Speaker 1: Man. I loved the eighties arcade games, fanny packs, acid
Speaker 1: washed genes, Jane Fonda doing jazzer size. I mean, what's
Speaker 1: not to like smiling and feeling so fine? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: the looming threat of nuclear war.
Speaker 2: The temperature of a UK fabo is twenty million degrees.
Speaker 1: Cooh boy, situation called We're all fucked ump Yep. The
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties weren't all Robotron and Rube's cubes. There was
Speaker 1: also that out of control nuclear arms race between the
Speaker 1: United States and the Soviet Union, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people spent the eighties deeply existentially terrified of nuclear war,
Speaker 1: including me. But what most people don't know is, in
Speaker 1: November of nineteen eighty three, the United States and the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union almost started an actual nuclear war entirely by accident,
Speaker 1: and none of us knew anything about it, which makes
Speaker 1: me think of a story. I'm at Helms and I'm
Speaker 1: hosting a new podcast called Snapfu. It's a show about gaffes,
Speaker 1: the disasters, history's greatest screw ups. On season one of Snaffo,
Speaker 1: the story of Able Archer eighty three, the NATO military
Speaker 1: exercise that nearly triggered World War three, you know.
Speaker 2: This is more like two drunks in a bar circling
Speaker 2: one another. And it's not so much that anybody would
Speaker 2: deliberately choose to start the war. It's just that things
Speaker 2: would spiral out of control. This is a true.
Speaker 1: Story about what really happens in the highest echelons of power, deception, espionage,
Speaker 1: political miscalculation, all while the fate of the human race
Speaker 1: hangs in the balance. It's a story with an a
Speaker 1: list cast, a Hollywood actor turned president. It did give
Speaker 1: me a real understanding of the communist menace. A paranoid
Speaker 1: Soviet dictator, Ohmadica he's preparing a sudden cow consa two
Speaker 1: trees and his spies totally immersed in this world of
Speaker 1: espionage and surveillance. And a dauntless sleuth who wanted to
Speaker 1: get to the bottom of it all. Hell out the folder.
Speaker 1: Open it up, and it has this green card that
Speaker 1: says every historian's nightmare classified. So what's the real story
Speaker 1: of Able Archer eighty three that lies buried in government archives?
Speaker 1: Is it just a story of an almost armageddon? Or
Speaker 1: is it a mind game all its own? To find
Speaker 1: out how close we were to doomsday and why most
Speaker 1: of us have no idea it even happened. Subscribe to Snapo,
Speaker 1: premiering October fifth, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever the hell you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: I mean, it is a miracle. We did not all
Speaker 2: die like it's just goofy