Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Be there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, senior writer Jonathan Strickland from how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. And today I thought we'd take a
Speaker 1: look at a few times when cooler heads prevailed and
Speaker 1: we sidestepped a sticky situation, namely a nuclear strike. Now,
Speaker 1: there are a whole bunch of times when we have
Speaker 1: nearly gone to nuclear war with various superpowers. And before
Speaker 1: I talk about those cases in which we almost went
Speaker 1: over the brink, let's talk a bit about the weapons
Speaker 1: themselves and how they work. At the heart of the
Speaker 1: matter is the humble atom. That's atom, not atom. Uh.
Speaker 1: Let's go to basic science on this one. So I'm
Speaker 1: gonna start fundamental. I know you guys know this, but
Speaker 1: I feel like it's all is important to start from
Speaker 1: the base and build your way up. So you probably
Speaker 1: are familiar with this from elementary school science and atom
Speaker 1: consists of a nucleus orbited by one or more electrons,
Speaker 1: and the nucleus contains one or more protons and possibly
Speaker 1: some neutrons. Electrons have a negative charge, protons have a
Speaker 1: positive charge, and neutrons have no charge at all because
Speaker 1: of their credit is bad. Now, if you know the
Speaker 1: rules about electromagnetic charges, you remember that opposites attract and
Speaker 1: the same charges repel each other. So that raises a question,
Speaker 1: how can an atom have a nucleus with two or
Speaker 1: more protons in it and not just break apart? If
Speaker 1: you have two positively charged particles subatomic particles protons that
Speaker 1: close to each other, how come they don't just push
Speaker 1: against each other and the nucleus just pop splits apart.
Speaker 1: And then we would just end up with hydrogen atoms
Speaker 1: because an hydrogen atom is just a proton and electron,
Speaker 1: your basic hydrogen atom. That would all make sense, right
Speaker 1: if it If the entire universe was just hydrogen, why
Speaker 1: do we have nucleus is or nuclei should say, nuclei
Speaker 1: with multiple protons. Well, to answer this question, we have
Speaker 1: to turn to the standard model of physics, which is
Speaker 1: mostly how we think the universe works. Mostly, the standard
Speaker 1: model doesn't quite incorporate everything. It doesn't explain absolutely everything.
Speaker 1: Gravity is a big mystery with the standard model. We
Speaker 1: consider it one of the four fundamental forces, but we
Speaker 1: don't really have all the mechanisms explained under the standard
Speaker 1: model of physics. It does, however, give us a pretty
Speaker 1: good idea of what's going on. It's held up to
Speaker 1: lots of experimentation and observations. So the standard model says
Speaker 1: that stuff like protons and neutrons are made up of
Speaker 1: even smaller particles called quarks, which is not as I
Speaker 1: learned the sound made by a Dirk. Quarks are the
Speaker 1: smallest building block we know of right now, and you
Speaker 1: can't split them up into smaller things. That's as small
Speaker 1: as you can get, at least as far as we
Speaker 1: know at the moment. Anyway, there's a force that holds
Speaker 1: these quark particles together to form larger particles called hadrons,
Speaker 1: among which are protons and neutrons. Those are both types
Speaker 1: of hadrons. There lots and lots of other ones as well,
Speaker 1: and this force is called the strong nuclear force. It's
Speaker 1: also what binds nuclei together so that they don't go
Speaker 1: splitting up all over the place, and out of the
Speaker 1: four fundamental forces of our universe, this is the strongest. However,
Speaker 1: it also takes effect over the smallest distance. The range
Speaker 1: is incredibly small. It's on the sub atomic scale. So
Speaker 1: while it's very strong, it doesn't reach very far. There's
Speaker 1: also a weak nuclear force. The physicist Enrico Fermi theorize
Speaker 1: that the weak nuclear force was what he was observing
Speaker 1: when he saw certain atoms undergoing What it's called beta decay.
Speaker 1: Has nothing to do with Siamese fish. Beta decay is
Speaker 1: about a neutron or a proton in an atoms nucleus
Speaker 1: switching sides. Essentially, a neutron will change it to a proton,
Speaker 1: and it will expel an electron in the process, so
Speaker 1: you've got a NEUTRALI charged particle. It expels an electron,
Speaker 1: it becomes positive as a result, And to make matters
Speaker 1: a bit more confusing, we call this electron that gets
Speaker 1: expelled a beta particle. So it is an electron, but
Speaker 1: specifically a beta particle. Another sub atomic particle also forms
Speaker 1: in this process. It's called an anti neutrino. So this
Speaker 1: type of beta decay is called beta minus decay. However,
Speaker 1: there's also a beta plus decay. That's when you have
Speaker 1: the opposite happen, where a proton becomes a neutron as
Speaker 1: opposed to a neutron becoming a proton. Beta plus decay
Speaker 1: uh products include not just the the brand new neutron.
Speaker 1: It also includes a subatomic particle called a positron and
Speaker 1: a new trino, So you get anti neutrinos and electrons
Speaker 1: with one and you get positrons and neutrinos with the other. Anyway,
Speaker 1: weak nuclear force explains this process of nuclear decay, this
Speaker 1: particular type of nuclear decay. There are a couple of
Speaker 1: others as well. So when atoms decay, one of the
Speaker 1: byproducts is also energy. They give off energy as they decay,
Speaker 1: they radiate it. So this is the source of radiation. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's why we call it nuclear radiation. Not all atoms
Speaker 1: do this because some of them are perfectly stable. That
Speaker 1: means that they're not going to decay into some other
Speaker 1: form because they're already stable. They're not there's nothing for
Speaker 1: them to to get more stable. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: if you were to have, um, you know, a stack
Speaker 1: of of things and they fall over to a certain point,
Speaker 1: they're not gonna fall anymore because they're flat against the ground.
Speaker 1: That's as far as they go. That's kind of the
Speaker 1: same idea. Now, in the case of nuclear weapons, the
Speaker 1: the elements we use. Their atoms need just the right
Speaker 1: push in order to have their nuclei split, and when
Speaker 1: that happens, the split nuclei shoot off a few neutrons,
Speaker 1: and that ultimately is the secret sauce to nuclear weapons.
Speaker 1: So here's how it all works. Let's say you get
Speaker 1: yourself a whole bunch of a particular large, unstable atom.
Speaker 1: Let's say, for argument's sake, it's oh, I don't know,
Speaker 1: uranium two thirty five, which is essentially weaponized uranium. Uh.
