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Speaker 1: Also media, and we're back.

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Speaker 2: It's behind the Bastards. This is our special episodes on

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Speaker 2: the guys who built the nuclear doomsday machine that could

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Speaker 2: kill us all at any moment. Episode five, The end

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Speaker 2: is finally in sight. That could be literal. Margaret Kiljoy,

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Speaker 2: Welcome back to the program. How you doing.

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Speaker 3: I'm doing great. I've gone full circle. I've accepted that

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Speaker 3: this is reality, and I am just very happy to

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Speaker 3: get to live in these times.

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Speaker 2: It's great that you got to that point because actually

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Speaker 2: the next ten pages are all Warhammer. Oh I just

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Speaker 2: stopped writing about nukes at a certain point, but you

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Speaker 2: can just assume that that's real.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, because that's what your brain does when presented with

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Speaker 3: this much disaster, is you're like, yeah, man, I really

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Speaker 3: like fantasy books.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm just gonna I'm just gonna relax to the

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Speaker 2: comfort of a game where every single person is worse

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Speaker 2: than Hitler, Like we're Hitler would be a moderate bleeding hearts. Well,

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Speaker 2: let's get back to talking about this insane minute man system,

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Speaker 2: because we've talked about some of the shit that's crazy

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Speaker 2: about this, but we still have not gotten to the

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Speaker 2: craziest thing about this, right, Good, So we left off.

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Speaker 2: John Ruble has been having in nineteen fifty nine and

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Speaker 2: start at sixty. He's having conversations with all these Air

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Speaker 2: Force guys about the minute Man system, and he's come

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Speaker 2: up with some serious concerns about, well, how do we

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Speaker 2: decide when these things are fired? When you choose to

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Speaker 2: shoot one, how do the other nine get launched? Is

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Speaker 2: it really just four guys who have to turn their

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Speaker 2: keys in order to launch fifty missiles? Are there ways

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Speaker 2: they could at fifty random cities? Are there ways they

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Speaker 2: could accidentally get launched due to, you know, an electrical error?

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Speaker 3: Right?

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Speaker 2: These are all concerns, and the Air Force is like,

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Speaker 2: with the fuck are you asking questions for? You fucking nerd?

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Speaker 2: Get the hell out of here. Let us killed. Yeah

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Speaker 2: you a commie? So here's Rubelt are tell me? Yeah,

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Speaker 2: you got to tell me if you're a communists. Here's

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Speaker 2: Rubel discussing his concerns. I was curious about the procedures

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Speaker 2: for launching. How are the decisions to be made and

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Speaker 2: what happens when the launch commands are given? What if

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Speaker 2: you decide you really didn't want to launch the rest

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Speaker 2: after you've already launched some can you launch missiles one

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Speaker 2: at a time selectively, what if some operators decide to

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Speaker 2: launch without authority? Here I cite from a transcript of

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Speaker 2: my discussion of this matter for the John F. Kennedy Library.

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Speaker 2: A moment arrived in this briefing in the June of

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Speaker 2: nineteen fifteen. In June of nineteen fifty nine, when I

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Speaker 2: could ask the question I wanted to ask, when I

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Speaker 2: had asked Bennett in private before, but without getting a

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Speaker 2: satisfactory response. I had the feeling that if I asked

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Speaker 2: the question surrounded as I was by members of the

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Speaker 2: President's Science Advisory Committee panel, that I might elicit a

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Speaker 2: better answer. So I said something like, Bob, can you

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Speaker 2: describe how the missiles are launched? Now? I began to

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Speaker 2: think he was made uncomfortable by the question. He seemed

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Speaker 2: reluctant to grasp it simple meaning. And Bob gives the

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Speaker 2: explanation I gave you earlier about how well these guys

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Speaker 2: are all behind bulletproof glass, and they have guns so

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Speaker 2: they you know, one guy can't threaten the other, and

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Speaker 2: they turn their keys at the same time or close

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Speaker 2: to it, and that'll count as a vote to launch

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Speaker 2: the missile. Right the first miss and so Rebel's immediate

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Speaker 2: question is when you say the missiles are launched, do

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Speaker 2: you mean all fifty? And Bob said, well, that depends

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Speaker 2: on whether or not the missiles are ready, but yeah,

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Speaker 2: all fifty will launch. Now, this upsets everybody on the

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Speaker 2: President's Science Advisory Panel. These people are not These are

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Speaker 2: like normal people, right, These are not maniacs. These are

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Speaker 2: like science guys who were, you know, scared of nuclear holocaust? Right,

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Speaker 2: And they're like, what or guys live launch fifty missiles

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Speaker 2: with no one getting in the way. Really, and there's

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Speaker 2: no way to stop all fifty from launching once you

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Speaker 2: start the process of launching one. Are you serious? He was,

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Speaker 2: So everybody gets upset. So Bob Bob is like, now

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Speaker 2: in damage control mode, and Bob Bennett goes like, now, look,

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Speaker 2: you have to understand, this isn't as crazy as it sounds.

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Speaker 2: There are two modes that we can fire these in. Right.

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Speaker 2: One of these modes is salvo and the other is

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Speaker 2: ripple launch. Right, one of them launches all the missiles

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Speaker 2: as close as simultaneously as possible, and the other staggers them. Right,

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Speaker 2: does that make it better? There's two modes Margaret, there's

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Speaker 2: two modes. It's fine.

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Speaker 3: The hose has shower and jet. Yeah, not a hose.

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Speaker 2: You just know, Bob has not sat down with anyone

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Speaker 2: who is not constantly spending every second of their life

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Speaker 2: like touching themselves to the thought of ending humanity, right,

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Speaker 2: and he's just like, wait, people don't they don't know

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Speaker 2: there's two modes that'll fix it. I'll tell them about

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Speaker 2: the modes, right.

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Speaker 4: See.

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Speaker 3: I think they and its consequences have been a disaster

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Speaker 3: for the years.

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Speaker 2: It's a fucking catastrophe. Yeah, once people start thinking about

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Speaker 2: game again, that needs to be a bricking. If you

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Speaker 2: ever encounter somebody who starts talking game theory shit, just

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Speaker 2: brick them, you know, give them a good heart.

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Speaker 3: Theory says you have to brick them. That's the you

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Speaker 3: have to brick them.

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Speaker 2: It's the only way to stop these people. Yeah, all right,

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Speaker 2: Rubel continues quote. It turned out in pursuing the matter

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Speaker 2: further that if you had preset the system for a

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Speaker 2: ripple launch, there was no way to interrupt it. After

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Speaker 2: the launch command was transmitted to the silos. If the

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Speaker 2: first missile went then six seconds later, let us say

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Speaker 2: the second and after another six seconds the third, and

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Speaker 2: if after the twentieth missile you decide that was really

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Speaker 2: enough missiles, you couldn't stop the system from launching the

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Speaker 2: remaining thirty. According to what Bennett told us at the time,

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Speaker 2: Rubelle describes the committee as pretty shook by this revelation.

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Speaker 2: I don't think anybody had ever realized before that there

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Speaker 2: would be four men buried in the ground somewhere in

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Speaker 2: North Dakota who might someday stick their keys into four

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Speaker 2: little slots, turn them, and irrevocably launch fifty minutemen missiles.

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Speaker 3: Yeah that's life on Earth.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's insane. The next question this inspired was under

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Speaker 2: what circumstances would these men get the order to turn

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Speaker 2: their keys? Everyone outside the Air Force assumed they'd have

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Speaker 2: to be a verified command from the President or a

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Speaker 2: designated military authority, but that wasn't physically required, and as

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Speaker 2: Rubel notes, the whole system was designed to remove choices

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Speaker 2: from civilian leadership. Quote. By design, the president could not

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Speaker 2: decide to launch one missile or two or a few

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Speaker 2: against specific targets. This was intentional. The Air Force built

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Speaker 2: it this way to remove choice from the president. So

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Speaker 2: the president, if he was asked to make that decision

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Speaker 2: in ten or fifteen minutes do we start a nuclear war?

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Speaker 2: So he would not have any option but to do it.

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Speaker 2: That's why they built it this way. That was conscious,

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Speaker 2: that was intentional.

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Speaker 3: Fuck.

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Speaker 2: So now I should note here, and this is something

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Speaker 2: Rebel points out, fifty of these Minuteman missiles, with the

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Speaker 2: standard explosive loads they had, would have meant more explosive

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Speaker 2: power than all of the bombs used in all of

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Speaker 2: the wars in human history put together up to that point.

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Speaker 2: Four guys could do this, and again, the whole minute

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Speaker 2: Man system was meant to eventually have at least a

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Speaker 2: thousand missiles general power. In fact, advocated for two hundred

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Speaker 2: squadrons a total of ten thousand missiles, all set up

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Speaker 2: the same way.

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Speaker 3: Every state gets four, every state gets four.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. So Rubel was so frightened by all of this

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Speaker 2: that he dedicated his career to stopping the system as

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Speaker 2: it existed from being implemented. He sat down first with

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Speaker 2: General Curtis LeMay, than the Air Force Chief of Staff.

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Speaker 2: Rubelle expressed to LeMay that he believed the minute Man

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Speaker 2: system represented a crucial loss of civilian command and control.

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Speaker 2: Here's LeMay's response, command and control. Command and control, what's that?

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Speaker 2: It's telling the fighting man what to do. That's what

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Speaker 2: it is, and that's a job with a professional soldier.

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Speaker 2: They talk about the president, exercise and command and control?

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Speaker 2: What is the president? Rebel notes that le may spit

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Speaker 2: out the p and president a politician. What does the

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Speaker 2: politician know about war? Who needs a president? If there's

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Speaker 2: a war? Nobody. All we need him for is to

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Speaker 2: tell us that there is a war. We are professional soldiers,

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Speaker 2: will take care of the rest. Just out of his mind.

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Speaker 3: Hell yeah, I'm impressed that you got This is like

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Speaker 3: almost the worst bat. This is Schrodinger's worst bastard in

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Speaker 3: all right.

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Speaker 2: Right, yeah, absolutely, yeah, Like this man's dedication to ending

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Speaker 2: all life on earth is really unique in history. I mean,

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Speaker 2: I assume he had a Soviet counterpart, but like, I'm

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Speaker 2: not as familiar with them.

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Speaker 3: Do you think that they get like lonely, the American

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Speaker 3: one and the Russian one, and they have only each

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Speaker 3: other to talk to when they talk about their doomsday machine,

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Speaker 3: that they're the only people who really understand.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, man, they won't give me ten thousand missiles, bro,

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Speaker 2: I know, it's so hard to get enough missiles to

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Speaker 2: kill the whole world a thousand times over. Like, don't worry,

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Speaker 2: we got a bunch too, though, homie, Like, it'll be fine.

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Speaker 2: The no one's gonna live through this.

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Speaker 3: We'll do our part too, all right, as long as

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Speaker 3: you do your part.

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Speaker 2: Mm hmm. So it's here that Rubell points out every

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Speaker 2: detail of the minute Man system discussed so far was

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Speaker 2: designed per the specifications of the Air Force. This was

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Speaker 2: true right down to the mechanics of how turning the

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Speaker 2: keys led to firing the missiles, which is the scariest

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Speaker 2: part of the whole system. To make a complicated story

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Speaker 2: kind of simpler, the keys send out these electronic pulse

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Speaker 2: generators which travel to electronic gates, and once the get

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Speaker 2: the signal pat the pulse passes through the gate, it

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Speaker 2: advances one notch for each pulse that passes through the gate, right,

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Speaker 2: and if enough pulses pass through the gates, it starts

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Speaker 2: launching the missiles automatically.

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Speaker 3: Right. Oh my god, so I start You can hack

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Speaker 3: one position and get all four sorry, yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it doesn't even have to be that. Because

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Speaker 2: I explained this to a friend of mine who has

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Speaker 2: never read a book about nukes, but who has done amateur,

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Speaker 2: unlicensed electrician work. And she immediately asked, hey, wait, does

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Speaker 2: that mean that, like, if the power goes out and

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Speaker 2: then comes back on, it might send a pulse and

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Speaker 2: advance one notch closer to firing the missiles. Wow, God,

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Speaker 2: you wouldn't think so, right. Clearly, anyone putting the effort

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Speaker 2: of putting missiles and hardened bunkers meant to a stand

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Speaker 2: an atom bomb would have made sure that something as

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Speaker 2: simple as a power outage in rural North Dakota in

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Speaker 2: the sixties wouldn't trigger an atomic holocaust. Only they did not.

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Speaker 2: They never considered it for a second.

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Speaker 3: My god, this.

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Speaker 2: Thing could have started launching fifty missiles if there was

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Speaker 2: a power outage or a couple of power outages. Because

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Speaker 2: once Rubel starts taking this to other engineers, they bring

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Speaker 2: this up and they start looking into how the system

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Speaker 2: design realized that's totally possible, Like it absolutely could have

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Speaker 2: happened if they had built the system the way it

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Speaker 2: was originally designed. And no one in the Air Force

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Speaker 2: even fought to look into that, Like that's how reckless

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Speaker 2: these pieces of shit are. Now the reason why the

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Speaker 2: Air Force doesn't care about this sort of thing is

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Speaker 2: that they are more concerned that just two guys can

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Speaker 2: launch a whole squadron of ICBMs if everyone else in

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Speaker 2: the country is killed first. So they built an automated

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Speaker 2: clock system. The other thing they added to this is

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Speaker 2: they have this automatic clock system that counts down from

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Speaker 2: between six hours. You can set it to like one

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Speaker 2: hour or six hours. You can set it to a

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Speaker 2: variety of times, but depending on how you set it,

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Speaker 2: if one command center votes to launch the missiles after

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Speaker 2: a limit, after whatever time you set it to, this

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Speaker 2: automated system will act as the second vote to fire

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Speaker 2: the remaining forty missiles, and Jesus right, yeah, Now, when

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Speaker 2: this is.

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Speaker 3: Explained, this is worse than I expected.

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Speaker 2: It's so bad, so fucked.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so bad, like it's the Taurus firearms of

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Speaker 3: nuclear missiles. It's nuts, like to not.

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Speaker 2: Even no, not even Celtech. Yeah, they built a nuclear

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Speaker 2: cig P three twenty to go off in a cops box.

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Speaker 2: Oh man. So when all this was explained to Rubel,

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Speaker 2: the Air Force guy who's telling him this says that, like, well,

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Speaker 2: the minimum setting is fifty eight minutes, right, and we

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Speaker 2: want to have at least that much time to allow

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Speaker 2: the military to disable the system. If two men vote

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Speaker 2: to launch without warning and we decide we don't want

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Speaker 2: to launch the rest of the squadron, right, that seems

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Speaker 2: like maybe it's a safety feature. Right now, many of

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Speaker 2: these silos are hours away from anything else. That's kind

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Speaker 2: of the point. Even to this day. You can't reach

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Speaker 2: a lot of these in fifty eight minutes, you know.

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Speaker 2: But the other problem is that the Air Force colonel

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Speaker 2: who described the way this clock system worked to Rubel

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Speaker 2: lied to him. The minimum count you could set it

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Speaker 2: to wasn't fifty eight minutes. It was zero minutes.

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Speaker 3: So you really genuinely could just automate all the minute men.

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Speaker 2: Yeah we damn near? Did we damn near? Did? Here's

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Speaker 2: rebel again. Zero could mean that only two men or

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Speaker 2: perhaps none at all, could set off the unstoppable firing

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Speaker 2: of fifty minute man missiles by accident or effectively by

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Speaker 2: designing the system this way in the event of a

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Speaker 2: series of power interruptions. So Rubel is like, oh God,

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Speaker 2: I have to do something this system. These missiles are

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Speaker 2: not active yet, these silos aren't active yet, and I

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Speaker 2: have to stop them from being made active at least

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Speaker 2: until this is fixed. Right, So he sets to work

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Speaker 2: trying to get someone at the Air Force to give

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Speaker 2: a shit about these problems. Right. He sits down with

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Speaker 2: the head of missile Development, General Shreiverer, who he described

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Speaker 2: as conspicuously disinterested in discussing the subject. Eventually, in late

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Speaker 2: nineteen sixty he manages to have lunch with the Deputy

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Speaker 2: Secretary of Defense, and while they're arguing about this system,

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Speaker 2: he's like, look, man, tell me, would you feel safe

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Speaker 2: knowing the Soviets had a system that worked the way

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Speaker 2: the minute man does? And yeah, he thought I had

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Speaker 2: a point there, but my concerns again dropped into another

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Speaker 2: organizational black hole. Everyone's just trying to push this guy on.

