclear doomsday machine we all sleep alongside today,

661
00:33:06,320 --> 00:33:08,520
Speaker 2: right like he is one of the architects of this,

662
00:33:08,640 --> 00:33:10,960
Speaker 2: alongside Lea May. And the fact that he has a

663
00:33:11,040 --> 00:33:13,320
Speaker 2: name the name of a G I jo character belies

664
00:33:13,360 --> 00:33:15,960
Speaker 2: the fact that his backstory is pretty tame. His parents

665
00:33:15,960 --> 00:33:19,560
Speaker 2: are Irish immigrants from branches of wealthier families started by

666
00:33:19,560 --> 00:33:21,640
Speaker 2: second or third sons who left the home country to

667
00:33:21,640 --> 00:33:24,360
Speaker 2: find their fortune because how inheritance worked at the time.

668
00:33:24,800 --> 00:33:27,640
Speaker 2: Thomas Power grew up working class in New York City.

669
00:33:27,840 --> 00:33:29,720
Speaker 2: As a young adult, he entered the US Army Air

670
00:33:29,760 --> 00:33:32,000
Speaker 2: Corps in nineteen twenty eight when it was still a baby.

671
00:33:32,280 --> 00:33:35,400
Speaker 2: Since this was a comparatively dull time for the US military,

672
00:33:35,600 --> 00:33:39,360
Speaker 2: his career was pretty dull until World War Two. Power

673
00:33:39,480 --> 00:33:41,720
Speaker 2: was a gifted officer and hard working, and so once

674
00:33:41,720 --> 00:33:44,440
Speaker 2: the military starts expanding massively to meet the demands of

675
00:33:44,480 --> 00:33:48,080
Speaker 2: the war, officers like him are promoted rapidly. Power sees

676
00:33:48,120 --> 00:33:50,720
Speaker 2: combat for the first time, flying B twenty four missions

677
00:33:50,720 --> 00:33:53,440
Speaker 2: over Italy. He starts the war a major, and he

678
00:33:53,520 --> 00:33:56,560
Speaker 2: ends it a brigadier general and Deputy Chief of Operations

679
00:33:56,560 --> 00:33:59,840
Speaker 2: for all US Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific. Now.

680
00:34:00,520 --> 00:34:03,680
Speaker 2: Power is not briefed immediately about the existence of nuclear weapons.

681
00:34:03,760 --> 00:34:06,480
Speaker 2: LeMay is one of the first generals who learns about

682
00:34:06,600 --> 00:34:08,919
Speaker 2: the Manhattan Project who learns that we have a nuke.

683
00:34:10,040 --> 00:34:12,920
Speaker 2: Now he's not allowed to command the raid in person.

684
00:34:13,000 --> 00:34:14,880
Speaker 2: He wants to. He tries to, but he's at this

685
00:34:14,920 --> 00:34:17,799
Speaker 2: point too high ranking to be given that job, so

686
00:34:17,880 --> 00:34:22,719
Speaker 2: the nuke one. Yeah, I mean he's not allowed to

687
00:34:22,760 --> 00:34:25,000
Speaker 2: command raids in person in general, right, Power, I think

688
00:34:25,120 --> 00:34:27,520
Speaker 2: is his guy doing a lot of that, And Power

689
00:34:27,760 --> 00:34:29,400
Speaker 2: is the guy, Yeah, Power is the guy who is

690
00:34:29,400 --> 00:34:33,600
Speaker 2: commanding the raid on Tokyo in person. Yeah. So I

691
00:34:33,640 --> 00:34:35,680
Speaker 2: do think it's kind of worth noting in terms of

692
00:34:35,719 --> 00:34:39,520
Speaker 2: how these guys are both thinking. They're still patterning their options.

693
00:34:39,520 --> 00:34:42,000
Speaker 2: They've moved away from like the shit Eker was doing,

694
00:34:42,000 --> 00:34:44,680
Speaker 2: but they're patterning their operations largely off of how bomber

695
00:34:44,680 --> 00:34:48,680
Speaker 2: Harris had planned operations right in Tokyo as in Cologne.

696
00:34:48,680 --> 00:34:51,680
Speaker 2: The military insisted its primary objective was the destruction of

697
00:34:51,680 --> 00:34:54,840
Speaker 2: industrial buildings, but the Air Force planners working for LeMay

698
00:34:54,880 --> 00:34:57,799
Speaker 2: in Power picked targets based not on industrial density, but

699
00:34:57,960 --> 00:35:00,640
Speaker 2: how well they thought given neighborhoods would burn. The B

700
00:35:00,719 --> 00:35:02,560
Speaker 2: twenty nine crews were informed that the purpose of the

701
00:35:02,600 --> 00:35:05,160
Speaker 2: attack was to destroy small factories, but LeMay in Power

702
00:35:05,200 --> 00:35:07,719
Speaker 2: both knew that was not the real target. And these

703
00:35:07,760 --> 00:35:09,640
Speaker 2: guys have their way with the Army Air Corps in

704
00:35:09,680 --> 00:35:14,040
Speaker 2: Japan for months, but final victory still proves elusive. We

705
00:35:14,120 --> 00:35:17,760
Speaker 2: dropped more than sixteen hundred tons of explosives, on Tokyo

706
00:35:17,760 --> 00:35:20,560
Speaker 2: on March tenth, and again, remember duhe had theorized three

707
00:35:20,600 --> 00:35:22,720
Speaker 2: hundred was enough to wipe out any city on the earth,

708
00:35:23,239 --> 00:35:27,480
Speaker 2: but the Empire refused to surrender. LeMay's entire philosophy of

709
00:35:27,600 --> 00:35:30,360
Speaker 2: war was that victory could be achieved through the application

710
00:35:30,400 --> 00:35:32,799
Speaker 2: of long range bombing, and the application of long range

711
00:35:32,800 --> 00:35:37,400
Speaker 2: bombing alone. His only response when confronted with inconvenient facts

712
00:35:37,440 --> 00:35:40,680
Speaker 2: like this isn't working was to escalate. In the book

713
00:35:40,719 --> 00:35:44,719
Speaker 2: Fifteen Minutes, L. Douglas Keeney describes the generals escalating Mania,

714
00:35:45,160 --> 00:35:51,440
Speaker 2: LeMay bombed with an increasing sense of urgency. He bombed Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Kobe, Kawasaki,

715
00:35:51,480 --> 00:35:54,480
Speaker 2: and Yokohama. He attacked when and where he was ordered to,

716
00:35:54,840 --> 00:35:56,840
Speaker 2: but when he was finished, he pulled names out of

717
00:35:56,880 --> 00:35:59,879
Speaker 2: almanacs or off maps and bombed some more. In his view,

718
00:35:59,880 --> 00:36:02,480
Speaker 2: the only reason runways had been built on Tinian and

719
00:36:02,520 --> 00:36:04,440
Speaker 2: the only reason that B twenty nine were fueled up

720
00:36:04,440 --> 00:36:06,799
Speaker 2: and loaded with bombs. The only reason he was in

721
00:36:06,840 --> 00:36:10,160
Speaker 2: the Marianas was to bomb Japan. Five hundred bombers against

722
00:36:10,160 --> 00:36:12,920
Speaker 2: one city, eight hundred against another nine hundred bombers. Today

723
00:36:12,920 --> 00:36:15,600
Speaker 2: one thousand bombers tomorrow. The only point was to end

724
00:36:15,640 --> 00:36:18,680
Speaker 2: the war, one factory, one city at a time. So

725
00:36:18,800 --> 00:36:20,879
Speaker 2: intense were his operations that by the end of May,

726
00:36:21,080 --> 00:36:24,000
Speaker 2: LeMay eventually exceeded the supply of bombs the United States

727
00:36:24,080 --> 00:36:26,160
Speaker 2: Navy could deliver to him and was forced to take

728
00:36:26,200 --> 00:36:29,040
Speaker 2: a break. I feel that the destruction of Japan's ability

729
00:36:29,080 --> 00:36:31,760
Speaker 2: to wage war lies within the capacity of this command,

730
00:36:31,920 --> 00:36:35,560
Speaker 2: LeMay road of the bomber forces he commanded, I.

731
00:36:35,480 --> 00:36:38,960
Speaker 3: Mean, just a when you have a hammer, everything needs

732
00:36:39,000 --> 00:36:39,840
Speaker 3: to get exploded.

733
00:36:40,200 --> 00:36:43,279
Speaker 2: Yeah, and when you have a thousand bombers, you can't

734
00:36:43,320 --> 00:36:46,280
Speaker 2: really have any ideas that aren't dropping bombs on people,

735
00:36:46,600 --> 00:36:48,680
Speaker 2: you know. That's what else matters.

736
00:36:49,000 --> 00:36:52,120
Speaker 3: The only other I'm not trying to defend this, but

737
00:36:52,320 --> 00:36:56,120
Speaker 3: the only other, like primary option would be like getting

738
00:36:56,160 --> 00:36:58,960
Speaker 3: a beachhead and then like trying to take this.

739
00:37:00,200 --> 00:37:02,480
Speaker 2: I mean, and we'll talk more about that, right, Like,

740
00:37:02,719 --> 00:37:05,759
Speaker 2: this is not there's not any clear good options here.

741
00:37:05,760 --> 00:37:09,560
Speaker 2: It's a war, there rarely are. But it's important to

742
00:37:09,600 --> 00:37:13,760
Speaker 2: note that like through conventional methods, his plan doesn't seem

743
00:37:13,760 --> 00:37:16,600
Speaker 2: to be working. Allied war planners find themselves preparing for

744
00:37:16,640 --> 00:37:19,200
Speaker 2: an invasion. Right, we're still preparing this in ground troops

745
00:37:19,239 --> 00:37:22,839
Speaker 2: into Japan. Now, this is where you get a lot

746
00:37:22,880 --> 00:37:27,280
Speaker 2: of debate, right, And his book, Keeney describes the plans

747
00:37:27,320 --> 00:37:29,640
Speaker 2: for an invasion of Japan by the Allies as unnecessary,

748
00:37:29,680 --> 00:37:32,040
Speaker 2: and I think he expresses what I'd call significant faith

749
00:37:32,080 --> 00:37:34,560
Speaker 2: that Japan was on the brink of collapse. This is

750
00:37:34,640 --> 00:37:37,160
Speaker 2: not a conclusion shared by everyone, but I think there's

751
00:37:37,160 --> 00:37:40,480
Speaker 2: a strong argument here. One of the issues that's already developing,

752
00:37:40,520 --> 00:37:42,840
Speaker 2: as you can see though, is that a lot of guys,

753
00:37:43,800 --> 00:37:46,160
Speaker 2: even at this point, had already forgotten what had made

754
00:37:46,160 --> 00:37:50,000
Speaker 2: bombing Japan possible, Right that, Like, we're kind of narrowing

755
00:37:50,040 --> 00:37:53,520
Speaker 2: it down to, like, okay, and we bombed, Like both

756
00:37:53,560 --> 00:37:55,799
Speaker 2: sides of the nuke issue. One side is like, we

757
00:37:55,800 --> 00:37:58,480
Speaker 2: didn't need de nuke Japan because we had already destroyed

758
00:37:58,520 --> 00:38:00,600
Speaker 2: so much of them through bombing the island that they

759
00:38:00,600 --> 00:38:03,080
Speaker 2: were going to surrender anyway. And the other side is

760
00:38:03,320 --> 00:38:06,160
Speaker 2: Japan never would have surrendered unless nuked, and so we

761
00:38:06,239 --> 00:38:09,239
Speaker 2: had to nuke them to avoid an even costlier invasion. Right,

762
00:38:09,239 --> 00:38:12,239
Speaker 2: That's the basic argument. And both of these, if you're

763
00:38:12,280 --> 00:38:15,319
Speaker 2: thinking in the grand strategic sense, ignore the fact that

764
00:38:15,360 --> 00:38:17,239
Speaker 2: we only got to the point where we could bomb

765
00:38:17,320 --> 00:38:20,960
Speaker 2: the Home Islands the way we were after defeating Japan

766
00:38:21,040 --> 00:38:23,520
Speaker 2: in a series of more conventional engagements. Right, just in

767
00:38:23,600 --> 00:38:26,399
Speaker 2: terms of the whole strategic bombing is all we need

768
00:38:26,440 --> 00:38:28,120
Speaker 2: thing was never correct, right.

769
00:38:28,040 --> 00:38:29,799
Speaker 3: Right, because they had to defeat them on the sea

770
00:38:29,920 --> 00:38:31,120
Speaker 3: and on all the islands.