Speaker 1: It also actually it's out there in nature. It is
Speaker 1: not the most common form of uranium in nature because
Speaker 1: it is uh, by its very nature unstable. It will
Speaker 1: decay on its own over a very long period of time. UM.
Speaker 1: The more common form of uranium and nature is uranium
Speaker 1: two thirty eight. But for weapons, you want uranium two
Speaker 1: thirty five. It's an isotope of uranium. Isotopes are forms
Speaker 1: of an element that have the same number of protons,
Speaker 1: because if you change the number of protons, you change
Speaker 1: the element itself, So it has to have the exact
Speaker 1: same number of protons from isotope to isotope, but has
Speaker 1: a different number of neutrons UM. So, as another example,
Speaker 1: carbon twelve is a type of carbon that has six
Speaker 1: protons and six neutrons. Carbon fourteen is different, has got
Speaker 1: six protons and eight neutrons. Uh. It's also radioactive, meaning
Speaker 1: it will decay into a more stable form or another
Speaker 1: more stable atom and give off energy in that process
Speaker 1: as well as some neutrons. So uranium two thirty five
Speaker 1: has ninety two protons and ont reread neutrons. The half
Speaker 1: life of uranium two thirty five is seven hundred million
Speaker 1: years now half life. What that means is that if
Speaker 1: you had a chunk of uranium two thirty five, so
Speaker 1: they've got a whole bunch of these uranium two thirty
Speaker 1: five atoms, it's statistically probable that after seven hundred million
Speaker 1: years past, half of those atoms would decay have decayed
Speaker 1: to other more stable atoms. Statistically speaking, this is all
Speaker 1: about probability, not about a definite future. That's the thing
Speaker 1: you have to remember about half life. It's about probability,
Speaker 1: not definitive outcomes. Uranium two thirty eight, that more common
Speaker 1: form of uranium I talked about, has a half life
Speaker 1: of four point five billion years. So while uranium to
Speaker 1: thirty five is seven hundred million years half life, that's
Speaker 1: a long long time. I mean, particularly for human species right,
Speaker 1: four point five billion years leaves it in the dust.
Speaker 1: All right, So back to your ranium two thirty five.
Speaker 1: Fermine was able to create a controlled nuclear reaction using
Speaker 1: uranium two thirty five. So what he did was he
Speaker 1: took a He took low speed neutrons and fired them
Speaker 1: at atoms of uranium two thirty five in order to
Speaker 1: break the isotope apart, splitting it. That's what we call
Speaker 1: nuclear fission. We're splitting an atom. In this process, the
Speaker 1: atom gives off heat and radiation as well as generating
Speaker 1: new atoms, right, because you you split into two or
Speaker 1: more components. Also in that process, it shoots off some
Speaker 1: extra neutrons, so those go spinning off. Now that means
Speaker 1: that if you had enough uranium two thirty five, and
Speaker 1: you had a means of making sure those neutrons that
Speaker 1: gave off could hit those other atoms of uranium two
Speaker 1: thirty five, you could continue this reaction. It becomes a
Speaker 1: chain reaction. It the neutrons that get fired off hit
Speaker 1: other uranium two thirty five atoms, which then produce more
Speaker 1: free neutrons flying outward, which can hit more uranium two atoms,
Speaker 1: and so on and so forth, and each time you're
Speaker 1: doing this, it's generating more and more heat and energy
Speaker 1: and radiation uh than us. If you were to do
Speaker 1: this in an uncontrolled way, you get a bomb. If
Speaker 1: you do it in a controlled way, you can have
Speaker 1: a nuclear power plant. Our power plants are based off
Speaker 1: nuclear fission because that's the type of nuclear power we
Speaker 1: have found to be sustainable. Right now, there's a real
Speaker 1: push to make nuclear fusion a sustainable means of generating electricity,
Speaker 1: but right now it is very difficult to create a
Speaker 1: sustainable version of that. We can we can start nuclear fusion,
Speaker 1: but generally speaking, we tend to put as much or
Speaker 1: more energy into the system as we're getting out of it,
Speaker 1: and so that doesn't really work if you want a
Speaker 1: sustainable form of generating electricity. If you're spending more than
Speaker 1: you take in, you go broke eventually. Anyway, this uncontrolled
Speaker 1: chain reaction could be more of a bomb situation, although
Speaker 1: to be fair, in nuclear weapons it's still very much
Speaker 1: a controlled system. It's just controlled in a way to
Speaker 1: release an enormous amount of energy in a very destructive way. Now,
Speaker 1: this requires enriched uranium, and it it requires a lot of uranium.
Speaker 1: Two thirty five. You need a really high concentration of
Speaker 1: uranium two thirty five because uranium two thirty eight doesn't
Speaker 1: accept neutrons as readily. So if you shoot neutrons at
Speaker 1: uranium two thirty five, you're it's much easier to split
Speaker 1: that than if you were to fire it off uranium
Speaker 1: two thirty eight. So weapons grade uranium is typically about
Speaker 1: uranium two thirty five. This is a much higher concentration
Speaker 1: than you would find out in nature. So with these
Speaker 1: nuclear bombs, you have to make sure that the fuel
Speaker 1: is kept in separate subcritical masses to prevent premature detonation.
Speaker 1: So you you obviously don't want this thing to go
Speaker 1: off before you intend it to, or else you're going
Speaker 1: to destroy yourself. To make it explode, You need the
Speaker 1: bomb to achieve what is called critical mass. This is
Speaker 1: the minimum amount of mass you need of fission noble
Speaker 1: material to create a nuclear chain reaction sufficient enough to
Speaker 1: act as a weapon. So over at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com, we have an article all about this about
Speaker 1: how nuclear weapons work, and it contains a really helpful analogy.
Speaker 1: It says, imagine that the fission noble material, the stuff
Speaker 1: that you are going to split is represented as a
Speaker 1: bunch of marbles inside a circle. If the marbles are
Speaker 1: really close together, then you shoot a marble into that circle,
Speaker 1: it's going to hit against a couple of other marbles.
