Speaker 1: Also media, and we're back.
Speaker 2: It's behind the Bastards. This is our special episodes on
Speaker 2: the guys who built the nuclear doomsday machine that could
Speaker 2: kill us all at any moment. Episode five, The end
Speaker 2: is finally in sight. That could be literal. Margaret Kiljoy,
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the program. How you doing.
Speaker 3: I'm doing great. I've gone full circle. I've accepted that
Speaker 3: this is reality, and I am just very happy to
Speaker 3: get to live in these times.
Speaker 2: It's great that you got to that point because actually
Speaker 2: the next ten pages are all Warhammer. Oh I just
Speaker 2: stopped writing about nukes at a certain point, but you
Speaker 2: can just assume that that's real.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because that's what your brain does when presented with
Speaker 3: this much disaster, is you're like, yeah, man, I really
Speaker 3: like fantasy books.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm just gonna I'm just gonna relax to the
Speaker 2: comfort of a game where every single person is worse
Speaker 2: than Hitler, Like we're Hitler would be a moderate bleeding hearts. Well,
Speaker 2: let's get back to talking about this insane minute man system,
Speaker 2: because we've talked about some of the shit that's crazy
Speaker 2: about this, but we still have not gotten to the
Speaker 2: craziest thing about this, right, Good, So we left off.
Speaker 2: John Ruble has been having in nineteen fifty nine and
Speaker 2: start at sixty. He's having conversations with all these Air
Speaker 2: Force guys about the minute Man system, and he's come
Speaker 2: up with some serious concerns about, well, how do we
Speaker 2: decide when these things are fired? When you choose to
Speaker 2: shoot one, how do the other nine get launched? Is
Speaker 2: it really just four guys who have to turn their
Speaker 2: keys in order to launch fifty missiles? Are there ways
Speaker 2: they could at fifty random cities? Are there ways they
Speaker 2: could accidentally get launched due to, you know, an electrical error?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: These are all concerns, and the Air Force is like,
Speaker 2: with the fuck are you asking questions for? You fucking nerd?
Speaker 2: Get the hell out of here. Let us killed. Yeah
Speaker 2: you a commie? So here's Rubelt are tell me? Yeah,
Speaker 2: you got to tell me if you're a communists. Here's
Speaker 2: Rubel discussing his concerns. I was curious about the procedures
Speaker 2: for launching. How are the decisions to be made and
Speaker 2: what happens when the launch commands are given? What if
Speaker 2: you decide you really didn't want to launch the rest
Speaker 2: after you've already launched some can you launch missiles one
Speaker 2: at a time selectively, what if some operators decide to
Speaker 2: launch without authority? Here I cite from a transcript of
Speaker 2: my discussion of this matter for the John F. Kennedy Library.
Speaker 2: A moment arrived in this briefing in the June of
Speaker 2: nineteen fifteen. In June of nineteen fifty nine, when I
Speaker 2: could ask the question I wanted to ask, when I
Speaker 2: had asked Bennett in private before, but without getting a
Speaker 2: satisfactory response. I had the feeling that if I asked
Speaker 2: the question surrounded as I was by members of the
Speaker 2: President's Science Advisory Committee panel, that I might elicit a
Speaker 2: better answer. So I said something like, Bob, can you
Speaker 2: describe how the missiles are launched? Now? I began to
Speaker 2: think he was made uncomfortable by the question. He seemed
Speaker 2: reluctant to grasp it simple meaning. And Bob gives the
Speaker 2: explanation I gave you earlier about how well these guys
Speaker 2: are all behind bulletproof glass, and they have guns so
Speaker 2: they you know, one guy can't threaten the other, and
Speaker 2: they turn their keys at the same time or close
Speaker 2: to it, and that'll count as a vote to launch
Speaker 2: the missile. Right the first miss and so Rebel's immediate
Speaker 2: question is when you say the missiles are launched, do
Speaker 2: you mean all fifty? And Bob said, well, that depends
Speaker 2: on whether or not the missiles are ready, but yeah,
Speaker 2: all fifty will launch. Now, this upsets everybody on the
Speaker 2: President's Science Advisory Panel. These people are not These are
Speaker 2: like normal people, right, These are not maniacs. These are
Speaker 2: like science guys who were, you know, scared of nuclear holocaust? Right,
Speaker 2: And they're like, what or guys live launch fifty missiles
Speaker 2: with no one getting in the way. Really, and there's
Speaker 2: no way to stop all fifty from launching once you
Speaker 2: start the process of launching one. Are you serious? He was,
Speaker 2: So everybody gets upset. So Bob Bob is like, now
Speaker 2: in damage control mode, and Bob Bennett goes like, now, look,
Speaker 2: you have to understand, this isn't as crazy as it sounds.
Speaker 2: There are two modes that we can fire these in. Right.
Speaker 2: One of these modes is salvo and the other is
Speaker 2: ripple launch. Right, one of them launches all the missiles
Speaker 2: as close as simultaneously as possible, and the other staggers them. Right,
Speaker 2: does that make it better? There's two modes Margaret, there's
Speaker 2: two modes. It's fine.
Speaker 3: The hose has shower and jet. Yeah, not a hose.
Speaker 2: You just know, Bob has not sat down with anyone
Speaker 2: who is not constantly spending every second of their life
Speaker 2: like touching themselves to the thought of ending humanity, right,
Speaker 2: and he's just like, wait, people don't they don't know
Speaker 2: there's two modes that'll fix it. I'll tell them about
Speaker 2: the modes, right.
Speaker 4: See.
Speaker 3: I think they and its consequences have been a disaster
Speaker 3: for the years.
Speaker 2: It's a fucking catastrophe. Yeah, once people start thinking about
Speaker 2: game again, that needs to be a bricking. If you
Speaker 2: ever encounter somebody who starts talking game theory shit, just
Speaker 2: brick them, you know, give them a good heart.
Speaker 3: Theory says you have to brick them. That's the you
Speaker 3: have to brick them.
Speaker 2: It's the only way to stop these people. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 2: Rubel continues quote. It turned out in pursuing the matter
Speaker 2: further that if you had preset the system for a
Speaker 2: ripple launch, there was no way to interrupt it. After
Speaker 2: the launch command was transmitted to the silos. If the
Speaker 2: first missile went then six seconds later, let us say
Speaker 2: the second and after another six seconds the third, and
Speaker 2: if after the twentieth missile you decide that was really
Speaker 2: enough missiles, you couldn't stop the system from launching the
Speaker 2: remaining thirty. According to what Bennett told us at the time,
Speaker 2: Rubelle describes the committee as pretty shook by this revelation.
Speaker 2: I don't think anybody had ever realized before that there
Speaker 2: would be four men buried in the ground somewhere in
Speaker 2: North Dakota who might someday stick their keys into four
Speaker 2: little slots, turn them, and irrevocably launch fifty minutemen missiles.
Speaker 3: Yeah that's life on Earth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's insane. The next question this inspired was under
Speaker 2: what circumstances would these men get the order to turn
Speaker 2: their keys? Everyone outside the Air Force assumed they'd have
Speaker 2: to be a verified command from the President or a
Speaker 2: designated military authority, but that wasn't physically required, and as
Speaker 2: Rubel notes, the whole system was designed to remove choices
Speaker 2: from civilian leadership. Quote. By design, the president could not
Speaker 2: decide to launch one missile or two or a few
Speaker 2: against specific targets. This was intentional. The Air Force built
Speaker 2: it this way to remove choice from the president. So
Speaker 2: the president, if he was asked to make that decision
Speaker 2: in ten or fifteen minutes do we start a nuclear war?
Speaker 2: So he would not have any option but to do it.
Speaker 2: That's why they built it this way. That was conscious,
Speaker 2: that was intentional.
Speaker 3: Fuck.
Speaker 2: So now I should note here, and this is something
Speaker 2: Rebel points out, fifty of these Minuteman missiles, with the
Speaker 2: standard explosive loads they had, would have meant more explosive
Speaker 2: power than all of the bombs used in all of
Speaker 2: the wars in human history put together up to that point.
Speaker 2: Four guys could do this, and again, the whole minute
Speaker 2: Man system was meant to eventually have at least a
Speaker 2: thousand missiles general power. In fact, advocated for two hundred
Speaker 2: squadrons a total of ten thousand missiles, all set up
Speaker 2: the same way.
Speaker 3: Every state gets four, every state gets four.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So Rubel was so frightened by all of this
Speaker 2: that he dedicated his career to stopping the system as
Speaker 2: it existed from being implemented. He sat down first with
Speaker 2: General Curtis LeMay, than the Air Force Chief of Staff.
Speaker 2: Rubelle expressed to LeMay that he believed the minute Man
Speaker 2: system represented a crucial loss of civilian command and control.
Speaker 2: Here's LeMay's response, command and control. Command and control, what's that?
Speaker 2: It's telling the fighting man what to do. That's what
Speaker 2: it is, and that's a job with a professional soldier.
Speaker 2: They talk about the president, exercise and command and control?
Speaker 2: What is the president? Rebel notes that le may spit
Speaker 2: out the p and president a politician. What does the
Speaker 2: politician know about war? Who needs a president? If there's
Speaker 2: a war? Nobody. All we need him for is to
Speaker 2: tell us that there is a war. We are professional soldiers,
Speaker 2: will take care of the rest. Just out of his mind.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, I'm impressed that you got This is like
Speaker 3: almost the worst bat. This is Schrodinger's worst bastard in
Speaker 3: all right.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, absolutely, yeah, Like this man's dedication to ending
Speaker 2: all life on earth is really unique in history. I mean,
Speaker 2: I assume he had a Soviet counterpart, but like, I'm
Speaker 2: not as familiar with them.