771
00:38:31,320 --> 00:38:34,400
Speaker 2: By the point the Home Islands were isolated, it was

772
00:38:34,520 --> 00:38:37,640
Speaker 2: cave possible to defeat Japan just through bombing, right, But

773
00:38:38,000 --> 00:38:42,600
Speaker 2: there was a lot prior to that, right, Yeah. And

774
00:38:42,680 --> 00:38:45,480
Speaker 2: so when LeMay learns that we have an atom bomb

775
00:38:45,520 --> 00:38:47,680
Speaker 2: and here's how powerful this thing is, I think it

776
00:38:47,800 --> 00:38:50,680
Speaker 2: kind of strikes him as salvation to his theory of warfare,

777
00:38:51,080 --> 00:38:54,480
Speaker 2: right yea, And yeah, it's kind of this is kind

778
00:38:54,520 --> 00:38:56,799
Speaker 2: of the prehistory of the modern argument that nukes are

779
00:38:56,840 --> 00:38:58,920
Speaker 2: the only way to end Japan's willingness to fight, right,

780
00:38:58,960 --> 00:39:02,120
Speaker 2: and so bombs save lives. Part of why that gets

781
00:39:02,120 --> 00:39:05,919
Speaker 2: started is it's really convenient for guys like Curtis Leamy, Right,

782
00:39:06,360 --> 00:39:09,319
Speaker 2: It really helps a lot with the bets that they've

783
00:39:09,320 --> 00:39:12,400
Speaker 2: been making in their careers. If this is the only

784
00:39:12,520 --> 00:39:14,799
Speaker 2: way to end the war. You know, that's not the

785
00:39:14,800 --> 00:39:16,920
Speaker 2: only thing going on here, But they find it it's

786
00:39:17,040 --> 00:39:19,920
Speaker 2: very helpful. It's not a non factor here. How helpful

787
00:39:19,920 --> 00:39:21,920
Speaker 2: this is to a lot of people's beliefs about how

788
00:39:21,960 --> 00:39:24,560
Speaker 2: war already works that have kind of been proven wrong.

789
00:39:24,719 --> 00:39:27,439
Speaker 2: Is that nukes kind of retroactively make them right.

790
00:39:28,560 --> 00:39:31,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean there's just such a different order of magnitude.

791
00:39:31,200 --> 00:39:33,359
Speaker 3: It's just yeah, go in from a club to an

792
00:39:33,560 --> 00:39:34,120
Speaker 3: AR fifteen.

793
00:39:34,640 --> 00:39:38,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's And it's like, look if someone's like, all, like,

794
00:39:38,880 --> 00:39:42,000
Speaker 2: the only way to stop kids from like fucking with

795
00:39:42,080 --> 00:39:44,319
Speaker 2: the plants in my yard is to hit him with

796
00:39:44,360 --> 00:39:47,239
Speaker 2: a stick, and he hits kids with a stick, and

797
00:39:47,239 --> 00:39:49,279
Speaker 2: they keep fucking with his yard, so he like, well

798
00:39:49,480 --> 00:39:52,960
Speaker 2: I have to shoot them, and that stopped it, Like yeah, totally.

799
00:39:53,120 --> 00:39:57,120
Speaker 2: I don't know, man, were there other things you weren't considering.

800
00:39:58,120 --> 00:40:00,440
Speaker 3: Could they have laid it just to go back and

801
00:40:00,520 --> 00:40:02,880
Speaker 3: pretend like I'm in charge World War two? Could they

802
00:40:02,920 --> 00:40:05,040
Speaker 3: just lay siege to Japan and like be like that

803
00:40:05,200 --> 00:40:06,440
Speaker 3: we already beat you everywhere?

804
00:40:06,520 --> 00:40:09,960
Speaker 2: Or just they were Yeah, I mean that that's what happened. Right,

805
00:40:10,000 --> 00:40:12,800
Speaker 2: We cut off Japan. Ninety percent of their merchant shipping

806
00:40:13,000 --> 00:40:17,800
Speaker 2: had ended, right, Like, we had cut them off pretty conclusively.

807
00:40:19,360 --> 00:40:21,360
Speaker 2: And that's one side of this argument is that we

808
00:40:21,400 --> 00:40:24,160
Speaker 2: never needed to nuke them. There were other reasons, largely

809
00:40:24,200 --> 00:40:26,080
Speaker 2: we wanted to scare the shit out of the USSR.

810
00:40:26,320 --> 00:40:29,840
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, that's that's always what I assumed is basically, like,

811
00:40:29,880 --> 00:40:31,520
Speaker 3: we have a new toy, we need to prove that

812
00:40:31,560 --> 00:40:33,600
Speaker 3: we're like man enough to use.

813
00:40:33,520 --> 00:40:36,080
Speaker 2: It, right, And and part of why that gets so

814
00:40:36,160 --> 00:40:39,680
Speaker 2: much support among military leaders is that getting access to

815
00:40:39,719 --> 00:40:44,080
Speaker 2: these weapons allows them to continue fighting wars the way

816
00:40:44,080 --> 00:40:46,120
Speaker 2: they've been arguing is the only way we need to

817
00:40:46,120 --> 00:40:48,600
Speaker 2: fight a war, right, Like, oh, all that does matter

818
00:40:48,680 --> 00:40:52,719
Speaker 2: is bombers. Now, Now, I don't really think it's productive

819
00:40:52,760 --> 00:40:55,600
Speaker 2: to like try to make an argument about whose view

820
00:40:55,640 --> 00:40:58,719
Speaker 2: of the use of nuclear weapons was correct, you know,

821
00:40:59,160 --> 00:41:02,080
Speaker 2: because there's no there's not a perfect answer to that,

822
00:41:02,160 --> 00:41:03,440
Speaker 2: and a lot of it comes down to what you

823
00:41:03,520 --> 00:41:07,520
Speaker 2: believe about ethics. And like I would argue, even if

824
00:41:07,600 --> 00:41:10,640
Speaker 2: it would cost the lives of a million soldiers, that's

825
00:41:10,840 --> 00:41:15,239
Speaker 2: better than mass killing civilians for the human race, Like,

826
00:41:15,280 --> 00:41:17,960
Speaker 2: it's just bad. It opens us out, Like right now,

827
00:41:18,000 --> 00:41:20,320
Speaker 2: we're all fifteen minutes away from the end of humanity,

828
00:41:20,360 --> 00:41:22,960
Speaker 2: in part because decisions like this kept being made, and

829
00:41:23,000 --> 00:41:25,920
Speaker 2: each one leads to a bigger decision that kills more people,

830
00:41:26,360 --> 00:41:29,120
Speaker 2: and we probably shouldn't have started going down that road, right,

831
00:41:29,160 --> 00:41:32,680
Speaker 2: That would be like my answer, But LeMay felt very differently.

832
00:41:33,520 --> 00:41:37,879
Speaker 2: He himself laid out his theory of warfare pretty succinctly.

833
00:41:38,040 --> 00:41:40,399
Speaker 2: And this is a direct quote from the man. I'll

834
00:41:40,400 --> 00:41:42,680
Speaker 2: tell you what war is about. You've got to kill people,

835
00:41:42,680 --> 00:41:46,960
Speaker 2: and when you've killed enough, they stop fighting. And this

836
00:41:47,120 --> 00:41:49,760
Speaker 2: is like how the animating theory that the US brings

837
00:41:49,760 --> 00:41:53,080
Speaker 2: into basically every war. You know, we dress it up differently.

838
00:41:53,480 --> 00:41:55,839
Speaker 2: Very few of our general staff will say straight up,

839
00:41:55,880 --> 00:41:58,520
Speaker 2: that's what I believe. But this is what we thought

840
00:41:58,520 --> 00:42:01,480
Speaker 2: in Afghanistan and didn't work. This is what we thought

841
00:42:01,560 --> 00:42:04,640
Speaker 2: in Vietnam. This is what like, well, you just got

842
00:42:04,680 --> 00:42:07,399
Speaker 2: to kill enough of the bad guys. Eventually they run

843
00:42:07,440 --> 00:42:11,240
Speaker 2: out of bad guys. And that's just not how things work. Really.

844
00:42:11,280 --> 00:42:14,520
Speaker 3: It's the like that meme that's like, it's the everyone

845
00:42:14,640 --> 00:42:17,200
Speaker 3: is twelve theory.

846
00:42:16,280 --> 00:42:18,680
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, but yes, yes, yeah.

847
00:42:18,840 --> 00:42:20,680
Speaker 3: But the thing is, though, that's frustrating because it's like,

848
00:42:21,600 --> 00:42:23,960
Speaker 3: you know, people are always like, oh, you can't kill an ideology,

849
00:42:23,960 --> 00:42:26,200
Speaker 3: and you're like, you know, what if you kill enough

850
00:42:26,239 --> 00:42:28,839
Speaker 3: people who have an ideology, and the ideology goes away

851
00:42:28,880 --> 00:42:32,040
Speaker 3: for a very long time. Yeah, like you actually kind

852
00:42:32,120 --> 00:42:36,640
Speaker 3: of can You can't. Humans are squishy and soft and

853
00:42:36,719 --> 00:42:42,239
Speaker 3: easily killed. Defense is always harder than offense. I don't know.

854
00:42:42,400 --> 00:42:44,640
Speaker 3: I well, I'm not the friend of this.

855
00:42:44,960 --> 00:42:47,759
Speaker 2: Sometimes sometimes you do have to kill people, and there

856
00:42:47,800 --> 00:42:50,480
Speaker 2: are problems that you can kill your way out of,

857
00:42:50,719 --> 00:42:54,640
Speaker 2: right that we have as a species. Yeah, it's just

858
00:42:54,719 --> 00:42:59,200
Speaker 2: not all you need to do. Ever, now, it doesn't

859
00:42:59,239 --> 00:43:01,320
Speaker 2: work a lot of the most of the kill people

860
00:43:01,360 --> 00:43:04,440
Speaker 2: to solve problems. Advocates are saying things like, well, if

861
00:43:04,440 --> 00:43:08,200
Speaker 2: we bomb these people who are doing suicide bombings because

862
00:43:08,200 --> 00:43:12,040
Speaker 2: they're angry about their living conditions enough, they'll stop bombing us,

863
00:43:12,320 --> 00:43:16,520
Speaker 2: And like, well, but no, you only thinks that really

864
00:43:16,520 --> 00:43:20,120
Speaker 2: how it works in the long run. Yeah, Or this

865
00:43:20,239 --> 00:43:23,520
Speaker 2: insurgency that is being supported by the local populace, if

866
00:43:23,560 --> 00:43:26,160
Speaker 2: we make life miserable enough for the populace, they'll stop

867
00:43:26,200 --> 00:43:30,200
Speaker 2: supporting the insurgents. Gotta be a no dog. Unfortunately, history

868
00:43:30,280 --> 00:43:32,680
Speaker 2: is repeatedly shown it doesn't work as the way you

869
00:43:32,680 --> 00:43:34,680
Speaker 2: think it does, right, those.

870
00:43:34,520 --> 00:43:36,360
Speaker 3: Are the whole Like modern theory of warfare is that

871
00:43:36,400 --> 00:43:39,759
Speaker 3: basically people support whoever feeds them and like you, actually.

872
00:43:41,239 --> 00:43:45,399
Speaker 2: It helps sometimes Again, there's no one size fits all

873
00:43:45,520 --> 00:43:49,759
Speaker 2: theory of like this is. But when you're thinking of

874
00:43:49,800 --> 00:43:51,839
Speaker 2: one size right, when you limit it to the all

875
00:43:51,880 --> 00:43:54,920
Speaker 2: we need to do is bomb them. You're not going

876
00:43:54,920 --> 00:43:57,600
Speaker 2: to win the war unless you're using the bomb that

877
00:43:57,680 --> 00:44:00,360
Speaker 2: kills all of the people everywhere. And that where this

878
00:44:00,440 --> 00:44:02,080
Speaker 2: leads is them all being like, well, the only way

879
00:44:02,120 --> 00:44:05,440
Speaker 2: to effectively plan for war is to destroy the whole species.

880
00:44:05,640 --> 00:44:07,719
Speaker 2: And then we don't.

881
00:44:07,480 --> 00:44:11,160
Speaker 3: Have a war, yeah until we have the like planetary

882
00:44:11,200 --> 00:44:14,480
Speaker 3: destructo button like that, Yeah, explodes the inside of the planet.

883
00:44:14,480 --> 00:44:18,520
Speaker 3: We've hit the top. There's no more kill everyone button.

884
00:44:18,600 --> 00:44:20,080
Speaker 3: We found to kill everyone button.

885
00:44:20,120 --> 00:44:22,520
Speaker 2: I feel like Margaret, the way we should govern is

886
00:44:22,560 --> 00:44:25,200
Speaker 2: we should have a kill everyone buttons, and everyone has

887
00:44:25,200 --> 00:44:27,879
Speaker 2: a no, no, no, and everyone has.

888
00:44:27,800 --> 00:44:30,600
Speaker 3: A plot of Alfred Bester's Tiger Tiger.

889
00:44:31,280 --> 00:44:32,319
Speaker 2: I don't know. I haven't read that.

890
00:44:32,880 --> 00:44:35,320
Speaker 3: Oh, there's this old science fiction book. It might be

891
00:44:35,360 --> 00:44:38,520
Speaker 3: called Tiger Tiger. I might be getting wrong. The spoiler

892
00:44:38,560 --> 00:44:40,000
Speaker 3: at the end of this, just to say what I

893
00:44:40,000 --> 00:44:43,240
Speaker 3: think you were about to say, is that he basically

894
00:44:43,280 --> 00:44:45,239
Speaker 3: gives everyone in the world the plants of how to

895
00:44:45,280 --> 00:44:48,720
Speaker 3: make nukes, and then we get world peace because everyone

896
00:44:48,760 --> 00:44:52,560
Speaker 3: has mutually a shorted destruction on an individual level. Oh see, No,

897
00:44:52,800 --> 00:44:54,600
Speaker 3: it's entirely incorrect.