Speaker 1: If you've used enough force, it's going to create a
Speaker 1: little chain reaction. That's what we're talking about with fissionable
Speaker 1: material and a nuclear bomb. But if you fire a
Speaker 1: marble off into a circle and all the individual marbles
Speaker 1: are further apart from each other, it's less likely that
Speaker 1: you're going to be able to set off that nuclear
Speaker 1: chain reaction because even if you hit another marble, uh,
Speaker 1: it's far enough away from its fellow marbles that you're
Speaker 1: not likely to to make it a consistent, persistent nuclear
Speaker 1: chain reaction. And so that's really the difference between critical
Speaker 1: and subcritical masses. Now. To start the whole reaction, nuclear
Speaker 1: weapons typically use a pellet of polonium and beryllium separated
Speaker 1: by a piece of foil. When the subcritical masses come together,
Speaker 1: as in when a bomb is set to detonate, and
Speaker 1: more about that in a second, it causes the polonium
Speaker 1: to emit alpha particles, and an alpha particle, in case
Speaker 1: you're curious, is a pair of protons and a pair
Speaker 1: of neutrons that are bound together. The alpha particles make
Speaker 1: contact with a brillium which cause it to transform into
Speaker 1: an isotope of brillium and emit neutrons. So the burrillium
Speaker 1: changes to a different type of brillium, a different isotope
Speaker 1: of brillium, and it ejects these neutrons as part of it.
Speaker 1: Those ejected neutrons, they become the starting point for the
Speaker 1: nuclear chain reaction. Now, surrounding your enriched uranium to thirty
Speaker 1: five is a casing called a tamper. That's what's designed
Speaker 1: to contain the energy of the nuclear fission until it's
Speaker 1: time to release it in the form of the nuclear explosion.
Speaker 1: And typically it's uranium two thirty eight that ends up
Speaker 1: redirecting those free neutrons back into the core so that
Speaker 1: they can more efficiently impact other uranium two thirty five atoms,
Speaker 1: and it aids in the continuation of fission. The more
Speaker 1: fissionable material gets activated, the more efficient the bomb is
Speaker 1: and the bigger the explosion you get as a result. Now,
Speaker 1: one way to detonate a nuclear weapon is with the
Speaker 1: uranium bullet method. So typically you have the tampa, which
Speaker 1: UH you you know, is this container of some sort
Speaker 1: kind of like it's usually kind of a cylinder shape
Speaker 1: because you're fitting it inside a larger form factor of
Speaker 1: a bomb, and that's what's made of uranium two thirty eight.
Speaker 1: Inside of this you have a sphere of uranium two
Speaker 1: thirty five, and in the center of the sphere is
Speaker 1: your neutron generator, in other words, your little pellet of
Speaker 1: polonium and brillium. You've got a tube leading down into
Speaker 1: the center of the sphere. At the other end of
Speaker 1: the tube are some explosives, and inside the tube is
Speaker 1: a bullet of uranium two thirty five. So when it's
Speaker 1: time to detonate the bomb, you explode the explosives. These
Speaker 1: are conventional explosives, not nuclear explosives. That propels the uranium
Speaker 1: two thirty five bullet at a very high rate down
Speaker 1: the tube, colliding with the pellet and thus UH initiating
Speaker 1: the neutron generator, which shoots out neutrons and thus starts
Speaker 1: to fission the uranium two. This fissioning activity happens in
Speaker 1: a in an instant like a fraction of a fraction
Speaker 1: of a fraction of a second but in that fraction
Speaker 1: each time this is happening so so fast that energy
Speaker 1: builds and builds and builds and builds until it's greater
Speaker 1: than what the bomb itself can contain. And then it explodes.
Speaker 1: It takes place uh in so fast that uh it's
Speaker 1: it's it's like billions of a second um And you
Speaker 1: want to be super careful with that, obviously, because it's
Speaker 1: a massive amount of destruction. Now, there's another method for
Speaker 1: detonating it nuclear weapon called the implosion method, in which
Speaker 1: high explosives around the tamper. So again that uranium two
Speaker 1: eight typically uh explosive surrounding it create a powerful shock
Speaker 1: wave when they go off. So the explosives go off,
Speaker 1: creates a shock wave generated into the center of this
Speaker 1: that compresses the tamper and thus compresses the fission norble
Speaker 1: core inside the tamper, and that triggers the fission ng reaction,
Speaker 1: and you get the same result as the one I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier. Now, in World War Two, we dropped two
Speaker 1: atomic bombs. We the United States dropped two atomic bombs
Speaker 1: on Japan. One of them called Little Boy, and that
Speaker 1: was a uranium bullet style bomb. The other was called
Speaker 1: Fat man, and that was an implosion style bomb, and
Speaker 1: it also used plutonium two thirty nine as its core,
Speaker 1: not uranium, but plutonium nine. Later, a guy named Edward Teller,
Speaker 1: who we've talked about on tech stuff before, improve the
Speaker 1: yield of nuclear weapons using what is called the boosting method.
Speaker 1: This combines fusion reactions with fission bombs. The fusion reactions
Speaker 1: would create the neutrons, which then would trigg are the
Speaker 1: fission reactions at a really high rate, so more efficiently,
Speaker 1: so you you get more of the fission norble material
Speaker 1: to split, thus generating more energy, and nearly of American
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons follow that particular design. But then you've also
Speaker 1: got fusion bombs. Now, fusion is when you fuse two
Speaker 1: atoms together and you still get a big release of
Speaker 1: energy in this process. H Essentially, these bombs fuse hydrogen
Speaker 1: isotopes including deuterium and tritium together and that ends up
Speaker 1: releasing an enormous amount of energy. So to explode a
Speaker 1: bomb of this type, you reverse the roles of fusion
Speaker 1: and fission. You know, I just mentioned that to make
Speaker 1: a really efficient fission bomb, you could incorporate fusion into
Speaker 1: it as well. Well. In this case, you're talking about
Speaker 1: using fission reactions in order to fuel a fusion reaction
Speaker 1: which will generate the massive amount of energy for the bomb.
Speaker 1: So the fission bomb would create an implosion shock wave,
Speaker 1: kind of like the explosives I talked about in the
Speaker 1: previous example with fat Man. And in that shock wave
Speaker 1: you would also get a release of X rays. That's
Speaker 1: one of the types of energy you would get as
Speaker 1: released from a fission reaction. The X rays will end
Speaker 1: up heating the tamper, which you still have, just like
Speaker 1: you would with the other types of nuclear weapons, and
Speaker 1: that would still be uranium to eight typically inside of
Speaker 1: which is a fuel of lithium deuteride, and that would
Speaker 1: end up heating up because the X rays, the X
Speaker 1: rays heat up the the lithium deuteride. The shock wave
Speaker 1: would compress the lithium deuteride by a factor of like thirty.
