A Comprehensive Breakdown Of Nuclear War Threats - Annie Jacobsen

how many nukes are in existence right now 12,500 approximately and where does that number come from how do we know that that's the number yeah well there are nine nuclear armed Nations and the way we know the specifics of them is thanks to a group here in the United States called the Federation of American scientists they have a organization within that called the nuclear notebook group led by a guy called Hans Christensen and they do all the counting for us the one variable would be North Korea because they don't have any form of transparency and so it's guessing when it comes to what we think North Korea has who are the nine the nine are the obvious Russia America UK France India Pakistan China North Korea Israel Australia no no wow how do we know that countries aren't giving a United States organization purposefully under reported numbers to make us think that they've got fewer that they've gotten rid of it that they've de-escalated uh when in fact they got loads well some of the treaties uh which are like being threatened right now ask for uh transparency and also inspection and so like for example people go to Russia on our side and vice versa things can get held up when there's direct conflicts right like right now but it's amazing you know in my book I I take the readers from nuclear launch to nuclear winter and I have these little sort of nerdish History breaks where I give you some of the details like this but mostly I stay out of the policy both behind nuclear nonproliferation and also the policies that could lead to nuclear war because I really want the readers to know like this is what happens and the things you're asking me are super important because they have to do with sort of preventative ideas you know this idea that if we are more transparent with one another and I'm talking about the nuclear armed Nations there's going to be communication on some level yeah it's interesting I wonder I wonder if it's true I wonder if 12,500 is the actual number um you know it would make complete sense he we Cyber Sub auge and and and hacking of chips and getting it like the most obvious like the original scop conspiracy lying like why not just lie about it uh hide them put them in a place that it's not like treaties and I don't know when it comes to nuclear war or the potential destruction of your of your country something tells me there's a lot of incentives to not be super transparent I'll give you an example North Korea the CIA will tell you that North Korea has 50 nuclear weapons but some private organizations some NOS non-governmental organizations will tell you that number is as high as 130 so that gives you an example of like how how accurate that number may or may not be 70,000 was the number we were at when we peaked that's right 1986 right what happened to do do you deconstruct a bomb do you do you sell it for parts do you keep the depleted uranium core to make a nuclear reactor what do you do I mean what a great question and what an interesting concept of where does all that nuclear material go um there's a plant in Texas called pantex and that's where they do that and it is so profoundly classified and not a lot of people know about it and it's almost certainly on you know everybody's Nuclear Strike Target list because can you imagine the Mayhem that would ensue if you struck that there's just so many prar iously dangerous situations it feels like any sight that has to do with anything that touches a nuclear weapon becomes you know radioactive like literally and figuratively where are most of America's nukes are they on land are they at Sea have we got any that are in space okay so I map out the Triad America has what's called the Triad and what a great place to begin because it's like so much of what I try to do in this book is demystify you know it's often said here in America that the the nuclear weapons belong to the to the nuclear priesthood the PHD priesthood right and there's kind of a an almost it seems like a fool hearty attempt to keep the laymen out to keep regular people like you and me from really knowing these things but interestingly when you look at them they're very simple um and because America is a democracy a lot of our information is transparent so for example the defense department puts out a very thick monograph which almost no one reads I have read you can read which tells you exactly these numbers and it explains what is called the nuclear Triad and it's such an interesting place to start and you realize actually things are easier than you think nuclear Triad oh3 okay so we have silos underground silos we have a submarine force and then we have a bomber force and the silos they're there are 400 of them Across America and believe it or not every single one of them is targetable every single one of them you can locate it used to be on an old map now it's GPS um then the submarines are just crazy to learn about I mean they are called the handmaidens of the Apocalypse with good reason there are 14 of them they're nuclear armed nuclear powerered submarines satellites can't see them they just cruise around underwater like loaded with nuclear weapons each one has as many as 90 and that's enough to take out like not a city like not a continent but arguably civilization because 90 nuclear weapons almost certainly sets off nuclear World War III one does right okay so then the last part of the Triad is the bomber Force we have 66 bombers those are the b2s that are very famous that looks like a flying wing and then the old school b52s and those drop gravity bombs the interesting spooky thing about that third part of the Triad is that it's the only part of the Triad the nuclear Triad that can be recalled so it's almost certainly what the president sends first in other words the icbms the ballistic missiles that launch out of the silos and the sub launched ballistic missiles in the submarines once they are launched they they cannot be redirected or recalled and so once they launch that is endgame yeah that's scary that being said something tells me that using the b52s and and the b2s uh you've got