898
00:44:54,520 --> 00:44:56,319
Speaker 2: That that was a I mean, yeah, I don't think

899
00:44:56,360 --> 00:44:58,359
Speaker 2: that would really work very well. It's a fun idea

900
00:44:58,360 --> 00:45:00,440
Speaker 2: for her story. No, my theory is you give everyone

901
00:45:00,480 --> 00:45:02,960
Speaker 2: a chip that lets them all vote whenever, like a

902
00:45:03,040 --> 00:45:05,040
Speaker 2: vote is called about, like whether or not they want

903
00:45:05,080 --> 00:45:07,120
Speaker 2: to destroy the world or not. And if fifty one

904
00:45:07,200 --> 00:45:09,640
Speaker 2: percent of humanity votes to destroy the world, then a

905
00:45:09,680 --> 00:45:12,319
Speaker 2: device goes off and it kills everybody, Right, so you

906
00:45:12,360 --> 00:45:15,080
Speaker 2: have to keep life pleasant enough for at least fifty

907
00:45:15,120 --> 00:45:17,319
Speaker 2: one I feel like it's better than the system we.

908
00:45:17,360 --> 00:45:20,319
Speaker 3: Have, all right, what if that is actually always a

909
00:45:20,360 --> 00:45:22,560
Speaker 3: ballot option on every elect.

910
00:45:22,360 --> 00:45:24,120
Speaker 2: Every kill everyone, yes or no.

911
00:45:24,400 --> 00:45:27,000
Speaker 3: So it's like, well, we give a Democrat, Republican or

912
00:45:27,080 --> 00:45:28,279
Speaker 3: kill every kill everybody.

913
00:45:28,800 --> 00:45:30,680
Speaker 2: I didn't kill everybody might have won last year.

914
00:45:30,760 --> 00:45:32,560
Speaker 3: Yeah wait, I've changed my mind about this.

915
00:45:34,360 --> 00:45:46,840
Speaker 2: Anyways, So yeah, let's go to ads. We're back. Real

916
00:45:46,880 --> 00:45:50,160
Speaker 2: warfare had proven that strategic bombing and precision bombing were

917
00:45:50,160 --> 00:45:52,839
Speaker 2: both more difficult and less effective in practice than their

918
00:45:52,840 --> 00:45:56,160
Speaker 2: advocates hoped, and nukes were an answer to these prayers.

919
00:45:56,160 --> 00:45:58,319
Speaker 2: They were a weapon system that seemed to justify all

920
00:45:58,360 --> 00:46:00,920
Speaker 2: of their du Haey inspired theories of how aerial warfare

921
00:46:01,000 --> 00:46:03,239
Speaker 2: ought to work. As soon as we use a nuke

922
00:46:03,239 --> 00:46:05,840
Speaker 2: for the first time, there's this immediate, loud and growing

923
00:46:05,920 --> 00:46:08,239
Speaker 2: chorus of voices within the Army Air Corps that like,

924
00:46:08,640 --> 00:46:10,920
Speaker 2: maybe this is the only weapon we ever need in

925
00:46:10,960 --> 00:46:13,319
Speaker 2: the future. And I want to read another quote from

926
00:46:13,320 --> 00:46:16,120
Speaker 2: the book fifteen minutes. The fact that Japan, while still

927
00:46:16,160 --> 00:46:19,160
Speaker 2: in possession of a formidable and intact land army, surrendered

928
00:46:19,239 --> 00:46:22,799
Speaker 2: without having her homeland invaded by enemy landforces represents a

929
00:46:22,880 --> 00:46:26,520
Speaker 2: unique and significant event in military history. LeMay would later say.

930
00:46:26,840 --> 00:46:29,960
Speaker 2: General James H. Jimmy Doolittle agreed the Navy had the

931
00:46:30,000 --> 00:46:32,600
Speaker 2: transport to make the invasion of Japan possible, the ground

932
00:46:32,640 --> 00:46:34,640
Speaker 2: forces had the power to make it successful. The B

933
00:46:34,760 --> 00:46:38,319
Speaker 2: twenty nine made it unnecessary, said General hap Arnold. The

934
00:46:38,400 --> 00:46:41,640
Speaker 2: influence of atomic energy on airpower can be stated very simply.

935
00:46:41,800 --> 00:46:45,040
Speaker 2: It has made airpower all important. Right, So this is

936
00:46:45,080 --> 00:46:47,080
Speaker 2: immediately a lot of the most influential guys in the

937
00:46:47,120 --> 00:46:49,160
Speaker 2: Air Corps are saying, this is kind of all it

938
00:46:49,200 --> 00:46:52,960
Speaker 2: matters in war going forward right, Like, yeah, we finally

939
00:46:53,040 --> 00:46:55,640
Speaker 2: figured it out. We were wrong last time, but like

940
00:46:56,280 --> 00:46:58,520
Speaker 2: we weren't ready yet, but now we're ready to make

941
00:46:58,600 --> 00:47:00,759
Speaker 2: bombers be the only thing that you need. Yeah, if

942
00:47:00,760 --> 00:47:03,560
Speaker 2: you're wrong long enough, here become right right. Yes, that

943
00:47:04,120 --> 00:47:06,360
Speaker 2: is how things work sometimes. And it may seem that

944
00:47:06,400 --> 00:47:08,920
Speaker 2: I am not going into detail about the Manhattan Project

945
00:47:09,000 --> 00:47:11,120
Speaker 2: and the guys who like developed and built the first

946
00:47:11,200 --> 00:47:14,759
Speaker 2: nuclear bomb, because you'd think, if we're talking about the

947
00:47:14,800 --> 00:47:17,319
Speaker 2: global nuclear doomsday device, the guys who made the first

948
00:47:17,400 --> 00:47:20,560
Speaker 2: nuke are somewhat culpable for that, right, and they are.

949
00:47:21,320 --> 00:47:23,719
Speaker 2: I don't think their role is worth me covering here

950
00:47:23,800 --> 00:47:25,840
Speaker 2: for a couple of reasons. For one, there's been a

951
00:47:25,880 --> 00:47:28,640
Speaker 2: pretty big budget movie recently about those guys, so I

952
00:47:28,640 --> 00:47:31,160
Speaker 2: think there's a pretty high background level of understanding about

953
00:47:31,200 --> 00:47:35,280
Speaker 2: like the Manhattan Project right now. And more to the point,

954
00:47:35,360 --> 00:47:37,440
Speaker 2: I don't place most of the moral blame on a

955
00:47:37,480 --> 00:47:41,480
Speaker 2: potential global nuclear war on the Manhattan Project guys. I

956
00:47:41,560 --> 00:47:43,560
Speaker 2: think you have to put yourself in the shoes of

957
00:47:43,640 --> 00:47:46,399
Speaker 2: guys like Sillard, who we started the series talking about, right,

958
00:47:46,440 --> 00:47:49,040
Speaker 2: these people who are watching the worst war ever happen,

959
00:47:49,320 --> 00:47:52,560
Speaker 2: and all of tens of millions die and they're being told, Hey,

960
00:47:52,560 --> 00:47:54,279
Speaker 2: if we build a bomb big enough, maybe we can

961
00:47:54,320 --> 00:47:57,480
Speaker 2: stop this war. Right, Given the knowledge a lot of

962
00:47:57,520 --> 00:47:59,040
Speaker 2: these guys would have had at the time, and these

963
00:47:59,040 --> 00:48:02,480
Speaker 2: guys are not all high level state actors with access

964
00:48:02,520 --> 00:48:07,040
Speaker 2: to complete information about the strategic scenario, right, given the

965
00:48:07,160 --> 00:48:08,920
Speaker 2: level of knowledge they would have had to understand, I

966
00:48:08,920 --> 00:48:12,560
Speaker 2: think participation in the Manhattan Project is understandable, right, Yeah, yeah,

967
00:48:12,640 --> 00:48:15,640
Speaker 2: at that stage. And to make that point, let's talk

968
00:48:15,640 --> 00:48:18,800
Speaker 2: about a guy called named Lewis Slotkin. I'm gonna have

969
00:48:18,840 --> 00:48:21,040
Speaker 2: to go back and get his name right. I corrected myself.

970
00:48:21,040 --> 00:48:22,640
Speaker 2: I spelled it wrong at the start. I had a

971
00:48:22,680 --> 00:48:25,960
Speaker 2: K in there. I fucked up. I'm sorry, I'll correct

972
00:48:26,000 --> 00:48:29,240
Speaker 2: it later. Lewis was Canadian by birth, but his parents

973
00:48:29,239 --> 00:48:33,200
Speaker 2: were Yiddish speaking Jewish refugees from Russia's Mini Pagrams. So

974
00:48:33,280 --> 00:48:35,359
Speaker 2: he grows up in Canada and he does well enough

975
00:48:35,400 --> 00:48:38,360
Speaker 2: as an undergrad that he's accepted to a PhD program

976
00:48:38,440 --> 00:48:41,560
Speaker 2: at King's College in London. He excels there as well.

977
00:48:41,640 --> 00:48:43,920
Speaker 2: The nature of his work is beyond me, but he

978
00:48:43,960 --> 00:48:46,960
Speaker 2: won prizes for his continuous contributions to physics. Right, I

979
00:48:46,960 --> 00:48:49,400
Speaker 2: don't understand what he was smart about, but it was physics,

980
00:48:49,440 --> 00:48:51,560
Speaker 2: and he was good at it. Here In's a reputation,

981
00:48:51,800 --> 00:48:54,000
Speaker 2: a rare one for an engineering nerd, as being an

982
00:48:54,000 --> 00:48:57,400
Speaker 2: adrenaline junkie. In the book Brighter Than a Thousand Suns,

983
00:48:57,520 --> 00:49:00,400
Speaker 2: Robert Yunk says that Slotkin's colleagues at the time described

984
00:49:00,440 --> 00:49:03,560
Speaker 2: in regularly going off quote in search of fighting, excitement,

985
00:49:03,600 --> 00:49:06,560
Speaker 2: and adventure. He had volunteered for service in the Spanish

986
00:49:06,600 --> 00:49:08,600
Speaker 2: Civil War more for the sake of the thrill of

987
00:49:08,640 --> 00:49:12,200
Speaker 2: it than on political grounds. Jeez, he's that kind of dude, right,

988
00:49:12,200 --> 00:49:14,719
Speaker 2: He's a little bit of an adrenaline junkie. He gets

989
00:49:14,800 --> 00:49:18,080
Speaker 2: hired by the University of Chicago in nineteen forty two.

990
00:49:18,120 --> 00:49:20,520
Speaker 2: He is invited to the Manhattan Project and he works

991
00:49:20,560 --> 00:49:24,600
Speaker 2: directly with uranium and plutonium. Slotkin's particular expertise is in

992
00:49:24,640 --> 00:49:28,560
Speaker 2: assembling the cores of atomic devices. This is very dangerous,

993
00:49:28,640 --> 00:49:31,000
Speaker 2: high stakes work, and he seems to thrive on the

994
00:49:31,040 --> 00:49:33,160
Speaker 2: thrill of it. I found one account of him by

995
00:49:33,160 --> 00:49:36,360
Speaker 2: Martin Zelig, quoting a colleague who worked closely with Slotkin.

996
00:49:36,760 --> 00:49:39,000
Speaker 2: It was Friday afternoon and Lewis wanted to shut down

997
00:49:39,040 --> 00:49:41,360
Speaker 2: the reactor to make adjustments to an experiment at the

998
00:49:41,360 --> 00:49:43,200
Speaker 2: bottom of the tank of water, which was used to

999
00:49:43,239 --> 00:49:46,200
Speaker 2: absorb radiation. We said that was impossible, and we planned

1000
00:49:46,239 --> 00:49:48,600
Speaker 2: to shut down the reactor that weekend. When we came

1001
00:49:48,640 --> 00:49:50,960
Speaker 2: back on Monday morning, I found that Lewis had stripped

1002
00:49:51,000 --> 00:49:52,960
Speaker 2: down to his shorts, dived into the tank and made

1003
00:49:52,960 --> 00:49:56,000
Speaker 2: the adjustments underwater. I was appalled that anyone would take

1004
00:49:56,040 --> 00:49:58,440
Speaker 2: such risks. It shows what kind of a person he was.

1005
00:49:58,560 --> 00:50:01,239
Speaker 2: He was like a cowboy, but a good experimental scientist.

1006
00:50:01,840 --> 00:50:05,120
Speaker 2: So you've got like your cowboy nuclear engineer here, right.

1007
00:50:05,080 --> 00:50:06,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, who fought in the space of a war.

1008
00:50:06,840 --> 00:50:09,240
Speaker 2: Well he wanted to. Yeah, Oh, I thought he doesn't

1009
00:50:09,320 --> 00:50:10,680
Speaker 2: quite make it. Yeah, I don't think he makes it.