Speaker 1: It's crazy how compressed it gets. And also inside the
Speaker 1: tampa is a plutonium rod which would start to fission
Speaker 1: as result of all this, and that would release more
Speaker 1: heat more neutrons. Those neutrons would combine with the compressed
Speaker 1: lithium deuteride to fuel to create tritium so you then
Speaker 1: have enough temperature and pressure to support fusion reactions. That's
Speaker 1: one of the problems with nuclear fusion power plants is
Speaker 1: that you have to create such an intense amount of
Speaker 1: pressure and temperature that the energy you pour in is
Speaker 1: equal to or greater than the energy you're getting out
Speaker 1: of the actual fusion. Well, in a bomb, that's not
Speaker 1: so much a concern. You want to generate as much
Speaker 1: of this heat and pressure as you possibly can, so
Speaker 1: because the fission reactions are creating that tremendous amount of
Speaker 1: heat and pressure, nuclear fusion can actually occur, and you
Speaker 1: start getting tritium deuterium and deuterium deuterium reactions, and that
Speaker 1: generates even more heat and more radiation, which is enough
Speaker 1: to induce fission in the uranium two thirty eight tamper.
Speaker 1: So remember the uranium two thirty eight tamper doesn't typically
Speaker 1: fission in most of these bombs, it requires so much
Speaker 1: energy to do that, But these fusion bombs can actually
Speaker 1: create that kind of energy. The combination of all that
Speaker 1: energy is enormous, and then the bomb explodes, releasing it
Speaker 1: into the environment. Now, at the point of explosion, you
Speaker 1: would easily imagine there's an intense release of an incredible
Speaker 1: amount of heat, and the blast also creates a really
Speaker 1: powerful pressure wave moving outward from the point of explosion. Then,
Speaker 1: on top of that, you've got the radiation, the energy
Speaker 1: being radiated radiated out like gamma rays and other very
Speaker 1: harmful forms of radiation, followed by radiation fallout, which is
Speaker 1: typically radioactive dust and debris that originated inside the bomb itself.
Speaker 1: Stuff close to the hypocenter, which is another term for
Speaker 1: ground zero, would be vaporized because of the temperatures involved.
Speaker 1: We're talking three hundred million degrees celsius or five hundred
Speaker 1: million degrees fahrenheit. Further out from the center of the
Speaker 1: pressure wave could cause entire buildings to collapse because it's
Speaker 1: so powerful, and the heat is still intense enough to
Speaker 1: cause fatalities. It's hot enough to burn people alive even
Speaker 1: if you're not right there at the point of explosion.
Speaker 1: The further out you go, the less effect those initial
Speaker 1: events will have. The heat will become less intense the
Speaker 1: further out. The pressure wave less effective further out, but
Speaker 1: there are a lot of secondary problems that could still
Speaker 1: be life threatening, including things like fallout, radiation fallout, is
Speaker 1: going to spread really far and will continue to spread
Speaker 1: based upon prevailing winds of the area, and also stuff
Speaker 1: like fires. The heat's going to be hot enough to
Speaker 1: generate a lot of fires and a lot of areas,
Speaker 1: and that could that could end up being a very
Speaker 1: um prevalent and immediate danger to you. So that's cheerful, right.
Speaker 1: New clear weapons are terrifying, There's no question about it. Uh.
Speaker 1: They can reach devastation greater than anything humans have ever witnessed.
Speaker 1: And since World War Two, many have worked really hard
Speaker 1: to make sure no more nuclear weapons see use ever again.
Speaker 1: But we've had a whole lot of close calls and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go more into that in just a minute,
Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: All Right, We're gonna start with probably the closest we've
Speaker 1: ever been to getting into a full on nuclear confrontation. Uh.
Speaker 1: There were other events that happened before this, and there
Speaker 1: are other events that happened after this, and I'll cover
Speaker 1: some of those later on, but let's start with the granddaddy,
Speaker 1: the big one. That would be October nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: when the United States of America and the then Soviet
Speaker 1: un and we're at the height of the Cold War.
Speaker 1: So you had these two powerful countries standing in opposition
Speaker 1: to each other, and both were building up their respective
Speaker 1: militaries and arsenals in an effort to stay on top
Speaker 1: or at least not fall behind their great rival. Has
Speaker 1: a pretty terrifying time for everybody, whether you lived in
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union or the United States or one of
Speaker 1: countless other nations that felt helpless because these two giants
Speaker 1: were posturing against each other. And Uh, one could argue,
Speaker 1: we're sort of returning to that kind of world now,
Speaker 1: but that's really a discussion for a different show. Anyway.
Speaker 1: In October ninety two, an event called the Cuban Missile
Speaker 1: Crisis happened. This was a nuclear game of chess between
Speaker 1: the White House and the Kremlin, and it was the
Speaker 1: closest the United States and the uss are ever got
Speaker 1: to a full fledged nuclear conflict on both sides. Uh.
Speaker 1: This at least, this was the closest anyone got. That
Speaker 1: wasn't the creation of a computational error. More on those
Speaker 1: types of close calls in a little bit. So to
Speaker 1: catch you guys up on some history in case you
Speaker 1: don't know about the Cuban Missile Crisis. The government in
Speaker 1: Cuba was Communist and that was something that made the
Speaker 1: United States government really nervous. So the US attempted to
Speaker 1: overthrow the Cuban government, but that was a total disaster.
Speaker 1: That was the Bay of Pigs invasion, as well as
Speaker 1: some other events that were around that time. Meanwhile, the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union had reached an agreement with Cuba. The sovi
Speaker 1: Union would install nuclear missiles and nuclear aircraft nuclear capable
Speaker 1: aircraft in Cuba as a deterrent to US invasions, and
Speaker 1: it would also serve as a handy launchpad for a
Speaker 1: strike against the U S should things devolve into a
Speaker 1: nuclear war. Now, the United States got wind of that plan,
Speaker 1: and President Kennedy issued a warning to the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: and essentially said, hey, stop putting stuff in Cuba, man,
Speaker 1: it's not cool, especially nuclear stuff, all right. On October fourteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two, American spy aircraft captured images of what
Speaker 1: was clearly medium and intermediate range ballistic nuclear missile sites
Speaker 1: under construction in Cuba, and they were close to being finished.
Speaker 1: They were on the fast track, and thus the Cuban
Speaker 1: Missile Crisis was born. Kennedy ordered what he called a
Speaker 1: naval quarantine on Cuba on October two. Now, this was
Speaker 1: essentially a blockade, except they didn't call it a blockade.