to ready the pilots I I I have to presume that you basically have a 247 crew of nuclear missile carrying plane Pilots permanently on base 24 hours a day 365 days a year and alarm goes off and they are in the planes the planes are fueled they're on the ground they're ready to go etc etc I mean how long is it going to take a a a plane to get from wherever it is to to Moscow to be able to because you got to be over the top of the target if you're using gravity you've got to be over the top of the target well you're absolutely right and that's why the bombers get sent first but they almost will have no role and I interviewed pilots who are who you know fly these aircraft and who have trained for this as you said constantly through across all the decades that they have been in existence and yet they almost certainly don't play a role Because by the time they would get to a target for example we keep B the B2 bomber um very close to Pyongyang right for this reason but very close means 5H hour flight and when you're talking about nuclear war happening in seconds and minutes not days not hours and weeks or hours and days you know One Pilot said to me the chances are you would you would get there after the war has commenced and you would have no way to refuel in air because so many of these aircraft need that capacity so you're refueling capacity yes it is they are all suicides Mission I mean nuclear war is one b big giant suicide you said I saw you write about how Russian and Chinese submarines regularly sneak up to within a couple of hundred miles of the United States coasts what was that thing about something to do with the grapefruit on the moon right right right okay so the uh Michael con or Admiral Conor the the former commander of America's nuclear submarine force not somebody who usually goes on the record or talks to journalists he shared with me this stunning analogy which is that it's harder to find a submarine Under the Sea than it is to find a grapefruit sized object in space so that's how stealthy submarines are and yes thank you for noticing that detail in the book because I was shocked to come across in a defense department budget request of all things a map a sonar map demonstrating the pathways of Soviet or sorry Freudian slip there of Russian and Chinese submarines coming up along America's Coast just a few hundred miles out and that is enough to keep you up at night if all of the rest of it isn't what are the most likely steps to a mistaken nuclear war in your opinion well you know M right so there's this famous quote which I use um whereby the UN Secretary General Antonio gutterz says we are one misunderstanding one miscalculation away from nuclear apocalypse and so there are there is a lot of room for error right where you're you know there's a lot of room for mistakes but there's also a lot of room for the madman scenario um and that's what I use in the book whereby a nuclear armed Nation makes a rogue launch against the United States for reasons that we never know um that remains unanswered because the world ends before anyone gets that answer but it is according to sources I interviewed a plausible scenario you know a a nealis Madman with a nuclear Arsenal so be it a mistake be it a misunderstanding be it a Madman we are really on the brink of catastrophe here which is like I think the calling you know the the sort of Clarion call to have all of us talking about this thank you for having me on your show because your show is you know listened to by all kinds of people not just policy wonks and uh people that seem to be obsessed with the sort of geopolitical maneuver of everyone nuclear war you know it's important to all of us well it's not going to discriminate whether you're a policy wonk or a defense department person everybody's going to feel the impact okay so someone fires a nuke what happens from there take us through the timeline from button of first nuke gets pushed let's say that it's from North Korea and it's going to be aimed at the US yeah and this is like this is that second by second telling the T the the ticking clock scenario that as I was reporting the book initially wasn't sure how I was going to actually like tell the story and then once I began to really learn the specifics of this it became only the top the ticking clock scenario because as you say it just it's a sequence it just happens once nuclear launch happens it all goes from there and so the way it begins interesting inly is in space and that is because the United States has spent trillions of dollars over the past decades being aware of when anyone launches a nuclear miss when anyone launches a ballistic missile when anyone launches a missile at all hang on hang on what's what's a ballistic missile what's what's a give me to give me the hierarchy so and it's a great question because you know we hear a lot about strategic weapons versus tactical weapons right so tactical nukes that's what you hear Vladimir Putin threatening now when he's talking about using a tactical nuke that's that's a battlefield nuke America doesn't even keep them we did in the Cold War but realized what a ridiculously bad idea it is because it means you might actually use them on the battlefield you know you're just going upping upping the scale you go from the mother of all bombs to the nuclear tactical weapon a ballistic missile is a weap a warhead loaded on a rocket that can travel it's called an ICBM intercontinental ballistic missile so that it can travel from one continent to the other and it uses you know gravity in as much that it has three phases okay that's it takes 30 minutes three phases boost phase five minutes midcourse phase 20 minutes terminal phase 100 seconds that's from a Launchpad in Russia 26 minutes 40 seconds from pongyang it's 33 minutes I mean I geek out on the details and have like you know professors of math mathematics at MIT do the math for me because you want to show how precise this all is how specific the details are that the defense department works on and so these Satellite Systems in space it's called cbers again analog you know everything's in an acronym space based infrared satellite