1010
00:50:10,719 --> 00:50:15,960
Speaker 2: Over and Lewis is he's he's literally the guy who

1011
00:50:16,000 --> 00:50:19,200
Speaker 2: builds the core of Trinity, our first nuke. He's like

1012
00:50:19,239 --> 00:50:22,560
Speaker 2: with his hands. He's made Chief Armor of the United

1013
00:50:22,600 --> 00:50:25,560
Speaker 2: States as an honor for this after the bomb goes off,

1014
00:50:25,840 --> 00:50:29,000
Speaker 2: like that's his job title. But the honors failed to

1015
00:50:29,000 --> 00:50:31,000
Speaker 2: make up for the downsides of his job, like the

1016
00:50:31,000 --> 00:50:33,280
Speaker 2: fact that in August of nineteen forty five, he watched

1017
00:50:33,280 --> 00:50:37,360
Speaker 2: his good friend Harry Dalling Daglin dagh La I n

1018
00:50:37,640 --> 00:50:41,640
Speaker 2: die horrific death. After there's this there's this thing you

1019
00:50:41,680 --> 00:50:44,240
Speaker 2: have to do sometimes where you're like switching out the

1020
00:50:44,239 --> 00:50:47,360
Speaker 2: core of a bomb. And I think this is basically

1021
00:50:47,400 --> 00:50:50,080
Speaker 2: at the time, how you have it like armed or

1022
00:50:50,120 --> 00:50:53,279
Speaker 2: disarmed pretty much, but you've got this this thing known

1023
00:50:53,280 --> 00:50:55,960
Speaker 2: as the demon core, which is this like plutonium gallium

1024
00:50:56,000 --> 00:51:00,800
Speaker 2: alloy bomb core. And these are insanely dangerous. The process

1025
00:51:00,840 --> 00:51:04,319
Speaker 2: of like moving them is called tickling the dragon's tail

1026
00:51:04,440 --> 00:51:07,799
Speaker 2: for a reason because it's it's this insanely like if

1027
00:51:07,800 --> 00:51:10,600
Speaker 2: this thing falls or breaks in any way, you're dying

1028
00:51:10,640 --> 00:51:13,839
Speaker 2: a horrific death. Like this is one of those rare

1029
00:51:13,880 --> 00:51:16,279
Speaker 2: things about nukes that's as dangerous as like the movie

1030
00:51:16,400 --> 00:51:19,359
Speaker 2: version would be. Like if anyone drops this thing, it's

1031
00:51:19,360 --> 00:51:22,759
Speaker 2: a fucking like hell is unleashed in the room and

1032
00:51:23,160 --> 00:51:27,360
Speaker 2: his so Slotkin's friend Harry dies this way, this nightmarish

1033
00:51:27,400 --> 00:51:30,359
Speaker 2: death from radiation exposure, just a few weeks after Hiroshima,

1034
00:51:30,719 --> 00:51:33,319
Speaker 2: and at this point in time, we don't know much

1035
00:51:33,520 --> 00:51:37,439
Speaker 2: about radiation sickness as it involves nuclear weapons, right, We've

1036
00:51:37,440 --> 00:51:43,279
Speaker 2: had very little experience medically with this. Dalaane's agonizing death

1037
00:51:43,360 --> 00:51:46,600
Speaker 2: provides Los Alamos researchers with some of their first hard

1038
00:51:46,680 --> 00:51:50,680
Speaker 2: data on acute radiation poisoning. Slotkin was shaken by the incident,

1039
00:51:50,719 --> 00:51:54,040
Speaker 2: and as the months after the bombing flew by, he

1040
00:51:54,080 --> 00:51:57,040
Speaker 2: grew disillusioned with the US military as an institution. You know,

1041
00:51:57,320 --> 00:52:00,120
Speaker 2: the sheer carnage of the first atom bombs may have

1042
00:52:00,200 --> 00:52:03,359
Speaker 2: influenced this. He helps build these with his bear he's

1043
00:52:03,480 --> 00:52:06,400
Speaker 2: not bear, but with his hands. And the bombings in

1044
00:52:06,440 --> 00:52:09,080
Speaker 2: Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed between one hundred and fifty thousand

1045
00:52:09,120 --> 00:52:12,320
Speaker 2: and two hundred and fifty thousand people as a general estimate, right.

1046
00:52:13,239 --> 00:52:15,760
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're trying to stop the Nazis, and then you're like, whoops,

1047
00:52:15,920 --> 00:52:19,440
Speaker 3: I oh god, Yeah, build the bomb that killed one

1048
00:52:19,520 --> 00:52:20,839
Speaker 3: hundred two hundred thousand people.

1049
00:52:21,200 --> 00:52:24,320
Speaker 2: Fifty two hundred and fifty thousand people. Yeah, Like, that's

1050
00:52:24,360 --> 00:52:26,319
Speaker 2: that's got to wear on your soul, even if you

1051
00:52:26,320 --> 00:52:28,759
Speaker 2: think it was necessary, right yeah, And it does look

1052
00:52:28,800 --> 00:52:31,000
Speaker 2: that way to a lot of these guys. Japan surrenders

1053
00:52:31,080 --> 00:52:34,200
Speaker 2: unconditionally less than a week after the bombing of Nagasaki, right,

1054
00:52:34,200 --> 00:52:37,440
Speaker 2: and that probably balms some of their souls to an extent.

1055
00:52:37,960 --> 00:52:40,920
Speaker 2: But after victory in Japan. It becomes harder and harder

1056
00:52:40,920 --> 00:52:43,200
Speaker 2: for slot Can to justify what he's doing because the

1057
00:52:43,280 --> 00:52:46,319
Speaker 2: US is now a nation at peace and they're continuing

1058
00:52:46,360 --> 00:52:49,200
Speaker 2: to build nuclear weapons, and he is forced to grapple

1059
00:52:49,239 --> 00:52:51,759
Speaker 2: with a new reality, which is that the US does

1060
00:52:51,800 --> 00:52:54,400
Speaker 2: not have an enemy, and we are building a massive

1061
00:52:54,480 --> 00:52:59,360
Speaker 2: nuclear stockpile, right, and military leaders, it's generals who have

1062
00:52:59,480 --> 00:53:03,680
Speaker 2: direct troll over those weapons. You know, they theoretically have

1063
00:53:03,719 --> 00:53:07,000
Speaker 2: to follow the president's orders, but there's nothing stopping them

1064
00:53:07,000 --> 00:53:13,440
Speaker 2: physically from utilizing those nukes, right, yeah, Yeah, And he

1065
00:53:13,480 --> 00:53:16,759
Speaker 2: also is aware, being reasonably well read, because these guys

1066
00:53:16,760 --> 00:53:18,480
Speaker 2: are just talking about this, that a lot of these

1067
00:53:18,480 --> 00:53:21,719
Speaker 2: military leaders believe overwhelmingly that the use of nukes is

1068
00:53:21,760 --> 00:53:24,200
Speaker 2: to break the will of an enemy population through mass

1069
00:53:24,239 --> 00:53:30,080
Speaker 2: destruction of the civilian populace. Right like that, we're using them. Yes,

1070
00:53:30,920 --> 00:53:33,000
Speaker 2: it's not hard to imagine why he may have felt

1071
00:53:33,000 --> 00:53:35,759
Speaker 2: compelled to change his career. He committed to that course

1072
00:53:35,800 --> 00:53:38,360
Speaker 2: of action in nineteen forty six, and we'll discuss what

1073
00:53:38,440 --> 00:53:39,560
Speaker 2: happened to him in a little bit.

1074
00:53:39,760 --> 00:53:40,680
Speaker 3: Become a podcaster.

1075
00:53:41,040 --> 00:53:44,600
Speaker 2: He became a podcaster the very first Yes, the only

1076
00:53:44,640 --> 00:53:47,200
Speaker 2: thing worse, Yes, yeah, the only thing worse than a

1077
00:53:47,239 --> 00:53:52,720
Speaker 2: nuclear weapons engineer. He now works on Pod Save America. Yeah. Really,

1078
00:53:52,760 --> 00:53:55,560
Speaker 2: the only place to go, the only downward trend you can.

1079
00:53:55,400 --> 00:53:58,440
Speaker 1: Take, the only podcast name you can remember today.

1080
00:53:59,000 --> 00:54:00,879
Speaker 2: I don't know a lot of pod Sophie. I don't

1081
00:54:00,880 --> 00:54:03,920
Speaker 2: know a lot of podcasts. What else is there? Last

1082
00:54:03,920 --> 00:54:05,279
Speaker 2: podcast on the left.

1083
00:54:05,120 --> 00:54:07,760
Speaker 1: Cool People Did Cool Stuff by Margaret Kiljoy.

1084
00:54:08,480 --> 00:54:12,000
Speaker 2: Well those are all. I'm not going to say that

1085
00:54:12,080 --> 00:54:15,920
Speaker 2: a nuclear engineer joined one of our podcasts, Sophie. That

1086
00:54:16,000 --> 00:54:17,839
Speaker 2: man has so much blood on his hands. We don't

1087
00:54:17,840 --> 00:54:20,280
Speaker 2: need that kind of heat fair enough.

1088
00:54:20,480 --> 00:54:22,239
Speaker 1: I'm not going to start a war here.

1089
00:54:22,920 --> 00:54:24,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well you don't have to start a war if

1090
00:54:24,440 --> 00:54:27,480
Speaker 2: you have enough nukes. That's why we can feel confident

1091
00:54:27,480 --> 00:54:29,800
Speaker 2: that the Chopo guys are never going to nucas first

1092
00:54:30,160 --> 00:54:33,560
Speaker 2: is because we always keep a fleet of cool Zone

1093
00:54:33,600 --> 00:54:37,080
Speaker 2: Media nuclear subs off the coast of wherever those guys live.

1094
00:54:37,280 --> 00:54:39,879
Speaker 3: Sophie is just trying to wash her hands of work

1095
00:54:39,920 --> 00:54:41,160
Speaker 3: that she did all the work for.

1096
00:54:41,520 --> 00:54:43,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, getting all those nukes in our hands.

1097
00:54:43,640 --> 00:54:45,680
Speaker 3: Sure, so tired everyone.

1098
00:54:46,840 --> 00:54:49,040
Speaker 2: Anyway, I'm just making the point that I'm not really

1099
00:54:49,040 --> 00:54:51,600
Speaker 2: going to detail on all the Manhattan Project guys because

1100
00:54:51,600 --> 00:54:54,320
Speaker 2: I don't think that they're deserve nearly as much blame

1101
00:54:54,320 --> 00:54:57,960
Speaker 2: as the guys who consciously built the global nuclear doomsday device.

1102
00:54:58,080 --> 00:55:00,400
Speaker 2: Right now, there were there is overla. There are some

1103
00:55:00,440 --> 00:55:02,160
Speaker 2: people who were on both teams, and one of the

1104
00:55:02,160 --> 00:55:04,640
Speaker 2: guys who was on both teams was General Leslie Groves.

1105
00:55:04,840 --> 00:55:07,960
Speaker 2: He is the military minder for the Manhattan Project scientists.

1106
00:55:08,000 --> 00:55:10,960
Speaker 2: He is their producer, for lack of a better word, Sophie,

1107
00:55:11,160 --> 00:55:13,480
Speaker 2: you know, one of the great producers in all of history,

1108
00:55:13,640 --> 00:55:14,440
Speaker 2: Leslie Groves.

1109
00:55:14,520 --> 00:55:16,360
Speaker 3: There's a play about it called The Producers.

1110
00:55:16,920 --> 00:55:19,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is that is largely about him and his

1111
00:55:19,560 --> 00:55:21,280
Speaker 2: time in Manhattan.

1112
00:55:21,280 --> 00:55:22,640
Speaker 3: W'd you got to say it like that?

1113
00:55:22,719 --> 00:55:24,160
Speaker 1: Why'd you go to put my name in there?

1114
00:55:24,239 --> 00:55:27,560
Speaker 2: It's kind of accurate, Sophie. In nineteen forty two, a

1115
00:55:27,560 --> 00:55:30,400
Speaker 2: lot of people call Leslie Groves the safety electormen of

1116
00:55:30,440 --> 00:55:35,200
Speaker 2: the Manhattan Project, Robert, you know Robert. In nineteen forty two,

1117
00:55:35,360 --> 00:55:38,440
Speaker 2: General Groves gives a lecture to a group of civilian scientists.

1118
00:55:38,480 --> 00:55:40,880
Speaker 2: This is when we're kind of trying to get people

1119
00:55:40,920 --> 00:55:44,080
Speaker 2: on board the Manhattan Project. He gives a lecture and

1120
00:55:44,120 --> 00:55:46,399
Speaker 2: he's basically trying to He's talking about why we should

1121
00:55:46,400 --> 00:55:48,560
Speaker 2: build a nuke. And part of the lectures he has

1122
00:55:48,600 --> 00:55:51,440
Speaker 2: to convince these scientists, why if we get a nuke,

1123
00:55:51,560 --> 00:55:54,720
Speaker 2: other countries won't immediately start trying to develop nukes, leading

1124
00:55:54,760 --> 00:55:57,880
Speaker 2: to like a nuclear arms race. And he says, no, no, no,

1125
00:55:58,120 --> 00:56:00,520
Speaker 2: once we've got a nuke, everyone will be too scared

1126
00:56:00,520 --> 00:56:02,400
Speaker 2: to try to get a nuke. And he described his

1127
00:56:02,480 --> 00:56:05,560
Speaker 2: reasoning as fear of counter employment. Right, this is why.