Speaker 1: They gave it the name quarantine because blockade suggests an
Speaker 1: act of war, and they didn't want that to be
Speaker 1: the case. And it's amazing to me how word choice
Speaker 1: can somehow make two things that are essentially the same
Speaker 1: legally distinct. But I digress. The Soviet Union wasn't just
Speaker 1: trying to poke the United States in this case. It
Speaker 1: wasn't just an instance of them saying we're trying to
Speaker 1: get the edge on you. The Soviets were concerned because
Speaker 1: the United States had Jupiter missile systems stationed in Turkey,
Speaker 1: so they were within striking range of the Soviet Union,
Speaker 1: and the Soviet Union one of those missiles out of Turkey.
Speaker 1: Installing missiles in Cuba would kind of level things out,
Speaker 1: but simultaneous, simultaneously, rather escalate tensions, you know, like that
Speaker 1: super fun, awesome combo. So while you had the president
Speaker 1: of the United States and the premier of the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union arguing with each other and trying to convince each
Speaker 1: other to back off, things were getting really really tense
Speaker 1: around an inside Cuba, And what most most folks didn't
Speaker 1: know for a really long time was that the area
Speaker 1: around Cuba was host to full were secret submarines, Soviet
Speaker 1: submarines armed with nuclear tipped torpedoes, and the submarines were
Speaker 1: told to use those nuclear weapons in the event that
Speaker 1: the Americans attacked Cuba and attempt another invasion, which was
Speaker 1: an option that the White House was seriously considering at
Speaker 1: the time, and several of the President's advisors were actually
Speaker 1: advocating for an air strike against Cuba. So imagine if
Speaker 1: that air strike had happened and these submarine commanders were
Speaker 1: following orders that would have initiated a nuclear strike against
Speaker 1: the United States, and then October nineteen sixty two happened.
Speaker 1: So conditions were not great. Cuba, in case you're not aware,
Speaker 1: is much warmer than the USSR, and the submarines were
Speaker 1: ill equipped to deal with that heat. They ran on
Speaker 1: diesel engines, and they had battery power as well, and
Speaker 1: occasionally they would have to resurface to recharge their batteries.
Speaker 1: The air conditioning systems were not very good on these
Speaker 1: submarines and they would fail pretty frequently, so it would
Speaker 1: get stifling, lee hot, and stuffy inside of them. And
Speaker 1: then you had this constant tension of aggression surrounding these crews,
Speaker 1: plus the directive that you were to launch a nuclear
Speaker 1: attack against one of the most powerful nations on the
Speaker 1: planet in the event of any sort of military aggression
Speaker 1: against Cuba, and it was pretty much a cocktail for disaster.
Speaker 1: On top of that, you would know that any attack
Speaker 1: you made against the United States would be returned against
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union, there would be a retaliatory strike, and
Speaker 1: that this would initiate a full global conflict. So it
Speaker 1: was serious business. Now. Making matters worse than that, as
Speaker 1: if you can imagine such a thing, was the fact
Speaker 1: that the Soviet subs didn't have any contact with their headquarters.
Speaker 1: They could not get in contact with Moscow. The best
Speaker 1: they could manage was picking up radio signals from a
Speaker 1: civilian broadcast station in Florida, so they're getting all their
Speaker 1: news from a US source in Florida, not from headquarters.
Speaker 1: American forces eventually spotted the submarines, so they did what
Speaker 1: was under the rules for Americans at the time, which
Speaker 1: was if they spotted submarines in the area, they set
Speaker 1: off signaling charges. Now, signaling charge is an explosive, so
Speaker 1: they were setting off explosives in the ocean near these submarines. Now,
Speaker 1: the purpose of the explosions was not to cause any
Speaker 1: damage to the submarines. They were supposed to be harmless,
Speaker 1: and in fact they were in this case harmless. They
Speaker 1: did not cause damage to the submarines. What they're supposed
Speaker 1: to do is essentially be the equivalent of knocking on
Speaker 1: someone's door saying, hey, I know your home. Come to
Speaker 1: the door, except in this case it's hey, I know
Speaker 1: you're in their surface, because otherwise we're gonna consider it
Speaker 1: a threat. So obviously increasing tensions even further. So you
Speaker 1: would imagine that setting explosions off near nuclear armed submarines
Speaker 1: is potentially a disastrous idea, and it could have been.
Speaker 1: But no one fired any nuclear weapons at that stage,
Speaker 1: and that's amazing. It was super close. Tensions could not
Speaker 1: have been higher without any actual fighting, but but no
Speaker 1: one pulled the trigger on that. Now, the US had
Speaker 1: moved to def Con three earlier in October. So def
Speaker 1: con stands for defense condition, and there are five levels
Speaker 1: of def con and they get worse the lower the
Speaker 1: number is, so def Con five is the the best.
Speaker 1: Defcon one is the most dangerous. So the lower the number,
Speaker 1: the closer the US is to maximum combat readiness. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, Defcon one means the US is ready
Speaker 1: to commit some massive military power in an act of war.
Speaker 1: Level three means increase enforce readiness above normal readiness. So
Speaker 1: that was the level they were at earlier in October,
Speaker 1: was an increased level of readiness. As I recorded this,
Speaker 1: we stand at Defcon four. Defcon four means normal increased
Speaker 1: intelligence and strengthened security measures, so normal readiness, but we're
Speaker 1: paying way more attention than we would be at Defcon five.
Speaker 1: Defcon five just means normal peacetime readiness. Sure, it would
Speaker 1: be nice to be there, but for the United States,
Speaker 1: the actions of North Korea and Russia recently have made
Speaker 1: this complicated. So we've been at Defcon four. Oh, in
Speaker 1: China too, to some extent. Anyway, by October, the United
Speaker 1: States had decided to bump this up to Defcon level two,
Speaker 1: which is further increase in force readiness but less than
Speaker 1: maximum readiness, which I don't know how you determine that.
Speaker 1: If you just ask people, Hey, are you guys ready?
Speaker 1: And if they say yes, and you say are you
Speaker 1: as ready as you can be? And they say no,
Speaker 1: then I guess maybe that's it. Anyway, I would say,
Speaker 1: if we were to translate this, this would come into uh,
Speaker 1: you know, yo hold me back, bro level. That would
Speaker 1: be essentially what Defcon level two is is YO, hold
Speaker 1: me back. So you're ready to swing your fist, but
Speaker 1: you're not actively swinging your fist. And it shows that
Speaker 1: the tensions were really at a high point. So it
Speaker 1: was not a sure thing that cooler heads would actually
Speaker 1: prevail on that day in October on those Soviet submarines.
