Transcript

Most Replayed Moment: Here's What Happens When A Nuclear Bomb Drops! These Countries Will Be Safe!

0:00 Uh If I was a Fly on the wall. Not that there would be a wall left. What would I what would I s I was looking at America or the UK after it been strike struck by

0:14 these nuclear bombs by thousands of you know Russian or North Korean nuclear weapons, what would I see? What would the visuals be in those minutes after the strike? I describe The first bomb. In the scenario that strikes the Pentagon, it's a one megaton thermonuclear bomb in painstaking horrific detail, all sourced from defense department documents, defense scientists who have worked for decades to describe precisely what happens to things and to humans.

0:41 And it's horrifying. But on top of the initial flash of thermonuclear light, which is 1080 million degrees, which catches everything on fire in a nine mile diameter radius. On top of the bulldozing effect of the wind and the all the buildings coming down and more fires igniting more fires. On top of the radiation poisoning people to death and Minutes and hours and days and weeks. If they happen to have survived. On top of all that, each one of these fires creates a mega fire that is a hundred or more square miles. And so essentially, in essence, what do you see? Well, in the scenario at minute seventy two, a thousand

1:24 Russian nuclear weapons land on the United States. And so it just becomes A conflagration of fire. It's just fire. Fires burning.

1:34 First, two hundred square mile fires burning. And then we move into nuclear winter, and that's sort of the denouement of the book. where I tell you about nuclear winter from The point of view of one of the original Scientists.

1:53 Who wrote that original nuclear winter paper with Carl Sagan. back in nineteen eighty three. And his name is Professor Brian Toon, and he spent the decades since working with the state of the art. climate modeling systems that can now precisely tell us what nuclear winter will look like.'Cause I've always thought, you know what, nuclear war wouldn't be that bad if, you know, Russia launched a thousand of their nuclear bombs at the United States and I was here in New York where I am now. I would die instantly, so I wouldn't really know it happened. Is that true?

2:23 I think you would want to die instantly. I mean there's a quote from Nikita Khrushchev, the former um premier of the Soviet Union, and he said after nuclear war the survivors would envy the dead. Because there is there is this sense of if you survived, I mean there is no more. Law and order there is no more rule of law. There is no government and Craig Fugate made that very clear. The bunkers that the people in the military command and control centers would be in, let's say the secret bunkers, not the ones that are targets that Russia's gonna take out that I write about in the book, but the smaller ones. Those are going to Only function for as long as there's gasoline to run the diesel in.

3:09 the diesel generators. And then those people are going to have to come out. And who's left? it's man returning to the most primal, most violent state, as people fight over the tiny resources that remain, and by the way, they're all malnourished. Everybody's sick. And most people have lost everything and everyone they know.

3:35 How's that gonna feel? Yeah. It's gonna feel as you describe here on page two hundred and seventy seven. There are a thousand flashes of light superheating the air. In each ground zero to one hundred and eighty million degrees Fahrenheit, a thousand fireballs each more than a mile in diameter.

3:53 A thousand steeply fronted blast waves. A thousand walls of compressed air. A thousand. American cities and towns. Well

4:03 where all engineered structures in five, six or seven miles radius change physical shapes, collapse and burn, a thousand cities and towns with molten asphalt streets, a thousand cities and towns with survivors impaled to death by flying debris, a thousand cities and towns filled with tens of millions of dead people. With tens of millions of unfortunate survivors suffering fatal third degree burns, people naked, tattered, bleeding. And suffocating. People who don't look or act. Like people.

4:30 Anymore. Across America and Europe, hundreds of millions of people are dead and dying, or hundreds of military aircraft fly circles in the air until the until they run out of fuel. I mean that is That is some visual. How many people would be

4:49 Dead or dying, do you think? After those seventy two minutes. Hundreds of millions of people. Die. In the fireballs, no question.

5:00 But The number that I think is very interesting to think about. comes from Professor Toon and his team who wrote a paper for Nature. uh recently twenty twenty two and sort of updated nuclear winter idea based around food and the number that they have is five billion people. would be dead.