1128
00:56:05,760 --> 00:56:08,080
Speaker 2: And this will evolve into they won't use a nuke

1129
00:56:08,160 --> 00:56:09,960
Speaker 2: if we've got enough nukes because they know that we'll

1130
00:56:10,040 --> 00:56:12,000
Speaker 2: use them in return. Right, But it starts with no

1131
00:56:12,040 --> 00:56:14,920
Speaker 2: one will even try to get one, you know, because

1132
00:56:14,920 --> 00:56:18,480
Speaker 2: they'll be so scared of our nuke. You just move

1133
00:56:18,560 --> 00:56:21,520
Speaker 2: the logic when it proves ineffective. That's how logic works.

1134
00:56:21,960 --> 00:56:25,400
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, Promises like this have been key to

1135
00:56:25,480 --> 00:56:28,360
Speaker 2: weapons development since the creation of the machine gun and dynamite.

1136
00:56:28,680 --> 00:56:31,759
Speaker 2: And after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the logic shifted. We now

1137
00:56:31,800 --> 00:56:34,880
Speaker 2: had to assume our adversaries would develop a nuclear arsenal,

1138
00:56:35,080 --> 00:56:37,360
Speaker 2: so we'd have to expand ours until it was sufficient

1139
00:56:37,400 --> 00:56:39,719
Speaker 2: to destroy the enemy. Right before we have a nuke,

1140
00:56:39,719 --> 00:56:41,239
Speaker 2: We're like, no one will even try to get these

1141
00:56:41,280 --> 00:56:42,880
Speaker 2: after we have them, and then as soon as we

1142
00:56:42,880 --> 00:56:45,239
Speaker 2: set one off, So obviously everyone's gonna have one of these.

1143
00:56:45,960 --> 00:56:50,480
Speaker 2: You gotta get enough of them to stop them. General

1144
00:56:50,480 --> 00:56:53,200
Speaker 2: Omar Bradley summed up the general thinking among the brass

1145
00:56:53,239 --> 00:56:55,800
Speaker 2: after World War Two. And this is Bradley talking in

1146
00:56:55,880 --> 00:56:58,800
Speaker 2: nineteen forty five. Our greatest strength lies in the threat

1147
00:56:58,800 --> 00:57:01,759
Speaker 2: of quick retaliation the event we are attacked, and the

1148
00:57:01,800 --> 00:57:05,640
Speaker 2: only retaliation Bradley believed would be atomic quote. The a

1149
00:57:05,760 --> 00:57:08,520
Speaker 2: bomb is the most powerfully destructive device known today. As

1150
00:57:08,560 --> 00:57:11,160
Speaker 2: a believer in humanity, I deplore its use, and as

1151
00:57:11,160 --> 00:57:13,840
Speaker 2: a soldier I respect it, and as an American citizen,

1152
00:57:13,920 --> 00:57:15,879
Speaker 2: I believe we should be prepared to use its full

1153
00:57:15,920 --> 00:57:19,280
Speaker 2: psychological and military effect towards preventing war, and if we

1154
00:57:19,320 --> 00:57:23,720
Speaker 2: are attacked, towards winning it right and a pillar of

1155
00:57:23,760 --> 00:57:26,320
Speaker 2: Bradley's and this is how all these guys talk to

1156
00:57:26,360 --> 00:57:28,400
Speaker 2: this day in a lot of ways, which is like, look,

1157
00:57:28,800 --> 00:57:31,640
Speaker 2: the only job of a you know, a president should

1158
00:57:31,680 --> 00:57:36,000
Speaker 2: not have any any actual role in how we operate

1159
00:57:36,040 --> 00:57:38,240
Speaker 2: as a military. His job is to decide when we're

1160
00:57:38,240 --> 00:57:40,240
Speaker 2: at war. The civilians decide when we go to war,

1161
00:57:40,480 --> 00:57:42,400
Speaker 2: and then we should be the ones who decide how

1162
00:57:42,400 --> 00:57:45,760
Speaker 2: to win it, right, Like, that's a very common school

1163
00:57:45,800 --> 00:57:49,640
Speaker 2: of thought among military people, especially in this period of time.

1164
00:57:50,080 --> 00:57:53,120
Speaker 2: And you get part of the danger is that, like, well,

1165
00:57:53,160 --> 00:57:56,360
Speaker 2: then when war is on the table, the guy whose

1166
00:57:56,440 --> 00:57:59,040
Speaker 2: job is to advise the president on war has only

1167
00:57:59,120 --> 00:58:02,920
Speaker 2: been thinking of nuki everybody, right, like, and maybe that's bad.

1168
00:58:04,680 --> 00:58:07,200
Speaker 3: Well, what's funny is that? Okay, so in this, you know,

1169
00:58:07,360 --> 00:58:10,720
Speaker 3: as an American citizen, that's why I care about nukes, right,

1170
00:58:11,200 --> 00:58:14,120
Speaker 3: And it it gets back to what Wells. I think

1171
00:58:14,160 --> 00:58:17,240
Speaker 3: I have an inverse conclusion as Wells. But you look

1172
00:58:17,280 --> 00:58:19,560
Speaker 3: at this and you're like, well, the end of national

1173
00:58:19,560 --> 00:58:22,439
Speaker 3: borders seems like the only way out of this mess.

1174
00:58:23,040 --> 00:58:23,160
Speaker 2: Uh.

1175
00:58:24,040 --> 00:58:26,200
Speaker 3: Maybe I'm wrong about this, but it's just interesting that

1176
00:58:26,240 --> 00:58:28,800
Speaker 3: Wells used it as like therefore we're gonna have world government,

1177
00:58:29,400 --> 00:58:32,400
Speaker 3: you know, and since he's like that type of socialist,

1178
00:58:32,480 --> 00:58:35,960
Speaker 3: that's like, yeah, his hope for it. But it's just like,

1179
00:58:36,960 --> 00:58:40,240
Speaker 3: I don't know, maybe maybe I'm being too utopian of like, well,

1180
00:58:40,240 --> 00:58:42,520
Speaker 3: it's the national borders, it's the idea that like there's

1181
00:58:42,520 --> 00:58:44,800
Speaker 3: this US versus them anyway. Whatever.

1182
00:58:44,880 --> 00:58:48,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, just no, no, no, I yeah, I get it.

1183
00:58:48,520 --> 00:58:55,000
Speaker 2: I agree. Yeah. So a pillar of Bradley's logic here

1184
00:58:55,240 --> 00:58:58,160
Speaker 2: is the understanding, which for him is reflexive that the

1185
00:58:58,320 --> 00:59:01,440
Speaker 2: US would not attack for right. And you do have

1186
00:59:01,480 --> 00:59:03,920
Speaker 2: to understand that a lot of these because even the

1187
00:59:03,960 --> 00:59:07,600
Speaker 2: only country that ever has right. Yes, I'm not trying

1188
00:59:07,600 --> 00:59:09,560
Speaker 2: to argue for this from a logical standard. Yeah, but

1189
00:59:09,600 --> 00:59:12,200
Speaker 2: his understanding for why we need to be ready to

1190
00:59:12,320 --> 00:59:15,919
Speaker 2: kill everything everywhere if we get nuked is that we

1191
00:59:15,960 --> 00:59:19,000
Speaker 2: will be nuked first. Right, He's only everything in terms

1192
00:59:19,040 --> 00:59:21,440
Speaker 2: of defense, and this is not where the logic is now,

1193
00:59:21,480 --> 00:59:24,680
Speaker 2: So this is important. Initially, the argument by guys like

1194
00:59:24,680 --> 00:59:27,800
Speaker 2: Bradley is that if we are nuked, hundreds of thousands

1195
00:59:27,840 --> 00:59:31,040
Speaker 2: of Americans or millions will be dead. Right, we might

1196
00:59:31,160 --> 00:59:34,760
Speaker 2: nearly all be dead, and so the only response we

1197
00:59:34,800 --> 00:59:37,919
Speaker 2: can prepare for is an overwhelming nuclear one that will

1198
00:59:37,920 --> 00:59:41,840
Speaker 2: wipe out the enemy in a similar level. Right, That's

1199
00:59:41,960 --> 00:59:45,400
Speaker 2: not where things are today. No one waits. No one's

1200
00:59:45,440 --> 00:59:49,640
Speaker 2: policy among the two primary nuclear powers. Neither policy is

1201
00:59:49,680 --> 00:59:52,480
Speaker 2: wait until we have a bloody nose to calculate our

1202
00:59:52,520 --> 00:59:54,920
Speaker 2: strike back. Right. That is important, you understand, But it's

1203
00:59:54,960 --> 00:59:57,000
Speaker 2: important to understand. That's where a guy like Bradley is

1204
00:59:57,040 --> 01:00:01,560
Speaker 2: starting from, and what became our current nuclear strategy diverged

1205
01:00:01,560 --> 01:00:05,320
Speaker 2: from Bradley's purely defensive strategy when guys like General Leslie

1206
01:00:05,360 --> 01:00:09,120
Speaker 2: Groves started pondering what the future had to bring. Groves

1207
01:00:09,160 --> 01:00:13,160
Speaker 2: described a theoretical nuclear war as unendurable and believe that

1208
01:00:13,200 --> 01:00:16,760
Speaker 2: the existence of nuclear weapons made that such a war unthinkable.

1209
01:00:17,040 --> 01:00:19,040
Speaker 2: But that wasn't just a statement of recognition, it was

1210
01:00:19,080 --> 01:00:22,800
Speaker 2: a strategic plan in order to protect itself. Groves thought

1211
01:00:23,000 --> 01:00:25,200
Speaker 2: the US had to make the concept of nuclear war

1212
01:00:25,280 --> 01:00:28,680
Speaker 2: unthinkable to its enemies. And this is going to end.

1213
01:00:28,680 --> 01:00:30,240
Speaker 2: This is going to start with, well, we need to

1214
01:00:30,280 --> 01:00:32,160
Speaker 2: have some nukes of our own. Well, we need to

1215
01:00:32,200 --> 01:00:35,040
Speaker 2: have bombers that are spread out and always ready to

1216
01:00:35,080 --> 01:00:37,720
Speaker 2: take off, and those planes need to always have bombs

1217
01:00:37,720 --> 01:00:39,680
Speaker 2: in them so that it could cut down the amount

1218
01:00:39,720 --> 01:00:41,320
Speaker 2: of time it would take them to get into the air,

1219
01:00:41,360 --> 01:00:43,800
Speaker 2: so that we can guarantee we'll have a response. And

1220
01:00:43,840 --> 01:00:46,040
Speaker 2: if we can guarantee that we'll have response no matter

1221
01:00:46,080 --> 01:00:50,280
Speaker 2: how quickly the enemy bombs us first, then they'll never

1222
01:00:50,360 --> 01:00:52,160
Speaker 2: bomb us because they know that they're going to get

1223
01:00:52,240 --> 01:00:54,920
Speaker 2: nuked back into the Stone Age in return. Right, But

1224
01:00:55,040 --> 01:00:58,000
Speaker 2: then where we go from here is well, actually, with

1225
01:00:58,280 --> 01:01:01,240
Speaker 2: ICBMs and shit, it's not enough to just have planes

1226
01:01:01,240 --> 01:01:03,440
Speaker 2: on the runway. You need to always have some planes

1227
01:01:03,480 --> 01:01:06,240
Speaker 2: in the air and some subs at sea that are

1228
01:01:06,320 --> 01:01:09,200
Speaker 2: nuclear armed and ready to strike, which means you always

1229
01:01:09,200 --> 01:01:12,080
Speaker 2: have planes with live nuclear bombs. Flanger right. You see

1230
01:01:12,080 --> 01:01:15,280
Speaker 2: how the logic starts in this with Bradley. There's a reason,

1231
01:01:15,280 --> 01:01:19,400
Speaker 2: there's some rationality, and if an enemy kills millions of us,

1232
01:01:19,440 --> 01:01:21,160
Speaker 2: we need to be ready to strike back. And the

1233
01:01:21,200 --> 01:01:24,200
Speaker 2: only possible strike back is going to be cataclysmic because

1234
01:01:24,240 --> 01:01:27,360
Speaker 2: we've been nuked, right, And it goes to we always

1235
01:01:27,440 --> 01:01:29,680
Speaker 2: have to have planes in the air and submarines in

1236
01:01:29,720 --> 01:01:32,040
Speaker 2: the ground with live nuclear missiles one hundred percent of

1237
01:01:32,080 --> 01:01:35,520
Speaker 2: the time. That esk and you get there very quickly.

1238
01:01:35,560 --> 01:01:38,240
Speaker 2: That escalation chain hits that point as soon as the

1239
01:01:38,280 --> 01:01:41,880
Speaker 2: technology becomes available, right an extent, it drives the technology.