Speaker 3: Do you think that they get like lonely, the American
Speaker 3: one and the Russian one, and they have only each
Speaker 3: other to talk to when they talk about their doomsday machine,
Speaker 3: that they're the only people who really understand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, they won't give me ten thousand missiles, bro,
Speaker 2: I know, it's so hard to get enough missiles to
Speaker 2: kill the whole world a thousand times over. Like, don't worry,
Speaker 2: we got a bunch too, though, homie, Like, it'll be fine.
Speaker 2: The no one's gonna live through this.
Speaker 3: We'll do our part too, all right, as long as
Speaker 3: you do your part.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. So it's here that Rubell points out every
Speaker 2: detail of the minute Man system discussed so far was
Speaker 2: designed per the specifications of the Air Force. This was
Speaker 2: true right down to the mechanics of how turning the
Speaker 2: keys led to firing the missiles, which is the scariest
Speaker 2: part of the whole system. To make a complicated story
Speaker 2: kind of simpler, the keys send out these electronic pulse
Speaker 2: generators which travel to electronic gates, and once the get
Speaker 2: the signal pat the pulse passes through the gate, it
Speaker 2: advances one notch for each pulse that passes through the gate, right,
Speaker 2: and if enough pulses pass through the gates, it starts
Speaker 2: launching the missiles automatically.
Speaker 3: Right. Oh my god, so I start You can hack
Speaker 3: one position and get all four sorry, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it doesn't even have to be that. Because
Speaker 2: I explained this to a friend of mine who has
Speaker 2: never read a book about nukes, but who has done amateur,
Speaker 2: unlicensed electrician work. And she immediately asked, hey, wait, does
Speaker 2: that mean that, like, if the power goes out and
Speaker 2: then comes back on, it might send a pulse and
Speaker 2: advance one notch closer to firing the missiles. Wow, God,
Speaker 2: you wouldn't think so, right. Clearly, anyone putting the effort
Speaker 2: of putting missiles and hardened bunkers meant to a stand
Speaker 2: an atom bomb would have made sure that something as
Speaker 2: simple as a power outage in rural North Dakota in
Speaker 2: the sixties wouldn't trigger an atomic holocaust. Only they did not.
Speaker 2: They never considered it for a second.
Speaker 3: My god, this.
Speaker 2: Thing could have started launching fifty missiles if there was
Speaker 2: a power outage or a couple of power outages. Because
Speaker 2: once Rubel starts taking this to other engineers, they bring
Speaker 2: this up and they start looking into how the system
Speaker 2: design realized that's totally possible, Like it absolutely could have
Speaker 2: happened if they had built the system the way it
Speaker 2: was originally designed. And no one in the Air Force
Speaker 2: even fought to look into that, Like that's how reckless
Speaker 2: these pieces of shit are. Now the reason why the
Speaker 2: Air Force doesn't care about this sort of thing is
Speaker 2: that they are more concerned that just two guys can
Speaker 2: launch a whole squadron of ICBMs if everyone else in
Speaker 2: the country is killed first. So they built an automated
Speaker 2: clock system. The other thing they added to this is
Speaker 2: they have this automatic clock system that counts down from
Speaker 2: between six hours. You can set it to like one
Speaker 2: hour or six hours. You can set it to a
Speaker 2: variety of times, but depending on how you set it,
Speaker 2: if one command center votes to launch the missiles after
Speaker 2: a limit, after whatever time you set it to, this
Speaker 2: automated system will act as the second vote to fire
Speaker 2: the remaining forty missiles, and Jesus right, yeah, Now, when
Speaker 2: this is.
Speaker 3: Explained, this is worse than I expected.
Speaker 2: It's so bad, so fucked.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so bad, like it's the Taurus firearms of
Speaker 3: nuclear missiles. It's nuts, like to not.
Speaker 2: Even no, not even Celtech. Yeah, they built a nuclear
Speaker 2: cig P three twenty to go off in a cops box.
Speaker 2: Oh man. So when all this was explained to Rubel,
Speaker 2: the Air Force guy who's telling him this says that, like, well,
Speaker 2: the minimum setting is fifty eight minutes, right, and we
Speaker 2: want to have at least that much time to allow
Speaker 2: the military to disable the system. If two men vote
Speaker 2: to launch without warning and we decide we don't want
Speaker 2: to launch the rest of the squadron, right, that seems
Speaker 2: like maybe it's a safety feature. Right now, many of
Speaker 2: these silos are hours away from anything else. That's kind
Speaker 2: of the point. Even to this day. You can't reach
Speaker 2: a lot of these in fifty eight minutes, you know.
Speaker 2: But the other problem is that the Air Force colonel
Speaker 2: who described the way this clock system worked to Rubel
Speaker 2: lied to him. The minimum count you could set it
Speaker 2: to wasn't fifty eight minutes. It was zero minutes.
Speaker 3: So you really genuinely could just automate all the minute men.
Speaker 2: Yeah we damn near? Did we damn near? Did? Here's
Speaker 2: rebel again. Zero could mean that only two men or
Speaker 2: perhaps none at all, could set off the unstoppable firing
Speaker 2: of fifty minute man missiles by accident or effectively by
Speaker 2: designing the system this way in the event of a
Speaker 2: series of power interruptions. So Rubel is like, oh God,
Speaker 2: I have to do something this system. These missiles are
Speaker 2: not active yet, these silos aren't active yet, and I
Speaker 2: have to stop them from being made active at least
Speaker 2: until this is fixed. Right, So he sets to work
Speaker 2: trying to get someone at the Air Force to give
Speaker 2: a shit about these problems. Right. He sits down with
Speaker 2: the head of missile Development, General Shreiverer, who he described
Speaker 2: as conspicuously disinterested in discussing the subject. Eventually, in late
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty he manages to have lunch with the Deputy
Speaker 2: Secretary of Defense, and while they're arguing about this system,
Speaker 2: he's like, look, man, tell me, would you feel safe
Speaker 2: knowing the Soviets had a system that worked the way
Speaker 2: the minute man does? And yeah, he thought I had
Speaker 2: a point there, but my concerns again dropped into another
Speaker 2: organizational black hole. Everyone's just trying to push this guy on.
Speaker 2: I don't want to deal with it. I don't want
Speaker 2: to think about it. Why are you trying? Why are
Speaker 2: you causing problems? Just let us build this thing and
Speaker 2: forget about it. Man, No one else has a problem
Speaker 2: with this. That's literally how he's being treated.
Speaker 3: It's like, so it's not even the torment Nexus. It's
Speaker 3: like one guy's trying to stop the torment Nexus from
Speaker 3: being built by a bunch of people who also don't
Speaker 3: think that the Torment Nexus needs to be. They're just
Speaker 3: doing their part.
Speaker 2: Torment said, come on, man, don't fuck with us. A
Speaker 2: lot of people's jobs are on the line building the
Speaker 2: Torment Nexus. Yeah, come on. So, as I noted Rubel,
Speaker 2: because he's good at his job, he gets promoted regularly, right,
Speaker 2: and in sixty one I think sixty sixty one, he
Speaker 2: passes his job at the Strategic Warfare Office I think
Speaker 2: it's sixty onto a guy named Martin Stern. He tells
Speaker 2: Stern that his top priority is to change the Minuteman
Speaker 2: launch control system and warns him, you will not get
Speaker 2: this done unless you get a presidential directive ordering the
Speaker 2: Air Force to do something. And Marvin has a good
Speaker 2: relationship with some of these generals, and so he starts
Speaker 2: at being like, that's not how you get things done
Speaker 2: in the Air Force, right, you just gotta let me
Speaker 2: talk to these guys. But then he starts talking to
Speaker 2: these guys and all of these generals lie to him,
Speaker 2: and he realizes like, oh fuck, no, they really are
Speaker 2: refusing to fix these problems, these apocalyptic problems, and they're
Speaker 2: trying to fast track these missiles to being activated. To
Speaker 2: make a long story short, Rubel and several of his
Speaker 2: friends spend the next two years of their lives shouting
Speaker 2: at everyone who will listen about this. This culminates and
Speaker 2: another guy at the DoD named Jim Fletcher heading a
Speaker 2: committee that issues a report on the minute Man system.
Speaker 2: Their research found that a very real chance that simple
Speaker 2: power outages could cause large portions of our nuclear arsenal
Speaker 2: to fire. The ultimate bill and this is it's because
Speaker 2: of this commission report that we retrofit the whole minute
Speaker 2: Man system. Right, And the ultimate bill for retrofitting the
Speaker 2: system is hundreds of millions of dollars. Right. It's very
Speaker 2: expensive to fix these problems, which is why the Air
Speaker 2: Force hadn't wanted to fix them. But Rubel does win.
Speaker 2: The most dangerous features for the economy, Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: real bad fucking. The stock market does not do well
Speaker 2: when everyone's dead. Nope, Nope, doesn't do much at all.
Speaker 2: Now Rubel does win. The most dangerous features are removed
Speaker 2: by the time the first minute Man silo goes active
Speaker 2: at the end of nineteen sixty one. But a big
Speaker 2: part of why I noted all of this stuff. None
Speaker 2: of this comes out until two thousand and eight, when Rubel,
Speaker 2: at the end of his life, publishes a confession talking
Speaker 2: about all this right as a way to try to
Speaker 2: warn people. Essentially, he's warning people, nothing's really all that
Speaker 2: much better today, right, Like, that's why he writes this,
Speaker 2: to try to get people to understand how much danger
Speaker 2: we're all in. And a big part of the point
Speaker 2: of that confession is he's talking about all of the
Speaker 2: gaps in the system of civilian control of the military
Speaker 2: that allowed all of this to happen in the first place,
Speaker 2: because those gaps weren't entirely eradicated by fixing this one system.