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Speaker 2: I don't want to deal with it. I don't want

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Speaker 2: to think about it. Why are you trying? Why are

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Speaker 2: you causing problems? Just let us build this thing and

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Speaker 2: forget about it. Man, No one else has a problem

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Speaker 2: with this. That's literally how he's being treated.

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Speaker 3: It's like, so it's not even the torment Nexus. It's

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Speaker 3: like one guy's trying to stop the torment Nexus from

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Speaker 3: being built by a bunch of people who also don't

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Speaker 3: think that the Torment Nexus needs to be. They're just

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Speaker 3: doing their part.

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Speaker 2: Torment said, come on, man, don't fuck with us. A

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Speaker 2: lot of people's jobs are on the line building the

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Speaker 2: Torment Nexus. Yeah, come on. So, as I noted Rubel,

285
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Speaker 2: because he's good at his job, he gets promoted regularly, right,

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Speaker 2: and in sixty one I think sixty sixty one, he

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Speaker 2: passes his job at the Strategic Warfare Office I think

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Speaker 2: it's sixty onto a guy named Martin Stern. He tells

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Speaker 2: Stern that his top priority is to change the Minuteman

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Speaker 2: launch control system and warns him, you will not get

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Speaker 2: this done unless you get a presidential directive ordering the

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Speaker 2: Air Force to do something. And Marvin has a good

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Speaker 2: relationship with some of these generals, and so he starts

294
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Speaker 2: at being like, that's not how you get things done

295
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Speaker 2: in the Air Force, right, you just gotta let me

296
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Speaker 2: talk to these guys. But then he starts talking to

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Speaker 2: these guys and all of these generals lie to him,

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Speaker 2: and he realizes like, oh fuck, no, they really are

299
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Speaker 2: refusing to fix these problems, these apocalyptic problems, and they're

300
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Speaker 2: trying to fast track these missiles to being activated. To

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Speaker 2: make a long story short, Rubel and several of his

302
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Speaker 2: friends spend the next two years of their lives shouting

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Speaker 2: at everyone who will listen about this. This culminates and

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Speaker 2: another guy at the DoD named Jim Fletcher heading a

305
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Speaker 2: committee that issues a report on the minute Man system.

306
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Speaker 2: Their research found that a very real chance that simple

307
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Speaker 2: power outages could cause large portions of our nuclear arsenal

308
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Speaker 2: to fire. The ultimate bill and this is it's because

309
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Speaker 2: of this commission report that we retrofit the whole minute

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Speaker 2: Man system. Right, And the ultimate bill for retrofitting the

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Speaker 2: system is hundreds of millions of dollars. Right. It's very

312
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Speaker 2: expensive to fix these problems, which is why the Air

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Speaker 2: Force hadn't wanted to fix them. But Rubel does win.

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Speaker 2: The most dangerous features for the economy, Yeah yeah, yeah,

315
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Speaker 2: real bad fucking. The stock market does not do well

316
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Speaker 2: when everyone's dead. Nope, Nope, doesn't do much at all.

317
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Speaker 2: Now Rubel does win. The most dangerous features are removed

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Speaker 2: by the time the first minute Man silo goes active

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Speaker 2: at the end of nineteen sixty one. But a big

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Speaker 2: part of why I noted all of this stuff. None

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Speaker 2: of this comes out until two thousand and eight, when Rubel,

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Speaker 2: at the end of his life, publishes a confession talking

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Speaker 2: about all this right as a way to try to

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Speaker 2: warn people. Essentially, he's warning people, nothing's really all that

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Speaker 2: much better today, right, Like, that's why he writes this,

326
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Speaker 2: to try to get people to understand how much danger

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Speaker 2: we're all in. And a big part of the point

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Speaker 2: of that confession is he's talking about all of the

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Speaker 2: gaps in the system of civilian control of the military

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Speaker 2: that allowed all of this to happen in the first place,

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Speaker 2: because those gaps weren't entirely eradicated by fixing this one system.

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Speaker 2: He documented a conversation one of his allies had with

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Speaker 2: another Air Force general around the same time. Quote General

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Speaker 2: Cutter told me that we had to complete the BMEWS

335
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Speaker 2: Ballistic Missile Early Warning System as soon as possible, and

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Speaker 2: he urged that we expanded in order to create a

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Speaker 2: highly redundant capability at each site. We must have an

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Speaker 2: absolutely reliable early warning of a missile attack. Basically, I agreed,

339
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Speaker 2: all would have been well if he had stopped there,

340
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Speaker 2: but he didn't. In words I can't precisely recall, he

341
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Speaker 2: went on to say that we had to have this

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Speaker 2: redundancy in the resulting high level of right reliability, so

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Speaker 2: that when we finally connected the warning system directly to

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Speaker 2: the launch button of our own ICBMs, there would be

345
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Speaker 2: no false alarms. I was astonished. I told him flatly,

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Speaker 2: we would not automate our response at We would not

347
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Speaker 2: connect the warning system directly to the launch button. We

348
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Speaker 2: would not, in some go to a launch on warning strategy.

349
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Speaker 2: We would especially not go to one that did not

350
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Speaker 2: have the president in the decision making. Loop Cutter coldly replied,

351
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Speaker 2: in that case, we might as well surrender now.

352
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Speaker 3: I love it. It's like no one who's ever done plumbing

353
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Speaker 3: or hacking. No, yeah, air gap, you need a fucking

354
00:18:08,760 --> 00:18:10,920
Speaker 3: air gap, needs for so many gaps.

355
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Speaker 2: Never trust a computer, don't trust people, and don't trust computers.

356
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Speaker 3: Every hacker is like, this is my computer that matters,

357
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Speaker 3: So it doesn't have the Internet right like it.

358
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Speaker 2: It's just it's fucking insane, like the whole Well, we

359
00:18:26,680 --> 00:18:28,399
Speaker 2: might as well surrender now. If we're not just going

360
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Speaker 2: to have an automatic doomsday device that goes off, if

361
00:18:30,720 --> 00:18:33,640
Speaker 2: a radar has an hallucination, why don't we just quit?

362
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Speaker 2: Fuck it? What's the communists like? It's fucking crazy? And

363
00:18:38,520 --> 00:18:41,600
Speaker 2: I should note that this happens later, but the Soviet

364
00:18:41,640 --> 00:18:45,760
Speaker 2: Union does devise a similar automated system called the dead Hand,

365
00:18:46,160 --> 00:18:49,840
Speaker 2: and some aspect it's kind of unclear exactly how put

366
00:18:49,880 --> 00:18:51,800
Speaker 2: together this is, but they do a version of the

367
00:18:51,880 --> 00:18:56,960
Speaker 2: same thing, right this right it is a really cool name,

368
00:18:57,400 --> 00:18:59,119
Speaker 2: but it's basically a way to guarantee that if the

369
00:18:59,280 --> 00:19:02,439
Speaker 2: US wiped out out their command and control first, that

370
00:19:02,680 --> 00:19:07,000
Speaker 2: there would be an automatic launch system in order to retaliate. Right,

371
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Speaker 2: It's kind of unclear exactly what got actually built, but

372
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Speaker 2: they this is these same conversions of all of these

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Speaker 2: same conversations happened in the USSR.

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Speaker 3: Right two, because they, if nothing else, they need the

375
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Speaker 3: Americans to believe they do that right right exactly, and

376
00:19:20,640 --> 00:19:23,280
Speaker 3: like everyone is worried about what the other guy is

377
00:19:23,320 --> 00:19:24,639
Speaker 3: doing and everybody's out.

378
00:19:24,520 --> 00:19:25,479
Speaker 2: Of their fucking minds.

379
00:19:26,400 --> 00:19:26,720
Speaker 3: Yeah.

380
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Speaker 2: Now the good news is, Margaret, it's time for ads.

381
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Speaker 3: Oh good, it is a nice thing that makes the

382
00:19:33,680 --> 00:19:35,480
Speaker 3: ads seem like a nice refreshment.

383
00:19:35,720 --> 00:19:38,960
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, probably not going to get ads for nukes.

384
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Speaker 4: Huzzah.

385
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Speaker 2: And we're back. So the good news is this, This

386
00:19:52,119 --> 00:19:54,879
Speaker 2: is not the only kind of thinking exhibited by modern

387
00:19:54,920 --> 00:19:59,959
Speaker 2: military advisors and officers today. But general Cutters type of

388
00:20:00,080 --> 00:20:02,359
Speaker 2: thinking is not extinct at the Pentagon, and it is

389
00:20:02,400 --> 00:20:04,600
Speaker 2: still very common. I don't know if i'd say it's

390
00:20:04,600 --> 00:20:07,200
Speaker 2: completely dominant, but there are a lot of guys who

391
00:20:07,280 --> 00:20:11,160
Speaker 2: think this way who are still part of our nuclear

392
00:20:11,200 --> 00:20:12,760
Speaker 2: defense architecture, right.

393
00:20:13,200 --> 00:20:13,280
Speaker 1: This.

394
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Speaker 2: In fact, getting that job kind of requires that you're

395
00:20:16,680 --> 00:20:18,840
Speaker 2: at least a little bit like these people.

396
00:20:19,000 --> 00:20:19,200
Speaker 4: Right.

397
00:20:19,480 --> 00:20:22,879
Speaker 2: It fairly uncommon for people who don't somewhat agree with

398
00:20:22,960 --> 00:20:25,879
Speaker 2: some of this to wind up in those positions. Rubell

399
00:20:25,960 --> 00:20:29,600
Speaker 2: points out that there was no technical auditing practice standardized

400
00:20:29,640 --> 00:20:32,120
Speaker 2: for examining the technical status of launch controls for any

401
00:20:32,119 --> 00:20:35,680
Speaker 2: of our nuclear weapons systems, and there is none today, right,

402
00:20:36,160 --> 00:20:39,800
Speaker 2: And that's a real problem. There's no one checking other

403
00:20:39,840 --> 00:20:42,040
Speaker 2: than guys like Rubel to make sure we don't build

404
00:20:42,080 --> 00:20:47,320
Speaker 2: another really flawed, suicidally flawed missile system, which the Minuteman

405
00:20:47,440 --> 00:20:51,119
Speaker 2: initially was. Now, while Rubel was fighting to reform the

406
00:20:51,119 --> 00:20:53,520
Speaker 2: minute Man system, he was part of the problem in

407
00:20:53,600 --> 00:20:55,680
Speaker 2: a different way. Right. We've just talked about him. Maybe

408
00:20:55,720 --> 00:20:58,199
Speaker 2: he saved everybody's lives. Here's him being kind of a

409
00:20:58,240 --> 00:21:02,360
Speaker 2: bastard and late night. Yeah, in late nineteen sixty, which

410
00:21:02,400 --> 00:21:04,200
Speaker 2: is right in the middle of when he's having this fight.

411
00:21:04,480 --> 00:21:08,200
Speaker 2: President Eisenhower issued an order for all three military departments

412
00:21:08,200 --> 00:21:12,160
Speaker 2: to formulate a single operational plan or PSYOP for nuclear

413
00:21:12,200 --> 00:21:15,119
Speaker 2: war like SIOP, not like a psyop, but it is

414
00:21:15,320 --> 00:21:17,600
Speaker 2: pronounced the same way, right, and this will this will

415
00:21:17,640 --> 00:21:19,879
Speaker 2: get finalized in sixty two. But they start working on it,

416
00:21:19,880 --> 00:21:22,560
Speaker 2: and they presented initially in nineteen sixty. So in late

417
00:21:22,640 --> 00:21:25,520
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty the DoD the Department of Defense, shares a

418
00:21:25,560 --> 00:21:28,600
Speaker 2: cohesive plan for nuclear war to a mix of military

419
00:21:28,600 --> 00:21:32,040
Speaker 2: personnel and selected civilian defense officials for the first time.

420
00:21:32,560 --> 00:21:36,560
Speaker 2: The Single Integrated Operational Plan or PSYOP sixty two was,

421
00:21:36,640 --> 00:21:40,560
Speaker 2: in Rubel's words, deliberately designed to inflict hundreds of millions

422
00:21:40,600 --> 00:21:43,840
Speaker 2: of deaths and uncounted casualties, mostly on in innocent civilians

423
00:21:43,840 --> 00:21:47,520
Speaker 2: in the USSR in China. This plan was presented at

424
00:21:47,560 --> 00:21:51,520
Speaker 2: an underground meeting at the SAC headquarters near Omaha, Nebraska.

425
00:21:51,840 --> 00:21:55,520
Speaker 2: General Power Stage managed a deliberately theatrical display in which,

426
00:21:55,520 --> 00:21:59,000
Speaker 2: at his command, AIDS would simultaneously set up easels and

427
00:21:59,040 --> 00:22:01,560
Speaker 2: start flipping maps over that like each new map would

428
00:22:01,560 --> 00:22:05,199
Speaker 2: show different detonations from different waves of planned strikes, you know,

429
00:22:05,560 --> 00:22:08,080
Speaker 2: five minutes, in ten minutes, twenty minutes. Right, this is

430
00:22:08,119 --> 00:22:10,800
Speaker 2: like it's an analog PowerPoint, right, he has like guys

431
00:22:10,840 --> 00:22:15,680
Speaker 2: being his PowerPoint presentation basically, Yeah, and I'm going to

432
00:22:15,760 --> 00:22:18,120
Speaker 2: quote from Rubel, because Reubella is at this meeting, right,

433
00:22:18,200 --> 00:22:20,879
Speaker 2: I'm going to quote from his description of what he

434
00:22:20,960 --> 00:22:23,359
Speaker 2: sees here. At the point in the briefing where some

435
00:22:23,400 --> 00:22:26,399
Speaker 2: bombers were described flying northeast from the Mediterranean on their

436
00:22:26,440 --> 00:22:29,320
Speaker 2: way to Moscow, General Power waved at the speaker, saying

437
00:22:29,480 --> 00:22:31,439
Speaker 2: just a minute, just a minute. He turned in his

438
00:22:31,480 --> 00:22:34,040
Speaker 2: front row chair to stare into the obscurity of uniforms

439
00:22:34,080 --> 00:22:36,480
Speaker 2: and dusk stretching behind me, and said, I just hope

440
00:22:36,480 --> 00:22:38,840
Speaker 2: none of you have any relatives in Albania, because they

441
00:22:38,840 --> 00:22:40,760
Speaker 2: have a radar station there that is right on our

442
00:22:40,800 --> 00:22:43,439
Speaker 2: flight path, and we take it out with that, to

443
00:22:43,480 --> 00:22:46,240
Speaker 2: which the response was utter silence. Power turned to the

444
00:22:46,320 --> 00:22:48,280
Speaker 2: speaker and with another wave of his hand told him

445
00:22:48,320 --> 00:22:51,560
Speaker 2: to go ahead. Just Cashry was like, by the way,

446
00:22:51,560 --> 00:22:54,119
Speaker 2: we're killing everyone in Albania immediately.

447
00:22:54,200 --> 00:22:56,480
Speaker 3: Yeah, famously our enemy Uh huh.

448
00:22:56,840 --> 00:22:59,960
Speaker 2: Hope you don't got family there, because again we knew

449
00:23:00,000 --> 00:23:02,120
Speaker 2: pok them right away. Because of a radar station. We're

450
00:23:02,119 --> 00:23:03,720
Speaker 2: just going to kill everyone in the country. Because of

451
00:23:03,720 --> 00:23:06,680
Speaker 2: a radar station, everyone in the country. We're wiping the

452
00:23:06,720 --> 00:23:07,480
Speaker 2: whole country out.