system cbers a constellation of satellites in geosync meaning it can park above an animation and watch for the hot rocket exhaust on a ballistic missile launch which it can see in less than a fraction of a s of a second I mean that when you really think about that this all begins in the first fraction of a second you understand the depth and scope of what exists behind the veil of the possibility of nuclear warfare what happen so uh microsc after the exhaust flares go off and it's not even left the ground yet satellite detects it presumably sends that to the US what is the sequence of events that occurs from a defense department presidential perspective Y and it all happens super fast so literally Within seconds that data in space goes to the command centers I was amazed to learn that it goes immediately to three command sistors and and again it it becomes like very visual when you realize how simple this all is the data goes to you know Cheyenne Mountain we know about this from movies it's in you know it's like the the nuclear bunker in Colorado beneath the mountain it's real it's one of three the other one is beneath the Pentagon it's called The National military command center and the third nuclear bunker is beneath stratcom us strategic command that's in Nebraska and the way it was explained to me that like made it really easy to understand Cheyenne Mountain is like the brain the Pentagon is the Beating Heart of nuclear war and the bunker beneath NE Omaha Nebraska is the muscle and those three command centers with their Partners in the space force and at various different command C centers begin to interpret this data and so it takes only 150 seconds from launch for the machines people call them AI I call them you know machine learning to start calculating is that missile headed toward Moscow or Hana Lulu is the missile headed toward San Francisco or is it headed toward the east coast and 100 50 seconds later that information becomes clear and by then can you imagine what has been going on in those three command centers and all the hundreds of thousands of people that are working on this issue again behind the veil 247 365 and so it becomes simply a matter of minutes before the president of the United States is notified about all this and that comes to me directly from two former secretaries of defense here in the in the US who are saying this is how it works letting the president know that very soon he's going to have to make a decision about Counterattack about how to respond and that sets in motion this crazy policy called launch on warning which requires the president of the United States to launch nuclear weapons in response to a rogue attack it's called a bolt out of the blue attack before nuclear weapons actually hit the United States said differently we don't wait to absorb a nuclear blow we launch and that has to do with what we just talked about the nuclear silos the theory is that whoever is launching at the United States will try and take out the nuclear silos so we can't respond so therefore we must respond which gets you into this sort of orwellian understanding of how orwellian all of this is and by the way now I've only taken you for through the first few minutes okay the the language that you used there you said that the president will have to make a decision and that it is kind of the President's duty to do this launch on warning but all of that stops at the glass floor that is the president's right finger or or or him saying yes or or in in the affirmative type thing it seems to me like there is still a human decision element of this in the US so it sounds like what you're saying is that you believe that perhaps the president would choose not to launch nuclear weapons that it's not an completely automated system absolutely outside of the bounds of of human decision that there is still a point at which and maybe 999 times out of a thousand the president would hit the button um but that there is still this kind of like arbitrary odd integration of the president into the system absolutely I mean it is not what is called an executive order the launch on warning is policy it's not an executive order and and it is the president's decision and only the president's decision yet so if you had an incredibly tempered incredibly peaceful uh incredibly fill-in-the blank president who just simply was unwilling to launch nuclear weapons you are absolutely right interestingly you're the only person who has who has posed this it's the Brit it's the it's the totally War cooked Brit in me that doesn't want to have a a nuclear winter so I had a guy called Andrew Bustamante on the show who's excia his first job was as a nuclear Silo operative yeah he was one of the two guys with the keys um I'm going to guess that you have worked out about every hour round about on the hour or so alarm goes off keys go in code gets put in they have no can you just run us through because that was one of my favorite stories that he taught me about how like willing denters and and and stuff basically because of the network of the 400 silos and they're linked and you don't know if yours is going on can you just explain kind of how all of that works I'm sure I mean listen I'm a journalist and the firsthand witness is always better than the secondhand Storyteller which is me so I'm sure that his account of it is riveting and I will watch it I have spoken to misers who describe exactly that and yes there are protocols in place so that they don't make an error so that a Mis can can't go Rogue and decide to do something but what there isn't in place is a system in between the president and the misier so in other words once the President says once the president gives the launch order the the sequence begins there's no descent there's no room for descent and I asked the the Los Alamos classified historian Glenn McDuff a variation on your question to me like what you know would we could we see someone refuse whether it's anyone below the president let's say even the stratcom commander or down to the missier and he said to me Annie I would recommend you'd have better chances winning the Power Ball yeah than to have