Speaker 2: He documented a conversation one of his allies had with
Speaker 2: another Air Force general around the same time. Quote General
Speaker 2: Cutter told me that we had to complete the BMEWS
Speaker 2: Ballistic Missile Early Warning System as soon as possible, and
Speaker 2: he urged that we expanded in order to create a
Speaker 2: highly redundant capability at each site. We must have an
Speaker 2: absolutely reliable early warning of a missile attack. Basically, I agreed,
Speaker 2: all would have been well if he had stopped there,
Speaker 2: but he didn't. In words I can't precisely recall, he
Speaker 2: went on to say that we had to have this
Speaker 2: redundancy in the resulting high level of right reliability, so
Speaker 2: that when we finally connected the warning system directly to
Speaker 2: the launch button of our own ICBMs, there would be
Speaker 2: no false alarms. I was astonished. I told him flatly,
Speaker 2: we would not automate our response at We would not
Speaker 2: connect the warning system directly to the launch button. We
Speaker 2: would not, in some go to a launch on warning strategy.
Speaker 2: We would especially not go to one that did not
Speaker 2: have the president in the decision making. Loop Cutter coldly replied,
Speaker 2: in that case, we might as well surrender now.
Speaker 3: I love it. It's like no one who's ever done plumbing
Speaker 3: or hacking. No, yeah, air gap, you need a fucking
Speaker 3: air gap, needs for so many gaps.
Speaker 2: Never trust a computer, don't trust people, and don't trust computers.
Speaker 3: Every hacker is like, this is my computer that matters,
Speaker 3: So it doesn't have the Internet right like it.
Speaker 2: It's just it's fucking insane, like the whole Well, we
Speaker 2: might as well surrender now. If we're not just going
Speaker 2: to have an automatic doomsday device that goes off, if
Speaker 2: a radar has an hallucination, why don't we just quit?
Speaker 2: Fuck it? What's the communists like? It's fucking crazy? And
Speaker 2: I should note that this happens later, but the Soviet
Speaker 2: Union does devise a similar automated system called the dead Hand,
Speaker 2: and some aspect it's kind of unclear exactly how put
Speaker 2: together this is, but they do a version of the
Speaker 2: same thing, right this right it is a really cool name,
Speaker 2: but it's basically a way to guarantee that if the
Speaker 2: US wiped out out their command and control first, that
Speaker 2: there would be an automatic launch system in order to retaliate. Right,
Speaker 2: It's kind of unclear exactly what got actually built, but
Speaker 2: they this is these same conversions of all of these
Speaker 2: same conversations happened in the USSR.
Speaker 3: Right two, because they, if nothing else, they need the
Speaker 3: Americans to believe they do that right right exactly, and
Speaker 3: like everyone is worried about what the other guy is
Speaker 3: doing and everybody's out.
Speaker 2: Of their fucking minds.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now the good news is, Margaret, it's time for ads.
Speaker 3: Oh good, it is a nice thing that makes the
Speaker 3: ads seem like a nice refreshment.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, probably not going to get ads for nukes.
Speaker 4: Huzzah.
Speaker 2: And we're back. So the good news is this, This
Speaker 2: is not the only kind of thinking exhibited by modern
Speaker 2: military advisors and officers today. But general Cutters type of
Speaker 2: thinking is not extinct at the Pentagon, and it is
Speaker 2: still very common. I don't know if i'd say it's
Speaker 2: completely dominant, but there are a lot of guys who
Speaker 2: think this way who are still part of our nuclear
Speaker 2: defense architecture, right.
Speaker 1: This.
Speaker 2: In fact, getting that job kind of requires that you're
Speaker 2: at least a little bit like these people.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: It fairly uncommon for people who don't somewhat agree with
Speaker 2: some of this to wind up in those positions. Rubell
Speaker 2: points out that there was no technical auditing practice standardized
Speaker 2: for examining the technical status of launch controls for any
Speaker 2: of our nuclear weapons systems, and there is none today, right,
Speaker 2: And that's a real problem. There's no one checking other
Speaker 2: than guys like Rubel to make sure we don't build
Speaker 2: another really flawed, suicidally flawed missile system, which the Minuteman
Speaker 2: initially was. Now, while Rubel was fighting to reform the
Speaker 2: minute Man system, he was part of the problem in
Speaker 2: a different way. Right. We've just talked about him. Maybe
Speaker 2: he saved everybody's lives. Here's him being kind of a
Speaker 2: bastard and late night. Yeah, in late nineteen sixty, which
Speaker 2: is right in the middle of when he's having this fight.
Speaker 2: President Eisenhower issued an order for all three military departments
Speaker 2: to formulate a single operational plan or PSYOP for nuclear
Speaker 2: war like SIOP, not like a psyop, but it is
Speaker 2: pronounced the same way, right, and this will this will
Speaker 2: get finalized in sixty two. But they start working on it,
Speaker 2: and they presented initially in nineteen sixty. So in late
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty the DoD the Department of Defense, shares a
Speaker 2: cohesive plan for nuclear war to a mix of military
Speaker 2: personnel and selected civilian defense officials for the first time.
Speaker 2: The Single Integrated Operational Plan or PSYOP sixty two was,
Speaker 2: in Rubel's words, deliberately designed to inflict hundreds of millions
Speaker 2: of deaths and uncounted casualties, mostly on in innocent civilians
Speaker 2: in the USSR in China. This plan was presented at
Speaker 2: an underground meeting at the SAC headquarters near Omaha, Nebraska.
Speaker 2: General Power Stage managed a deliberately theatrical display in which,
Speaker 2: at his command, AIDS would simultaneously set up easels and
Speaker 2: start flipping maps over that like each new map would
Speaker 2: show different detonations from different waves of planned strikes, you know,
Speaker 2: five minutes, in ten minutes, twenty minutes. Right, this is
Speaker 2: like it's an analog PowerPoint, right, he has like guys
Speaker 2: being his PowerPoint presentation basically, Yeah, and I'm going to
Speaker 2: quote from Rubel, because Reubella is at this meeting, right,
Speaker 2: I'm going to quote from his description of what he
Speaker 2: sees here. At the point in the briefing where some
Speaker 2: bombers were described flying northeast from the Mediterranean on their
Speaker 2: way to Moscow, General Power waved at the speaker, saying
Speaker 2: just a minute, just a minute. He turned in his
Speaker 2: front row chair to stare into the obscurity of uniforms
Speaker 2: and dusk stretching behind me, and said, I just hope
Speaker 2: none of you have any relatives in Albania, because they
Speaker 2: have a radar station there that is right on our
Speaker 2: flight path, and we take it out with that, to
Speaker 2: which the response was utter silence. Power turned to the
Speaker 2: speaker and with another wave of his hand told him
Speaker 2: to go ahead. Just Cashry was like, by the way,
Speaker 2: we're killing everyone in Albania immediately.
Speaker 3: Yeah, famously our enemy Uh huh.
Speaker 2: Hope you don't got family there, because again we knew
Speaker 2: pok them right away. Because of a radar station. We're
Speaker 2: just going to kill everyone in the country. Because of
Speaker 2: a radar station, everyone in the country. We're wiping the
Speaker 2: whole country out.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, Rubel, I think we've established is a thinking man
Speaker 2: and a man who cares about ethics. He's not a monster.
Speaker 2: He's a part of this terrible system, but he has
Speaker 2: a soul and he's upset. He's upset at this general
Speaker 2: casual being, like, so we start by killing albaniact just
Speaker 2: for shit, right, He's upset, but he doesn't say shit right.
Speaker 2: He writes about this decades later. He writes about his
Speaker 2: discomfort in this meeting, and that specifically, he writes about
Speaker 2: his discomfort at the fact that SIAP sixty two quote
Speaker 2: deliberately removed effective operational control from the president or any
Speaker 2: other civilian or even military commander in the event of
Speaker 2: a nuclear conflict. Now, none of this is public knowledge
Speaker 2: for decades, right, it takes a long time. We only
Speaker 2: know what we know because in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 2: Rubell published his experiences as a warning to the rest
Speaker 2: of the country, and he noted that during this meeting,
Speaker 2: General Power and the other authors of si UP sixty
Speaker 2: two gave an anticipated death count of five hundred to
Speaker 2: six hundred million deaths from fallout alone in the USSR
Speaker 2: in China.
Speaker 3: That gets into that, like, that's like a combined death
Speaker 3: count of every war that's ever happened. Levels ye problem, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like right, it's got to be up there, right. Quote.
Speaker 2: No accounting was presented of reciprocal effects in the United
Speaker 2: States or collateral deaths and damage in many other parts
Speaker 2: of the globe where global clouds of radioactive dust would
Speaker 2: eventually descend. They just don't bother with that. We're not
Speaker 2: interested in what the fallout might do. We're not interested
Speaker 2: in the knock on effects. We're just interested in killing
Speaker 2: half of all of the people or more in the
Speaker 2: USSR in China, right yeah. And the way in which
Speaker 2: Power and the other briefers talk about civilian death on
Speaker 2: an unimaginable scale struck Rubel as ghoulish. Quote. There are
Speaker 2: about six hundred million Chinese in China. He said, his
Speaker 2: chart went up to half that number, three hundred million.