453
00:23:08,080 --> 00:23:09,320
Speaker 3: Yeah.

454
00:23:09,359 --> 00:23:13,440
Speaker 2: So, Rubel, I think we've established is a thinking man

455
00:23:13,680 --> 00:23:16,159
Speaker 2: and a man who cares about ethics. He's not a monster.

456
00:23:16,600 --> 00:23:18,560
Speaker 2: He's a part of this terrible system, but he has

457
00:23:18,600 --> 00:23:22,200
Speaker 2: a soul and he's upset. He's upset at this general

458
00:23:22,240 --> 00:23:25,159
Speaker 2: casual being, like, so we start by killing albaniact just

459
00:23:25,200 --> 00:23:29,360
Speaker 2: for shit, right, He's upset, but he doesn't say shit right.

460
00:23:29,400 --> 00:23:31,960
Speaker 2: He writes about this decades later. He writes about his

461
00:23:32,000 --> 00:23:35,200
Speaker 2: discomfort in this meeting, and that specifically, he writes about

462
00:23:35,200 --> 00:23:37,719
Speaker 2: his discomfort at the fact that SIAP sixty two quote

463
00:23:37,880 --> 00:23:41,760
Speaker 2: deliberately removed effective operational control from the president or any

464
00:23:41,880 --> 00:23:44,639
Speaker 2: other civilian or even military commander in the event of

465
00:23:44,640 --> 00:23:48,520
Speaker 2: a nuclear conflict. Now, none of this is public knowledge

466
00:23:48,560 --> 00:23:52,400
Speaker 2: for decades, right, it takes a long time. We only

467
00:23:52,440 --> 00:23:54,000
Speaker 2: know what we know because in two thousand and eight,

468
00:23:54,359 --> 00:23:56,960
Speaker 2: Rubell published his experiences as a warning to the rest

469
00:23:56,960 --> 00:23:59,439
Speaker 2: of the country, and he noted that during this meeting,

470
00:23:59,640 --> 00:24:02,200
Speaker 2: General Power and the other authors of si UP sixty

471
00:24:02,240 --> 00:24:06,199
Speaker 2: two gave an anticipated death count of five hundred to

472
00:24:06,240 --> 00:24:09,480
Speaker 2: six hundred million deaths from fallout alone in the USSR

473
00:24:09,520 --> 00:24:10,000
Speaker 2: in China.

474
00:24:14,920 --> 00:24:17,440
Speaker 3: That gets into that, like, that's like a combined death

475
00:24:17,480 --> 00:24:20,400
Speaker 3: count of every war that's ever happened. Levels ye problem, yeah.

476
00:24:20,400 --> 00:24:25,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, like right, it's got to be up there, right. Quote.

477
00:24:25,600 --> 00:24:28,359
Speaker 2: No accounting was presented of reciprocal effects in the United

478
00:24:28,400 --> 00:24:31,040
Speaker 2: States or collateral deaths and damage in many other parts

479
00:24:31,040 --> 00:24:33,520
Speaker 2: of the globe where global clouds of radioactive dust would

480
00:24:33,560 --> 00:24:36,159
Speaker 2: eventually descend. They just don't bother with that. We're not

481
00:24:36,200 --> 00:24:38,440
Speaker 2: interested in what the fallout might do. We're not interested

482
00:24:38,440 --> 00:24:41,399
Speaker 2: in the knock on effects. We're just interested in killing

483
00:24:41,560 --> 00:24:43,480
Speaker 2: half of all of the people or more in the

484
00:24:43,560 --> 00:24:47,480
Speaker 2: USSR in China, right yeah. And the way in which

485
00:24:47,560 --> 00:24:50,399
Speaker 2: Power and the other briefers talk about civilian death on

486
00:24:50,480 --> 00:24:55,080
Speaker 2: an unimaginable scale struck Rubel as ghoulish. Quote. There are

487
00:24:55,080 --> 00:24:58,199
Speaker 2: about six hundred million Chinese in China. He said, his

488
00:24:58,320 --> 00:25:00,639
Speaker 2: chart went up to half that number, three hundred million.

489
00:25:00,640 --> 00:25:03,199
Speaker 2: On the vertical axis. It showed that debts from fallout

490
00:25:03,200 --> 00:25:05,199
Speaker 2: as time passed after the attack leveled out at that

491
00:25:05,320 --> 00:25:09,240
Speaker 2: number three hundred million. Half the population of China.

492
00:25:10,840 --> 00:25:13,080
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, they don't care.

493
00:25:13,400 --> 00:25:18,679
Speaker 2: They don't give a shit. Yeah, now I say they

494
00:25:18,680 --> 00:25:20,679
Speaker 2: don't give a shit. Someone in this meeting does give

495
00:25:20,720 --> 00:25:24,880
Speaker 2: a shit, right, And I'm gonna continue with Rubel's reminiscence.

496
00:25:25,480 --> 00:25:28,240
Speaker 2: A voice out of the gloom from somewhere behind me interrupted, saying,

497
00:25:28,359 --> 00:25:31,000
Speaker 2: may I ask a question. General Power turned again in

498
00:25:31,040 --> 00:25:34,000
Speaker 2: his front row seat, stared into the darkness, and said, yeah,

499
00:25:34,000 --> 00:25:36,160
Speaker 2: what is it? In a tone not likely to encourage

500
00:25:36,200 --> 00:25:39,760
Speaker 2: the timid What if this isn't China's war? The voice asked,

501
00:25:39,920 --> 00:25:41,879
Speaker 2: what if this is just a war with the Soviets?

502
00:25:42,119 --> 00:25:46,399
Speaker 2: Can you change the plan? Well? Yeah, General Power said resignedly,

503
00:25:46,640 --> 00:25:48,880
Speaker 2: we can, but I hope nobody thinks of it because

504
00:25:48,920 --> 00:25:55,000
Speaker 2: it would really screw up the plan. Hey, what if

505
00:25:55,000 --> 00:25:57,080
Speaker 2: we don't need to kill three hundred million people in China?

506
00:25:57,200 --> 00:25:58,800
Speaker 2: Can we like nix that part?

507
00:25:59,040 --> 00:25:59,159
Speaker 4: Well?

508
00:25:59,160 --> 00:26:01,560
Speaker 2: I hope not. That fucks up my plan. We're not

509
00:26:01,600 --> 00:26:03,720
Speaker 2: killing three hundred million people in China. That really fucks

510
00:26:03,760 --> 00:26:04,359
Speaker 2: things up for me.

511
00:26:05,080 --> 00:26:06,920
Speaker 3: We already had the banner printed, you know.

512
00:26:07,520 --> 00:26:09,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've got the banner printed in everything. We had

513
00:26:09,840 --> 00:26:12,640
Speaker 2: a mission accomplished board here. Come on, Yeah, you don't

514
00:26:12,640 --> 00:26:14,600
Speaker 2: want to kill three hundred million people in China. What's

515
00:26:14,640 --> 00:26:15,080
Speaker 2: wrong with you?

516
00:26:15,920 --> 00:26:18,640
Speaker 3: Yeah? But what was that? Bonus effects?

517
00:26:18,720 --> 00:26:22,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, bonus effects. Now it says something about Rubel

518
00:26:22,560 --> 00:26:25,200
Speaker 2: that it was not until this moment that he found

519
00:26:25,240 --> 00:26:28,560
Speaker 2: himself thinking about the Vonse Conference in January of nineteen

520
00:26:28,600 --> 00:26:31,119
Speaker 2: forty two, in which a group of top Nazis planned

521
00:26:31,160 --> 00:26:33,480
Speaker 2: the Holocaust. For some reason, this is one of the

522
00:26:33,520 --> 00:26:35,959
Speaker 2: most frightening moments of the Cold War to me, A

523
00:26:36,000 --> 00:26:38,880
Speaker 2: man who truly cared about protecting his country and stopping

524
00:26:38,920 --> 00:26:42,000
Speaker 2: a dangerous system from going live finds himself stuck in

525
00:26:42,040 --> 00:26:45,000
Speaker 2: a room where something many times worse than the Holocaust

526
00:26:45,040 --> 00:26:48,560
Speaker 2: is being casually planned, and he realizes, oh fuck, oh shit,

527
00:26:48,880 --> 00:26:51,240
Speaker 2: I'm like some junior SS guys sitting in the back

528
00:26:51,280 --> 00:26:53,639
Speaker 2: of the Vonse conference too scared to speak up and

529
00:26:53,680 --> 00:26:57,880
Speaker 2: ruin micro fuck fuck, I'm a not fuck like. That's

530
00:26:57,920 --> 00:27:00,639
Speaker 2: literally how he describes his recollection is like, this is

531
00:27:00,680 --> 00:27:02,720
Speaker 2: the fuck. This is so much worse than the they're

532
00:27:02,720 --> 00:27:09,080
Speaker 2: talking about skilling six hundred million people. He doesn't say shit,

533
00:27:09,640 --> 00:27:12,640
Speaker 2: he does not. He is not that kind of brave, right,

534
00:27:13,760 --> 00:27:15,840
Speaker 2: He is a work within them that's.

535
00:27:15,720 --> 00:27:18,920
Speaker 3: Like a telling human conditioned thing right, because we all

536
00:27:18,960 --> 00:27:21,720
Speaker 3: imagine ourselves saying something right now.

537
00:27:22,600 --> 00:27:25,760
Speaker 2: You want to hope you would. And I get the

538
00:27:25,800 --> 00:27:29,280
Speaker 2: feeling from his writing that Rubelle never quite forgave himself

539
00:27:29,320 --> 00:27:30,560
Speaker 2: for not right.

540
00:27:31,000 --> 00:27:31,280
Speaker 3: Good.

541
00:27:31,480 --> 00:27:34,399
Speaker 2: He shouldn't have, Yeah, he shouldn't have. This should haunt

542
00:27:34,440 --> 00:27:36,080
Speaker 2: you to the end of your days.

543
00:27:36,359 --> 00:27:38,960
Speaker 3: But he's still the most deeply human person in that room.

544
00:27:39,840 --> 00:27:41,960
Speaker 2: I'll say the second most, because we're about to talk

545
00:27:41,960 --> 00:27:44,480
Speaker 2: about someone who does speak up. There is one guy

546
00:27:44,840 --> 00:27:49,040
Speaker 2: who has who actually has some courage here. Okay, So

547
00:27:49,160 --> 00:27:52,600
Speaker 2: the day after this first meeting at the SAC headquarters,

548
00:27:52,680 --> 00:27:55,560
Speaker 2: Rubel takes part in a smaller meeting about the meeting

549
00:27:55,600 --> 00:27:58,000
Speaker 2: they just had. Right, even the military, you can't escape

550
00:27:58,040 --> 00:28:02,840
Speaker 2: meetings about meetings, you know, like that's that's that's just bureaucracy, baby.

551
00:28:03,280 --> 00:28:06,359
Speaker 2: So this smaller meeting includes the Secretary of Defense, all

552
00:28:06,400 --> 00:28:08,440
Speaker 2: of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the secretaries of

553
00:28:08,480 --> 00:28:11,560
Speaker 2: each major branch of the military, plus the Commandant of

554
00:28:11,560 --> 00:28:14,760
Speaker 2: the Marine Corps, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Speaking

555
00:28:14,800 --> 00:28:17,760
Speaker 2: on the harrowing meeting they just had, quote told everyone

556
00:28:17,800 --> 00:28:21,959
Speaker 2: that they'd done a very fine job, a very difficult job, right, So,

557
00:28:22,359 --> 00:28:25,080
Speaker 2: and that sentiment is echoed by everyone. Everyone just goes

558
00:28:25,080 --> 00:28:27,160
Speaker 2: around congratulating each other at the start of this meeting

559
00:28:27,200 --> 00:28:29,040
Speaker 2: being it was a great meeting. It was really tough,

560
00:28:29,200 --> 00:28:31,199
Speaker 2: but you guys really pulled together and came up with

561
00:28:31,200 --> 00:28:33,280
Speaker 2: a plant two six hundred million people, and I'm proud

562
00:28:33,280 --> 00:28:35,199
Speaker 2: of you. You know, it's not easy to figure out

563
00:28:35,240 --> 00:28:37,239
Speaker 2: how to kill half a billion people or more, but

564
00:28:37,280 --> 00:28:41,720
Speaker 2: you guys really got a job. Yeah. Yeah, So everyone

565
00:28:41,760 --> 00:28:45,720
Speaker 2: in the room echoes this congratulatory sentiment except for one guy,

566
00:28:46,400 --> 00:28:50,200
Speaker 2: General David M. Shoop, commandant of the Marine Corps. And

567
00:28:51,120 --> 00:28:53,719
Speaker 2: you know, the Marines. The Marines are an interesting branch

568
00:28:53,840 --> 00:28:57,680
Speaker 2: because both the chuttiest maniacs and the military and the

569
00:28:57,800 --> 00:29:01,760
Speaker 2: absolute like coolest, like best soldiers in American history, like

570
00:29:01,800 --> 00:29:05,680
Speaker 2: Smedley Butler were Marines, right, Yeah, they have a history

571
00:29:05,720 --> 00:29:10,680
Speaker 2: of producing occasionally these like really weirdly like woke generals

572
00:29:10,680 --> 00:29:13,640
Speaker 2: and stuff like Smedley Butler is a committed anti capitalist

573
00:29:13,720 --> 00:29:16,880
Speaker 2: and anti imperialist who gets very angry about being used

574
00:29:16,880 --> 00:29:20,200
Speaker 2: as a gangster for capitalism. And David and Shupe, who's

575
00:29:20,200 --> 00:29:22,120
Speaker 2: the commandant of the Core at this point, is cut

576
00:29:22,120 --> 00:29:25,520
Speaker 2: from the same cloth. He's the same kind of guy, and.

577
00:29:25,480 --> 00:29:28,520
Speaker 3: He probably seem like more like honor, like more like yes,

578
00:29:28,520 --> 00:29:31,000
Speaker 3: whatever you believe in, you're still like you're like, no,

579
00:29:31,040 --> 00:29:33,360
Speaker 3: I'm willing to risk my life to go do this thing.

580
00:29:33,520 --> 00:29:35,000
Speaker 2: That's why I joined the Marines.

581
00:29:35,720 --> 00:29:37,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, Like my dad was a marine. It doesn't

582
00:29:37,600 --> 00:29:40,280
Speaker 3: have entirely positive things to say about the people in

583
00:29:40,360 --> 00:29:41,080
Speaker 3: it with that, Like.

584
00:29:41,000 --> 00:29:44,160
Speaker 2: That's what I'm saying is there's they run the gamut,

585
00:29:44,360 --> 00:29:49,000
Speaker 2: you know. Yeah, but Shop is a really interesting guy

586
00:29:49,040 --> 00:29:51,160
Speaker 2: in the long history of Marine Corps commandants. He is

587
00:29:51,200 --> 00:29:54,040
Speaker 2: one of the men who earned that job title the most.

588
00:29:54,480 --> 00:29:56,880
Speaker 2: He'd been born in Indiana in nineteen oh four to

589
00:29:56,960 --> 00:30:00,120
Speaker 2: a poor family, and he was raised politically progressive and

590
00:30:00,200 --> 00:30:03,440
Speaker 2: grew into a staunch anti imperialist with a very strong

591
00:30:03,480 --> 00:30:07,920
Speaker 2: anti business outlook. He is not super sold on capitalism

592
00:30:08,080 --> 00:30:11,600
Speaker 2: and he hates imperialism. As a starving young man, he

593
00:30:11,720 --> 00:30:14,719
Speaker 2: joins the military to survive. He proves very good at

594
00:30:14,760 --> 00:30:17,240
Speaker 2: the job and is deployed twice to China during their

595
00:30:17,240 --> 00:30:19,760
Speaker 2: Civil war. He serves as a staff officer in the

596
00:30:19,760 --> 00:30:22,240
Speaker 2: Pacific during World War II until he was given a

597
00:30:22,280 --> 00:30:25,440
Speaker 2: combat command to lead the invasion of an island called Tarawa.