someone in the nuclear command and control apparatus defy authority yeah so what I learned from Andrew uh upon issuing of in fact before we get to issuing 400 uh missile silos is around the US in each of those at all times there are two operatives with keys around their neck they have alarms that go off uh firing alarms that go off where they have to keys go in code gets input they press a button that happens about 24 times a day they have no idea whether that is a false alarm or a real uh Real World um like uh activity M also if only one of the 400 puts the code in and turns the key all of them fire because they're networked together so you need you would need to have 399 and then one more willing to centers you also have the peer pressure of the other person with the key you also have this sort of trained almost like a a pavlovian response where we've continued to do this and we've continued to do this but one day you could get the alarm come through you another day at work put the code in turn the key and then he and go oh [ __ ] you have no idea what you're aiming at you have no idea why it's been fired you're just there to do that thing and that that to me this sort of distributed system if anyone fires then all of them fire you only need the code to go in into one of these silos so yeah I think the the Power Ball analogy probably probably stands up those are some pretty incredible details I'm going to have to drill down on those because I'm not familiar with them but that is kind of shocking okay once you launch you can't recall is it possible uh to intercept a nuke as it's coming toward us I've heard about Hypersonic missiles they sound faster than icbms can we fire a thing at their thing and knock it out the guy interestingly an ICBM is Hypersonic right so all of this business of hypersonic is just in my opinion great uh advertisement for the military-industrial complex to have new weapons um no one I know thinks Hypersonic missiles have really much are going to change much of anything in terms of defense they're certainly going to spend a lot more money for taxpayers what is interesting that you pointed out is about the myths behind the interceptor program I myself was at a dinner party when I was reporting this book seated next to a very knowledgeable person who when I said you know I'm writing he said oh Annie you know we have an Interceptor program for that and I didn't want to correct him um there has to be a female version of the mansplaining concept I haven't figured it out yet but I didn't want to correct him I figured I'll just give him a copy of my book because that is absolute fantasy you know this idea that America's Interceptor system is anything like for example Israel's Iron Dome is just simply not true we have 44 Interceptor missiles total four of them are at vanenburg air force base in Santa Barbara 40 of them are in Alaska and they too are like ballistic missiles okay so imagine Russia's 1,674 deployed nuclear weapons ready to launch in seconds or minutes coming at the United States up against 44 Interceptor missiles how presumably the Interceptor missiles aren't under the same um restriction and jurisdiction that the nuclear disarmament slowly winding down your thing consists of so if that's the case why not just have like a million of them is it are they costly is it hard to make is it storage you're absolutely right and inside of them the vehicle that takes out the nuclear warhead by the way is just a kinetic it there's no there's no explosives in it it's simply hitting it's an it's an object called an exoatmospheric kill vehicle how's that for a mouthful okay and that is just simply going to collide with the nuclear warhead one hopes one of them by the way is going 14,000 mil an hour the other one's going 20 ,000 miles an hour this is taking place 500 miles in space okay so even the missile defense agency the the spokesperson there said yes it is like taking out a bullet with a bullet that's their quote okay and the success rate is between 40 and 55% so to answer your question does it really make sense for anyone to have you know thousands of these on ready for launch status to maybe strike incoming War it's Madness all of it it's insane and there has to be a better solution than more weapons what do you think would be the most likely Target in the US is it take us through triage the the the targets and this you're talking about for an enemy to attack us correct well by all means the Pentagon is the first and primary target and all almost everyone who I interviewed for the book said to me that it's the bolt out of the blue attack against Washington DC that Washington DC fears most that has to do with the fact that it's not just that it would decapitate leadership and kill let's say two million people if you had a one Megaton thermonuclear bomb as I do in my scenario but then you're setting off a catastrophe of problems having to do with what's called continuity of government this idea that the United States government must continue functioning no matter what imagine you know DC being decapitated and so there's this incredible scramble that I write about in in the scenario of you know who's in charge and getting the commanderin-chief out of Washington DC you know the targets are everyone it was said to me this way by Professor Brian tun who's one of the original five authors of the nuclear winter theory he said if you live in a major city or a minor City if you live near an airport if there's an industrial base in your city just about any city in America up to let's say the top 800 of them you have a nuclear weapon pointed at you that's enough to keep you up at night and again the same goes for anyone in a enemy or an adversary of the United States that is also nuclear armed they too have a nuclear weapon toun said pointed at them but of course what he really meant is targetable to them because the nuclear weapons are actually left uh targeted out at Sea in case there was a rogue law which I found like one of the only comforting details in all of this and when those keys get turn that's when the codes the the the actual you know coordinates um are put into