1240
01:01:42,520 --> 01:01:45,560
Speaker 2: In nineteen forty five, military leaders in the US started

1241
01:01:45,560 --> 01:01:47,720
Speaker 2: putting forward variations of a battle plan that called for

1242
01:01:47,800 --> 01:01:51,800
Speaker 2: simultaneous nuclear attacks on multiple cities. Dale Osmith, and Air

1243
01:01:51,800 --> 01:01:54,920
Speaker 2: Force colonel, wrote an article for Air Force Quarterly Review

1244
01:01:55,080 --> 01:01:57,960
Speaker 2: where he described this sort of strike simultaneously hitting a

1245
01:01:58,000 --> 01:02:00,560
Speaker 2: bunch of enemy cities as a bullet of the heart.

1246
01:02:00,920 --> 01:02:03,760
Speaker 2: Smith wrote, the most effective air siege will result by

1247
01:02:03,800 --> 01:02:07,240
Speaker 2: concurrently attacking every critical element of an enemy's economy at

1248
01:02:07,240 --> 01:02:10,120
Speaker 2: the same time. If all critical systems could be destroyed

1249
01:02:10,120 --> 01:02:12,760
Speaker 2: at one blow, so that recuperation were impossible with any

1250
01:02:12,800 --> 01:02:15,360
Speaker 2: foreseeable time, there seems to be little question that a

1251
01:02:15,480 --> 01:02:17,560
Speaker 2: nation would die, just as surely as a man will

1252
01:02:17,600 --> 01:02:20,120
Speaker 2: die if a bullet pierces his heart and his circulating

1253
01:02:20,160 --> 01:02:23,680
Speaker 2: system has stopped. Another military planner wrote that his primary

1254
01:02:23,720 --> 01:02:26,360
Speaker 2: concern was quote the bomb's potential to break the will

1255
01:02:26,400 --> 01:02:30,280
Speaker 2: of nations and peoples by the stimulation of man's primordial fears,

1256
01:02:30,440 --> 01:02:33,240
Speaker 2: those of the unknown, the invisible, the mysterious.

1257
01:02:34,960 --> 01:02:36,560
Speaker 3: So it's just the same shit that they've been saying,

1258
01:02:36,600 --> 01:02:38,080
Speaker 3: but at a bigger scale.

1259
01:02:38,280 --> 01:02:42,000
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, and it's interesting how that last guy is

1260
01:02:42,040 --> 01:02:45,480
Speaker 2: almost writing is like, we need to create the supernatural

1261
01:02:45,520 --> 01:02:48,080
Speaker 2: figure of death and make it real in.

1262
01:02:48,120 --> 01:02:48,560
Speaker 3: Order to.

1263
01:02:50,240 --> 01:02:53,240
Speaker 2: Ensure that no one will ever fuck with us. Yeah, basically,

1264
01:02:54,920 --> 01:02:58,800
Speaker 2: but yeah, it is where we've gone from. You have

1265
01:02:58,880 --> 01:03:02,480
Speaker 2: to destroy of an enemy's civilian population that they lose

1266
01:03:02,520 --> 01:03:04,720
Speaker 2: them morale to fight. That doesn't work. It doesn't really

1267
01:03:04,720 --> 01:03:08,960
Speaker 2: work anywhere. Maybe it works in Japan at the very end, right,

1268
01:03:09,200 --> 01:03:15,160
Speaker 2: highly debatable, but it hasn't really turned out. So No,

1269
01:03:15,240 --> 01:03:17,600
Speaker 2: we just have to kill all of their civilians, right,

1270
01:03:17,640 --> 01:03:19,560
Speaker 2: and we have to be always ready to kill all

1271
01:03:19,600 --> 01:03:22,320
Speaker 2: of their civilians, otherwise someone might kill all of our civilians.

1272
01:03:24,080 --> 01:03:27,880
Speaker 2: We get there very quickly, and in terms of how

1273
01:03:27,920 --> 01:03:30,280
Speaker 2: quickly we get there after the bombing of Hiroshima, but

1274
01:03:30,320 --> 01:03:34,000
Speaker 2: before Nagasaki, world War II is not over yet. General

1275
01:03:34,040 --> 01:03:37,240
Speaker 2: Groves receives a list from US Army Air Forces of

1276
01:03:37,280 --> 01:03:41,760
Speaker 2: potential targets for subsequent nuclear strikes. In the book fifteen minutes,

1277
01:03:41,920 --> 01:03:45,600
Speaker 2: Kini writes, quote highlighted were forty key or leading cities,

1278
01:03:45,760 --> 01:03:49,400
Speaker 2: each assigned a priority for destruction. A map accompanied the chart,

1279
01:03:49,440 --> 01:03:51,360
Speaker 2: and on it were drawn lines that showed the likely

1280
01:03:51,400 --> 01:03:54,600
Speaker 2: penetration routes for the A bomb carriers. The forty cities

1281
01:03:54,640 --> 01:03:58,800
Speaker 2: were in the Soviet Union. We're still allied with them,

1282
01:03:59,200 --> 01:04:02,560
Speaker 2: and we're putting forward plans for the strategic annihilation of

1283
01:04:02,600 --> 01:04:06,480
Speaker 2: Soviet cities in nineteen forty five before we bombed Nagasaki. Oh,

1284
01:04:06,480 --> 01:04:09,680
Speaker 2: they're talking about the possibility, right. If you want to

1285
01:04:09,680 --> 01:04:12,600
Speaker 2: wonder how much of this was to scare the Soviets. Also, oh,

1286
01:04:12,720 --> 01:04:15,880
Speaker 2: that's on the table in nineteen forty five, we're still

1287
01:04:15,880 --> 01:04:17,959
Speaker 2: fighting with them, like ally.

1288
01:04:18,120 --> 01:04:20,919
Speaker 3: I mean that guys, like we're always fighting the last war,

1289
01:04:20,920 --> 01:04:22,720
Speaker 3: but they're also always fighting the next ward.

1290
01:04:22,800 --> 01:04:25,240
Speaker 2: It's the I mean, just in other because I know

1291
01:04:25,400 --> 01:04:28,920
Speaker 2: I'm not a Soviet Union Stan, but the amount of

1292
01:04:28,960 --> 01:04:31,920
Speaker 2: bad faith the US is engaging in from the beginning

1293
01:04:32,000 --> 01:04:34,720
Speaker 2: and our relationship with them is fucking nuts.

1294
01:04:35,160 --> 01:04:38,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like, I understand why they wanted the nuke.

1295
01:04:38,200 --> 01:04:41,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, I get why they were paranoid about US nuking them.

1296
01:04:41,840 --> 01:04:47,280
Speaker 2: We really wanted to nuke them. Yeah, So all of

1297
01:04:47,280 --> 01:04:49,720
Speaker 2: what's happening comes as a nightmare to the man who'd

1298
01:04:49,720 --> 01:04:53,400
Speaker 2: helped set everything into motion, Leo Zillard. He seems to

1299
01:04:53,440 --> 01:04:56,000
Speaker 2: have seen what was coming before the first bomb was dropped,

1300
01:04:56,240 --> 01:04:59,240
Speaker 2: after LeMay began his firebombing campaign. I think maybe this

1301
01:04:59,280 --> 01:05:01,360
Speaker 2: is just a situation. He saw what a bombing on

1302
01:05:01,400 --> 01:05:05,120
Speaker 2: that scale would do, right, And he decides he had

1303
01:05:05,160 --> 01:05:08,080
Speaker 2: been wrong really like maybe not wrong about trying to

1304
01:05:08,080 --> 01:05:10,040
Speaker 2: get a nuke before the Nazis got it, but that

1305
01:05:10,120 --> 01:05:13,960
Speaker 2: it shouldn't be used under any circumstances. And he starts

1306
01:05:14,000 --> 01:05:17,160
Speaker 2: protesting the slaughter of Japanese civilians by US air power.

1307
01:05:17,360 --> 01:05:19,760
Speaker 2: In June of nineteen forty five, Leo leads a group

1308
01:05:19,800 --> 01:05:21,920
Speaker 2: of scientists from the University of Chicago to send a

1309
01:05:21,960 --> 01:05:25,160
Speaker 2: report to the Manhattan Project leadership. In it, he requests

1310
01:05:25,160 --> 01:05:27,760
Speaker 2: that they demonstrate their nuclear de weapon for the first

1311
01:05:27,760 --> 01:05:31,120
Speaker 2: time in an uninhabited area, right so, before we bomb Heroshima.

1312
01:05:31,440 --> 01:05:33,560
Speaker 2: He has a letter of reports sent to the Manhattan

1313
01:05:33,600 --> 01:05:38,080
Speaker 2: Project being like, please don't set this off for the

1314
01:05:38,120 --> 01:05:40,640
Speaker 2: first time in a city full of people, Like set

1315
01:05:40,640 --> 01:05:43,560
Speaker 2: it off in the middle of nowhere, to scare Japan

1316
01:05:43,600 --> 01:05:46,720
Speaker 2: at a surrendering right now, we don't do this. There's

1317
01:05:46,720 --> 01:05:48,800
Speaker 2: a few reasons for We're not sure the bomb's gonna work,

1318
01:05:49,120 --> 01:05:51,160
Speaker 2: and it would be really bad if we promised Japan

1319
01:05:51,200 --> 01:05:53,920
Speaker 2: the biggest bomb ever and then nothing happens, Right, So

1320
01:05:53,960 --> 01:05:59,160
Speaker 2: there's a worry of that now. Sillard his justification for

1321
01:05:59,240 --> 01:06:02,080
Speaker 2: why we need to not murder a city with a

1322
01:06:02,160 --> 01:06:05,960
Speaker 2: nuke is that it'll harm the US's reputation going forward,

1323
01:06:05,960 --> 01:06:08,480
Speaker 2: and it'll set off a deadly chain reaction. Right if

1324
01:06:08,480 --> 01:06:10,600
Speaker 2: the first use of a nuclear weapon is in war,

1325
01:06:10,680 --> 01:06:13,960
Speaker 2: destroying a civilian city. Sillard believes quote. This new means

1326
01:06:13,960 --> 01:06:17,080
Speaker 2: of indiscriminate destruction will spark an arms race, and soon

1327
01:06:17,200 --> 01:06:20,000
Speaker 2: every powerful country will want a nuclear arsenal of their own,

1328
01:06:20,280 --> 01:06:22,880
Speaker 2: and the entire survival of humanity will be imperiled. Like

1329
01:06:22,920 --> 01:06:25,840
Speaker 2: if we start by nuking a city, we have no

1330
01:06:26,440 --> 01:06:29,400
Speaker 2: we have no sort of moral standing to be like,

1331
01:06:29,600 --> 01:06:30,560
Speaker 2: don't none of.

1332
01:06:30,520 --> 01:06:32,120
Speaker 3: You use these? Right?

1333
01:06:32,480 --> 01:06:35,560
Speaker 2: You guys stay away from them. Well, we'll keep ours,

1334
01:06:35,680 --> 01:06:37,600
Speaker 2: but you guys don't build them. You can trust us

1335
01:06:37,680 --> 01:06:38,880
Speaker 2: not to use them, right?

1336
01:06:39,720 --> 01:06:43,720
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, ouck, this is less than one hundred years ago.

1337
01:06:43,760 --> 01:06:47,320
Speaker 3: It's like the other less yes thing, Like I've met

1338
01:06:47,320 --> 01:06:51,920
Speaker 3: people who you know are older than this. Yep, you know, yep,

1339
01:06:52,360 --> 01:06:53,840
Speaker 3: some of you listening are older than this.

1340
01:06:54,600 --> 01:06:57,920
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, there must be a couple, right, It's it's

1341
01:06:58,000 --> 01:07:01,840
Speaker 2: good stuff, so you know. Sillard starts off being the

1342
01:07:01,840 --> 01:07:04,120
Speaker 2: guy who sends Roosevelt a letter saying we need to

1343
01:07:04,160 --> 01:07:06,960
Speaker 2: build this thing, and he ends out being like, we,

1344
01:07:07,320 --> 01:07:10,480
Speaker 2: under no circumstances can we use these things? Yeah, please

1345
01:07:10,760 --> 01:07:15,280
Speaker 2: please don't embark down this road to madness. That poor man, Yeah,

1346
01:07:15,360 --> 01:07:18,480
Speaker 2: it's fucked up. And another poor man is Lewis Slutton.

1347
01:07:18,960 --> 01:07:22,480
Speaker 2: So Lewis sluttin finds himself increasingly horrified. In March of

1348
01:07:22,560 --> 01:07:24,600
Speaker 2: nineteen forty six, he writes to a friend, I have

1349
01:07:24,720 --> 01:07:27,360
Speaker 2: become involved in the Navy tests, much to my disgust.

1350
01:07:27,560 --> 01:07:29,040
Speaker 2: The reason for this is that I am one of

1351
01:07:29,040 --> 01:07:31,600
Speaker 2: the few people left here who are experienced bomb put

1352
01:07:31,600 --> 01:07:35,280
Speaker 2: her togetherers. He's already disgusted it being with the Navy.