598
00:30:26,080 --> 00:30:29,800
Speaker 2: His forces encountered immediate and fierce resistance. His transport was

599
00:30:29,840 --> 00:30:32,400
Speaker 2: disabled before landing, and he had to wade ashore, where

600
00:30:32,400 --> 00:30:34,600
Speaker 2: he was struck by shrapnel and shot in the neck.

601
00:30:34,960 --> 00:30:37,800
Speaker 2: Despite this, he continued to organize and lead his men

602
00:30:37,880 --> 00:30:40,160
Speaker 2: from the front with a gunshot wound to the neck.

603
00:30:40,600 --> 00:30:42,800
Speaker 2: On the afternoon of the second day of the attack,

604
00:30:42,880 --> 00:30:46,960
Speaker 2: he sent a message to his divisional headquarters Combat Efficiency colon,

605
00:30:47,080 --> 00:30:52,880
Speaker 2: we are winning. Just just a badass, Like, what are these?

606
00:30:52,920 --> 00:30:56,880
Speaker 2: What of our absolute coolest battlefield commanders in the war.

607
00:30:57,440 --> 00:31:00,360
Speaker 2: Shep receives a Congressional Medal of Honor for his efforts,

608
00:31:00,440 --> 00:31:03,800
Speaker 2: right if you want to know, like, how what kind

609
00:31:03,840 --> 00:31:06,120
Speaker 2: of a badass this dude was? Like he is a

610
00:31:06,240 --> 00:31:08,240
Speaker 2: general leading from the front in such a way that

611
00:31:08,280 --> 00:31:10,800
Speaker 2: he gets a medal of Honor for his service in combat.

612
00:31:11,240 --> 00:31:14,240
Speaker 2: And he is the only man in this entire story

613
00:31:14,360 --> 00:31:16,800
Speaker 2: who gives us anything we can be truly proud of

614
00:31:16,840 --> 00:31:19,760
Speaker 2: as Americans. And I'm going to quote from Annie Jacobson's

615
00:31:19,760 --> 00:31:24,320
Speaker 2: book Nuclear War here, and this is after they're going

616
00:31:24,400 --> 00:31:26,920
Speaker 2: over the plan again to kill six hundred million people.

617
00:31:27,360 --> 00:31:29,720
Speaker 2: No one spoke up to object to the indiscriminate killing

618
00:31:29,760 --> 00:31:32,040
Speaker 2: of six hundred million people in a US government led

619
00:31:32,080 --> 00:31:35,400
Speaker 2: preemptive first strike nuclear attack. Rubel wrote, not any of

620
00:31:35,400 --> 00:31:38,880
Speaker 2: the joint chiefs, not the Secretary of Defense, not John Ruble.

621
00:31:39,200 --> 00:31:42,560
Speaker 2: Then finally, one man did, General David M. Shupe, the

622
00:31:42,600 --> 00:31:45,080
Speaker 2: commandant of the US Marine Corps, a marine awarded the

623
00:31:45,120 --> 00:31:47,160
Speaker 2: Medal of Honor for his actions in World War Two.

624
00:31:47,960 --> 00:31:50,320
Speaker 2: Shupe was a short man with rimless glasses who could

625
00:31:50,320 --> 00:31:52,520
Speaker 2: have passed for a school teacher from a rural Mid

626
00:31:52,560 --> 00:31:55,840
Speaker 2: American community. Recalled Rubel, he remembered how Shop spoke in

627
00:31:55,880 --> 00:31:57,920
Speaker 2: a calm, level voice when he offered the sole a

628
00:31:58,000 --> 00:32:01,120
Speaker 2: poising view on the plan for nuclear war. That Shop said,

629
00:32:01,440 --> 00:32:04,280
Speaker 2: all I can say is any plan that murders three

630
00:32:04,320 --> 00:32:06,680
Speaker 2: hundred million Chinese when it might not even be their

631
00:32:06,760 --> 00:32:09,400
Speaker 2: war is not a good plan. That is not the

632
00:32:09,480 --> 00:32:13,880
Speaker 2: American way. The room fell silent. Rubel wrote, Nobody moved

633
00:32:13,880 --> 00:32:18,200
Speaker 2: a muscle, nobody seconded Shoop's descent. No one else said anything.

634
00:32:18,560 --> 00:32:21,320
Speaker 2: According to Rubel, everyone just looked the other way.

635
00:32:23,080 --> 00:32:27,440
Speaker 3: Yeah fuck yeah, yeah.

636
00:32:27,520 --> 00:32:31,040
Speaker 2: At least there was one I know, at least there

637
00:32:31,080 --> 00:32:32,760
Speaker 2: was one guy being like, are you do you guys

638
00:32:32,800 --> 00:32:35,600
Speaker 2: realize how fucking evil this is? Ht you out of

639
00:32:35,640 --> 00:32:38,520
Speaker 2: your minds. You know what you're talking about killing three

640
00:32:38,600 --> 00:32:40,720
Speaker 2: million people who might not have fun, fuck all to us.

641
00:32:40,720 --> 00:32:41,960
Speaker 2: They don't even have nukes yet.

642
00:32:42,720 --> 00:32:47,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, we we killed Japan for trying to kill all

643
00:32:47,160 --> 00:32:48,080
Speaker 3: the Chanese people.

644
00:32:48,280 --> 00:32:51,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, did you not see a problem here? Yeah? Yeah,

645
00:32:53,600 --> 00:32:56,440
Speaker 2: that's not the American way. Unfortunately it is. But I

646
00:32:56,480 --> 00:32:59,840
Speaker 2: can't blame for trying to make it not be Yeah, exactly.

647
00:33:00,960 --> 00:33:03,160
Speaker 2: Shoop goes on to be a cool guy the rest

648
00:33:03,200 --> 00:33:06,480
Speaker 2: of his life. He spoke vocally against nuclear escalation during

649
00:33:06,480 --> 00:33:08,560
Speaker 2: the Cuban missile crisis, like he was a major voice

650
00:33:08,560 --> 00:33:10,080
Speaker 2: trying to be like, no, no, no, we need to

651
00:33:10,160 --> 00:33:13,160
Speaker 2: take a step back. And he was also he advised

652
00:33:13,160 --> 00:33:16,040
Speaker 2: against entering South Vietnam during the opening stages of the

653
00:33:16,120 --> 00:33:18,200
Speaker 2: Vietnam War. He was one of the few generals who

654
00:33:18,280 --> 00:33:20,120
Speaker 2: was like, this is a terrible idea and we should

655
00:33:20,120 --> 00:33:22,880
Speaker 2: not get involved at all. This is a really bad plan.

656
00:33:23,120 --> 00:33:23,880
Speaker 3: Right Yeah.

657
00:33:24,600 --> 00:33:27,280
Speaker 2: In general, he was the one sane man not afraid

658
00:33:27,280 --> 00:33:29,840
Speaker 2: to speak his mind in the entire defense establishment during

659
00:33:29,880 --> 00:33:32,040
Speaker 2: some of the maddest years of the Cold War. Right,

660
00:33:32,640 --> 00:33:37,200
Speaker 2: So yeah, thank you, general, i'd I know what this

661
00:33:37,360 --> 00:33:39,080
Speaker 2: is involved. We shouldn't do this.

662
00:33:39,320 --> 00:33:41,400
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, and he.

663
00:33:41,480 --> 00:33:44,280
Speaker 2: Clearly like not afraid of confrontation, is willing to say, like,

664
00:33:44,320 --> 00:33:46,000
Speaker 2: you people are fucking maniacs.

665
00:33:46,600 --> 00:33:48,320
Speaker 3: Yeah.

666
00:33:48,360 --> 00:33:51,320
Speaker 2: But unfortunately he uh, he's the only one. So Ruebel,

667
00:33:51,360 --> 00:33:54,320
Speaker 2: who is not a fighter, not great at confrontation, one

668
00:33:54,320 --> 00:33:57,920
Speaker 2: gets the idea, does continue to push bureaucratically for a

669
00:33:57,960 --> 00:34:00,520
Speaker 2: saner nuclear posture, but he does so from within the

670
00:34:00,560 --> 00:34:03,640
Speaker 2: bureaucracy in which he was comfortable. In his two thousand

671
00:34:03,640 --> 00:34:06,520
Speaker 2: and eight report, he accused defense planners of building both

672
00:34:06,560 --> 00:34:09,560
Speaker 2: Syops sixty two and the minute Man system deliberately to

673
00:34:09,640 --> 00:34:12,640
Speaker 2: deny quote any but a go no go option to

674
00:34:12,680 --> 00:34:16,439
Speaker 2: civilian leadership. As Henry Kissinger put it in nineteen sixty one.

675
00:34:16,680 --> 00:34:19,080
Speaker 2: And this is the only time I'll quote Kissinger approvingly,

676
00:34:19,440 --> 00:34:23,400
Speaker 2: these plans offered the president just one choice quote suicide

677
00:34:23,480 --> 00:34:28,480
Speaker 2: or surrender, holocaust or humiliation. In other words, the military

678
00:34:28,520 --> 00:34:30,400
Speaker 2: has set it up that the only choice the president

679
00:34:30,400 --> 00:34:34,160
Speaker 2: gets to make is let the country get nuked or

680
00:34:34,239 --> 00:34:35,120
Speaker 2: kill everybody.

681
00:34:35,960 --> 00:34:36,160
Speaker 3: Right.

682
00:34:37,040 --> 00:34:39,320
Speaker 2: The good news is that in the early nineteen sixties,

683
00:34:39,440 --> 00:34:42,520
Speaker 2: at the very start of the Kennedy administration, is probably

684
00:34:42,600 --> 00:34:45,279
Speaker 2: the high water mark for at least the danger of

685
00:34:45,280 --> 00:34:48,359
Speaker 2: an atomic Holocaust during the Cold War. Part of why

686
00:34:48,360 --> 00:34:55,640
Speaker 2: we stepped to tell you, yeah, during the war so far. Yeah.

687
00:34:56,040 --> 00:34:57,880
Speaker 2: Part of what got us to step back from the

688
00:34:57,920 --> 00:35:01,400
Speaker 2: brink a little bit is that after the Berlin Crisis,

689
00:35:01,440 --> 00:35:03,560
Speaker 2: which is, you know, the Soviet Union tries to cut

690
00:35:03,560 --> 00:35:06,799
Speaker 2: off supplies into the chunk of Berlin that NATO is

691
00:35:06,840 --> 00:35:09,319
Speaker 2: occupying and we have to drop a bunch of shit

692
00:35:09,320 --> 00:35:12,160
Speaker 2: in by plane. Right after that, and then the Cuban

693
00:35:12,160 --> 00:35:16,680
Speaker 2: Missile crisis, Kennedy comes to realize what Rubel had known

694
00:35:16,719 --> 00:35:18,680
Speaker 2: for a while, which is that the men running the

695
00:35:18,719 --> 00:35:21,440
Speaker 2: Strategic Air Command in particular and the Air Force in

696
00:35:21,480 --> 00:35:25,040
Speaker 2: general are out of their goddamn minds. Right like that,

697
00:35:25,080 --> 00:35:27,239
Speaker 2: he starts to become Kennedy starts become very aware that, like,

698
00:35:27,280 --> 00:35:29,239
Speaker 2: these people are crazy and they're going to get us

699
00:35:29,239 --> 00:35:31,640
Speaker 2: all killed. I have to do something about the way

700
00:35:31,640 --> 00:35:35,160
Speaker 2: this system works, right, And this is arguably the best

701
00:35:35,160 --> 00:35:37,800
Speaker 2: thing he did in his presidency. One of the first

702
00:35:37,840 --> 00:35:39,600
Speaker 2: moments where this was made clear to him was on

703
00:35:39,640 --> 00:35:42,919
Speaker 2: September fifth, during Kennedy's first year in office, in which

704
00:35:42,960 --> 00:35:46,600
Speaker 2: several Air forcemen submitted a first strike study that suggested

705
00:35:46,719 --> 00:35:50,840
Speaker 2: killing fifty four percent of the USSR's population. An alternate

706
00:35:50,880 --> 00:35:54,319
Speaker 2: plan suggested just attacking Soviet military targets, which a guy

707
00:35:54,400 --> 00:35:57,439
Speaker 2: named Casin, the study author, estimated would kill only around

708
00:35:57,480 --> 00:36:00,800
Speaker 2: a million civilians. However, US casual he's from a Soviet

709
00:36:00,840 --> 00:36:04,239
Speaker 2: response ranged from basically none to seventy five percent of

710
00:36:04,239 --> 00:36:05,279
Speaker 2: the US population.

711
00:36:06,000 --> 00:36:07,600
Speaker 3: Uh huh right.

712
00:36:08,480 --> 00:36:11,360
Speaker 2: Rubell includes a note about the reactions of people in

713
00:36:11,360 --> 00:36:14,759
Speaker 2: the Kennedy administration to this horror show. Ted Sorensen, the

714
00:36:14,800 --> 00:36:16,960
Speaker 2: chief White House counsel and speechwriter who had been with

715
00:36:17,040 --> 00:36:20,080
Speaker 2: Kennedy since his earliest Senate days, was outraged when Cayson

716
00:36:20,080 --> 00:36:23,040
Speaker 2: told him about the study, shouting, you're crazy. We shouldn't

717
00:36:23,080 --> 00:36:25,799
Speaker 2: let guys like you around here. Even Moripauld was a

718
00:36:25,800 --> 00:36:28,800
Speaker 2: friend of Caseon's on the NSC staff named Marcus Raskin.

719
00:36:29,200 --> 00:36:31,759
Speaker 2: Raskin had served as foreign policy advisor to a few

720
00:36:31,800 --> 00:36:35,200
Speaker 2: Liberal Democratic senators and had been hired as a token leftist.

721
00:36:35,520 --> 00:36:38,400
Speaker 2: Raskin was horrified by the very existence of such a study.

722
00:36:38,680 --> 00:36:40,480
Speaker 2: How does this make us any better than those who

723
00:36:40,600 --> 00:36:42,840
Speaker 2: measured the gas ovens or the engineers who built the

724
00:36:42,880 --> 00:36:45,640
Speaker 2: tracks for the death trains in Nazi Germany, he hollered.

725
00:36:45,640 --> 00:36:50,439
Speaker 2: At one point Raskin never spoke to Cason again. Good question, yeah,

726
00:36:50,600 --> 00:36:56,400
Speaker 2: really good question. Yeah. Kennedy himself was briefed on the

727
00:36:56,520 --> 00:36:58,560
Speaker 2: likely death toll of a nuclear war, basically on the

728
00:36:58,560 --> 00:37:00,920
Speaker 2: result like he's briefed on this case and study, and

729
00:37:01,000 --> 00:37:04,560
Speaker 2: his response is characteristically eloquent. He says, and we call

730
00:37:04,600 --> 00:37:06,040
Speaker 2: ourselves the human race.

731
00:37:07,680 --> 00:37:11,800
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh fuck yeah.