play what is the protocol that the the president is chilling in the White House answering emails on the phone Mr President this missile is coming toward us have you got any idea what the process from there is well I do because I interviewed many people around the president that would be confronted with trying to you know make decisions about what happens next so surely you would have his military advisers at us strategic command and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff trying to get a launch order in response from him the Counterattack order and that is something called jamming the president and that is well known and that is confirmed by almost all military sources that they are very aware of the launch on warning um protocols the policy and that's what they need from the president because the launch order can come from him and only from him but the most interesting sort of counterargument that that would be the primary event happening came to me from the Secret Service from the the president has a a paramilitary team that is with him all the time this is not very well known it's called the counter assault team and they Shadow him everywhere and they are responsible um certainly in event like this for making sure that he's whisked out of Washington DC to safety that would be on the command of the um of the person in charge of the president's detail uh the special agent in charge also known as the sac and I interviewed Lou merletti who is the head of the Secret Service the sorry the director of The Secret Service and before that he had been the sack for President Clinton and he explained to me that most certainly the Secret Service would be completely at odds with stratcom in that moment because they would want to move the president to ravenrock which is again that sometimes mythical you know command bunker outside Washington DC that is very real and is actually called officially the alternate National military command Center because it is where anyone left living who should have been at the Pentagon would now go in the event of nuclear war it's about 70 miles outside of DC and it's a quick helicopter ride if you can get there before the EM pulse takes the helicopter out are there any bunkers that can survive modern nuclear warheads almost none and certainly not the ones that were built in the 1950s you know the the ravenrock bunker the Strat bunker they were like the specs and again this is what's transparent this is what is known on the record but they were built to withstand a one Megaton thermonuclear weapon but almost certainly they would be targeted by 10 or a hundred smaller size nuclear weapons which you know as I really nerd out in the latter part of the book where these Bonkers get destroyed you you learn that they nothing can survive mult being hit by multiple nuclear bombs because the energy is spread out so you know in such a manner that they just simply can't survive and we haven't even begun to talk about the problem of losing electricity because people forget that all bunkers run on generators and eventually if there's no electricity there's no way to Pump Fuel talk to me about the different types and sizes of bombs that have been developed you know Oppenheimer just came out and we got to see this very impressive very scary explosion go on and yet compared with what we have now that's like it's like puny it's like a stick of dynamite yeah atomic bombs are so different than thermonuclear weapons and again you know what a great question because so many people don't know this the nuclear priesthood has kind of you know kept kept these kind of Layman's details I think out of public discourse the bomb dropped on Hiroshima for example was 15 kilotons Nagasaki was 20 kilotons a thermonuclear weapon like the one that's on the cover of my book that is a photograph of the ivy Mike thermonuclear device which was the first ever exploded thermonuclear weapon it was designed by Rich Richard Garwin who I interviewed for the book he was 24 years old when he drew the plans he's now 95 that weapon he explained to me was 10.4 megatons it exploded with the power of almost 1,000 Hiroshima bombs exploding at the same time from one center point of power it is so massive it is five miles of fire and that says nothing of the blast and the destruction that pushes out like a bulldozzer in rings at one point the Russians had a 50 Megaton weapon was that bomber yes it was and you can look at those images online and just be absolutely terrified is this what's the difference between an atomic bomb hydrogen bomb thermonuclear Warhead what what's what I'm so glad you're asking these questions because these are like what keep keep people from you know wanting to have this discussion a hydrogen bomb is a synonym for a thermonuclear bomb same thing atomic bomb is the were the early fision bombs and the thermonuclear and the hydrogen same thing are used Fusion so the way that Richard Garwin explained it to me and again the smartest people in the room can explain things to a child because that's how smart they are and that's how easy it should be and what Garwin said to me was Annie keep in mind that a thermonuclear bomb uses an atomic bomb inside the weapon as a fuse that gives you an idea of how much power is involved yeah that's the Striking pin the thing that pre viously was the most destructive bomb ever dropped on a city is the thing that starts the thing that explodes you're absolutely right okay so you mentioned about this sort of five mile radius let's say that oh actually that's a question are these uh whatever they're called above ground midair they do they deploy in they hit the ground um so they can deploy either place um the way to kill the most people and that's a quote from John Von noyman who Des who decid was working on this issue uh with Oppenheimer when they were deciding the the Dynamics of where to detonate or explode the bomb the Hiroshima bomb the original bomb Von noyman the mathematician figured out that you would kill the most people if it was 1,900 ft above the target again what a gruesome and mobra fact and interestingly Von noyman was given the Medal of Honor or I