5:25 The population of the planet currently is about eight billion? Yes. So there'd be three billion people still alive. Where shall I go to be one of the three billion? I was I was just in New Zealand and Australia. That's exactly where you'd go. Although according to Toon, those are the only places that could actually sustain agriculture. I was there.

5:48 Two weeks ago. Not even two weeks ago, it was maybe ten days ago. I was in New Zealand and Australia. And at that time. I think Iran attacked Is round. Yeah.

6:01 I was kinda happy. You were in the right place at the right time. I was kinda happy for where I was located, if I'm gonna yeah. And I was thinking I actually remember talking to my friends and I pulled up a map. I was trying to see how far away I was from everything. I was thinking if'cause World War Three started training on Twitter, I was thinking if If it does break out now. I think I'm pr probably pretty well placed. Is that the place to be? I mean he was so generous with me. He shared a lot of his slideshows that he has for his students. And that is really pretty much what's left. I mean, because most of the world is Certainly covered in these

6:38 you know, sheets of ice, you the the freshwater bodies. And places like Iowa and U K Ukraine would be would be just snow for ten years. And so agriculture would fail. And when agriculture fails, people Just die not and and on on top of that, you have the radiation poisoning because the ozone layer will be so damaged and destroyed that You

7:04 Can't Be outside in the sunlight. And so people Be forced to live underground. And so you have to imagine

7:14 People living underground, fighting for food, everywhere except for New Zealand and Australia. Um There was also another interesting detail that That's You know

7:26 Sixty six million years ago. An asteroid. hit earth and wiped out. The dinosaurs. And something like seventy percent of the known species.

7:37 And Professor Tun compared to the Nuclear war. to that situation. And so when you really think about it, and and again this was also echoed by Craig Fugate. FEMA's director.

7:50 Yeah. You think about it, there's nothing we can do. About an asteroid. At least not right now. And yet there is something, Kit.

8:00 Mm. Nuclear war is a man made. Threat. And therefore It has to be

8:07 A man made solution. What is the solution? I really believe that People motivate other people. It's like a fundamental truth on the smallest scale and on the biggest scale. And so there's one person who is incredibly powerful, and that is the president of the United States. For better or for worse. It's just the way it is. And so in the same way that the president has s presidential soul authority to start

8:33 A nuclear war. The president also has a very powerful pen with which he can write executive orders and EO. And the story I tell on the hopeful note goes like this. When I was in high school in nineteen eighty three, there was an ABC TV movie called The Day After. And it Showed a fictional war between the United States and then Soviet Russia.

8:58 It was horrific and terrifying. Okay, a hundred million Americans watched it. A hundred millions of Americans. It's like the third of a po the population. And I think it was half the population then. Um

9:12 Президен Рен was one of those Americans. He had a private screening at Camp David. His advisors told him not to watch it. He did watch it. Before that, President Reagan was a hawk.

9:26 He was pro nuclear weapons. His position was the more nuclear weapons, the better. He was the one putting nuclear weapons in space with the Star Wars program, the SDI program. Okay, he couldn't have been more pro deterrence. Supremacy. He saw and The day after.

9:47 And he changed his position. He wrote in his White House journal that he became greatly depressed. His words. And he reached out to Gorbachev.

9:58 And then they had a Reykjavik summit. A summit in Iceland. Reagan and Gorbachev. And

10:05 Through communication, right? Through Both of them realizing this is madness. Realizing what could happen. Seeing the day after and realizing

10:16 My God. This cannot happen. And they famously issued a statement that said a new the joint statement between the two of them that said A nuclear war cannot be won. And must never be fought. And the result of the Rekovitz summit was that the world has gone from 70,000 nuclear warheads

10:37 That was the all time high. Seventy. Thousand. Why do you need Seventy thousand.

10:44 Nuclear warheads. That's what there were in nineteen eighty six. And now Here we are. Because of the reductions, because of the treaties, thanks to those two.

10:55 twelve thousand five hundred approximately. Nuclear war heads. That Is the movement in the right direction. And it came from

11:05 A dramatic story being told. And it came from the president taking action because he People. Would not stand for this anymore. There were massive protests.