732
00:37:11,880 --> 00:37:15,360
Speaker 2: The Cuban missile crisis unfolded across thirteen days in nineteen

733
00:37:15,440 --> 00:37:17,680
Speaker 2: sixty two, and it seems to have inspired Kennedy to

734
00:37:17,719 --> 00:37:20,800
Speaker 2: take action to reduce the ability of his insane generals

735
00:37:20,800 --> 00:37:23,880
Speaker 2: to destroy the world. When he imposed a blockade of

736
00:37:23,920 --> 00:37:26,720
Speaker 2: Cuba to force the USSR to remove their nukes. General

737
00:37:26,800 --> 00:37:31,040
Speaker 2: LeMay insisted on direct military intervention as the only path forward,

738
00:37:31,320 --> 00:37:34,160
Speaker 2: claiming that any attempt to solve the problem without violence

739
00:37:34,160 --> 00:37:37,479
Speaker 2: would lead to war. Look, we might have a war

740
00:37:37,520 --> 00:37:40,200
Speaker 2: if we don't get violent with these guys. You don't

741
00:37:40,200 --> 00:37:44,960
Speaker 2: want a war, do you? Quote LeMay indirectly threatened to

742
00:37:45,000 --> 00:37:47,200
Speaker 2: make his dissent public. I think that a blockade and

743
00:37:47,239 --> 00:37:49,000
Speaker 2: the political talk would be considered by a lot of

744
00:37:49,000 --> 00:37:51,280
Speaker 2: our friends and neutrals as being a pretty weak response

745
00:37:51,320 --> 00:37:52,520
Speaker 2: to this. And I'm sure a lot of our own

746
00:37:52,560 --> 00:37:55,000
Speaker 2: citizens would feel that way too. In other words, you're

747
00:37:55,040 --> 00:37:57,560
Speaker 2: in a pretty bad fix at the present time. LeMay's

748
00:37:57,600 --> 00:38:01,360
Speaker 2: words angered Kennedy, who asked, what did you say? LeMay responded,

749
00:38:01,400 --> 00:38:04,040
Speaker 2: You're in a pretty bad fix. Kenneth O'Donnell recalled in

750
00:38:04,080 --> 00:38:06,480
Speaker 2: his memoirs that after the meeting, Kennedy asked him, can

751
00:38:06,520 --> 00:38:09,200
Speaker 2: you imagine LeMay saying a thing like that? These brass

752
00:38:09,200 --> 00:38:11,400
Speaker 2: hats have one great advantage in their favor. If we

753
00:38:11,480 --> 00:38:13,120
Speaker 2: listen to them and do what they want us to do,

754
00:38:13,320 --> 00:38:15,160
Speaker 2: none of us will be alive later to tell them

755
00:38:15,200 --> 00:38:15,760
Speaker 2: they were wrong.

756
00:38:19,560 --> 00:38:23,480
Speaker 3: I better understand the like second half of the twentieth

757
00:38:23,520 --> 00:38:27,719
Speaker 3: century is a big push for pacifism on the left. Yeah, yeah, Like,

758
00:38:28,200 --> 00:38:29,839
Speaker 3: and it's one of those things you like look back

759
00:38:29,840 --> 00:38:31,960
Speaker 3: at and you're like, oh, that seems kins silly, and

760
00:38:32,000 --> 00:38:32,439
Speaker 3: you're like.

761
00:38:32,920 --> 00:38:36,840
Speaker 2: Some parts worked, some didn't, But oh yeah.

762
00:38:36,200 --> 00:38:37,719
Speaker 3: I get why people lean towards that.

763
00:38:38,560 --> 00:38:43,360
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. And this is arguably the best thing Kennedy

764
00:38:43,400 --> 00:38:47,319
Speaker 2: does is it's during the Kennedy administration that we take

765
00:38:47,440 --> 00:38:51,680
Speaker 2: trigger control mostly and eventually entirely away from the military.

766
00:38:51,880 --> 00:38:52,040
Speaker 4: Right.

767
00:38:52,200 --> 00:38:56,160
Speaker 2: The scenario now, and this is I don't I think

768
00:38:56,160 --> 00:39:00,240
Speaker 2: it's better, but it's also differently bad. Now, some general

769
00:39:00,520 --> 00:39:03,280
Speaker 2: or some colonel or some kid in a silo couldn't

770
00:39:03,360 --> 00:39:05,080
Speaker 2: launch our arsenal.

771
00:39:05,400 --> 00:39:05,600
Speaker 4: Right.

772
00:39:05,960 --> 00:39:08,279
Speaker 2: You can't have four kids launching fifty missiles on their

773
00:39:08,280 --> 00:39:11,000
Speaker 2: own because you have to have like codes transmitted and stuff, right,

774
00:39:11,800 --> 00:39:16,359
Speaker 2: But one guy can decide to launch everything, and it's

775
00:39:16,400 --> 00:39:19,080
Speaker 2: the president. Now, that does mean we have civilian control,

776
00:39:19,480 --> 00:39:21,719
Speaker 2: and I think that's a positive step away from a

777
00:39:21,760 --> 00:39:25,399
Speaker 2: bunch of insane generals potentially having that command, or four

778
00:39:25,520 --> 00:39:28,040
Speaker 2: kids in a cornfield having that ability.

779
00:39:28,160 --> 00:39:28,319
Speaker 4: Right.

780
00:39:29,760 --> 00:39:33,359
Speaker 2: But and that is a major thing that happens under Kennedy, right,

781
00:39:33,480 --> 00:39:36,719
Speaker 2: is that command and control of our nuclear arsenal gets

782
00:39:36,760 --> 00:39:39,920
Speaker 2: shifted much further to the president, and that process continues

783
00:39:39,960 --> 00:39:43,120
Speaker 2: over the years. This is what leads to the nuclear football, right,

784
00:39:44,000 --> 00:39:46,239
Speaker 2: which I think people are generally aware of, right because

785
00:39:46,239 --> 00:39:49,080
Speaker 2: it's under Kennedy. I talked about how that Los Alamos

786
00:39:49,080 --> 00:39:50,880
Speaker 2: scientists came up with the idea to we need a

787
00:39:50,920 --> 00:39:53,680
Speaker 2: lock on these fucking things, and they figure out how

788
00:39:53,760 --> 00:39:57,520
Speaker 2: to do that during the Kennedy administration, and Kennedy gives

789
00:39:57,560 --> 00:39:59,920
Speaker 2: the order to start putting locks on our weapons, right,

790
00:40:01,080 --> 00:40:03,960
Speaker 2: which starts moving this this all, I'm YadA yading. This

791
00:40:04,040 --> 00:40:06,480
Speaker 2: takes longer to get to where we are now, but

792
00:40:06,560 --> 00:40:10,120
Speaker 2: this starts the process, right that leads to the situation

793
00:40:10,239 --> 00:40:12,759
Speaker 2: we have now where these weapons all do at least

794
00:40:12,800 --> 00:40:15,200
Speaker 2: have a lock, and where we have the football, right,

795
00:40:15,239 --> 00:40:18,160
Speaker 2: the nuclear football, which is ultimately a product of both

796
00:40:18,160 --> 00:40:21,120
Speaker 2: that scientist Agnu realizing a single private with eight bullets

797
00:40:21,160 --> 00:40:23,200
Speaker 2: was all that stood between a nuke and whoever, as

798
00:40:23,239 --> 00:40:25,880
Speaker 2: well as Rubel and his allies repeatedly insisting to their

799
00:40:25,880 --> 00:40:27,759
Speaker 2: bosses that these Air Force fuckers are out of their

800
00:40:27,760 --> 00:40:32,800
Speaker 2: goddamn minds, right, like that is you know, a really

801
00:40:32,800 --> 00:40:36,360
Speaker 2: good thing that happens here. And characteristically, when the switch

802
00:40:36,520 --> 00:40:39,160
Speaker 2: the lock is first demoed, it was presented to President

803
00:40:39,280 --> 00:40:41,680
Speaker 2: Kennedy who immediately is like, yeah, put these on everything

804
00:40:41,719 --> 00:40:45,440
Speaker 2: we can right immediately, right now, do it today. You

805
00:40:45,520 --> 00:40:50,360
Speaker 2: have no other priorities, and the military loses their fucking mind.

806
00:40:50,480 --> 00:40:54,080
Speaker 2: The faust are bombs. They put a lock, our bombs up.

807
00:40:54,600 --> 00:40:57,560
Speaker 2: The fears of one General Alfred Starbird, which is a

808
00:40:57,680 --> 00:41:00,880
Speaker 2: wild name, were summarized as follows. How is a pilot

809
00:41:00,960 --> 00:41:03,040
Speaker 2: us are four and somewhere around the world going to

810
00:41:03,040 --> 00:41:05,080
Speaker 2: get a code from the president of the United States

811
00:41:05,080 --> 00:41:07,840
Speaker 2: to ourma nuclear weapon before being overrun by a massively

812
00:41:07,880 --> 00:41:12,919
Speaker 2: superior number of Soviet troops. Okay, maybe it's this. I'm

813
00:41:12,920 --> 00:41:13,400
Speaker 2: fine with that.

814
00:41:13,520 --> 00:41:17,840
Speaker 3: Actually, yeah, a couple instead of all of us. I

815
00:41:17,880 --> 00:41:18,200
Speaker 3: don't know.

816
00:41:19,160 --> 00:41:22,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, Look, I'm not casual about the lives of soldiers.

817
00:41:22,920 --> 00:41:26,480
Speaker 2: They're people too, But it's a soldier's job to potentially

818
00:41:26,560 --> 00:41:28,640
Speaker 2: die for their country, and I prefer that to the

819
00:41:28,680 --> 00:41:33,359
Speaker 2: whole world dying, including that soldier. Including that soldier, they're

820
00:41:33,360 --> 00:41:36,240
Speaker 2: not living through it all. None of these bomber guys,

821
00:41:36,320 --> 00:41:38,719
Speaker 2: all of these sac bombers know that their missions are

822
00:41:38,760 --> 00:41:40,640
Speaker 2: suicide missions. If they get the order to fly to

823
00:41:40,680 --> 00:41:43,000
Speaker 2: the USSR, they are not coming back. There won't be

824
00:41:43,040 --> 00:41:46,200
Speaker 2: anywhere to come back to, right, Yeah, although the.

825
00:41:46,280 --> 00:41:51,400
Speaker 3: Only people still alive, they'll flying from other ten minutes before. Yeah, yeah, I.

826
00:41:51,400 --> 00:41:53,120
Speaker 2: Mean that would That's how it is now, because we

827
00:41:53,120 --> 00:41:56,080
Speaker 2: have these doomsday planes that we literally call like doomsday planes,

828
00:41:56,080 --> 00:41:59,000
Speaker 2: which are these huge shielded planes that are able to

829
00:41:59,040 --> 00:42:02,840
Speaker 2: president basically can hand over control of continuing to launch

830
00:42:02,840 --> 00:42:06,880
Speaker 2: our nukes to the official in the plane because the

831
00:42:06,920 --> 00:42:09,439
Speaker 2: President's going to be dead pretty soon. Everyone is. None

832
00:42:09,440 --> 00:42:11,840
Speaker 2: of these bunkers working as well as people want to

833
00:42:11,880 --> 00:42:14,320
Speaker 2: believe they do, especially not when you're talking about multiple

834
00:42:14,360 --> 00:42:16,880
Speaker 2: thermonuclear impacts. It doesn't matter how deep. If people are

835
00:42:16,920 --> 00:42:20,600
Speaker 2: dropping multiple hydrogen bombs as they would be, or missiles

836
00:42:20,600 --> 00:42:24,200
Speaker 2: as they would be in this very few things could

837
00:42:24,560 --> 00:42:28,680
Speaker 2: could protect you. All of these fancy bunker complexes are

838
00:42:28,719 --> 00:42:32,480
Speaker 2: great if you don't get directly hit by multiple thermonuclear bombs,

839
00:42:32,480 --> 00:42:34,120
Speaker 2: but they're not going to protect you from it, which

840
00:42:34,120 --> 00:42:37,400
Speaker 2: is you're going to boil alive, right, yeah, yeah, no,

841
00:42:38,360 --> 00:42:41,840
Speaker 2: And that's anti Jacobson's Nuclear War book, which posits a

842
00:42:41,880 --> 00:42:44,719
Speaker 2: pretty chilling theory about how this could all go down.

843
00:42:45,320 --> 00:42:48,400
Speaker 2: Does have everyone dies, like everyone in command and control

844
00:42:48,440 --> 00:42:50,240
Speaker 2: is fucking dead, except for the guy in the doomsday

845
00:42:50,280 --> 00:42:52,200
Speaker 2: plane who make sure that everyone dies on the other

846
00:42:52,400 --> 00:42:57,600
Speaker 2: side of the world. That's nuclear war. Anyway. Let's have

847
00:42:57,680 --> 00:43:00,680
Speaker 2: some ads and we'll come back and finish this story. Whew,

848
00:43:07,640 --> 00:43:10,880
Speaker 2: all right, we're back. So this is what gets us.

849
00:43:10,880 --> 00:43:13,000
Speaker 2: The stuff with Kennedy evolves into like, you know, the

850
00:43:13,040 --> 00:43:15,760
Speaker 2: system we have today which gives the president's sole authority

851
00:43:15,800 --> 00:43:18,520
Speaker 2: to end civilization. We'll talk about that a little more

852
00:43:18,560 --> 00:43:20,320
Speaker 2: in a second, but I want to finish with Curtis

853
00:43:20,400 --> 00:43:24,600
Speaker 2: LeMay's story first in nineteen sixty four, now is Chief

854
00:43:24,600 --> 00:43:28,080
Speaker 2: of Staff of the Air Force. Curtis Lamay is still

855
00:43:28,120 --> 00:43:30,839
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty five, Curtis LeMay is in charge of

856
00:43:30,920 --> 00:43:35,680
Speaker 2: all of the US air power in Southeast Asia. Basically

857
00:43:36,520 --> 00:43:40,120
Speaker 2: during the Korean War, same deal. During the start of Vietnam,

858
00:43:40,520 --> 00:43:44,520
Speaker 2: same deal. So when in nineteen sixty four, when we

859
00:43:44,560 --> 00:43:48,120
Speaker 2: really start upping our commitment in Vietnam, he is running

860
00:43:48,160 --> 00:43:51,280
Speaker 2: things and he pushes a plan to bomb northern Vietnam

861
00:43:51,320 --> 00:43:54,680
Speaker 2: into submission. The plan is described, and I believe this

862
00:43:54,840 --> 00:43:58,960
Speaker 2: was his name for it, as the genteel du Pey Plan. Right.

863
00:43:59,040 --> 00:44:01,319
Speaker 2: I mentioned that like the polite version of the dou

864
00:44:01,400 --> 00:44:03,799
Speaker 2: Hay plan, Right, do Hay being the guy who's like,

865
00:44:03,840 --> 00:44:06,080
Speaker 2: you just kill all the civilians until they're not willing

866
00:44:06,080 --> 00:44:10,560
Speaker 2: to fight anymore. Now, there's a big battle between Kennedy's

867
00:44:10,560 --> 00:44:14,080
Speaker 2: civilian advisors who wanted the US to threaten North Vietnam's

868
00:44:14,120 --> 00:44:17,000
Speaker 2: industry but not actually blow it up immediately, So that

869
00:44:17,040 --> 00:44:18,719
Speaker 2: we blow up some of it and we make it

870
00:44:18,760 --> 00:44:21,480
Speaker 2: clear we can really cripple their industry so that we

871
00:44:21,480 --> 00:44:24,440
Speaker 2: have a negotiating hand to push for peace, right, And

872
00:44:24,080 --> 00:44:25,919
Speaker 2: I don't think we should have gotten involved in fucking

873
00:44:25,960 --> 00:44:28,160
Speaker 2: Vietnam whatsoever. I'm not saying that, like these guys were

874
00:44:28,200 --> 00:44:31,000
Speaker 2: good and ethical, but that is a much saner response

875
00:44:31,120 --> 00:44:34,080
Speaker 2: than Leamy's, because Limay just wants to send North Vietnam

876
00:44:34,120 --> 00:44:37,000
Speaker 2: back to the Stone Age, right right. Like these liberals

877
00:44:37,040 --> 00:44:38,520
Speaker 2: are like, well, we can bomb them, you know, kind

878
00:44:38,520 --> 00:44:40,880
Speaker 2: of strategically in order to exert a cost and make

879
00:44:40,920 --> 00:44:42,560
Speaker 2: them willing to come to the negotiation table. And the

880
00:44:42,640 --> 00:44:44,560
Speaker 2: May is like, what if we just fucking kill everybody.