Speaker 2: On the vertical axis. It showed that debts from fallout
Speaker 2: as time passed after the attack leveled out at that
Speaker 2: number three hundred million. Half the population of China.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, they don't care.
Speaker 2: They don't give a shit. Yeah, now I say they
Speaker 2: don't give a shit. Someone in this meeting does give
Speaker 2: a shit, right, And I'm gonna continue with Rubel's reminiscence.
Speaker 2: A voice out of the gloom from somewhere behind me interrupted, saying,
Speaker 2: may I ask a question. General Power turned again in
Speaker 2: his front row seat, stared into the darkness, and said, yeah,
Speaker 2: what is it? In a tone not likely to encourage
Speaker 2: the timid What if this isn't China's war? The voice asked,
Speaker 2: what if this is just a war with the Soviets?
Speaker 2: Can you change the plan? Well? Yeah, General Power said resignedly,
Speaker 2: we can, but I hope nobody thinks of it because
Speaker 2: it would really screw up the plan. Hey, what if
Speaker 2: we don't need to kill three hundred million people in China?
Speaker 2: Can we like nix that part?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 2: I hope not. That fucks up my plan. We're not
Speaker 2: killing three hundred million people in China. That really fucks
Speaker 2: things up for me.
Speaker 3: We already had the banner printed, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've got the banner printed in everything. We had
Speaker 2: a mission accomplished board here. Come on, Yeah, you don't
Speaker 2: want to kill three hundred million people in China. What's
Speaker 2: wrong with you?
Speaker 3: Yeah? But what was that? Bonus effects?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, bonus effects. Now it says something about Rubel
Speaker 2: that it was not until this moment that he found
Speaker 2: himself thinking about the Vonse Conference in January of nineteen
Speaker 2: forty two, in which a group of top Nazis planned
Speaker 2: the Holocaust. For some reason, this is one of the
Speaker 2: most frightening moments of the Cold War to me, A
Speaker 2: man who truly cared about protecting his country and stopping
Speaker 2: a dangerous system from going live finds himself stuck in
Speaker 2: a room where something many times worse than the Holocaust
Speaker 2: is being casually planned, and he realizes, oh fuck, oh shit,
Speaker 2: I'm like some junior SS guys sitting in the back
Speaker 2: of the Vonse conference too scared to speak up and
Speaker 2: ruin micro fuck fuck, I'm a not fuck like. That's
Speaker 2: literally how he describes his recollection is like, this is
Speaker 2: the fuck. This is so much worse than the they're
Speaker 2: talking about skilling six hundred million people. He doesn't say shit,
Speaker 2: he does not. He is not that kind of brave, right,
Speaker 2: He is a work within them that's.
Speaker 3: Like a telling human conditioned thing right, because we all
Speaker 3: imagine ourselves saying something right now.
Speaker 2: You want to hope you would. And I get the
Speaker 2: feeling from his writing that Rubelle never quite forgave himself
Speaker 2: for not right.
Speaker 3: Good.
Speaker 2: He shouldn't have, Yeah, he shouldn't have. This should haunt
Speaker 2: you to the end of your days.
Speaker 3: But he's still the most deeply human person in that room.
Speaker 2: I'll say the second most, because we're about to talk
Speaker 2: about someone who does speak up. There is one guy
Speaker 2: who has who actually has some courage here. Okay, So
Speaker 2: the day after this first meeting at the SAC headquarters,
Speaker 2: Rubel takes part in a smaller meeting about the meeting
Speaker 2: they just had. Right, even the military, you can't escape
Speaker 2: meetings about meetings, you know, like that's that's that's just bureaucracy, baby.
Speaker 2: So this smaller meeting includes the Secretary of Defense, all
Speaker 2: of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the secretaries of
Speaker 2: each major branch of the military, plus the Commandant of
Speaker 2: the Marine Corps, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Speaking
Speaker 2: on the harrowing meeting they just had, quote told everyone
Speaker 2: that they'd done a very fine job, a very difficult job, right, So,
Speaker 2: and that sentiment is echoed by everyone. Everyone just goes
Speaker 2: around congratulating each other at the start of this meeting
Speaker 2: being it was a great meeting. It was really tough,
Speaker 2: but you guys really pulled together and came up with
Speaker 2: a plant two six hundred million people, and I'm proud
Speaker 2: of you. You know, it's not easy to figure out
Speaker 2: how to kill half a billion people or more, but
Speaker 2: you guys really got a job. Yeah. Yeah, So everyone
Speaker 2: in the room echoes this congratulatory sentiment except for one guy,
Speaker 2: General David M. Shoop, commandant of the Marine Corps. And
Speaker 2: you know, the Marines. The Marines are an interesting branch
Speaker 2: because both the chuttiest maniacs and the military and the
Speaker 2: absolute like coolest, like best soldiers in American history, like
Speaker 2: Smedley Butler were Marines, right, Yeah, they have a history
Speaker 2: of producing occasionally these like really weirdly like woke generals
Speaker 2: and stuff like Smedley Butler is a committed anti capitalist
Speaker 2: and anti imperialist who gets very angry about being used
Speaker 2: as a gangster for capitalism. And David and Shupe, who's
Speaker 2: the commandant of the Core at this point, is cut
Speaker 2: from the same cloth. He's the same kind of guy, and.
Speaker 3: He probably seem like more like honor, like more like yes,
Speaker 3: whatever you believe in, you're still like you're like, no,
Speaker 3: I'm willing to risk my life to go do this thing.
Speaker 2: That's why I joined the Marines.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, Like my dad was a marine. It doesn't
Speaker 3: have entirely positive things to say about the people in
Speaker 3: it with that, Like.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm saying is there's they run the gamut,
Speaker 2: you know. Yeah, but Shop is a really interesting guy
Speaker 2: in the long history of Marine Corps commandants. He is
Speaker 2: one of the men who earned that job title the most.
Speaker 2: He'd been born in Indiana in nineteen oh four to
Speaker 2: a poor family, and he was raised politically progressive and
Speaker 2: grew into a staunch anti imperialist with a very strong
Speaker 2: anti business outlook. He is not super sold on capitalism
Speaker 2: and he hates imperialism. As a starving young man, he
Speaker 2: joins the military to survive. He proves very good at
Speaker 2: the job and is deployed twice to China during their
Speaker 2: Civil war. He serves as a staff officer in the
Speaker 2: Pacific during World War II until he was given a
Speaker 2: combat command to lead the invasion of an island called Tarawa.
Speaker 2: His forces encountered immediate and fierce resistance. His transport was
Speaker 2: disabled before landing, and he had to wade ashore, where
Speaker 2: he was struck by shrapnel and shot in the neck.
Speaker 2: Despite this, he continued to organize and lead his men
Speaker 2: from the front with a gunshot wound to the neck.
Speaker 2: On the afternoon of the second day of the attack,
Speaker 2: he sent a message to his divisional headquarters Combat Efficiency colon,
Speaker 2: we are winning. Just just a badass, Like, what are these?
Speaker 2: What of our absolute coolest battlefield commanders in the war.
Speaker 2: Shep receives a Congressional Medal of Honor for his efforts,
Speaker 2: right if you want to know, like, how what kind
Speaker 2: of a badass this dude was? Like he is a
Speaker 2: general leading from the front in such a way that
Speaker 2: he gets a medal of Honor for his service in combat.
Speaker 2: And he is the only man in this entire story
Speaker 2: who gives us anything we can be truly proud of
Speaker 2: as Americans. And I'm going to quote from Annie Jacobson's
Speaker 2: book Nuclear War here, and this is after they're going
Speaker 2: over the plan again to kill six hundred million people.
Speaker 2: No one spoke up to object to the indiscriminate killing
Speaker 2: of six hundred million people in a US government led
Speaker 2: preemptive first strike nuclear attack. Rubel wrote, not any of
Speaker 2: the joint chiefs, not the Secretary of Defense, not John Ruble.
Speaker 2: Then finally, one man did, General David M. Shupe, the
Speaker 2: commandant of the US Marine Corps, a marine awarded the
Speaker 2: Medal of Honor for his actions in World War Two.
Speaker 2: Shupe was a short man with rimless glasses who could
Speaker 2: have passed for a school teacher from a rural Mid
Speaker 2: American community. Recalled Rubel, he remembered how Shop spoke in
Speaker 2: a calm, level voice when he offered the sole a
Speaker 2: poising view on the plan for nuclear war. That Shop said,
Speaker 2: all I can say is any plan that murders three
Speaker 2: hundred million Chinese when it might not even be their
Speaker 2: war is not a good plan. That is not the
Speaker 2: American way. The room fell silent. Rubel wrote, Nobody moved
Speaker 2: a muscle, nobody seconded Shoop's descent. No one else said anything.
Speaker 2: According to Rubel, everyone just looked the other way.
Speaker 3: Yeah fuck yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: At least there was one I know, at least there
Speaker 2: was one guy being like, are you do you guys
Speaker 2: realize how fucking evil this is? Ht you out of
Speaker 2: your minds. You know what you're talking about killing three
Speaker 2: million people who might not have fun, fuck all to us.