1353
01:07:36,240 --> 01:07:38,800
Speaker 2: He doesn't like what he's doing. In an article for

1354
01:07:38,840 --> 01:07:42,440
Speaker 2: The Beaver, a Canadian publication of record, Zelig writes, despite

1355
01:07:42,440 --> 01:07:45,040
Speaker 2: his seeming zeal, there are hints that Slutin might not

1356
01:07:45,080 --> 01:07:47,240
Speaker 2: have been enamored with Adam Baum's per se. And in

1357
01:07:47,320 --> 01:07:51,320
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty two, Winnipeg Free Press story journalist Val Wearer

1358
01:07:51,640 --> 01:07:54,880
Speaker 2: writes that Slotin's father was astonished to hear after Hiroshima

1359
01:07:54,920 --> 01:07:56,960
Speaker 2: that his son had been working on the atomic bomb.

1360
01:07:57,240 --> 01:07:59,920
Speaker 2: The response was, we had to get it before the Germans.

1361
01:08:00,280 --> 01:08:04,120
Speaker 2: Winnipeg lawyer Israel Ludwig Slowden's nephew recalls his mother saying

1362
01:08:04,120 --> 01:08:06,080
Speaker 2: that Uncle Lou was troubled by what he was doing

1363
01:08:06,120 --> 01:08:09,240
Speaker 2: in Los Alamos. In November of nineteen eighty nine, Philip Morrison,

1364
01:08:09,360 --> 01:08:11,160
Speaker 2: in a terse note to me scribbled at the bottom

1365
01:08:11,200 --> 01:08:13,120
Speaker 2: of my letter of inquiry to him, wrote that he

1366
01:08:13,160 --> 01:08:15,680
Speaker 2: and Slowtin talked a good deal about war in peace,

1367
01:08:16,439 --> 01:08:20,040
Speaker 2: so he is starting to He's become pretty quickly after

1368
01:08:20,080 --> 01:08:23,280
Speaker 2: the war decided that like this is not a good

1369
01:08:23,320 --> 01:08:26,840
Speaker 2: path to be going down, and he puts his notice

1370
01:08:26,840 --> 01:08:29,400
Speaker 2: in at Los Alamos in nineteen forty six, upset at

1371
01:08:29,439 --> 01:08:32,920
Speaker 2: the future that he sees looming for his troubled part child. Tragically,

1372
01:08:33,000 --> 01:08:35,920
Speaker 2: just days before he would have quit, Slotin performs a

1373
01:08:35,960 --> 01:08:39,479
Speaker 2: demonstration of the same basic tickling the dragon's tail technique

1374
01:08:39,520 --> 01:08:41,680
Speaker 2: that had so recently killed his friend. He's teaching a

1375
01:08:41,720 --> 01:08:44,920
Speaker 2: new guy how to do it. History repeated itself. Slowdin

1376
01:08:45,040 --> 01:08:48,200
Speaker 2: drops the core and he throws himself in front of

1377
01:08:48,200 --> 01:08:51,280
Speaker 2: the new guy to take the brunt of the radiation,

1378
01:08:52,320 --> 01:08:55,600
Speaker 2: and he like, within hours he's vomiting and like his

1379
01:08:55,720 --> 01:08:58,680
Speaker 2: body is starting to turn into soup. They keep him

1380
01:08:58,720 --> 01:09:01,599
Speaker 2: alive for nine days in the hospital, but there's never

1381
01:09:01,640 --> 01:09:03,400
Speaker 2: any hope. They would it would have been kinder to

1382
01:09:03,400 --> 01:09:04,240
Speaker 2: shoot him in the head.

1383
01:09:05,280 --> 01:09:07,000
Speaker 3: And one of the kid who I knew, a kid

1384
01:09:07,000 --> 01:09:10,880
Speaker 3: who survived Chernobyl and was living in the US and

1385
01:09:11,000 --> 01:09:13,360
Speaker 3: was like a kid and was like going to die

1386
01:09:13,520 --> 01:09:14,280
Speaker 3: of chernobyl.

1387
01:09:14,560 --> 01:09:20,439
Speaker 2: Oh god, h cool stuff. Yeah, and one of the

1388
01:09:20,479 --> 01:09:22,840
Speaker 2: I mean one of Slotan's an amazing guy. As soon

1389
01:09:22,880 --> 01:09:25,840
Speaker 2: as he realizes what's happening, everybody else evacuates. He knows

1390
01:09:25,880 --> 01:09:28,320
Speaker 2: that he's been exposed too much to evacuate. He immediately

1391
01:09:28,479 --> 01:09:30,559
Speaker 2: draws a map of where everyone had been in the room,

1392
01:09:30,720 --> 01:09:33,559
Speaker 2: so that when they're researching what had happened to him,

1393
01:09:33,760 --> 01:09:36,360
Speaker 2: they can gain a better understanding of how nuclear radiation

1394
01:09:36,560 --> 01:09:39,519
Speaker 2: kills people. That's his like immediate action is to like

1395
01:09:39,600 --> 01:09:42,120
Speaker 2: sketch out where everyone was when the device went off.

1396
01:09:42,320 --> 01:09:44,599
Speaker 3: Yah, and live by the science, die by the science.

1397
01:09:45,200 --> 01:09:48,479
Speaker 2: Yeah. Like that, he's he's consciously being studied. He like

1398
01:09:48,640 --> 01:09:51,240
Speaker 2: knows that he's trying to be a better at least

1399
01:09:51,280 --> 01:09:54,920
Speaker 2: get something out of his death. Annie Jacobson describes it

1400
01:09:54,960 --> 01:09:57,639
Speaker 2: in a like the aftermath of this in a harrowing

1401
01:09:57,680 --> 01:10:00,360
Speaker 2: way in her book Nuclear War A scenario quote, the

1402
01:10:00,439 --> 01:10:02,960
Speaker 2: mess inside Slowtin's dead body was like a sea of

1403
01:10:03,040 --> 01:10:06,479
Speaker 2: rotten soup. His blood was uncoaggulable at autopsy. One of

1404
01:10:06,520 --> 01:10:10,280
Speaker 2: the doctors wrote in a classified postmodem report the radiation

1405
01:10:10,360 --> 01:10:12,840
Speaker 2: poisoning had caused the near complete loss of tissue that

1406
01:10:12,920 --> 01:10:15,719
Speaker 2: once separated one of Slowtin's organs from the next. Without

1407
01:10:15,720 --> 01:10:17,720
Speaker 2: this lining, his organs had merged into one.

1408
01:10:19,200 --> 01:10:22,559
Speaker 3: So bad, don't build the torment nexus.

1409
01:10:22,640 --> 01:10:26,080
Speaker 2: Don't build the torment nexus. You might wind up soup.

1410
01:10:27,439 --> 01:10:29,000
Speaker 3: Fuck cool.

1411
01:10:29,240 --> 01:10:31,320
Speaker 2: Anyway, Margaret, how are you feeling about nukes?

1412
01:10:31,439 --> 01:10:35,599
Speaker 3: Jesus from you know, I'm pretty excited that uh, if

1413
01:10:35,600 --> 01:10:39,360
Speaker 3: I buck, it be completely gone.

1414
01:10:39,680 --> 01:10:40,920
Speaker 2: I thought it happened this second.

1415
01:10:41,560 --> 01:10:47,760
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you know, I quantum immortality says that I'm

1416
01:10:47,760 --> 01:10:50,240
Speaker 3: going to continue to live in a timeline where I

1417
01:10:50,320 --> 01:10:51,360
Speaker 3: don't die this way.

1418
01:10:51,640 --> 01:10:54,639
Speaker 2: Yeah, it'll probably be fine. It'll probably be fine.

1419
01:10:54,960 --> 01:10:58,559
Speaker 3: Yeah right, yeah, yeah, I don't know. It's it's so

1420
01:10:58,760 --> 01:11:01,720
Speaker 3: interesting because you know, fear of nuclear annihilation was like

1421
01:11:01,760 --> 01:11:06,960
Speaker 3: such an important part of my parents' generations lives, and

1422
01:11:07,000 --> 01:11:11,760
Speaker 3: it's watching it creep back in is not fun, No,

1423
01:11:12,720 --> 01:11:15,960
Speaker 3: but it I don't know, I don't know where I'm

1424
01:11:15,960 --> 01:11:18,800
Speaker 3: going with this. It's just it's a it's a nightmareish thing.

1425
01:11:19,040 --> 01:11:22,720
Speaker 3: But it it's so frustrating because you look at this,

1426
01:11:23,160 --> 01:11:25,080
Speaker 3: it's that game theory shit that all of the worst

1427
01:11:25,080 --> 01:11:27,640
Speaker 3: people you know are excited about. Yeah, Like it's like,

1428
01:11:28,400 --> 01:11:32,640
Speaker 3: if you take any lethal weapons self defense class They're like,

1429
01:11:33,160 --> 01:11:35,200
Speaker 3: the best way to win a gunfight is don't get

1430
01:11:35,200 --> 01:11:36,040
Speaker 3: into a gunfight.

1431
01:11:36,240 --> 01:11:38,040
Speaker 2: Avoid a gunfight at all. It's the same way to

1432
01:11:38,080 --> 01:11:39,280
Speaker 2: win a knife fight, really.

1433
01:11:39,240 --> 01:11:41,360
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, the best way to win a knife fight

1434
01:11:41,400 --> 01:11:43,479
Speaker 3: is to run before the knives touch anybody.

1435
01:11:43,520 --> 01:11:46,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, is to be nowhere near a knife fight. Yeah,

1436
01:11:46,640 --> 01:11:48,439
Speaker 2: you're a winner of a knife fight every day.

1437
01:11:48,840 --> 01:11:53,519
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. And it's just so frustrating because it's I

1438
01:11:53,560 --> 01:11:55,599
Speaker 3: don't know, I've been, I've been, you know. I with

1439
01:11:55,680 --> 01:11:58,720
Speaker 3: my podcast Cool People Did Cool Stuff, talked a lot

1440
01:11:58,760 --> 01:12:02,320
Speaker 3: about the you know, early punk and the stuff that

1441
01:12:02,400 --> 01:12:04,600
Speaker 3: led into a lot of modern protest movement stuff, and

1442
01:12:04,640 --> 01:12:06,720
Speaker 3: a lot of it is from the anti nuke movement. Yeah,

1443
01:12:06,720 --> 01:12:10,280
Speaker 3: and it's confusing to look at from the modern perspective,

1444
01:12:11,120 --> 01:12:13,080
Speaker 3: but if you put yourselves in the shoes of like

1445
01:12:13,120 --> 01:12:17,000
Speaker 3: the kids who grew up in this m you're like, yeah, no,

1446
01:12:17,120 --> 01:12:19,000
Speaker 3: that actually just makes a lot of sense.

1447
01:12:19,280 --> 01:12:21,599
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean, we could talk about because a

1448
01:12:21,640 --> 01:12:24,040
Speaker 2: lot of the fear of nuclear power is because of

1449
01:12:24,080 --> 01:12:26,960
Speaker 2: how prominent the fear of annihilation from nukes, and if

1450
01:12:27,000 --> 01:12:29,840
Speaker 2: they never start out being a weapon for killing civilians,

1451
01:12:30,200 --> 01:12:32,880
Speaker 2: maybe there's not the kind of resistance to nuclear power,

1452
01:12:32,880 --> 01:12:34,960
Speaker 2: which could have avoided a lot of problems VIASA, the

1453
01:12:35,080 --> 01:12:39,439
Speaker 2: climate change. You know, maybe that's maybe not, but I

1454
01:12:39,720 --> 01:12:41,920
Speaker 2: do think that a lot of our fears which are

1455
01:12:41,960 --> 01:12:45,280
Speaker 2: not fully rational. There are some rational fears regarding nuclear power,

1456
01:12:45,320 --> 01:12:47,400
Speaker 2: but a lot of it is just people that are

1457
01:12:47,439 --> 01:12:53,559
Speaker 2: scared of nukes for other reasons. Right, Yeah, I don't know.