881
00:44:45,760 --> 00:44:47,799
Speaker 2: I'm going to quote from the book Bombing to Win

882
00:44:47,960 --> 00:44:52,080
Speaker 2: by Robert Pape quote. Destroying the North's industrial economy appears

883
00:44:52,120 --> 00:44:54,120
Speaker 2: to have been valued more for its effect on civilian

884
00:44:54,120 --> 00:44:56,439
Speaker 2: morale than for reducing the flow of military goods into

885
00:44:56,440 --> 00:44:59,200
Speaker 2: the South. For instance, the rationale for closing the port

886
00:44:59,200 --> 00:45:01,840
Speaker 2: of Haiphong was not to interdict battlefield hardware, but to

887
00:45:01,920 --> 00:45:06,960
Speaker 2: weaken civilian morale, right, which keeps not working it. Yes,

888
00:45:07,040 --> 00:45:10,799
Speaker 2: you may recall none of this did. This led to

889
00:45:10,880 --> 00:45:14,840
Speaker 2: Operation Rolling Thunder, And Rolling Thunder is LeMay's baby. This

890
00:45:14,960 --> 00:45:17,759
Speaker 2: is like Operation Rolling Thunder is the genteel dou Hay

891
00:45:17,840 --> 00:45:20,440
Speaker 2: plan put into effect it is a three year bombing

892
00:45:20,480 --> 00:45:23,719
Speaker 2: campaign that resulted in what, Margaret, you want to.

893
00:45:23,719 --> 00:45:28,440
Speaker 3: Guess, no, effective destruction of the morale of the enemy.

894
00:45:29,280 --> 00:45:31,719
Speaker 2: I mean stuff was just yeah, yeah, yeah, it doesn't work.

895
00:45:32,719 --> 00:45:37,640
Speaker 2: We don't win Vietnam. In case you were unaware of that. Interesting,

896
00:45:38,400 --> 00:45:42,080
Speaker 2: This does not stop their ability to equip and support

897
00:45:42,120 --> 00:45:44,759
Speaker 2: their troops. It does not break civilian morale. It does not.

898
00:45:45,400 --> 00:45:48,560
Speaker 2: It doesn't do the trick and thiss me.

899
00:45:48,640 --> 00:45:51,840
Speaker 3: One of the main things I've learned over this epic

900
00:45:51,920 --> 00:45:55,400
Speaker 3: journey we've been on. If you had asked me, I

901
00:45:55,440 --> 00:45:57,600
Speaker 3: would have been like, well, it's probably a moral to

902
00:45:57,600 --> 00:46:00,840
Speaker 3: bomb all these enemy cities, but it probably is effective

903
00:46:01,719 --> 00:46:04,920
Speaker 3: at destroying morale. And what I have learned is that

904
00:46:04,960 --> 00:46:05,520
Speaker 3: it's not.

905
00:46:06,360 --> 00:46:10,120
Speaker 2: No, no, Well, you gotta think if like, if somebody,

906
00:46:10,680 --> 00:46:15,120
Speaker 2: for example, goes and stabs the person you love most

907
00:46:15,120 --> 00:46:17,319
Speaker 2: in the world in the gut, are you gonna like

908
00:46:18,040 --> 00:46:20,799
Speaker 2: walk away because you're demoralized, or are you gonna fuck

909
00:46:20,840 --> 00:46:21,560
Speaker 2: that person up?

910
00:46:21,800 --> 00:46:21,880
Speaker 4: Like?

911
00:46:21,920 --> 00:46:24,440
Speaker 2: Are you gonna do everything in your power to destroy

912
00:46:24,520 --> 00:46:25,440
Speaker 2: that person? Right?

913
00:46:25,600 --> 00:46:25,839
Speaker 4: Yeah?

914
00:46:26,400 --> 00:46:26,600
Speaker 3: Yeah.

915
00:46:26,719 --> 00:46:29,960
Speaker 2: I think people think similarly when their family is incinerated

916
00:46:29,960 --> 00:46:31,239
Speaker 2: from the sky.

917
00:46:31,360 --> 00:46:33,640
Speaker 3: Yeah.

918
00:46:33,880 --> 00:46:36,040
Speaker 2: But this the fact that this fails and the fact

919
00:46:36,040 --> 00:46:39,840
Speaker 2: that LeMay's plans kind of fail a lot brings me

920
00:46:39,880 --> 00:46:42,120
Speaker 2: to a key point about LeMay and all the dou

921
00:46:42,160 --> 00:46:44,560
Speaker 2: Hay acolytes who came to run our air power during

922
00:46:44,560 --> 00:46:45,959
Speaker 2: this time. These guys.

923
00:46:46,000 --> 00:46:48,120
Speaker 3: Surrealist Manray is also one of these people.

924
00:46:49,000 --> 00:46:54,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, these guys loved nukes because nukes were the only

925
00:46:54,320 --> 00:46:57,440
Speaker 2: weapon system that worked the way they thought all weapons

926
00:46:57,480 --> 00:47:01,160
Speaker 2: should work. So they always insisted on using nukes at

927
00:47:01,200 --> 00:47:04,520
Speaker 2: every corner, and when they were denied, they didn't know

928
00:47:04,560 --> 00:47:07,160
Speaker 2: how to fight a modern war well, because they only

929
00:47:07,200 --> 00:47:09,520
Speaker 2: have the one strategy and it only works if you

930
00:47:09,640 --> 00:47:11,839
Speaker 2: use nukes. So when the president says no, you can't

931
00:47:11,920 --> 00:47:13,880
Speaker 2: nuke them, then they're left leg Well, I guess we

932
00:47:13,920 --> 00:47:16,399
Speaker 2: try to use conventional bombs and it just doesn't do it.

933
00:47:16,600 --> 00:47:20,760
Speaker 2: But they don't. None of these people are actually capable

934
00:47:20,760 --> 00:47:24,000
Speaker 2: of adapting and looking their failure in the face because

935
00:47:24,000 --> 00:47:27,440
Speaker 2: they've based everything on this being how war works. And

936
00:47:27,440 --> 00:47:31,000
Speaker 2: because unless you're killing everyone, right, yes, yeah, because they're

937
00:47:31,000 --> 00:47:34,880
Speaker 2: twelve year old boys. Yeah, now, fuck, I'm ending this

938
00:47:35,000 --> 00:47:37,959
Speaker 2: story in the mid sixties, right, which there's a lot

939
00:47:38,160 --> 00:47:41,200
Speaker 2: more to talk about in terms of nukes and shit. Obviously,

940
00:47:41,239 --> 00:47:43,719
Speaker 2: after this point. But I'm ending here because kind of

941
00:47:43,800 --> 00:47:46,680
Speaker 2: by the point we're at in the story, right, Vietnam,

942
00:47:47,000 --> 00:47:52,400
Speaker 2: the tale of how our nuclear arsenal functions changes, but

943
00:47:52,600 --> 00:47:57,279
Speaker 2: not like in earth shattering ways. Right, everything gets kind

944
00:47:57,280 --> 00:47:59,960
Speaker 2: of better. Our early warning systems get better, are missile

945
00:48:00,160 --> 00:48:03,799
Speaker 2: get more destructive and reliable. Nuclear submarines are by this

946
00:48:03,840 --> 00:48:05,719
Speaker 2: point a part of the determent. We're not talking about

947
00:48:05,760 --> 00:48:07,560
Speaker 2: that all that much, but that's a major part of

948
00:48:07,560 --> 00:48:11,080
Speaker 2: the deterrent package, right, because a nuclear submarine absolutely cannot

949
00:48:11,080 --> 00:48:14,279
Speaker 2: be found, right, It's basically impossible. Like, if you have

950
00:48:14,400 --> 00:48:17,359
Speaker 2: nuclear submarines, you always have nukes out there that you

951
00:48:17,400 --> 00:48:20,000
Speaker 2: can throw back at whoever fucks with you, So it's

952
00:48:20,000 --> 00:48:21,680
Speaker 2: a guarantee that you'll be able to get some sort

953
00:48:21,680 --> 00:48:25,040
Speaker 2: of second strike. Nuclear submarines are fucking terrifying. They're the

954
00:48:25,080 --> 00:48:28,160
Speaker 2: scariest weapons human beings have ever made and probably ever

955
00:48:28,200 --> 00:48:31,239
Speaker 2: will make. Right, Like it is just death tubes. They're

956
00:48:31,280 --> 00:48:34,440
Speaker 2: fucking nightmares. I had a friend, Yeah, I have a

957
00:48:34,480 --> 00:48:39,759
Speaker 2: friend who went to Annapolis that's the Naval Academy, and

958
00:48:40,200 --> 00:48:44,400
Speaker 2: was a nuclear submarine pilot during the eighties. There's a

959
00:48:44,440 --> 00:48:47,279
Speaker 2: book called blind Man's Bluff that's about like all the

960
00:48:47,320 --> 00:48:49,400
Speaker 2: stuff that he used to do, and all of his

961
00:48:49,600 --> 00:48:53,080
Speaker 2: like stories are because what US and Soviet subs were

962
00:48:53,080 --> 00:48:55,160
Speaker 2: doing in this period of time was like d basically

963
00:48:55,239 --> 00:48:57,400
Speaker 2: one would try to like plain chicken, trying to force

964
00:48:57,440 --> 00:49:00,719
Speaker 2: the other to surface, right, so, you know, because it

965
00:49:00,800 --> 00:49:03,360
Speaker 2: was like that was kind of part of the game

966
00:49:03,440 --> 00:49:05,759
Speaker 2: that we were playing in the high seas, and so

967
00:49:05,840 --> 00:49:08,000
Speaker 2: he has all these stories of just like he and

968
00:49:08,040 --> 00:49:11,080
Speaker 2: a couple of his friends are standing and I guess

969
00:49:11,080 --> 00:49:13,839
Speaker 2: the bridge or whatever, doing a bunch of complicated math

970
00:49:13,880 --> 00:49:15,760
Speaker 2: in their heads, and if they fuck up the math,

971
00:49:15,960 --> 00:49:18,320
Speaker 2: everyone dies because they crash into something.

972
00:49:18,400 --> 00:49:18,560
Speaker 3: Right.

973
00:49:18,600 --> 00:49:23,280
Speaker 2: Like, It's like those kind of stories like sub nuclear

974
00:49:23,320 --> 00:49:25,960
Speaker 2: subs are fucking taro. But you know, once we get

975
00:49:26,080 --> 00:49:28,960
Speaker 2: nuclear subs, that's we have all three kind of arms

976
00:49:29,080 --> 00:49:32,400
Speaker 2: of our nuclear like posture. We have our ICBMs, we

977
00:49:32,440 --> 00:49:35,200
Speaker 2: have nuclear subs, we have our bombers. Right obviously we

978
00:49:35,239 --> 00:49:37,799
Speaker 2: also have like field artillery and you know, nukes and

979
00:49:37,800 --> 00:49:40,920
Speaker 2: stuff that the army can use. But nothing that happens

980
00:49:40,960 --> 00:49:44,439
Speaker 2: after this point seriously alters the fundamental calculus up until

981
00:49:44,480 --> 00:49:47,400
Speaker 2: something that's kind of more recent, and that fundamental calculus

982
00:49:47,480 --> 00:49:50,480
Speaker 2: is we and the Russians and other people China now

983
00:49:50,520 --> 00:49:53,319
Speaker 2: as well. Right, obviously, more people have nukes, but all

984
00:49:53,360 --> 00:49:56,239
Speaker 2: of the nuclear powers have a bunch of nukes ready

985
00:49:56,239 --> 00:49:59,200
Speaker 2: to fire at a moment's notice, and in both the

986
00:49:59,280 --> 00:50:02,160
Speaker 2: US and Russia, only the president gets to decide when

987
00:50:02,200 --> 00:50:06,520
Speaker 2: we use them, right, Right, That's the way it is

988
00:50:07,080 --> 00:50:09,720
Speaker 2: starting in the sixties, and that's the way it is today,

989
00:50:09,800 --> 00:50:11,960
Speaker 2: right Obviously, Like I'm not gonna talk a lot about

990
00:50:12,000 --> 00:50:14,880
Speaker 2: hypersonic missiles. That's kind of the biggest recent change that

991
00:50:15,000 --> 00:50:18,400
Speaker 2: might seriously alter a lot of calculus because it allows

992
00:50:18,680 --> 00:50:21,319
Speaker 2: a strike that potentially might not get spotted at all,

993
00:50:21,480 --> 00:50:24,640
Speaker 2: and so maybe there's no warning, which is why I

994
00:50:24,680 --> 00:50:26,839
Speaker 2: read a really fucked up war on the Rocks article.

995
00:50:26,920 --> 00:50:31,760
Speaker 2: There's basically arguing for like an automated AI like second

996
00:50:31,800 --> 00:50:34,560
Speaker 2: strike system because of the fact that, well maybe they

997
00:50:34,600 --> 00:50:36,040
Speaker 2: are able to if they blow up the president, no

998
00:50:36,080 --> 00:50:37,120
Speaker 2: one can launch the nukes back.

999
00:50:37,200 --> 00:50:39,880
Speaker 3: Right, So, no one's watched the movie war Games, That's

1000
00:50:39,920 --> 00:50:40,319
Speaker 3: what I'm meaning.

1001
00:50:40,320 --> 00:50:43,200
Speaker 2: No one has ever watched the movie war Actually, the

1002
00:50:43,320 --> 00:50:46,160
Speaker 2: actually wargames. Literally one of the generals they quote references

1003
00:50:46,200 --> 00:50:49,200
Speaker 2: Wargames in order to say that we don't have a

1004
00:50:49,239 --> 00:50:51,280
Speaker 2: machine that does that right now, like this is so

1005
00:50:51,560 --> 00:50:53,200
Speaker 2: they were arguing that we need to do it.

1006
00:50:53,320 --> 00:50:54,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh my god.

1007
00:50:55,360 --> 00:50:57,880
Speaker 2: And this is part of one of the one of

1008
00:50:57,960 --> 00:51:00,959
Speaker 2: the things that that that I have worry about, because

1009
00:51:00,960 --> 00:51:03,759
Speaker 2: I don't really think it's an immediate worry that they're

1010
00:51:03,760 --> 00:51:07,080
Speaker 2: going to like give AI the ability to launch nukes

1011
00:51:07,440 --> 00:51:10,439
Speaker 2: or do that. That's not my immediate worry. But they're

1012
00:51:10,480 --> 00:51:14,720
Speaker 2: already integrating different machine learning tools into like the radar

1013
00:51:14,960 --> 00:51:18,560
Speaker 2: systems in our early warning systems. That's the worry is

1014
00:51:18,600 --> 00:51:21,880
Speaker 2: that people are being advised by these by machines that

1015
00:51:22,640 --> 00:51:27,800
Speaker 2: like them, that like the minute Man, will have unanticipated

1016
00:51:27,840 --> 00:51:31,359
Speaker 2: flaws that the arrogant pieces of shit who designed these

1017
00:51:31,360 --> 00:51:35,319
Speaker 2: weapons refuse to consider because they cannot accept the fact

1018
00:51:35,360 --> 00:51:37,759
Speaker 2: that maybe they didn't think of everything, and they will

1019
00:51:37,800 --> 00:51:40,279
Speaker 2: fuck up and miss stuff and it could cause it

1020
00:51:40,280 --> 00:51:42,680
Speaker 2: could cause the end of the world. Right, That's what

1021
00:51:42,800 --> 00:51:46,080
Speaker 2: scares me more than like a death computer, right.

1022
00:51:46,440 --> 00:51:50,960
Speaker 3: Which any hacker or wanna be hackers you would immediately

1023
00:51:51,000 --> 00:51:53,880
Speaker 3: be like, oh, you can't build systems that don't have flaws.

1024
00:51:54,120 --> 00:51:55,520
Speaker 3: That doesn't happen.