Speaker 2: They don't even have nukes yet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we we killed Japan for trying to kill all
Speaker 3: the Chanese people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, did you not see a problem here? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's not the American way. Unfortunately it is. But I
Speaker 2: can't blame for trying to make it not be Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: Shoop goes on to be a cool guy the rest
Speaker 2: of his life. He spoke vocally against nuclear escalation during
Speaker 2: the Cuban missile crisis, like he was a major voice
Speaker 2: trying to be like, no, no, no, we need to
Speaker 2: take a step back. And he was also he advised
Speaker 2: against entering South Vietnam during the opening stages of the
Speaker 2: Vietnam War. He was one of the few generals who
Speaker 2: was like, this is a terrible idea and we should
Speaker 2: not get involved at all. This is a really bad plan.
Speaker 3: Right Yeah.
Speaker 2: In general, he was the one sane man not afraid
Speaker 2: to speak his mind in the entire defense establishment during
Speaker 2: some of the maddest years of the Cold War. Right,
Speaker 2: So yeah, thank you, general, i'd I know what this
Speaker 2: is involved. We shouldn't do this.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, and he.
Speaker 2: Clearly like not afraid of confrontation, is willing to say, like,
Speaker 2: you people are fucking maniacs.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But unfortunately he uh, he's the only one. So Ruebel,
Speaker 2: who is not a fighter, not great at confrontation, one
Speaker 2: gets the idea, does continue to push bureaucratically for a
Speaker 2: saner nuclear posture, but he does so from within the
Speaker 2: bureaucracy in which he was comfortable. In his two thousand
Speaker 2: and eight report, he accused defense planners of building both
Speaker 2: Syops sixty two and the minute Man system deliberately to
Speaker 2: deny quote any but a go no go option to
Speaker 2: civilian leadership. As Henry Kissinger put it in nineteen sixty one.
Speaker 2: And this is the only time I'll quote Kissinger approvingly,
Speaker 2: these plans offered the president just one choice quote suicide
Speaker 2: or surrender, holocaust or humiliation. In other words, the military
Speaker 2: has set it up that the only choice the president
Speaker 2: gets to make is let the country get nuked or
Speaker 2: kill everybody.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: The good news is that in the early nineteen sixties,
Speaker 2: at the very start of the Kennedy administration, is probably
Speaker 2: the high water mark for at least the danger of
Speaker 2: an atomic Holocaust during the Cold War. Part of why
Speaker 2: we stepped to tell you, yeah, during the war so far. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Part of what got us to step back from the
Speaker 2: brink a little bit is that after the Berlin Crisis,
Speaker 2: which is, you know, the Soviet Union tries to cut
Speaker 2: off supplies into the chunk of Berlin that NATO is
Speaker 2: occupying and we have to drop a bunch of shit
Speaker 2: in by plane. Right after that, and then the Cuban
Speaker 2: Missile crisis, Kennedy comes to realize what Rubel had known
Speaker 2: for a while, which is that the men running the
Speaker 2: Strategic Air Command in particular and the Air Force in
Speaker 2: general are out of their goddamn minds. Right like that,
Speaker 2: he starts to become Kennedy starts become very aware that, like,
Speaker 2: these people are crazy and they're going to get us
Speaker 2: all killed. I have to do something about the way
Speaker 2: this system works, right, And this is arguably the best
Speaker 2: thing he did in his presidency. One of the first
Speaker 2: moments where this was made clear to him was on
Speaker 2: September fifth, during Kennedy's first year in office, in which
Speaker 2: several Air forcemen submitted a first strike study that suggested
Speaker 2: killing fifty four percent of the USSR's population. An alternate
Speaker 2: plan suggested just attacking Soviet military targets, which a guy
Speaker 2: named Casin, the study author, estimated would kill only around
Speaker 2: a million civilians. However, US casual he's from a Soviet
Speaker 2: response ranged from basically none to seventy five percent of
Speaker 2: the US population.
Speaker 3: Uh huh right.
Speaker 2: Rubell includes a note about the reactions of people in
Speaker 2: the Kennedy administration to this horror show. Ted Sorensen, the
Speaker 2: chief White House counsel and speechwriter who had been with
Speaker 2: Kennedy since his earliest Senate days, was outraged when Cayson
Speaker 2: told him about the study, shouting, you're crazy. We shouldn't
Speaker 2: let guys like you around here. Even Moripauld was a
Speaker 2: friend of Caseon's on the NSC staff named Marcus Raskin.
Speaker 2: Raskin had served as foreign policy advisor to a few
Speaker 2: Liberal Democratic senators and had been hired as a token leftist.
Speaker 2: Raskin was horrified by the very existence of such a study.
Speaker 2: How does this make us any better than those who
Speaker 2: measured the gas ovens or the engineers who built the
Speaker 2: tracks for the death trains in Nazi Germany, he hollered.
Speaker 2: At one point Raskin never spoke to Cason again. Good question, yeah,
Speaker 2: really good question. Yeah. Kennedy himself was briefed on the
Speaker 2: likely death toll of a nuclear war, basically on the
Speaker 2: result like he's briefed on this case and study, and
Speaker 2: his response is characteristically eloquent. He says, and we call
Speaker 2: ourselves the human race.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh fuck yeah.
Speaker 2: The Cuban missile crisis unfolded across thirteen days in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty two, and it seems to have inspired Kennedy to
Speaker 2: take action to reduce the ability of his insane generals
Speaker 2: to destroy the world. When he imposed a blockade of
Speaker 2: Cuba to force the USSR to remove their nukes. General
Speaker 2: LeMay insisted on direct military intervention as the only path forward,
Speaker 2: claiming that any attempt to solve the problem without violence
Speaker 2: would lead to war. Look, we might have a war
Speaker 2: if we don't get violent with these guys. You don't
Speaker 2: want a war, do you? Quote LeMay indirectly threatened to
Speaker 2: make his dissent public. I think that a blockade and
Speaker 2: the political talk would be considered by a lot of
Speaker 2: our friends and neutrals as being a pretty weak response
Speaker 2: to this. And I'm sure a lot of our own
Speaker 2: citizens would feel that way too. In other words, you're
Speaker 2: in a pretty bad fix at the present time. LeMay's
Speaker 2: words angered Kennedy, who asked, what did you say? LeMay responded,
Speaker 2: You're in a pretty bad fix. Kenneth O'Donnell recalled in
Speaker 2: his memoirs that after the meeting, Kennedy asked him, can
Speaker 2: you imagine LeMay saying a thing like that? These brass
Speaker 2: hats have one great advantage in their favor. If we
Speaker 2: listen to them and do what they want us to do,
Speaker 2: none of us will be alive later to tell them
Speaker 2: they were wrong.
Speaker 3: I better understand the like second half of the twentieth
Speaker 3: century is a big push for pacifism on the left. Yeah, yeah, Like,
Speaker 3: and it's one of those things you like look back
Speaker 3: at and you're like, oh, that seems kins silly, and
Speaker 3: you're like.
Speaker 2: Some parts worked, some didn't, But oh yeah.
Speaker 3: I get why people lean towards that.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. And this is arguably the best thing Kennedy
Speaker 2: does is it's during the Kennedy administration that we take
Speaker 2: trigger control mostly and eventually entirely away from the military.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: The scenario now, and this is I don't I think
Speaker 2: it's better, but it's also differently bad. Now, some general
Speaker 2: or some colonel or some kid in a silo couldn't
Speaker 2: launch our arsenal.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: You can't have four kids launching fifty missiles on their
Speaker 2: own because you have to have like codes transmitted and stuff, right,
Speaker 2: But one guy can decide to launch everything, and it's
Speaker 2: the president. Now, that does mean we have civilian control,
Speaker 2: and I think that's a positive step away from a
Speaker 2: bunch of insane generals potentially having that command, or four
Speaker 2: kids in a cornfield having that ability.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: But and that is a major thing that happens under Kennedy, right,
Speaker 2: is that command and control of our nuclear arsenal gets
Speaker 2: shifted much further to the president, and that process continues
Speaker 2: over the years. This is what leads to the nuclear football, right,
Speaker 2: which I think people are generally aware of, right because
Speaker 2: it's under Kennedy. I talked about how that Los Alamos
Speaker 2: scientists came up with the idea to we need a
Speaker 2: lock on these fucking things, and they figure out how
Speaker 2: to do that during the Kennedy administration, and Kennedy gives
Speaker 2: the order to start putting locks on our weapons, right,
Speaker 2: which starts moving this this all, I'm YadA yading. This
Speaker 2: takes longer to get to where we are now, but
Speaker 2: this starts the process, right that leads to the situation
Speaker 2: we have now where these weapons all do at least
Speaker 2: have a lock, and where we have the football, right,
Speaker 2: the nuclear football, which is ultimately a product of both
Speaker 2: that scientist Agnu realizing a single private with eight bullets
Speaker 2: was all that stood between a nuke and whoever, as
Speaker 2: well as Rubel and his allies repeatedly insisting to their
Speaker 2: bosses that these Air Force fuckers are out of their
Speaker 2: goddamn minds, right, like that is you know, a really
Speaker 2: good thing that happens here. And characteristically, when the switch
Speaker 2: the lock is first demoed, it was presented to President
Speaker 2: Kennedy who immediately is like, yeah, put these on everything
Speaker 2: we can right immediately, right now, do it today. You
Speaker 2: have no other priorities, and the military loses their fucking mind.
Speaker 2: The faust are bombs. They put a lock, our bombs up.
Speaker 2: The fears of one General Alfred Starbird, which is a
Speaker 2: wild name, were summarized as follows. How is a pilot
Speaker 2: us are four and somewhere around the world going to
Speaker 2: get a code from the president of the United States
Speaker 2: to ourma nuclear weapon before being overrun by a massively
Speaker 2: superior number of Soviet troops. Okay, maybe it's this. I'm
Speaker 2: fine with that.