Speaker 1: I'm thankful they did, though, but it was never a
Speaker 1: sure thing. Now. In the end, Soviets removed their missiles
Speaker 1: and bombers from Cuba, and later the United States removed
Speaker 1: their Jupiter missile installations from Turkey, and apparently there had
Speaker 1: been the plan the whole time. The United States was
Speaker 1: already planning on removing those missile installations in Turkey, which
Speaker 1: was one of the demands the Soviet Union had had, saying, Hey,
Speaker 1: if we're going to pull out a cub but you
Speaker 1: gotta pull up Turkey. But the US didn't agree upon
Speaker 1: it as a point of negotiation, even though they had
Speaker 1: already planned on doing that. So that was interesting that
Speaker 1: the US had planned on removing those missiles, but they
Speaker 1: did not agree to having that be part of the
Speaker 1: terms to settle this crisis. Uh maybe because it might
Speaker 1: have made the country look weak or something. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't pretend to understand global politics. The point is
Speaker 1: that both the United States and the USS are backed
Speaker 1: off from the button and opened up a channel of
Speaker 1: communication that still exists to this day, this hot line
Speaker 1: between the Kremlin and the White House, though there are
Speaker 1: times when one site isn't that eager to take the
Speaker 1: other side's calls, and by backed off, I don't mean
Speaker 1: that things calmed down right away. The US Strategic Air
Speaker 1: Command or s A C remained at def Conto from
Speaker 1: October twenty nine to November fift nineteen sixty five, so
Speaker 1: more than three years. Only then did it quote unquote
Speaker 1: posture down to def Con three because it was scary. Now.
Speaker 1: I've recorded a few other shows that also tie into
Speaker 1: this same era in various ways. For example, the Space
Speaker 1: Race was largely an extension of the Cold War. In fact,
Speaker 1: you could argue that without the Cold War, we never
Speaker 1: would have been to the moon. Both the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: and the United States were racing to send people into
Speaker 1: space and to the Moon, and it was in part
Speaker 1: an effort to prove that they that their country was
Speaker 1: technologically superior to the rival country. But there was also
Speaker 1: an element of intimidation involved. So essentially, if you could
Speaker 1: send a rocket into orbit, you could also send a
Speaker 1: rocket all the way around the Earth and hit a
Speaker 1: target on the other side, like say the United States
Speaker 1: from the Soviet Union or the Soviet Union from the
Speaker 1: United States. So in part, the space race was a
Speaker 1: way of saying, hey, we have the capability of wiping
Speaker 1: you off the planet, so don't push us. The thing
Speaker 1: was both sides were making that argument at the same time. Again,
Speaker 1: absolutely terrifying, although we got some awesome stuff out of it.
Speaker 1: I mean, the space race gave us tons of technology
Speaker 1: and pushed our scientific understanding of our solar system quite
Speaker 1: a bit, so it's not like it was all bad,
Speaker 1: but the motivations behind it were largely motivated by politics
Speaker 1: and military goals. Luckily we were able to leverage that
Speaker 1: into ways that we're not indirectly connected to conflict. But yeah,
Speaker 1: once once the Soviet Union launched Sputnik into orbit. Sput
Speaker 1: Nick was the satellite, the first man made satellite in
Speaker 1: orbit around the Earth. All it did was really beep,
Speaker 1: but amateur radio operators in the United States picked up
Speaker 1: the beeping and it caused quite a bit of panic
Speaker 1: because suddenly everyone realized that if the Union could launch
Speaker 1: something into orbit, they could probably launch something all the
Speaker 1: way to the United States. Uh, the intercontal in, the
Speaker 1: intercontinental ballistic missile or i c b M, was essentially
Speaker 1: born at that point. Anyway, let's go back to close
Speaker 1: calls with nuclear war, because that's really what we're here
Speaker 1: to talk about. And let's jump ahead to November nine
Speaker 1: ninety nine. That's when the North American Aerospace Defense Headquarters,
Speaker 1: or nora AD for short, went bonkers. I would say
Speaker 1: that they went ballistic, but luckily they didn't, because that
Speaker 1: would have been a terrible, terrifying pun In that case,
Speaker 1: according to the computer systems over at nora AD, a
Speaker 1: huge missile attack from the Soviet Union was on its
Speaker 1: way to targets within the United States. And this is
Speaker 1: what we often in the technology world would call a
Speaker 1: bad thing. So nora AD was following protocol and they
Speaker 1: sent an alert to high level command posts and the
Speaker 1: tippy top of US military leadership, and immediately the command
Speaker 1: was given to put I C B M Cruise on
Speaker 1: the highest possible alert, and nuclear bomber crews were scrambled
Speaker 1: to their aircraft to prepare for takeoff. The airborne command Post,
Speaker 1: which is the aircraft that the President of the United
Speaker 1: States is supposed to be a board in the event
Speaker 1: of a massive attack. This is what creates a mobile
Speaker 1: base of operations. It took off, so the airboard command
Speaker 1: Post took off into the atmosphere. Uh, the President wasn't
Speaker 1: on it at the time, which seems like a bit
Speaker 1: of an oversight, but it did take off. So for
Speaker 1: more than five incredibly tense minutes, United States operators were
Speaker 1: scouring satellite data to confirm that the Soviets had indeed
Speaker 1: launched missiles against the United States. They had the information
Speaker 1: from the Nora D computers, but they wanted, obviously to
Speaker 1: confirmed that information with satellite data, but they couldn't find
Speaker 1: any data to confirm it. United States leaders decided magnanimously
Speaker 1: not to launch a full scale retaliation, which is a
Speaker 1: good thing because it would have turned out that they
Speaker 1: would have been committing a first strike. There was nothing
Speaker 1: to retaliate against. So what the heck actually happened? And
Speaker 1: the answer is pretty crazy, and it sounds like something
Speaker 1: from a movie like Airplane. It sounds like a deleted
Speaker 1: scene from a disaster spoof movie. What had happened was
Speaker 1: a technician had inserted a training tape into an operational
Speaker 1: nora ADD computer. The training tape contained various scenarios on it,
Speaker 1: including one in which the Soviet Union launches a full
Speaker 1: scale missile attack against the United States. And this was
Speaker 1: just to run simulations, to run what would happen in
Speaker 1: this case and how effective would a retaliatory strike be.