might be getting the the title of the medal wrong but some extraordinary prestigious medal from the president himself for having figured that out which is sort of horrific when you really think about that um but that is a very specific issue about killing people because of course this is a weapon of mass genocide and if you explode it higher up the blast will kill more people but if a bomb is exploded on the ground you have a whole different horrific set of consequential deaths and that has to do with radiation poisoning because when the bomb explodes on the ground think about all the dirt the earth that is blasted up all of that is now irradiated and all of that dirt is going to fall back down to earth irradiated versus the detonation that occurs above the Earth will essentially dis disperse into the atmosphere and be taken away by the winds which is why people can walk around Hiroshima today it's why you can go to the Nevada Test Site W so if if if the Hiroshima bomb hadn't I didn't know that it was an above air 1,900 feet thing if that had exploded by hitting the pavement Hiroshima would be uninhabitable for 2,000 years well not uninhabitable but it would have a different the the radiation would have a longer shelf life right so like like I've been out to the Nevada Tess site where a very famous uh test was conducted in the 60s um and it it left behind what is called the sedan crater it's such a massive crater that it can be seen from outer space and I walked Walked around nearby it and so that was what 50 years ago and it's no longer you know you can stay there for a little bit of time but you're absolutely right that there are these radically different degrees of radiation poisonings of Earth and air dependent on atmosphere okay so a standard Megaton thermonuclear Warhead goes off 1 900 ft above a city what happens directly below it 5 miles out 25 miles out 100 miles out talk me through that in the book I use the one Megaton thermonuclear bomb on the Pentagon detonating above you know around a thou a th000 feet above and the reason why I do that is again because I can give the effects to the reader not from Annie Jacobson's imagination but rather from act absolute specific details sourced from defense department documents called the effects of nuclear weapons originally called army manual 50 because defense scientists have spent all these decades since the Hiroshima Nagasaki bombs and then through our own atmospheric testing in the Marshall Islands in the 50s the defense scientists have been documenting with great detail what nuclear weapons due to people and things in Blast areas going out and so to begin with you have this thermonuclear flash of light that is 180 million degrees at its center point it's almost impossible for the human mind to comprehend that kind of power it's equivalent to about four times the center of the earth sun and so it sets it just in a flash sets things a light going 9 10 miles out I mean the defense department knows in inches where pine needles will catch on fire versus the upholstery in car seats and then of course so you have the initial Fireball a one Megaton thermonuclear weapon has one mile of fire pure fire that's 19 football fields everything is dead everything there is nothing no cellular life exists and outside of that you have you know you you wish that you were at the center point because outside in the next ring going out you have you know melted steel you have streets turning into molten lava like you have people absorbing into things you have permanent structures changing shape and collapsing then you have this bulldozer like blast that moves out you have winds of 200 300 400 miles an hour a hurricane level wind is 90 miles an hour by the way um everyone's on fire third degree burns on people that aren't buildings collapsing I mean shall I go on and horrify listeners this is okay so how about this as it was explained to me by a nuclear engineer who studies this you also have the issue of that mus you know when you have seen an atomic explosion perhaps on YouTube right from some of the early tests that were done in the 50 you see the mushroom stem and you see the mushroom cloud well the mushroom stem cre creates a sucking motion of everything on the on its down on the on the land below it so you have people telephone poles cars s people that have turned into combusting carbon being sucked up in a reverse sucking motion into that stem well you've seen uh if you watch the archive footage of of you know a house that they've built out in the Nevada desert or whatever you see things go and then go back the other way there sort of this and presumably that's the sucking motion you're absolutely right that is exactly what that is and so and then the most haunting detail of all is when you look at that mushroom cloud now that you can see on YouTube You Realize inside of that would be the remains of people the remains of civilization those bombs were exploded out in the Marshall Islands on atoles with no one around but you can imagine what would be in that cloud stem and the Cloud Cap if it were detonated over a city yeah wow I mean that's pretty one that's just one you know in the scenario that I propose there's more 1,000 or more that strike the United States when it's endgame 72 minutes in and the same is over in Russia and so that begins nuclear winter which I'm probably jumping to too fast because we haven't even tell us about nuclear winter well you know and I jumped there because you can it was interesting writing and Reporting this book and it's been interesting the book has only been out for a few days but hearing people's reaction because most people read it in one night I'm told right because or one day because they can't stop reading and it it is written that way because in the most dramatic human storytelling you know possible manner I think you are like what happens and yet you know what happens but what happens at the end of a nuclear war is nuclear winter and that is because after you get through the Fireballs that we were just discussing the blast the radiation poisoning you have situations where every single one of those ground zeros