Speaker 3: Actually, yeah, a couple instead of all of us. I
Speaker 3: don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Look, I'm not casual about the lives of soldiers.
Speaker 2: They're people too, But it's a soldier's job to potentially
Speaker 2: die for their country, and I prefer that to the
Speaker 2: whole world dying, including that soldier. Including that soldier, they're
Speaker 2: not living through it all. None of these bomber guys,
Speaker 2: all of these sac bombers know that their missions are
Speaker 2: suicide missions. If they get the order to fly to
Speaker 2: the USSR, they are not coming back. There won't be
Speaker 2: anywhere to come back to, right, Yeah, although the.
Speaker 3: Only people still alive, they'll flying from other ten minutes before. Yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Mean that would That's how it is now, because we
Speaker 2: have these doomsday planes that we literally call like doomsday planes,
Speaker 2: which are these huge shielded planes that are able to
Speaker 2: president basically can hand over control of continuing to launch
Speaker 2: our nukes to the official in the plane because the
Speaker 2: President's going to be dead pretty soon. Everyone is. None
Speaker 2: of these bunkers working as well as people want to
Speaker 2: believe they do, especially not when you're talking about multiple
Speaker 2: thermonuclear impacts. It doesn't matter how deep. If people are
Speaker 2: dropping multiple hydrogen bombs as they would be, or missiles
Speaker 2: as they would be in this very few things could
Speaker 2: could protect you. All of these fancy bunker complexes are
Speaker 2: great if you don't get directly hit by multiple thermonuclear bombs,
Speaker 2: but they're not going to protect you from it, which
Speaker 2: is you're going to boil alive, right, yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 2: And that's anti Jacobson's Nuclear War book, which posits a
Speaker 2: pretty chilling theory about how this could all go down.
Speaker 2: Does have everyone dies, like everyone in command and control
Speaker 2: is fucking dead, except for the guy in the doomsday
Speaker 2: plane who make sure that everyone dies on the other
Speaker 2: side of the world. That's nuclear war. Anyway. Let's have
Speaker 2: some ads and we'll come back and finish this story. Whew,
Speaker 2: all right, we're back. So this is what gets us.
Speaker 2: The stuff with Kennedy evolves into like, you know, the
Speaker 2: system we have today which gives the president's sole authority
Speaker 2: to end civilization. We'll talk about that a little more
Speaker 2: in a second, but I want to finish with Curtis
Speaker 2: LeMay's story first in nineteen sixty four, now is Chief
Speaker 2: of Staff of the Air Force. Curtis Lamay is still
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty five, Curtis LeMay is in charge of
Speaker 2: all of the US air power in Southeast Asia. Basically
Speaker 2: during the Korean War, same deal. During the start of Vietnam,
Speaker 2: same deal. So when in nineteen sixty four, when we
Speaker 2: really start upping our commitment in Vietnam, he is running
Speaker 2: things and he pushes a plan to bomb northern Vietnam
Speaker 2: into submission. The plan is described, and I believe this
Speaker 2: was his name for it, as the genteel du Pey Plan. Right.
Speaker 2: I mentioned that like the polite version of the dou
Speaker 2: Hay plan, Right, do Hay being the guy who's like,
Speaker 2: you just kill all the civilians until they're not willing
Speaker 2: to fight anymore. Now, there's a big battle between Kennedy's
Speaker 2: civilian advisors who wanted the US to threaten North Vietnam's
Speaker 2: industry but not actually blow it up immediately, So that
Speaker 2: we blow up some of it and we make it
Speaker 2: clear we can really cripple their industry so that we
Speaker 2: have a negotiating hand to push for peace, right, And
Speaker 2: I don't think we should have gotten involved in fucking
Speaker 2: Vietnam whatsoever. I'm not saying that, like these guys were
Speaker 2: good and ethical, but that is a much saner response
Speaker 2: than Leamy's, because Limay just wants to send North Vietnam
Speaker 2: back to the Stone Age, right right. Like these liberals
Speaker 2: are like, well, we can bomb them, you know, kind
Speaker 2: of strategically in order to exert a cost and make
Speaker 2: them willing to come to the negotiation table. And the
Speaker 2: May is like, what if we just fucking kill everybody.
Speaker 2: I'm going to quote from the book Bombing to Win
Speaker 2: by Robert Pape quote. Destroying the North's industrial economy appears
Speaker 2: to have been valued more for its effect on civilian
Speaker 2: morale than for reducing the flow of military goods into
Speaker 2: the South. For instance, the rationale for closing the port
Speaker 2: of Haiphong was not to interdict battlefield hardware, but to
Speaker 2: weaken civilian morale, right, which keeps not working it. Yes,
Speaker 2: you may recall none of this did. This led to
Speaker 2: Operation Rolling Thunder, And Rolling Thunder is LeMay's baby. This
Speaker 2: is like Operation Rolling Thunder is the genteel dou Hay
Speaker 2: plan put into effect it is a three year bombing
Speaker 2: campaign that resulted in what, Margaret, you want to.
Speaker 3: Guess, no, effective destruction of the morale of the enemy.
Speaker 2: I mean stuff was just yeah, yeah, yeah, it doesn't work.
Speaker 2: We don't win Vietnam. In case you were unaware of that. Interesting,
Speaker 2: This does not stop their ability to equip and support
Speaker 2: their troops. It does not break civilian morale. It does not.
Speaker 2: It doesn't do the trick and thiss me.
Speaker 3: One of the main things I've learned over this epic
Speaker 3: journey we've been on. If you had asked me, I
Speaker 3: would have been like, well, it's probably a moral to
Speaker 3: bomb all these enemy cities, but it probably is effective
Speaker 3: at destroying morale. And what I have learned is that
Speaker 3: it's not.
Speaker 2: No, no, Well, you gotta think if like, if somebody,
Speaker 2: for example, goes and stabs the person you love most
Speaker 2: in the world in the gut, are you gonna like
Speaker 2: walk away because you're demoralized, or are you gonna fuck
Speaker 2: that person up?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 2: Are you gonna do everything in your power to destroy
Speaker 2: that person? Right?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think people think similarly when their family is incinerated
Speaker 2: from the sky.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But this the fact that this fails and the fact
Speaker 2: that LeMay's plans kind of fail a lot brings me
Speaker 2: to a key point about LeMay and all the dou
Speaker 2: Hay acolytes who came to run our air power during
Speaker 2: this time. These guys.
Speaker 3: Surrealist Manray is also one of these people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these guys loved nukes because nukes were the only
Speaker 2: weapon system that worked the way they thought all weapons
Speaker 2: should work. So they always insisted on using nukes at
Speaker 2: every corner, and when they were denied, they didn't know
Speaker 2: how to fight a modern war well, because they only
Speaker 2: have the one strategy and it only works if you
Speaker 2: use nukes. So when the president says no, you can't
Speaker 2: nuke them, then they're left leg Well, I guess we
Speaker 2: try to use conventional bombs and it just doesn't do it.
Speaker 2: But they don't. None of these people are actually capable
Speaker 2: of adapting and looking their failure in the face because
Speaker 2: they've based everything on this being how war works. And
Speaker 2: because unless you're killing everyone, right, yes, yeah, because they're
Speaker 2: twelve year old boys. Yeah, now, fuck, I'm ending this
Speaker 2: story in the mid sixties, right, which there's a lot
Speaker 2: more to talk about in terms of nukes and shit. Obviously,
Speaker 2: after this point. But I'm ending here because kind of
Speaker 2: by the point we're at in the story, right, Vietnam,
Speaker 2: the tale of how our nuclear arsenal functions changes, but
Speaker 2: not like in earth shattering ways. Right, everything gets kind
Speaker 2: of better. Our early warning systems get better, are missile
Speaker 2: get more destructive and reliable. Nuclear submarines are by this
Speaker 2: point a part of the determent. We're not talking about
Speaker 2: that all that much, but that's a major part of
Speaker 2: the deterrent package, right, because a nuclear submarine absolutely cannot
Speaker 2: be found, right, It's basically impossible. Like, if you have
Speaker 2: nuclear submarines, you always have nukes out there that you
Speaker 2: can throw back at whoever fucks with you, So it's
Speaker 2: a guarantee that you'll be able to get some sort
Speaker 2: of second strike. Nuclear submarines are fucking terrifying. They're the
Speaker 2: scariest weapons human beings have ever made and probably ever
Speaker 2: will make. Right, Like it is just death tubes. They're
Speaker 2: fucking nightmares. I had a friend, Yeah, I have a
Speaker 2: friend who went to Annapolis that's the Naval Academy, and
Speaker 2: was a nuclear submarine pilot during the eighties. There's a
Speaker 2: book called blind Man's Bluff that's about like all the
Speaker 2: stuff that he used to do, and all of his
Speaker 2: like stories are because what US and Soviet subs were
Speaker 2: doing in this period of time was like d basically
Speaker 2: one would try to like plain chicken, trying to force
Speaker 2: the other to surface, right, so, you know, because it
Speaker 2: was like that was kind of part of the game
Speaker 2: that we were playing in the high seas, and so
Speaker 2: he has all these stories of just like he and
Speaker 2: a couple of his friends are standing and I guess
Speaker 2: the bridge or whatever, doing a bunch of complicated math
Speaker 2: in their heads, and if they fuck up the math,
Speaker 2: everyone dies because they crash into something.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Like, It's like those kind of stories like sub nuclear
Speaker 2: subs are fucking taro. But you know, once we get
Speaker 2: nuclear subs, that's we have all three kind of arms
Speaker 2: of our nuclear like posture. We have our ICBMs, we
Speaker 2: have nuclear subs, we have our bombers. Right obviously we
Speaker 2: also have like field artillery and you know, nukes and
Speaker 2: stuff that the army can use. But nothing that happens
Speaker 2: after this point seriously alters the fundamental calculus up until
Speaker 2: something that's kind of more recent, and that fundamental calculus
Speaker 2: is we and the Russians and other people China now
Speaker 2: as well. Right, obviously, more people have nukes, but all
Speaker 2: of the nuclear powers have a bunch of nukes ready
Speaker 2: to fire at a moment's notice, and in both the
Speaker 2: US and Russia, only the president gets to decide when
Speaker 2: we use them, right, Right, That's the way it is
Speaker 2: starting in the sixties, and that's the way it is today,
Speaker 2: right Obviously, Like I'm not gonna talk a lot about
Speaker 2: hypersonic missiles. That's kind of the biggest recent change that
Speaker 2: might seriously alter a lot of calculus because it allows
Speaker 2: a strike that potentially might not get spotted at all,
Speaker 2: and so maybe there's no warning, which is why I
Speaker 2: read a really fucked up war on the Rocks article.