Speaker 1: That's all it was. But it was being run on
Speaker 1: an operational nora AD computer, which interpreted this to mean
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union had actually launched an attack, not that
Speaker 1: it was a simulation. So a training tape very nearly
Speaker 1: started World War Three. In ninety nine, the United States
Speaker 1: wisely decided that it would be a really good idea
Speaker 1: to make sure nora AD computers would not be able
Speaker 1: to run training tapes in the future, and so they
Speaker 1: nerved it. Essentially, they removed that ability for nora AD
Speaker 1: computers to run these simulations. Now I've got a lot
Speaker 1: more to talk about as far as false alarms and
Speaker 1: close calls go. But before to jump into that last section,
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor. So
Speaker 1: these sort of things happened really rarely, right, please not?
Speaker 1: According to Marshall Shulman, who was a State Department advisor,
Speaker 1: he said that false alerts would happen fairly regularly, which
Speaker 1: is absolutely terrifying, and in fact said they happened regularly
Speaker 1: enough that handling them almost became a matter of routine,
Speaker 1: which is troubling all by itself. And that's that's what
Speaker 1: Shulman said. He said, it's almost terrifying to see the
Speaker 1: level of complacency in dealing with these because they happened
Speaker 1: that frequently. I mean, you want your team to respond
Speaker 1: calmly in the wake of an alert, because you want
Speaker 1: to make sure that they are going through the steps
Speaker 1: to verify that it is in fact at what it
Speaker 1: seems to be. You don't want them acting on misinformation,
Speaker 1: shan At the same time, you don't want them to
Speaker 1: fall victim to boy who cried wolf scenarios where they
Speaker 1: don't take it seriously. Enough so you want to balance there,
Speaker 1: and according to Showman that the complacency issue was getting
Speaker 1: to be a bit troubling for him. Now, just so
Speaker 1: you don't go thinking that the United States was alone
Speaker 1: and having faulty systems, let me tell you about September.
Speaker 1: That is when a Soviet satellite, part of an early
Speaker 1: detection system for missile launches, sent down a message indicating
Speaker 1: the United States had fired a nuclear missile, and then
Speaker 1: another nuclear missile, and then three more nuclear missiles, so
Speaker 1: it might have looked like an initial attack with five
Speaker 1: missiles heading towards the Soviet Union. Now, tensions were already
Speaker 1: high across the Soviet Union and the United States for
Speaker 1: other reasons. Earlier that month, the Soviet Union had shot
Speaker 1: down a South Korean passenger plane thinking that it was
Speaker 1: a military plane invading their airspace, and that's not what
Speaker 1: it was. So it was a tragic accident. But there
Speaker 1: was also a lot of worry that the United States
Speaker 1: could potentially retaliate for this, and so the first reaction
Speaker 1: could have been that this was the US's response to
Speaker 1: that that act. Now, the man in charge over at
Speaker 1: a early detection center in the Soviet Union was Lieutenant
Speaker 1: Colonel Stanislav Petrov, and he held the authority to launch
Speaker 1: a retaliatory strike, but he didn't exercise this authority. He
Speaker 1: deduced that a genuine attack on the Soviet Union from
Speaker 1: the United States would involve hundreds of missiles, not just five.
Speaker 1: He said, you, if you're going to start a war,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't launch only five missiles. It wouldn't be enough
Speaker 1: of a quantity to knock out enough of the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union's capability to retaliate, so it would just be inviting
Speaker 1: worldwide destruction. So Petrov said, I'm pretty sure this isn't real.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stake my life and my reputation on it,
Speaker 1: and he was right. So then they began to investigate
Speaker 1: what was the cause of this false alarm, because that
Speaker 1: is what it turned out to be. So the cause
Speaker 1: was the satellite itself and had misidentified a reflection from
Speaker 1: the top of some clouds. The sun was hitting these
Speaker 1: clouds at just the right angle for the reflection to
Speaker 1: hit the satellite, and the position the orientation of the
Speaker 1: satellite with respect of the United States made it look
Speaker 1: like this was coming from known US missile launch sites.
Speaker 1: So the satellite misidentified the reflections as missile launches, and
Speaker 1: really the satellite was in a good orbit to avoid
Speaker 1: this kind of miss understanding. The problem was, it was
Speaker 1: just the perfect set of circumstances. It was the equal ox,
Speaker 1: the sun was setting, and the satellite was in a
Speaker 1: position at just the right time with clouds in the
Speaker 1: right position to cause this confusion. And normally it wouldn't
Speaker 1: have happened at any other time of the year. The
Speaker 1: angles wouldn't have been right. It was just a coincidence. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: because there was a human being in charge who had
Speaker 1: the capacity to question the results presented by the satellite,
Speaker 1: we didn't see a nuclear strike from the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: launched at the United States as a result, sometimes a
Speaker 1: science experiment runs the risk of plunging US into nuclear conflict,
Speaker 1: so that's exciting. So for example, there was the Black
Speaker 1: Brand twelve rocket, which was a cooperative effort between the
Speaker 1: United States and Norway UH. It launched out of Norway
Speaker 1: along the coastline of Nora, Way, and it had a
Speaker 1: mission to send up a probe essentially to study the
Speaker 1: northern lights, the Aurora borealis. Norway had picked up the
Speaker 1: phone to call up there Russian neighbors and say, hey,
Speaker 1: by the way, we're gonna launch this satellite, so don't
Speaker 1: freak out, but we're gonna do it on such and
Speaker 1: such a day, at such and such a time. And
Speaker 1: so Russia knew about this. The only problem was that
Speaker 1: information never got to the people in charge of the
Speaker 1: early warning detection systems, so they had no knowledge of
Speaker 1: a planned scientific rocket launch. Instead, they had radar detectors
Speaker 1: looking at their screens and saying, it appears that a
Speaker 1: missile has launched, potentially from the United States submarine and
Speaker 1: on a trajectory that could take it to the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: So there was immediately a re action that this could
Speaker 1: potentially be an early attack, and in fact, there was
Speaker 1: worry that perhaps this was a warhead meant to explode
Speaker 1: to knockout radar detection so that we can then have
Speaker 1: an entire full blown attack follow it and the radar
Speaker 1: systems would be down. In the meantime, the word went
Speaker 1: up to the Kriblin and Boris Yeltsin went so far
Speaker 1: as to activate his nuclear football. The nuclear football is
Speaker 1: a device that leaders used to authorize a nuclear strike.