becomes a mega fire so because that tremendous x-ray flash of light that was 180 million degrees set everything on fire those fires create more fires I mean just imagine all the electricity all the electric lines whipping and connect and that are starting new fires everywhere it's like thousands of matches just fire after fire after fire each ground zero will be between 100 and 200 square miles of fire as it continues to burn and so multiply that by a thousand by 2,000 around the globe and what happens is you have 330 billion pounds of soot lofted into the troposphere and that is again not from my imagination that is from state-of-the-art climate modeling done by Professor Brian tunon one of the original authors of the nuclear winter Theory along with Carl Sean tune has stayed on this issue all these decades since and and the the climate modeling today shows us that nuclear winter the predictions from the 80s when the theory first came to be those were nothing compared to the truth of it that the sun will be blocked out by 70% or more from all that s in the troposphere and that the sun will be blocked out in that manner for between seven to 10 years is that globally that doesn't stay locally globally because the the atmos the wind moves and so Nations that had nothing to do with this nuclear war will be profoundly affected and what ton explained to me is that around the earth temperatures will fall as as much as 40° F large bodies of water in the mid latitudes in places like Iowa and Ukraine the bread baskets of the world the large bodies of water there will be frozen over under sheets of ice for seven or eight or nine years and so agriculture will fail and when agriculture fails people starve to death and that is why the number is now estimated to be 5 billion people dead after a nuclear exchange is that all 12,500 nukes is that 2,000 of them what's the number that you need to have launched to hit 5 billion in in the scenario it's just a couple thousand in the scenario I don't involve yet the other nuclear armed Nations and I did that on purpose because I was really trying to demonstrate that after 72 minutes in the scenario as it was explained to me and sort of you know fact checked by the sources that I was using and others you at once you lose electricity then you have no ability to record history for the future and so we never know if the other nuclear armed Nations get involved so to answer your question we don't know about the remainer of the nuclear weapons and we don't know about the thousands that were in storage all it takes is the amount of nuclear weapons that are on ready for launch status right now five billion people die in a war between the United States and Russia set off by a rogue nuclear nealis madman on a bolt out of the blue attack there's been a number of close calls in history some famous Ones guy a submarine foil in the air the wrong VHS tape being put in what was the closest that we came to nuclear war in the past in your opinion I believe that it's the nuclear test tape that you refer to and the reason for that so just for your listeners it was 1979 and this story came to me from a firsthand witness former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry himself he was on the night watch that night the nuclear night watch and he received word that the Russians had launched ballistic missiles at the United States both land launched icbms and sub launched slbms so this looked like a massive you know first and second strike attack and the information came from both the nuclear bunker beneath the pentag and the nuclear bunker beneath stratcom and so that idea which we didn't get into but I take the readers through in the book that you can have the early warning launch the early warning of a nuclear launch and that is when the president gets advised but then there has to be secondary confirmation right so this 1979 error you're talking about was moving toward secondary confirmation because there was already two bunkers confirming when suddenly someone realized that it was actually a VHS training tape a war game training tape that had been inserted into one of the machines at one of those bunkers and as Bill Perry said to me it looked real because it was meant to look real and so what was particularly shocking to me about that and why I as a journalist work with sources to help me tell the story and convey the drama is because when Bill Perry was telling me that story it had been you know 40 some odd years since it had happened and I could hear it in his voice the the terror and the almost trauma of thinking that he was the person who was going going to have to wake up the president and tell him that he was going to have to launch a nuclear counter attack well who starts one of these wars given that it's pretty obvious How It Ends like who in their right mind like it's not just you you're a very good journalist and writer but you know there's hundreds of people in every government around the world that's done the war games that's played out the five billion people and the nuclear winter and the you know the pine trees on on fire why would anyone start this given what happens and for that I looked to my discussions with Richard Garwin who designed the IV Mike thermonuclear weapon who has been advising presidents about nuclear weapons since the 1950s who arguably knows more about nuclear weapons and nuclear policy than anyone on this Earth and it was Garwin who said to me when we I was discussing scenarios with him um because I made every I made it very clear to all of my sources what I was doing and I asked all of them if I was fear-mongering and not one of them said I was you know former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said Annie I agree with what you're doing the people need to know but it was Garwin who when I asked him what is the most dangerous scenario that you could could think of kind of like you're asking me you know what kind of a crazy person would do this we we have leaders that know and he said that his fear was one nealis madman with a nuclear Arsenal is all it takes to start a nuclear war what does that mean who is that I