Speaker 2: There's basically arguing for like an automated AI like second
Speaker 2: strike system because of the fact that, well maybe they
Speaker 2: are able to if they blow up the president, no
Speaker 2: one can launch the nukes back.
Speaker 3: Right, So, no one's watched the movie war Games, That's
Speaker 3: what I'm meaning.
Speaker 2: No one has ever watched the movie war Actually, the
Speaker 2: actually wargames. Literally one of the generals they quote references
Speaker 2: Wargames in order to say that we don't have a
Speaker 2: machine that does that right now, like this is so
Speaker 2: they were arguing that we need to do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh my god.
Speaker 2: And this is part of one of the one of
Speaker 2: the things that that that I have worry about, because
Speaker 2: I don't really think it's an immediate worry that they're
Speaker 2: going to like give AI the ability to launch nukes
Speaker 2: or do that. That's not my immediate worry. But they're
Speaker 2: already integrating different machine learning tools into like the radar
Speaker 2: systems in our early warning systems. That's the worry is
Speaker 2: that people are being advised by these by machines that
Speaker 2: like them, that like the minute Man, will have unanticipated
Speaker 2: flaws that the arrogant pieces of shit who designed these
Speaker 2: weapons refuse to consider because they cannot accept the fact
Speaker 2: that maybe they didn't think of everything, and they will
Speaker 2: fuck up and miss stuff and it could cause it
Speaker 2: could cause the end of the world. Right, That's what
Speaker 2: scares me more than like a death computer, right.
Speaker 3: Which any hacker or wanna be hackers you would immediately
Speaker 3: be like, oh, you can't build systems that don't have flaws.
Speaker 3: That doesn't happen.
Speaker 2: No, No, That's why up until very recently this was
Speaker 2: all being done onlike the big nineteen eighties floppy discs
Speaker 2: and everything's fucking air gapped. Is like, you want this
Speaker 2: shit simple and reliable as possible. Yeah. Anyway, well now
Speaker 2: it's all bluetooth. So now's yeah exactly. Well, that's the
Speaker 2: most reliable thing in electronics is bluetooth. Everyone who has
Speaker 2: a headset knows that. So it's important everyone know that
Speaker 2: our launch policy from nineteen sixty four to today remains
Speaker 2: launch on warn. Now, the USSR, to be fair to them,
Speaker 2: officially rejected a launch on warn policy. There are grave
Speaker 2: doubts as to whether or not that was the real
Speaker 2: policy or propaganda. Right, A lot of people say they
Speaker 2: were definitely launch on warn too. I think that's probably right.
Speaker 2: I think both the US and Russia more or less
Speaker 2: would have fired if they felt like they had a
Speaker 2: credible warning that the other was firing. Right, Well, I
Speaker 2: don't think either of US.
Speaker 3: Russia needs us to believe they're launch on warn, even
Speaker 3: if they're saying something else. They have to say it
Speaker 3: in a way where they're like, oh, don't worry, we
Speaker 3: would totally not launch on warn, but scare people to
Speaker 3: thinking they would.
Speaker 2: Well, and now since Putin's taken and this is really interest.
Speaker 2: In the last few years, Putin has made it very
Speaker 2: clear that the Russian Federation is now launch on warn
Speaker 2: as well, right, So they are just straight up saying
Speaker 2: like everyone is now launch on warn, the US and Russia,
Speaker 2: and that's all that really matters. China's got some nukes.
Speaker 2: I don't know as much about their system, but they
Speaker 2: don't have near like both. The all it takes is
Speaker 2: the US and Russia, right, Yeah, Like, you know, it's
Speaker 2: worth being concerned about North Korea obviously, because one missile
Speaker 2: opens the possibility that all of the missiles start flying, right,
Speaker 2: because of the kind of cascading decision trees people will make.
Speaker 2: But the US and Russia are by far the most
Speaker 2: heavily armed right now. I know there's a tendency among
Speaker 2: folks on our side of the political aisle to say,
Speaker 2: oh my god, isn't it terrifying that Donald Trump has
Speaker 2: the fucking nuclear football?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: And I'm gonna say something controversial here, which is, I
Speaker 2: don't think Donald Trump is less suited to make that
Speaker 2: call than any other present, not because he would do
Speaker 2: a good job at that, but because no one can.
Speaker 2: Everyone is bad at this. Nobody is competent to make
Speaker 2: that call, and it's a dangerous mistake to believe that, well, well,
Speaker 2: Obama's would have been a good guy to have in
Speaker 2: the seat or Biden wou No, they're all bad at this,
Speaker 2: They would all have been terrible. No one will do
Speaker 2: a good job if they are put in that situation.
Speaker 2: In her chilling book Nuclear War, Annie Jacobson makes one
Speaker 2: very important point. Several times. She quotes John Wolfstal, the
Speaker 2: former national security advisor to President Obama, who said, no one,
Speaker 2: not even the president, has complete knowledge of what is
Speaker 2: going on in a crisis or in a conflict, let
Speaker 2: alone a nuclear war. Former Secretary of Defense for Reagan,
Speaker 2: William Perry added, many presidents come into the office uninformed
Speaker 2: about their role in a nuclear war. Some seem not
Speaker 2: to want to know. This is a point made several
Speaker 2: times that presidents generally don't know much about this, even
Speaker 2: though this football is with them at all times. They
Speaker 2: don't like to think about it, they don't like to
Speaker 2: ask too many questions about it. They don't like to
Speaker 2: dwell on it. A bunch of people who were in
Speaker 2: a position to know have said similar things that like
Speaker 2: President's not super well informed, generally on how all this
Speaker 2: works because it's scary. They don't like to think about it.
Speaker 3: I don't like to think about it like this knells
Speaker 3: firmly into the lake. Dude, things that you can't control,
Speaker 3: you don't worry. Absolutely. If I was the president, I would.
Speaker 2: Think about this a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'd be
Speaker 2: sending those missiles straight to the Great Lakes. But yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: That's why we're that's why you're running in what twenty
Speaker 3: thirty two?
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right on a takeout Lake Superior.
Speaker 3: Yeah, more like inferior.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right. We're going to get revenge for
Speaker 2: those brave men on the Edmund Fitzgerald know. Anyway, Jacobson
Speaker 2: continues talking about how unready presidents are to make these
Speaker 2: kind of calls. Once, at a press conference in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty two, President Reagan went so far as to incorrectly
Speaker 2: tell the public that submarine ballistic missiles are recalling. That's
Speaker 2: why that myth exists. After the Berlin Wall came down
Speaker 2: and the Soviet Union was dissolved, William Perry found in
Speaker 2: his experience as Secretary of Defense that many people clung
Speaker 2: to the idea that nuclear war was no longer a threat,
Speaker 2: when in fact he now says nothing could be further
Speaker 2: from the truth. In a nuclear war, confusion over protocol
Speaker 2: and speed of action will have unintended consequences beyond anyone's grasp.
Speaker 2: It will send the United States of America into the
Speaker 2: heart of darkness that defense official John Rubel warned about
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty, into what he called a twilight underworld
Speaker 2: governed by disciplined, meticulous, and energetically mindless group think aimed
Speaker 2: at wiping out half the people living on nearly one
Speaker 2: third of the Earth's surface.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yep.
Speaker 2: The fundamental issue here in terms of his Trump any
Speaker 2: worse than anyone else on this specific issue. Theoretically, the
Speaker 2: president is only going to be asked to make a
Speaker 2: call on whether or not to launch our missiles if
Speaker 2: one or more are known to have been launched towards
Speaker 2: the US or an ally. Because of the way all
Speaker 2: of these weapons systems work, this means that the hypothetical
Speaker 2: president in this scenario is going about his day doing
Speaker 2: something else and is grabbed and taken bodily like the
Speaker 2: Secret Service. Like response teams job is to literally physically
Speaker 2: haul him like carry him into the bunker and then
Speaker 2: into like a chopper to get to a more secure locations.
Speaker 2: The White House bunker isn't really all that safe, but
Speaker 2: he will be grabbed in the middle of his day,
Speaker 2: taken into a situation room, and told that the entirety
Speaker 2: of Washington, DC is about to die in flames, including
Speaker 2: nearly every member of his administration in the most likely scenarios.