1458
01:12:53,920 --> 01:12:58,400
Speaker 2: I don't know, Margaret, like the we probably shouldn't always

1459
01:12:58,400 --> 01:13:00,880
Speaker 2: have a doomsday device. I will say where I differ

1460
01:13:00,880 --> 01:13:03,120
Speaker 2: from a lot of people right now, and this has

1461
01:13:03,160 --> 01:13:06,200
Speaker 2: become increasingly the case the more I've studied it. I'm

1462
01:13:06,200 --> 01:13:09,760
Speaker 2: not really more worried about Trump being the president than

1463
01:13:09,800 --> 01:13:14,639
Speaker 2: anybody else in regards to that. Okay, I think maybe,

1464
01:13:14,680 --> 01:13:16,599
Speaker 2: I guess maybe there's an argument maybe he'd be dumb

1465
01:13:16,720 --> 01:13:20,040
Speaker 2: enough to try and use make a limited nuclear strike,

1466
01:13:20,240 --> 01:13:22,840
Speaker 2: right or maybe his policies in terms of like the

1467
01:13:22,880 --> 01:13:25,960
Speaker 2: military or degrading readiness to a degree that might make

1468
01:13:26,000 --> 01:13:27,960
Speaker 2: it likelier for one of these missiles to wind up

1469
01:13:27,960 --> 01:13:30,800
Speaker 2: in the wind or something. Certainly, the fact that we

1470
01:13:30,840 --> 01:13:33,880
Speaker 2: are now like both the US and Russia are talking

1471
01:13:33,880 --> 01:13:37,160
Speaker 2: about resuming nuclear tests is bad. But in terms of

1472
01:13:37,320 --> 01:13:40,680
Speaker 2: how how would Trump behave if he was put in

1473
01:13:40,720 --> 01:13:42,680
Speaker 2: that you got six minutes to destroy whether or not

1474
01:13:42,720 --> 01:13:46,280
Speaker 2: to kill everyone on Earth scenario. I'm not sure anyone's

1475
01:13:46,479 --> 01:13:50,880
Speaker 2: more competent than anyone else in that scenario. Yeah, fair right,

1476
01:13:51,400 --> 01:13:54,680
Speaker 2: Like it's fundamentally and this is something Jacobsen points out

1477
01:13:54,680 --> 01:13:56,920
Speaker 2: in her book is that when you talk to because

1478
01:13:56,960 --> 01:13:59,360
Speaker 2: a lot of guys whose job was in the nuclear

1479
01:13:59,400 --> 01:14:02,320
Speaker 2: weapons thing for the Department of Defense or for the

1480
01:14:02,640 --> 01:14:06,080
Speaker 2: like the Strategic Air Command, like a lot of those

1481
01:14:06,080 --> 01:14:07,720
Speaker 2: guys have versions of the same thing, which is that

1482
01:14:07,840 --> 01:14:11,280
Speaker 2: like the president, didn't the president at my time, They've

1483
01:14:11,280 --> 01:14:14,080
Speaker 2: said this about multiple presidents. The presidents that I dealt

1484
01:14:14,120 --> 01:14:17,320
Speaker 2: with never seemed very interested in it. They didn't ask questions,

1485
01:14:17,360 --> 01:14:19,679
Speaker 2: they didn't want to know much. They didn't like thinking

1486
01:14:19,720 --> 01:14:20,439
Speaker 2: about it.

1487
01:14:20,560 --> 01:14:22,920
Speaker 3: Right, That's that's what I would do if I was

1488
01:14:22,960 --> 01:14:25,080
Speaker 3: the president, as I would not want to think about it.

1489
01:14:25,120 --> 01:14:28,439
Speaker 3: And like and well, we haven't told anyone about your

1490
01:14:28,520 --> 01:14:30,320
Speaker 3: run for president yet, but we'll talk about that later.

1491
01:14:30,400 --> 01:14:33,799
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm talking about that later. I'm going to use them.

1492
01:14:35,240 --> 01:14:38,320
Speaker 3: Yeah, we know, defensively, we're going to go and dry

1493
01:14:38,400 --> 01:14:39,439
Speaker 3: up the lakes ahead of time.

1494
01:14:39,600 --> 01:14:42,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah, it's a defensive first strike on the lakes.

1495
01:14:42,280 --> 01:14:45,120
Speaker 3: The thing that maybe I shouldn't be worried about, the

1496
01:14:45,120 --> 01:14:47,240
Speaker 3: thing I worry about. People always talk about AI destroying

1497
01:14:47,320 --> 01:14:49,479
Speaker 3: humanity because it will take control of the weapons. That's

1498
01:14:49,520 --> 01:14:52,160
Speaker 3: not what I'm worried about. But people have been worried

1499
01:14:52,160 --> 01:14:55,200
Speaker 3: about that for decades. Right, I'm worried about AI taking

1500
01:14:55,240 --> 01:15:00,760
Speaker 3: control of the military systems that track things and do stuff. Yeah,

1501
01:15:00,840 --> 01:15:03,800
Speaker 3: and hallucinate in ICBM Like.

1502
01:15:04,000 --> 01:15:08,639
Speaker 2: Yeah, because we've had that happen the analog way, right,

1503
01:15:08,720 --> 01:15:11,439
Speaker 2: Someone's put in the wrong tape and they've accidentally started

1504
01:15:11,439 --> 01:15:14,280
Speaker 2: a training mission that it looks like ICBMs are headed

1505
01:15:14,439 --> 01:15:16,800
Speaker 2: towards our Like variants of that have happened to the

1506
01:15:16,880 --> 01:15:22,799
Speaker 2: US and the Soviet Union, right, Yeah, and human decision

1507
01:15:22,840 --> 01:15:26,639
Speaker 2: making is largely what stopped a catastrophe from happening. And yeah,

1508
01:15:26,840 --> 01:15:30,920
Speaker 2: the impulse to remove humans from it is really bad. Like,

1509
01:15:31,000 --> 01:15:33,120
Speaker 2: I don't believe in skynet. I think it's silly to

1510
01:15:33,120 --> 01:15:35,880
Speaker 2: believe that, like, oh, this AI will automatically seek to

1511
01:15:35,880 --> 01:15:38,160
Speaker 2: destroy humanity. I think it's very reasonable to be like, well,

1512
01:15:38,200 --> 01:15:39,880
Speaker 2: if we connect AI to any of this at all,

1513
01:15:40,280 --> 01:15:42,960
Speaker 2: it's just going to amplify the chances that somebody fucks

1514
01:15:43,000 --> 01:15:44,400
Speaker 2: up in a way that ends with the nukes aal

1515
01:15:44,520 --> 01:15:47,719
Speaker 2: going off. Right, Yeah, you've just you're making you're making

1516
01:15:47,720 --> 01:15:50,920
Speaker 2: it more complicated, and that increases the odds that we

1517
01:15:51,040 --> 01:15:52,360
Speaker 2: kill everybody every time.

1518
01:15:52,720 --> 01:15:57,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, it makes more mistakes than people, which is embarrassing. Yeah,

1519
01:15:57,680 --> 01:15:59,439
Speaker 3: because we make a lot of mistakes.

1520
01:15:59,840 --> 01:16:02,200
Speaker 2: And this is you know, you've had both Obama and

1521
01:16:02,280 --> 01:16:06,160
Speaker 2: Biden promised during their runs to basically take us a

1522
01:16:06,240 --> 01:16:08,680
Speaker 2: little bit back from where we always stand on the

1523
01:16:08,760 --> 01:16:11,600
Speaker 2: escalation ladder, to like change our policies so that we

1524
01:16:11,640 --> 01:16:14,920
Speaker 2: would not basically our policy would not be launched the

1525
01:16:15,040 --> 01:16:18,280
Speaker 2: nukes as soon as we get scared, and neither of

1526
01:16:18,360 --> 01:16:22,040
Speaker 2: them did anything. You know, there's and this is there's

1527
01:16:22,040 --> 01:16:23,680
Speaker 2: a couple of stories like that. One of the things

1528
01:16:23,800 --> 01:16:27,599
Speaker 2: Jacobson talks about is that like once North Korea started

1529
01:16:27,680 --> 01:16:30,200
Speaker 2: using ICBMs and it became clear that because you can't

1530
01:16:30,240 --> 01:16:33,040
Speaker 2: really stop an ICBM, we have these we have like

1531
01:16:33,160 --> 01:16:36,160
Speaker 2: forty something of these intercept missiles that are supposed to

1532
01:16:36,160 --> 01:16:38,880
Speaker 2: be able to shoot down an ICBM, but they don't.

1533
01:16:39,240 --> 01:16:42,760
Speaker 2: They have like a fifty percent success rate in like tests.

1534
01:16:43,120 --> 01:16:45,559
Speaker 2: But that's even overstating it because the way they work.

1535
01:16:45,560 --> 01:16:48,040
Speaker 2: They're not even a bombs, they're dumb. They're bullets. They

1536
01:16:48,040 --> 01:16:50,960
Speaker 2: have to hit the missile directly while it's in flight.

1537
01:16:51,360 --> 01:16:53,640
Speaker 2: And if they don't, you missed by an inch, You

1538
01:16:53,640 --> 01:16:56,040
Speaker 2: missed by a mile, right, like, Yeah, and we have

1539
01:16:56,320 --> 01:16:59,240
Speaker 2: very few of them, so the odds of us and

1540
01:16:59,280 --> 01:17:02,000
Speaker 2: we would have very little time to actually deploy any

1541
01:17:02,080 --> 01:17:02,880
Speaker 2: or have them ready.

1542
01:17:03,080 --> 01:17:06,439
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that new movie is actually pretty well researched

1543
01:17:06,439 --> 01:17:07,720
Speaker 3: about it. I can't remember what it's called, but I

1544
01:17:07,760 --> 01:17:08,840
Speaker 3: watched it a couple of weeks ago.

1545
01:17:08,920 --> 01:17:10,720
Speaker 2: And yeah, I've heard it's good. But the fear in

1546
01:17:10,760 --> 01:17:14,680
Speaker 2: me we should be scared, should we should not be

1547
01:17:14,760 --> 01:17:17,360
Speaker 2: doing anything the way that we're doing it when in

1548
01:17:17,400 --> 01:17:20,880
Speaker 2: regards to nuclear weapons. But if history is a guide,

1549
01:17:20,880 --> 01:17:24,000
Speaker 2: we're going to keep doing it. So anyway, people should

1550
01:17:24,040 --> 01:17:26,439
Speaker 2: check out your podcast Cool People who did cool stuff

1551
01:17:26,640 --> 01:17:29,240
Speaker 2: while they can. Yeah, while they can, they should check

1552
01:17:29,240 --> 01:17:33,840
Speaker 2: out our Pathfinder tabletop gaming episodes of it could happen

1553
01:17:33,840 --> 01:17:37,320
Speaker 2: here on our book club weekend show. That's fun. That'll

1554
01:17:37,360 --> 01:17:40,200
Speaker 2: distract you briefly at the looming apocalypse that awaits us.

1555
01:17:40,200 --> 01:17:44,559
Speaker 2: All yea, and for other distractions from the apocalypse, keep

1556
01:17:44,600 --> 01:17:47,760
Speaker 2: listening to podcasts. Don't think about how bad things are.

1557
01:17:48,000 --> 01:17:52,160
Speaker 2: Don't think about the fact that literally nothing can save

1558
01:17:52,200 --> 01:17:54,679
Speaker 2: you if the nukes all fall. There's no defense, there's

1559
01:17:54,680 --> 01:17:57,840
Speaker 2: no prepping for it. There's just death on a scale

1560
01:17:57,880 --> 01:18:01,120
Speaker 2: almost uncomprehensible. Don't think about that, think about podcasts.

1561
01:18:01,200 --> 01:18:03,120
Speaker 3: Just remember that you were going to die anyway.

1562
01:18:03,360 --> 01:18:03,639
Speaker 2: Sure.

1563
01:18:04,280 --> 01:18:05,800
Speaker 3: Yeah, tell your friends you love them.

1564
01:18:06,040 --> 01:18:07,680
Speaker 2: Tell your friends you love them, and tell them to

1565
01:18:07,720 --> 01:18:09,880
Speaker 2: listen to Behind the Bastards and cool people who did

1566
01:18:09,960 --> 01:18:11,360
Speaker 2: cool stuff. That's what's most important.

1567
01:18:11,400 --> 01:18:11,720
Speaker 3: That's right.

1568
01:18:11,880 --> 01:18:13,439
Speaker 2: If you can't tell them you love them, tell them

1569
01:18:13,439 --> 01:18:15,160
Speaker 2: about the podcast that you love. Yeah.

1570
01:18:15,200 --> 01:18:16,960
Speaker 3: That's actually a way to tell people you love them.

1571
01:18:16,960 --> 01:18:19,400
Speaker 3: If you can't struggling to say I love you, just

1572
01:18:19,439 --> 01:18:21,719
Speaker 3: say listen to cool people did cool stuff and Behind

1573
01:18:21,760 --> 01:18:22,320
Speaker 3: Your Bastards.

1574
01:18:22,680 --> 01:18:25,240
Speaker 2: Or take their phone, like when they're asleep, use their

1575
01:18:25,240 --> 01:18:28,360
Speaker 2: face to unlock it and subscribe automatically to all of

1576
01:18:28,360 --> 01:18:32,640
Speaker 2: our podcasts on their phone. Jesus Christ, Sophie. That's like

1577
01:18:32,680 --> 01:18:33,719
Speaker 2: a third of our listeners.

1578
01:18:34,320 --> 01:18:37,000
Speaker 3: Robert got we got it in the podcast.

1579
01:18:37,080 --> 01:18:39,840
Speaker 2: Yeah We're done, bye, all right bye everyone.

1580
01:18:41,760 --> 01:18:44,479
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

1581
01:18:44,840 --> 01:18:47,439
Speaker 1: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool

1582
01:18:47,520 --> 01:18:51,479
Speaker 1: zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

1583
01:18:51,560 --> 01:18:54,720
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the

1584
01:18:54,720 --> 01:18:58,800
Speaker 1: Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday

1585
01:18:58,880 --> 01:19:02,559
Speaker 1: and Friday. Describe to our channel YouTube dot com slash

1586
01:19:02,760 --> 01:19:04,240
Speaker 1: at Behind the Bastards