Speaker 1: Other radar centers and Russian satellites couldn't find any evidence
Speaker 1: of any other missile preparations, so there was no other
Speaker 1: corroborating evidence to suggest that this was in fact a
Speaker 1: legitimate missile strike aimed at the United States. So this
Speaker 1: led the Russians to conclude it wasn't actually an attack,
Speaker 1: and eventually the word got out that this was a
Speaker 1: scientific mission that had previous authorization and that Russia had
Speaker 1: been in communication with Norway the whole time. It just
Speaker 1: never got to the military side. Whoopsie Daisy almost went
Speaker 1: to full nuclear war over that. And you probably heard
Speaker 1: the story about how a flock of birds nearly initiated
Speaker 1: World War three. That was actually an oversimplification of what
Speaker 1: had happened. It was a story that actually predates the
Speaker 1: Cuban missile crisis. This goes back to the Suez Canal
Speaker 1: crisis in Egypt. The Suez Canal had proven to be
Speaker 1: critical during both World War One and World War Two,
Speaker 1: and so lots of different entities wanted to have control
Speaker 1: over the canal for stretch strategic purposes. This included the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union, Egypt, and the United Kingdom, so you had
Speaker 1: a lot of tensions in the area and the whole
Speaker 1: conflict is way too complex to get into. I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure the stuff you missed in history class hosts have
Speaker 1: talked about the Suez Canal crisis and the Pasket Uh
Speaker 1: and like I said, it gets super complicated. But I
Speaker 1: can talk about a series of coincidental events that nearly
Speaker 1: led us to World War Three. It happened on November five,
Speaker 1: ninety six. Nora AD detected these coincidental events, which collectively
Speaker 1: looked like it could have been a big aggressive move
Speaker 1: by the Soviet Union, like an actual massing to attack
Speaker 1: other areas of Europe and possibly launched tax attacks against
Speaker 1: the United States. Those coincidences included a fleet of ships
Speaker 1: Soviet ships moving from the Black Sea to the Aegean
Speaker 1: c There were a large number of MiG jets reported
Speaker 1: flying over Syria. There was a report of a British
Speaker 1: bomber being shot down also in Syria, and then there
Speaker 1: was an unknown number of unidentified aircraft detected over Turkey.
Speaker 1: But each of those events turned out to not be
Speaker 1: that big of a deal once the details were learned,
Speaker 1: So it's fortunate that no one thought those collective events
Speaker 1: actually amounted to a full attack. The fleet maneuver turned
Speaker 1: out to just be a routine exercise among the Soviet fleet,
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with any sort of aggressive act.
Speaker 1: The group of MiGs were was much smaller than had
Speaker 1: been reported. It wasn't like a hundred jets. That was
Speaker 1: actually a typical escort detail. The British bomber hadn't been
Speaker 1: shot down, the aircraft had suffered a mechanical failure and
Speaker 1: they had to make an emergency landing in Syria. And
Speaker 1: the mysterious aircraft flying over Turkey turned out to be
Speaker 1: a flock of Swans, which after a lengthy questioning, turned
Speaker 1: out not to be Soviet agents. And let me give
Speaker 1: you one last example of a close call. There are
Speaker 1: more besides this one, by the way, lots more, but
Speaker 1: here's one last one. On June third, defense displays at
Speaker 1: the Pentagon, the White House and a nora Ad flipped out.
Speaker 1: Now they had a display of four digits, which usually
Speaker 1: read as zero zero zero zero, just four zeros straight across.
Speaker 1: These were numbers to indicate any nuclear missiles that had
Speaker 1: been detected as being launched. So you want to see
Speaker 1: all zeros. There's any number besides a zero on that display,
Speaker 1: that's a big problem. The counters began to show the
Speaker 1: number two instead of zero, indicating a massive missile attack,
Speaker 1: and so to be certain, bomber crews were given orders
Speaker 1: to prepare their aircraft and missile launched systems began to
Speaker 1: warm up for a retaliatory strike while the top brass
Speaker 1: tried to figure out if this was in fact for
Speaker 1: real z s or not. Luckily, said brass determined that
Speaker 1: it was not for real z s and uh they
Speaker 1: ordered everyone to stand down. As a result, three days later,
Speaker 1: the same thing happened again, and again everyone got prepared
Speaker 1: or a massive retaliatory strike, and two false alarms that
Speaker 1: could cause a nuclear apocalypse warranted a full look at
Speaker 1: the system. Technicians trace the problem to a single computer chip,
Speaker 1: just one computer chip in the entire system that wasn't
Speaker 1: wired correctly. So replacing that chip solved the problem and
Speaker 1: they stopped having this issue with the display giving a
Speaker 1: false indicator of missile launches. That one faulty chip could
Speaker 1: have resulted in new in a nuclear war or at
Speaker 1: least a nuclear strike, which is absolutely terrifying. So what
Speaker 1: is the moral of the story here, Well, one thing
Speaker 1: is that nuclear weapons are super duper scary. I'd love
Speaker 1: to see them become a thing of the past, but
Speaker 1: they're incredibly powerful, and all it takes is one critical
Speaker 1: error to cause untold amounts of damage or precipitate a
Speaker 1: globally catastrophic series of events. But another lesson to take
Speaker 1: here is that we at least have been fortunate so
Speaker 1: far are to have people calm enough to reevaluate a
Speaker 1: situation before committing the ultimate act of warfare. It's sure
Speaker 1: would be nice if it weren't necessary to say, thank goodness,
Speaker 1: we have the right folks in the right place at
Speaker 1: the wrong time, But thank goodness we do have them.
Speaker 1: Now that's all for today. Next time, I hope to
Speaker 1: have a super duper happy, silly episode of tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I hadn't planned on going quite so dark, quite so
Speaker 1: quickly after that last dark episode we did, but this
Speaker 1: topic was fascinating to me and I thought relevant considering
Speaker 1: the state of the world today, so I thought it
Speaker 1: might be interesting for you guys too. Now, if you
Speaker 1: have suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, you can
Speaker 1: write me. The email address for the show is tech
Speaker 1: Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or you can
Speaker 1: send me a note on Facebook or Twitter. The handle
Speaker 1: for the show at both of those is text Stuff
Speaker 1: h s W. And remember you can watch me record
Speaker 1: these shows live on twitch dot tv slash tech Stuff
Speaker 1: on Wednesdays and Friday's. This is the which page to
Speaker 1: see the schedule, and I'll talk to you guys again
Speaker 1: really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
Speaker 1: is it how stuff works dot com