Speaker 2: He will then be told that he has between three
Speaker 2: and six minutes to decide to launch a world killing
Speaker 2: salvo of in most situations, hundreds to one thousand nuclear warheads.
Speaker 2: The entire time that he struggles with this decision, military advisors,
Speaker 2: who his entire job is to think about how important
Speaker 2: it is that we strike back before being decapitated, will
Speaker 2: shout for him to launch everything that we've got. No
Speaker 2: one is qualified for that job. Yeah, the only president
Speaker 2: we've ever had who could be argued to have stood
Speaker 2: up to this kind of pressure was JFK. Right, and
Speaker 2: JFK was a combat veteran, had been in some scary
Speaker 2: situations before, and thank fucking god he was the guy
Speaker 2: on the ground at that point in time, because it
Speaker 2: could have been a lot worse than it was. The
Speaker 2: Cuban missile crisis of a bunch of others. Shit, I
Speaker 2: don't have any real faith that Obama or Biden would
Speaker 2: have performed much better than Trump in this nightmare scenario.
Speaker 2: As John Ruble wrote in two thousand and eight, we
Speaker 2: know that this mentality, given half a chance, will surface
Speaker 2: in military and government councils. We know from recent history
Speaker 2: that a compliant bureaucracy, military and civilian will murder six
Speaker 2: million people in cold blood, or plan by design, build
Speaker 2: and deploy the means to murder half of the people
Speaker 2: on earth, probably including themselves. How come is all this
Speaker 2: built into the human genome? A melancholy procession from stones
Speaker 2: to atoms, a predestined progress toward the end times, the
Speaker 2: inevitable rise of maligned leaders over compliant masses. Anyway, thanks
Speaker 2: for listening to my podcasts.
Speaker 4: Yeah, wow what a wait end?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Like, what did you do today?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: I get My job is that I have to make
Speaker 3: jokes during the as I get described the mechanism by
Speaker 3: which the world will end.
Speaker 2: Yeah, cool stuff, legit, I don't know. Probably should be
Speaker 2: something people are like asking presidents to change. We could
Speaker 2: change this. It doesn't have to be this way. It
Speaker 2: doesn't have to be this dangerous, Like, there are other
Speaker 2: ways this could all be designed to where we're not
Speaker 2: permanently fifteen minutes or less away from annihilation, you know,
Speaker 2: and if we step back, probably the Russians do at
Speaker 2: least a little bit. You know. I don't have a
Speaker 2: lot of faith in Buden, but I don't think he
Speaker 2: wants to die in nuclear.
Speaker 3: Hell fire either, and most people don't.
Speaker 2: I think most people don't. Uh. Anyway, maybe this should
Speaker 2: be like a voting issue that people talk about, right,
Speaker 2: Like it's you know, climate change obviously very important, and
Speaker 2: people it needs to be much more of an issue.
Speaker 2: But this is up there, This is an equivalent problem,
Speaker 2: right because this is potentially a much more thorough destruction
Speaker 2: of the biosphere that climate.
Speaker 3: Change will bring even quicker.
Speaker 2: We should probably care about this a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, anyway, what a good system we all have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty nuts. I actually recommend all the books that
Speaker 1: I read for this, Annie Jacobson's Nuclear War A Scenario. Again,
Speaker 1: I don't entirely agree with kind of some of her
Speaker 1: panic about North Korea, but it's a pretty good book
Speaker 1: on the whole about the way the system works today.
Speaker 1: The book Fifteen Minutes is a really good look at
Speaker 1: like basically how we got to the point where we're
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes away from annihilation at all times. And then
Speaker 1: Command and Control, among other things, talks about a bunch
Speaker 1: of the different like fuck ups and errors that have
Speaker 1: happened along the way. They're all good books.
Speaker 3: I h the movie house a dynamite that just came
Speaker 3: out recently. It's the one that the way specifically the
Speaker 3: drama is just around. It's around the nuclear football, it's
Speaker 3: around the chain of command. This relates to it and
Speaker 3: the current one. And it's what started me, like a
Speaker 3: couple weeks before this started thinking about being like, oh,
Speaker 3: this isn't as like I sort of thought. I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: we probably have like decent intercept systems if it's just
Speaker 3: like one missile, right, you know, you're like, uh.
Speaker 2: If it's just one maybe, But again, we don't have
Speaker 2: decent intercept systems. None of these work nearly as well
Speaker 2: as they're supposed to, and there are some similar problems
Speaker 2: with at least some of the different early warning systems.
Speaker 2: It's been this is really a problem for the Russians
Speaker 2: because the Russians like one of the problems with the
Speaker 2: Russian system is that it's not smart enough to know
Speaker 2: because each of the missiles that we would be firing
Speaker 2: launches a bunch of chafe, right, So you have the
Speaker 2: actual warheads and ICBMs now often have multiple warheads, right
Speaker 2: that it's called an mirv I think, and basically what
Speaker 2: you can do, and this is particularly a case with
Speaker 2: like a lot of the sub mounted missiles too, is
Speaker 2: you launch one missile, but then it splits into like
Speaker 2: multiple warheads, each of which is targeted at a different area. Right,
Speaker 2: But also all of these missiles have what's called chaff,
Speaker 2: which is basically like like little strips of aluminum that
Speaker 2: come out with like the warhead in order to confuse
Speaker 2: like its system right right, right, yeah, yeah, yeah exactly,
Speaker 2: so that like it can protect the missile basically, but
Speaker 2: one of the main Russian systems can't tell the difference
Speaker 2: between that chaff and a shitload of additional missiles. So,
Speaker 2: like say there was a situation where North Korea launched
Speaker 2: an ICBM at somebody, and we launch a decapitation strike
Speaker 2: at North Korea or a strike at their nuclear facilities.
Speaker 2: That's a limited strike. We're just firing a couple of missiles.
Speaker 2: It might look because of where North Korea is, Russia
Speaker 2: and China might both think, oh shit, the Americans are
Speaker 2: launching hundreds of missiles and they could be coming for us.
Speaker 2: We don't know where they're targeted. And if the President
Speaker 2: hasn't gotten through to both of those leaders to inform them,
Speaker 2: and if or if they don't trust the president, right,
Speaker 2: who knows what's going to happen.
Speaker 3: I hate to say that HG. Wells is right because
Speaker 3: I don't actually believe in one world government, kind of
Speaker 3: famously with my political position, but this idea that like,
Speaker 3: the only way out of this, besides everyone de escalating,
Speaker 3: is better diplomacy and everyone talking to each other, and like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm moving away from nationalism, moving away from guarding your
Speaker 3: borders zealously, and moving well, I think the solution of
Speaker 3: most problems is to get rid of national borders. But
Speaker 3: I'm you know whatever, Yeah, I'm I'm so glad I'm
Speaker 3: not in charge of trying to figure out how to
Speaker 3: solve this. That's the main takeaway that I have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a couple of things we could do. Jacobsen
Speaker 2: talks about this, like one of the things that we
Speaker 2: don't do, but ought to because it's so hard to
Speaker 2: basically impossible almost to stop an ICBM reliably once it
Speaker 2: gets above a certain level, like once it gets and
Speaker 2: in terms of like there's no real way to like
Speaker 2: protect against the mass of ICBMs that Russia could launch,
Speaker 2: but North Korea doesn't have all that many. And if
Speaker 2: we were to keep like a bunch of predator drones
Speaker 2: in the area, we could theoretically have a quick reaction
Speaker 2: for US that could intercept an ICBM before it could
Speaker 2: get to the point of no return where you have
Speaker 2: no ability to shoot it down. But we just decided
Speaker 2: not to do that. Like that got theorized and it
Speaker 2: was like, I think it was too expensive. It's the
Speaker 2: same thing with like, well, we could have fad batteries
Speaker 2: to protect certain things that might be like that nuclear
Speaker 2: plant that might be a target, but we're not. We're
Speaker 2: just going to keep them, you know, protecting Israel. We're
Speaker 2: not going to have them, you know, in the US
Speaker 2: or whatever. For the most part, I mean obvious we
Speaker 2: have a lot of those in Ukraine, and there's good
Speaker 2: reason for that, but we don't devote It's both a
Speaker 2: mix of none of it really works all that well.
Speaker 2: None of our missile interception stuff is perfect. The fad
Speaker 2: is about as good as it gets, but it it's
Speaker 2: not good for everything. Like it could be useful against
Speaker 2: like some of those sub based missiles, but I don't
Speaker 2: think like it can take out ICBMs, certainly not or
Speaker 2: certainly not a hypersonic. I don't think anything can take
Speaker 2: out a hypersonic if it actually works the way they're
Speaker 2: supposed to. There's just not really reliable ways to stop
Speaker 2: a massive nuclear attack. If you get shot at by
Speaker 2: one missile, you might be able to do something right.
Speaker 2: That's kind of where we are.
Speaker 1: Well away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love talking about it though I love me
Speaker 2: some nukes.
Speaker 3: The ideas of all the things that I want to
Speaker 3: write fiction about is related to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Folks, get out there to go
Speaker 2: to the Wassaw Sound, you know, look around, hike around,
Speaker 2: get your metal detectors out. There's a couple of nukes
Speaker 2: just waiting for a new home.
Speaker 3: Out you know.
Speaker 2: Nuclear power.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, take care of each other and tell your
Speaker 3: friends you love them, but not in a way where
Speaker 3: you don't get completely lost thinking about this stuff all
Speaker 3: the time. And also podcasts cool people who did cool stuff,
Speaker 3: which is the opposite of this, but.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, yeah, sweet, all right, everybody go away.
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