would think that is the leader of North Korea today and I believe that's who Garwin was referring to and the reason for that is and the reason that we're see singular s the reason that we're sort of using that individual is because North Korea is the only nuclear armed nation that doesn't play by the rules I mean let's put rules in air quotes right but there are some rules of nuclear war one of which is you tell people when you're going to launch nuclear weapons and the and all of the nine nuclear arm Nations do that and when I'm saying nuclear weapons I mean when you're going to launch an ICBM test because you have to test your weapon systems to make sure they work and so all nations warn one another this is something I just learned in the book about North Korea by the way when I was reporting it that for example during the Ukraine war Russia didn't they they canceled a pre a pre a test that they had already had on the books they canceled it the United States did the same because no one wants to start a nuclear war by accident particularly in times of great hostility as is the world right now because it would be potentially mistaken by uh another country as oh this might be coming for Moscow or this might be coming for Washington uh what they don't know is it's going to land in the middle of the North Atlantic and it's just a test absolutely right I mean we talked about that earlier with a 150c window between if you're if you know or maybe it's going straight up into space to deliver a satellite so North Korea I learned from the North Korea experts here in the United States does not announce any of its missile tests and since January of 22 they have launched 100 missiles unannounced now I have spoken to the individuals who have to run these systems are in these bunkers do you know what you imagine what must go on in those first 150 seconds every time North Korea launches that's happed that's happened once a week for the last two years it's happened a hundred times so I guess since 2022 right um that is reckless and that is why North K in my scenario North Korea launches the bolt out of the blue attack because they are not playing by the rules they to them the rules don't exist I asked one of the experts why do they do that to show that they have power to demonstrate that they are outside the norm to demonstrate that they are menacing and will do what it is they choose to do it's so infantile it's so juvenile you think about North Korea it's such a like stupid Petty like idiotic system so immature uh I mean yeah it's it it's just as well that the uh citizens of that country don't know just how stupid the people that are running it are because if they did I think they'd be even more ashamed of the country that they live in but okay so moving forward what do you want to have happen have you have you considered what a safer world would look like is deescalation realistic we went from 70,000 to 12,500 reported should we continue to dial that down is there more policy that needs to be in place what what do you want to have happen in future well that's the Reagan reversal that we touched upon a little bit earlier right I mean you think about me as a high school student watching the day after the ABC miniseries um a fictitional story of war between Russia and America a nuclear war between those two countries terrifying horrifying 100 million people watched it but so did one very important American Ronald Reagan and he wrote in his presidential Memoirs that he was greatly depressed after watching that and he as a result because remember you're too young to remember but Ronald Reagan was a hawk he was pro- nuclear weapons he was working on SDI also known as Star Wars to put nuclear weapons in space um he believed in American Supremacy through American Nuclear Power Nuclear might and after watching the day after he changed his mind and that famously is known among DC insiders as the Reagan reversal and that is why the world went from 70,000 nuclear warheads to the 12,500 we have today because he reached out to gorbachov to communicate and so that's the answer to your question I believe is called communication it's called it doesn't make any sense to have such animosity to have such enmity toward you know anyone really but certainly not your nuclear armed adversaries because what is really the worst case scenario scario as a result of all that well read nuclear war a scenario and you will see and so you sure people may say oh Annie It's pansy is of you it's so so naive to think that communication can get us out of the tree but I believe that to be true I really believe that if a if a if an subject as significant as you know human existence is discussed openly among people then ultimately that issue Rises to the top and you start having people in positions of power like gorbachov and Reagan once were to make changes is it possible to still watch that series that you're talking about is that on YouTube or anywhere you can see it on YouTube absolutely the day after okay and by the way after the rovic summit the White House called the filmmakers and said you guys had something to do with this wow wow Annie Jacobson ladies and gentlemen Annie it's uh maab apocalyptic uh but pretty important I think I'm a massive uh I I have for a very long time had a big concern about existential risks and the fact that nuclear war isn't a classic existential risk permanent unrecoverable collapse it's miserable and no one wants to go through that and war is uh can be done in a way which is a lot more targeted so I really appreciate all of the work that you've done the book's fantastic where should people go they want to check out more of the things that you do online my books are sold everywhere and I read the audio of my audio books which I'm told makes it a little bit easier well you've got a fantastic voice so yeah I uh I imagine it does I really appreciate you I can't wait to see what you do next thank you for joining thank you so much for having me if you enjoyed that episode you will love a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last couple of months and it's available right here go on give them a watch