1025
00:51:56,000 --> 00:51:58,680
Speaker 2: No, No, That's why up until very recently this was

1026
00:51:58,719 --> 00:52:01,680
Speaker 2: all being done onlike the big nineteen eighties floppy discs

1027
00:52:01,680 --> 00:52:04,400
Speaker 2: and everything's fucking air gapped. Is like, you want this

1028
00:52:04,520 --> 00:52:11,160
Speaker 2: shit simple and reliable as possible. Yeah. Anyway, well now

1029
00:52:11,200 --> 00:52:14,200
Speaker 2: it's all bluetooth. So now's yeah exactly. Well, that's the

1030
00:52:14,200 --> 00:52:17,000
Speaker 2: most reliable thing in electronics is bluetooth. Everyone who has

1031
00:52:17,000 --> 00:52:20,040
Speaker 2: a headset knows that. So it's important everyone know that

1032
00:52:20,320 --> 00:52:24,000
Speaker 2: our launch policy from nineteen sixty four to today remains

1033
00:52:24,200 --> 00:52:27,839
Speaker 2: launch on warn. Now, the USSR, to be fair to them,

1034
00:52:28,360 --> 00:52:31,879
Speaker 2: officially rejected a launch on warn policy. There are grave

1035
00:52:31,920 --> 00:52:33,799
Speaker 2: doubts as to whether or not that was the real

1036
00:52:33,920 --> 00:52:36,480
Speaker 2: policy or propaganda. Right, A lot of people say they

1037
00:52:36,520 --> 00:52:39,640
Speaker 2: were definitely launch on warn too. I think that's probably right.

1038
00:52:39,960 --> 00:52:42,560
Speaker 2: I think both the US and Russia more or less

1039
00:52:42,600 --> 00:52:44,680
Speaker 2: would have fired if they felt like they had a

1040
00:52:44,680 --> 00:52:47,320
Speaker 2: credible warning that the other was firing. Right, Well, I

1041
00:52:47,360 --> 00:52:48,279
Speaker 2: don't think either of US.

1042
00:52:49,840 --> 00:52:51,960
Speaker 3: Russia needs us to believe they're launch on warn, even

1043
00:52:51,960 --> 00:52:53,880
Speaker 3: if they're saying something else. They have to say it

1044
00:52:53,920 --> 00:52:56,360
Speaker 3: in a way where they're like, oh, don't worry, we

1045
00:52:56,400 --> 00:52:59,160
Speaker 3: would totally not launch on warn, but scare people to

1046
00:52:59,239 --> 00:52:59,880
Speaker 3: thinking they would.

1047
00:53:00,400 --> 00:53:03,399
Speaker 2: Well, and now since Putin's taken and this is really interest.

1048
00:53:03,440 --> 00:53:05,040
Speaker 2: In the last few years, Putin has made it very

1049
00:53:05,080 --> 00:53:07,399
Speaker 2: clear that the Russian Federation is now launch on warn

1050
00:53:07,400 --> 00:53:09,399
Speaker 2: as well, right, So they are just straight up saying

1051
00:53:09,400 --> 00:53:12,120
Speaker 2: like everyone is now launch on warn, the US and Russia,

1052
00:53:12,120 --> 00:53:14,680
Speaker 2: and that's all that really matters. China's got some nukes.

1053
00:53:15,320 --> 00:53:17,040
Speaker 2: I don't know as much about their system, but they

1054
00:53:17,040 --> 00:53:19,160
Speaker 2: don't have near like both. The all it takes is

1055
00:53:19,200 --> 00:53:23,799
Speaker 2: the US and Russia, right, Yeah, Like, you know, it's

1056
00:53:23,800 --> 00:53:26,840
Speaker 2: worth being concerned about North Korea obviously, because one missile

1057
00:53:27,239 --> 00:53:29,960
Speaker 2: opens the possibility that all of the missiles start flying, right,

1058
00:53:30,000 --> 00:53:32,839
Speaker 2: because of the kind of cascading decision trees people will make.

1059
00:53:33,840 --> 00:53:36,880
Speaker 2: But the US and Russia are by far the most

1060
00:53:36,920 --> 00:53:41,520
Speaker 2: heavily armed right now. I know there's a tendency among

1061
00:53:41,600 --> 00:53:43,759
Speaker 2: folks on our side of the political aisle to say,

1062
00:53:43,800 --> 00:53:46,560
Speaker 2: oh my god, isn't it terrifying that Donald Trump has

1063
00:53:46,920 --> 00:53:48,200
Speaker 2: the fucking nuclear football?

1064
00:53:48,320 --> 00:53:48,520
Speaker 4: Right?

1065
00:53:49,080 --> 00:53:51,600
Speaker 2: And I'm gonna say something controversial here, which is, I

1066
00:53:51,600 --> 00:53:53,840
Speaker 2: don't think Donald Trump is less suited to make that

1067
00:53:53,920 --> 00:53:56,799
Speaker 2: call than any other present, not because he would do

1068
00:53:56,840 --> 00:53:59,120
Speaker 2: a good job at that, but because no one can.

1069
00:53:59,320 --> 00:54:03,439
Speaker 2: Everyone is bad at this. Nobody is competent to make

1070
00:54:03,520 --> 00:54:08,000
Speaker 2: that call, and it's a dangerous mistake to believe that, well, well,

1071
00:54:08,040 --> 00:54:10,960
Speaker 2: Obama's would have been a good guy to have in

1072
00:54:11,000 --> 00:54:13,640
Speaker 2: the seat or Biden wou No, they're all bad at this,

1073
00:54:13,760 --> 00:54:16,200
Speaker 2: They would all have been terrible. No one will do

1074
00:54:16,239 --> 00:54:18,320
Speaker 2: a good job if they are put in that situation.

1075
00:54:18,920 --> 00:54:22,239
Speaker 2: In her chilling book Nuclear War, Annie Jacobson makes one

1076
00:54:22,400 --> 00:54:26,200
Speaker 2: very important point. Several times. She quotes John Wolfstal, the

1077
00:54:26,239 --> 00:54:29,719
Speaker 2: former national security advisor to President Obama, who said, no one,

1078
00:54:30,080 --> 00:54:32,719
Speaker 2: not even the president, has complete knowledge of what is

1079
00:54:32,760 --> 00:54:35,160
Speaker 2: going on in a crisis or in a conflict, let

1080
00:54:35,200 --> 00:54:39,800
Speaker 2: alone a nuclear war. Former Secretary of Defense for Reagan,

1081
00:54:39,880 --> 00:54:43,520
Speaker 2: William Perry added, many presidents come into the office uninformed

1082
00:54:43,560 --> 00:54:46,440
Speaker 2: about their role in a nuclear war. Some seem not

1083
00:54:46,640 --> 00:54:49,680
Speaker 2: to want to know. This is a point made several

1084
00:54:49,680 --> 00:54:52,960
Speaker 2: times that presidents generally don't know much about this, even

1085
00:54:52,960 --> 00:54:54,759
Speaker 2: though this football is with them at all times. They

1086
00:54:54,760 --> 00:54:56,640
Speaker 2: don't like to think about it, they don't like to

1087
00:54:56,640 --> 00:54:58,840
Speaker 2: ask too many questions about it. They don't like to

1088
00:54:58,920 --> 00:55:01,319
Speaker 2: dwell on it. A bunch of people who were in

1089
00:55:01,320 --> 00:55:03,279
Speaker 2: a position to know have said similar things that like

1090
00:55:03,560 --> 00:55:06,759
Speaker 2: President's not super well informed, generally on how all this

1091
00:55:06,880 --> 00:55:10,160
Speaker 2: works because it's scary. They don't like to think about it.

1092
00:55:11,000 --> 00:55:13,120
Speaker 3: I don't like to think about it like this knells

1093
00:55:13,200 --> 00:55:16,840
Speaker 3: firmly into the lake. Dude, things that you can't control,

1094
00:55:16,920 --> 00:55:21,640
Speaker 3: you don't worry. Absolutely. If I was the president, I would.

1095
00:55:21,400 --> 00:55:25,440
Speaker 2: Think about this a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'd be

1096
00:55:25,440 --> 00:55:30,360
Speaker 2: sending those missiles straight to the Great Lakes. But yeah, yeah, yeah.

1097
00:55:30,000 --> 00:55:33,120
Speaker 3: That's why we're that's why you're running in what twenty

1098
00:55:33,200 --> 00:55:33,640
Speaker 3: thirty two?

1099
00:55:34,320 --> 00:55:37,680
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right on a takeout Lake Superior.

1100
00:55:38,400 --> 00:55:40,319
Speaker 3: Yeah, more like inferior.

1101
00:55:40,680 --> 00:55:42,600
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right. We're going to get revenge for

1102
00:55:42,640 --> 00:55:47,920
Speaker 2: those brave men on the Edmund Fitzgerald know. Anyway, Jacobson

1103
00:55:48,000 --> 00:55:51,480
Speaker 2: continues talking about how unready presidents are to make these

1104
00:55:51,560 --> 00:55:54,280
Speaker 2: kind of calls. Once, at a press conference in nineteen

1105
00:55:54,320 --> 00:55:57,040
Speaker 2: eighty two, President Reagan went so far as to incorrectly

1106
00:55:57,040 --> 00:56:00,680
Speaker 2: tell the public that submarine ballistic missiles are recalling. That's

1107
00:56:00,719 --> 00:56:03,719
Speaker 2: why that myth exists. After the Berlin Wall came down

1108
00:56:03,800 --> 00:56:06,319
Speaker 2: and the Soviet Union was dissolved, William Perry found in

1109
00:56:06,360 --> 00:56:09,560
Speaker 2: his experience as Secretary of Defense that many people clung

1110
00:56:09,600 --> 00:56:12,000
Speaker 2: to the idea that nuclear war was no longer a threat,

1111
00:56:12,160 --> 00:56:14,640
Speaker 2: when in fact he now says nothing could be further

1112
00:56:14,680 --> 00:56:18,280
Speaker 2: from the truth. In a nuclear war, confusion over protocol

1113
00:56:18,320 --> 00:56:21,760
Speaker 2: and speed of action will have unintended consequences beyond anyone's grasp.

1114
00:56:22,000 --> 00:56:24,080
Speaker 2: It will send the United States of America into the

1115
00:56:24,120 --> 00:56:26,919
Speaker 2: heart of darkness that defense official John Rubel warned about

1116
00:56:26,920 --> 00:56:30,600
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty, into what he called a twilight underworld

1117
00:56:30,640 --> 00:56:34,919
Speaker 2: governed by disciplined, meticulous, and energetically mindless group think aimed

1118
00:56:34,960 --> 00:56:37,279
Speaker 2: at wiping out half the people living on nearly one

1119
00:56:37,320 --> 00:56:38,480
Speaker 2: third of the Earth's surface.

1120
00:56:40,719 --> 00:56:42,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, yep.

1121
00:56:42,840 --> 00:56:45,640
Speaker 2: The fundamental issue here in terms of his Trump any

1122
00:56:45,640 --> 00:56:49,279
Speaker 2: worse than anyone else on this specific issue. Theoretically, the

1123
00:56:49,320 --> 00:56:51,200
Speaker 2: president is only going to be asked to make a

1124
00:56:51,239 --> 00:56:54,000
Speaker 2: call on whether or not to launch our missiles if

1125
00:56:54,080 --> 00:56:56,360
Speaker 2: one or more are known to have been launched towards

1126
00:56:56,400 --> 00:56:59,120
Speaker 2: the US or an ally. Because of the way all

1127
00:56:59,160 --> 00:57:02,480
Speaker 2: of these weapons systems work, this means that the hypothetical

1128
00:57:02,520 --> 00:57:05,920
Speaker 2: president in this scenario is going about his day doing

1129
00:57:05,960 --> 00:57:09,600
Speaker 2: something else and is grabbed and taken bodily like the

1130
00:57:09,640 --> 00:57:13,040
Speaker 2: Secret Service. Like response teams job is to literally physically

1131
00:57:13,120 --> 00:57:15,960
Speaker 2: haul him like carry him into the bunker and then

1132
00:57:16,000 --> 00:57:18,600
Speaker 2: into like a chopper to get to a more secure locations.

1133
00:57:18,640 --> 00:57:21,360
Speaker 2: The White House bunker isn't really all that safe, but

1134
00:57:21,440 --> 00:57:23,560
Speaker 2: he will be grabbed in the middle of his day,

1135
00:57:24,080 --> 00:57:28,080
Speaker 2: taken into a situation room, and told that the entirety

1136
00:57:28,080 --> 00:57:31,000
Speaker 2: of Washington, DC is about to die in flames, including

1137
00:57:31,040 --> 00:57:34,600
Speaker 2: nearly every member of his administration in the most likely scenarios.

1138
00:57:34,720 --> 00:57:36,640
Speaker 2: He will then be told that he has between three

1139
00:57:36,760 --> 00:57:39,880
Speaker 2: and six minutes to decide to launch a world killing

1140
00:57:39,920 --> 00:57:44,560
Speaker 2: salvo of in most situations, hundreds to one thousand nuclear warheads.

1141
00:57:44,920 --> 00:57:48,520
Speaker 2: The entire time that he struggles with this decision, military advisors,

1142
00:57:48,520 --> 00:57:51,200
Speaker 2: who his entire job is to think about how important

1143
00:57:51,240 --> 00:57:53,960
Speaker 2: it is that we strike back before being decapitated, will

1144
00:57:53,960 --> 00:57:57,760
Speaker 2: shout for him to launch everything that we've got. No

1145
00:57:57,800 --> 00:58:03,400
Speaker 2: one is qualified for that job. Yeah, the only president

1146
00:58:03,480 --> 00:58:06,120
Speaker 2: we've ever had who could be argued to have stood

1147
00:58:06,160 --> 00:58:08,800
Speaker 2: up to this kind of pressure was JFK. Right, and

1148
00:58:08,920 --> 00:58:12,120
Speaker 2: JFK was a combat veteran, had been in some scary

1149
00:58:12,160 --> 00:58:15,240
Speaker 2: situations before, and thank fucking god he was the guy

1150
00:58:15,280 --> 00:58:17,240
Speaker 2: on the ground at that point in time, because it

1151
00:58:17,240 --> 00:58:19,120
Speaker 2: could have been a lot worse than it was. The

1152
00:58:19,160 --> 00:58:21,560
Speaker 2: Cuban missile crisis of a bunch of others. Shit, I

1153
00:58:21,600 --> 00:58:24,479
Speaker 2: don't have any real faith that Obama or Biden would

1154
00:58:24,480 --> 00:58:27,360
Speaker 2: have performed much better than Trump in this nightmare scenario.

1155
00:58:27,840 --> 00:58:30,280
Speaker 2: As John Ruble wrote in two thousand and eight, we

1156
00:58:30,400 --> 00:58:33,360
Speaker 2: know that this mentality, given half a chance, will surface

1157
00:58:33,360 --> 00:58:36,320
Speaker 2: in military and government councils. We know from recent history

1158
00:58:36,320 --> 00:58:39,680
Speaker 2: that a compliant bureaucracy, military and civilian will murder six

1159
00:58:39,720 --> 00:58:42,760
Speaker 2: million people in cold blood, or plan by design, build

1160
00:58:42,800 --> 00:58:44,880
Speaker 2: and deploy the means to murder half of the people

1161
00:58:44,920 --> 00:58:48,680
Speaker 2: on earth, probably including themselves. How come is all this

1162
00:58:48,760 --> 00:58:52,040
Speaker 2: built into the human genome? A melancholy procession from stones

1163
00:58:52,080 --> 00:58:55,160
Speaker 2: to atoms, a predestined progress toward the end times, the

1164
00:58:55,200 --> 00:59:00,560
Speaker 2: inevitable rise of maligned leaders over compliant masses. Anyway, thanks

1165
00:59:00,600 --> 00:59:01,680
Speaker 2: for listening to my podcasts.

1166
00:59:02,440 --> 00:59:04,520
Speaker 4: Yeah, wow what a wait end?

1167
00:59:06,880 --> 00:59:08,000
Speaker 3: Yeah? Like, what did you do today?

1168
00:59:08,040 --> 00:59:08,200
Speaker 1: Oh?

1169
00:59:08,280 --> 00:59:10,280
Speaker 3: I get My job is that I have to make

1170
00:59:10,360 --> 00:59:13,200
Speaker 3: jokes during the as I get described the mechanism by

1171
00:59:13,200 --> 00:59:14,120
Speaker 3: which the world will end.

1172
00:59:14,760 --> 00:59:19,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, cool stuff, legit, I don't know. Probably should be

1173
00:59:19,640 --> 00:59:24,120
Speaker 2: something people are like asking presidents to change. We could

1174
00:59:24,200 --> 00:59:26,800
Speaker 2: change this. It doesn't have to be this way. It

1175
00:59:26,800 --> 00:59:30,760
Speaker 2: doesn't have to be this dangerous, Like, there are other

1176
00:59:30,840 --> 00:59:33,360
Speaker 2: ways this could all be designed to where we're not

1177
00:59:34,120 --> 00:59:37,920
Speaker 2: permanently fifteen minutes or less away from annihilation, you know,

1178
00:59:38,240 --> 00:59:42,040
Speaker 2: and if we step back, probably the Russians do at

1179
00:59:42,120 --> 00:59:43,720
Speaker 2: least a little bit. You know. I don't have a

1180
00:59:43,760 --> 00:59:45,360
Speaker 2: lot of faith in Buden, but I don't think he

1181
00:59:45,400 --> 00:59:47,360
Speaker 2: wants to die in nuclear.

1182
00:59:47,040 --> 00:59:49,800
Speaker 3: Hell fire either, and most people don't.

1183
00:59:50,120 --> 00:59:55,760
Speaker 2: I think most people don't. Uh. Anyway, maybe this should

1184
00:59:55,800 --> 00:59:58,400
Speaker 2: be like a voting issue that people talk about, right,

1185
00:59:58,480 --> 01:00:01,520
Speaker 2: Like it's you know, climate change obviously very important, and

1186
01:00:01,640 --> 01:00:03,720
Speaker 2: people it needs to be much more of an issue.

1187
01:00:03,880 --> 01:00:06,600
Speaker 2: But this is up there, This is an equivalent problem,

1188
01:00:06,800 --> 01:00:11,360
Speaker 2: right because this is potentially a much more thorough destruction

1189
01:00:11,400 --> 01:00:13,120
Speaker 2: of the biosphere that climate.

1190
01:00:12,880 --> 01:00:14,920
Speaker 3: Change will bring even quicker.

1191
01:00:15,400 --> 01:00:17,480
Speaker 2: We should probably care about this a lot.

1192
01:00:18,560 --> 01:00:27,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, anyway, what a good system we all have. Yeah,

1193
01:00:28,040 --> 01:00:31,880
Speaker 1: it's pretty nuts. I actually recommend all the books that

1194
01:00:31,920 --> 01:00:37,640
Speaker 1: I read for this, Annie Jacobson's Nuclear War A Scenario. Again,

1195
01:00:37,680 --> 01:00:39,720
Speaker 1: I don't entirely agree with kind of some of her

1196
01:00:40,120 --> 01:00:44,040
Speaker 1: panic about North Korea, but it's a pretty good book

1197
01:00:44,080 --> 01:00:46,240
Speaker 1: on the whole about the way the system works today.

1198
01:00:46,680 --> 01:00:49,320
Speaker 1: The book Fifteen Minutes is a really good look at

1199
01:00:49,520 --> 01:00:51,840
Speaker 1: like basically how we got to the point where we're

1200
01:00:51,840 --> 01:00:54,360
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes away from annihilation at all times. And then

1201
01:00:54,360 --> 01:00:57,240
Speaker 1: Command and Control, among other things, talks about a bunch

1202
01:00:57,240 --> 01:00:59,400
Speaker 1: of the different like fuck ups and errors that have

1203
01:00:59,440 --> 01:01:02,160
Speaker 1: happened along the way. They're all good books.

1204
01:01:03,680 --> 01:01:06,920
Speaker 3: I h the movie house a dynamite that just came

1205
01:01:06,960 --> 01:01:09,800
Speaker 3: out recently. It's the one that the way specifically the

1206
01:01:09,880 --> 01:01:13,880
Speaker 3: drama is just around. It's around the nuclear football, it's

1207
01:01:13,920 --> 01:01:16,920
Speaker 3: around the chain of command. This relates to it and

1208
01:01:16,960 --> 01:01:19,400
Speaker 3: the current one. And it's what started me, like a

1209
01:01:19,400 --> 01:01:22,240
Speaker 3: couple weeks before this started thinking about being like, oh,

1210
01:01:22,280 --> 01:01:25,760
Speaker 3: this isn't as like I sort of thought. I was like, oh,

1211
01:01:25,800 --> 01:01:27,920
Speaker 3: we probably have like decent intercept systems if it's just

1212
01:01:27,960 --> 01:01:32,200
Speaker 3: like one missile, right, you know, you're like, uh.

1213
01:01:31,600 --> 01:01:34,360
Speaker 2: If it's just one maybe, But again, we don't have

1214
01:01:34,480 --> 01:01:38,280
Speaker 2: decent intercept systems. None of these work nearly as well

1215
01:01:38,320 --> 01:01:40,880
Speaker 2: as they're supposed to, and there are some similar problems

1216
01:01:40,880 --> 01:01:43,560
Speaker 2: with at least some of the different early warning systems.

1217
01:01:43,600 --> 01:01:45,400
Speaker 2: It's been this is really a problem for the Russians

1218
01:01:45,400 --> 01:01:47,120
Speaker 2: because the Russians like one of the problems with the

1219
01:01:47,160 --> 01:01:49,880
Speaker 2: Russian system is that it's not smart enough to know

1220
01:01:50,080 --> 01:01:52,560
Speaker 2: because each of the missiles that we would be firing

1221
01:01:52,960 --> 01:01:54,880
Speaker 2: launches a bunch of chafe, right, So you have the

1222
01:01:54,880 --> 01:01:58,320
Speaker 2: actual warheads and ICBMs now often have multiple warheads, right

1223
01:01:58,320 --> 01:02:02,200
Speaker 2: that it's called an mirv I think, and basically what

1224
01:02:02,240 --> 01:02:04,200
Speaker 2: you can do, and this is particularly a case with

1225
01:02:04,240 --> 01:02:06,800
Speaker 2: like a lot of the sub mounted missiles too, is

1226
01:02:06,960 --> 01:02:09,640
Speaker 2: you launch one missile, but then it splits into like

1227
01:02:09,880 --> 01:02:13,320
Speaker 2: multiple warheads, each of which is targeted at a different area. Right,

1228
01:02:14,280 --> 01:02:16,440
Speaker 2: But also all of these missiles have what's called chaff,

1229
01:02:16,480 --> 01:02:21,040
Speaker 2: which is basically like like little strips of aluminum that

1230
01:02:21,400 --> 01:02:26,640
Speaker 2: come out with like the warhead in order to confuse

1231
01:02:27,240 --> 01:02:31,160
Speaker 2: like its system right right, right, yeah, yeah, yeah exactly,

1232
01:02:31,200 --> 01:02:34,320
Speaker 2: so that like it can protect the missile basically, but

1233
01:02:35,000 --> 01:02:37,560
Speaker 2: one of the main Russian systems can't tell the difference

1234
01:02:37,600 --> 01:02:41,000
Speaker 2: between that chaff and a shitload of additional missiles. So,

1235
01:02:41,080 --> 01:02:44,720
Speaker 2: like say there was a situation where North Korea launched

1236
01:02:44,760 --> 01:02:48,720
Speaker 2: an ICBM at somebody, and we launch a decapitation strike

1237
01:02:48,760 --> 01:02:50,880
Speaker 2: at North Korea or a strike at their nuclear facilities.

1238
01:02:50,880 --> 01:02:53,160
Speaker 2: That's a limited strike. We're just firing a couple of missiles.

1239
01:02:53,760 --> 01:02:56,480
Speaker 2: It might look because of where North Korea is, Russia

1240
01:02:56,560 --> 01:02:58,880
Speaker 2: and China might both think, oh shit, the Americans are

1241
01:02:58,920 --> 01:03:01,400
Speaker 2: launching hundreds of missiles and they could be coming for us.

1242
01:03:01,440 --> 01:03:04,320
Speaker 2: We don't know where they're targeted. And if the President

1243
01:03:04,400 --> 01:03:08,080
Speaker 2: hasn't gotten through to both of those leaders to inform them,

1244
01:03:08,080 --> 01:03:09,720
Speaker 2: and if or if they don't trust the president, right,

1245
01:03:09,840 --> 01:03:11,160
Speaker 2: who knows what's going to happen.

1246
01:03:11,880 --> 01:03:13,760
Speaker 3: I hate to say that HG. Wells is right because

1247
01:03:13,760 --> 01:03:17,000
Speaker 3: I don't actually believe in one world government, kind of

1248
01:03:17,000 --> 01:03:20,680
Speaker 3: famously with my political position, but this idea that like,

1249
01:03:21,200 --> 01:03:24,120
Speaker 3: the only way out of this, besides everyone de escalating,

1250
01:03:25,320 --> 01:03:29,600
Speaker 3: is better diplomacy and everyone talking to each other, and like, yeah,

1251
01:03:29,600 --> 01:03:33,360
Speaker 3: I'm moving away from nationalism, moving away from guarding your

1252
01:03:33,440 --> 01:03:37,840
Speaker 3: borders zealously, and moving well, I think the solution of

1253
01:03:37,880 --> 01:03:39,720
Speaker 3: most problems is to get rid of national borders. But

1254
01:03:39,800 --> 01:03:43,680
Speaker 3: I'm you know whatever, Yeah, I'm I'm so glad I'm

1255
01:03:43,680 --> 01:03:44,880
Speaker 3: not in charge of trying to figure out how to

1256
01:03:44,880 --> 01:03:46,920
Speaker 3: solve this. That's the main takeaway that I have.

1257
01:03:47,840 --> 01:03:52,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a couple of things we could do. Jacobsen

1258
01:03:52,560 --> 01:03:54,040
Speaker 2: talks about this, like one of the things that we

1259
01:03:54,120 --> 01:03:56,840
Speaker 2: don't do, but ought to because it's so hard to

1260
01:03:57,280 --> 01:04:01,240
Speaker 2: basically impossible almost to stop an ICBM reliably once it

1261
01:04:01,320 --> 01:04:04,920
Speaker 2: gets above a certain level, like once it gets and

1262
01:04:05,480 --> 01:04:07,840
Speaker 2: in terms of like there's no real way to like

1263
01:04:08,040 --> 01:04:10,920
Speaker 2: protect against the mass of ICBMs that Russia could launch,

1264
01:04:11,240 --> 01:04:13,240
Speaker 2: but North Korea doesn't have all that many. And if

1265
01:04:13,240 --> 01:04:16,200
Speaker 2: we were to keep like a bunch of predator drones

1266
01:04:16,560 --> 01:04:19,800
Speaker 2: in the area, we could theoretically have a quick reaction

1267
01:04:19,960 --> 01:04:22,280
Speaker 2: for US that could intercept an ICBM before it could

1268
01:04:22,320 --> 01:04:23,760
Speaker 2: get to the point of no return where you have

1269
01:04:23,840 --> 01:04:26,320
Speaker 2: no ability to shoot it down. But we just decided

1270
01:04:26,360 --> 01:04:28,120
Speaker 2: not to do that. Like that got theorized and it

1271
01:04:28,160 --> 01:04:29,720
Speaker 2: was like, I think it was too expensive. It's the

1272
01:04:29,760 --> 01:04:31,800
Speaker 2: same thing with like, well, we could have fad batteries

1273
01:04:31,840 --> 01:04:34,440
Speaker 2: to protect certain things that might be like that nuclear

1274
01:04:34,480 --> 01:04:36,360
Speaker 2: plant that might be a target, but we're not. We're

1275
01:04:36,400 --> 01:04:38,640
Speaker 2: just going to keep them, you know, protecting Israel. We're

1276
01:04:38,640 --> 01:04:41,479
Speaker 2: not going to have them, you know, in the US

1277
01:04:41,600 --> 01:04:44,200
Speaker 2: or whatever. For the most part, I mean obvious we

1278
01:04:44,200 --> 01:04:46,520
Speaker 2: have a lot of those in Ukraine, and there's good

1279
01:04:46,560 --> 01:04:50,200
Speaker 2: reason for that, but we don't devote It's both a

1280
01:04:50,240 --> 01:04:53,520
Speaker 2: mix of none of it really works all that well.

1281
01:04:53,560 --> 01:04:58,400
Speaker 2: None of our missile interception stuff is perfect. The fad

1282
01:04:58,680 --> 01:05:00,200
Speaker 2: is about as good as it gets, but it it's

1283
01:05:00,200 --> 01:05:02,800
Speaker 2: not good for everything. Like it could be useful against

1284
01:05:02,880 --> 01:05:04,680
Speaker 2: like some of those sub based missiles, but I don't

1285
01:05:04,680 --> 01:05:08,040
Speaker 2: think like it can take out ICBMs, certainly not or

1286
01:05:08,200 --> 01:05:10,720
Speaker 2: certainly not a hypersonic. I don't think anything can take

1287
01:05:10,760 --> 01:05:13,080
Speaker 2: out a hypersonic if it actually works the way they're

1288
01:05:13,080 --> 01:05:18,520
Speaker 2: supposed to. There's just not really reliable ways to stop

1289
01:05:19,480 --> 01:05:22,000
Speaker 2: a massive nuclear attack. If you get shot at by

1290
01:05:22,040 --> 01:05:24,439
Speaker 2: one missile, you might be able to do something right.

1291
01:05:24,920 --> 01:05:26,080
Speaker 2: That's kind of where we are.

1292
01:05:27,960 --> 01:05:28,400
Speaker 1: Well away.

1293
01:05:29,280 --> 01:05:32,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love talking about it though I love me

1294
01:05:32,160 --> 01:05:32,640
Speaker 2: some nukes.

1295
01:05:33,880 --> 01:05:35,400
Speaker 3: The ideas of all the things that I want to

1296
01:05:35,400 --> 01:05:36,840
Speaker 3: write fiction about is related to it.

1297
01:05:36,960 --> 01:05:40,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Folks, get out there to go

1298
01:05:40,320 --> 01:05:43,480
Speaker 2: to the Wassaw Sound, you know, look around, hike around,

1299
01:05:43,480 --> 01:05:45,880
Speaker 2: get your metal detectors out. There's a couple of nukes

1300
01:05:46,000 --> 01:05:48,160
Speaker 2: just waiting for a new home.

1301
01:05:47,960 --> 01:05:48,920
Speaker 3: Out you know.

1302
01:05:50,680 --> 01:05:51,440
Speaker 2: Nuclear power.

1303
01:05:52,600 --> 01:05:55,720
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, take care of each other and tell your

1304
01:05:55,760 --> 01:05:57,919
Speaker 3: friends you love them, but not in a way where

1305
01:05:57,960 --> 01:06:00,680
Speaker 3: you don't get completely lost thinking about this stuff all

1306
01:06:00,720 --> 01:06:04,600
Speaker 3: the time. And also podcasts cool people who did cool stuff,

1307
01:06:04,640 --> 01:06:07,160
Speaker 3: which is the opposite of this, but.

1308
01:06:08,040 --> 01:06:14,640
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, yeah, sweet, all right, everybody go away.

1309
01:06:15,920 --> 01:06:18,640
Speaker 4: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

1310
01:06:18,960 --> 01:06:22,200
Speaker 4: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia

1311
01:06:22,440 --> 01:06:25,640
Speaker 4: dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

1312
01:06:25,720 --> 01:06:28,880
Speaker 4: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the

1313
01:06:28,880 --> 01:06:32,960
Speaker 4: Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday

1314
01:06:33,040 --> 01:06:36,720
Speaker 4: and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com slash

1315
01:06:36,880 --> 01:06:39,120
Speaker 4: at Behind the Bastards