11:16 Do you believe we could ever get to zero? That is for the disarmament experts. I like to stay in my lane as a storyteller, as an investigative journalist. I like to give you the dramatic Fast read and then pass the baton. To those Who

11:36 Have been working on that issue for decades because boy are they qualified. I just had the great fortune of being invited to Brussels, where I was part of a nuclear expo, and there were members of the European Parliament in the audience. And I and there were all these disarmament people there, and I learned a lot about all of these groups. And They have the answer and they are the ones that should be asked that question. And they are doing a lot to get us there. I went on ChatGPT um a couple of months ago and I asked it, I said, Could you play out a scenario where the world ends because an artificial intelligence Basically gets leaked out of its

12:16 computer that it was um Born out, born on. And it the scenario that it played out involved nuclear war, because halfway, I think it was in step three or four, it says that the AI basically takes control. Of The nuclear warheads? Or at least some of them.

12:32 And then it's Kind of launches them at other countries. And Yeah. Hearing chat GPT

12:41 Say that. And it And in step three or four, use nuclear weapons as a way to kind of make the world extinct. It w it felt plausible. Okay, so I'm gonna push back against that, and which is by no means right. I'm not right, but we're just having a like sort of theoretical conversation here.

12:58 Chat GPT is gathering its information, right? So my I would argue that Chat GP has got a lot of information from the Terminator movie. Yeah. Okay. There is that in the Zeitgeist of what happens. Then I want you to

13:13 communication systems in nuclear command and control, which is actually nuclear command, commo control and communication. the the ability to for N C three to communicate with the actual weapons is so profoundly classified that I don't have access to it. But I'm gonna give this to you as an idea. Which is how analog

13:51 And Will they stay that way forever? Probably not. But are they that way right now, from what I understand, yes. Our submarine launched ballistic missiles.

14:04 that that are just so the the technology behind them and I I delineated for the reader. You it's it's astonishing that you can launch a missile From under water, it can breach the surface. It's after burners take off and then it begins its trajectory, you know, boost phase, mid course phase. terminal phase hits the target. This is incredible. And how does it get there?

14:32 You might ask. I asked. It gets there. By star sighting. Oh really? So you realize there's this little panel that opens up in the ballistic missile. And there are other ways that it's

14:47 navigat. But the primary mean of navigation is star sighting. Right. I mean you just have to really stop and go Oh m first of all. It's actually a really interesting concept that the Most advanced

15:00 Potentially civilization ending ballistic missile is guiding itself to its target by this Ancient Concept. Like that our hunter gatherer Ancestors.

15:14 used, which is looking at the stars. Mm. And that's meant to be. Uh defense against a system An enemy taking control of your nuclear weapons.

15:32 Potentially nine or ten different nuclear powers. And they don't all have the same system. So If a If we get to the point of AGI, which a lot of people almost see as the um singularity, almost you can't see past that moment where there is a new being amongst us that is capable of

15:50 thinking faster and more expansively and more intelligently than humans and those things we don't. I think it might look at our systems as child's play. I supp maybe not our systems, but maybe it'll look at North Korea systems as Charles Play, it might be able to put that V CR into the system and play out The nuclearist simulation that tricks those people.

16:08 Yes. Maybe time for the answer to your question of should we be at zero. Right. Yeah. What you have presented, which would be the whole point of somebody like me writing a book that somebody like you would read of a younger generation and begin having these conversations with their colleagues and their thougers and the people that could maybe influence public policy and saying

16:34 Well, that would be a very good reason to have zero nuclear weapons, or you know, everybody gets ten. I'm making that up. But right? Yeah, yeah. Because if you have twelve thousand five hundred nuclear weapons, it's better than seventy thousand. But There's way too many for an artificially intelligent you know, trigger scenario like you're talking about. Are you optimistic? optimistic about I am

17:05 I mean I am an optimistic person by nature, and so Do you think there will be a nuclear war? In the course of Humanity.

17:16 I wrote this book As the Optimistic Hopeful person.

17:23 that saying read this And realize That A man made problem has a man made solution. Earlier you talked about there being high consequence and low probability, but the more the years tick on,

17:40 that probability increases by nature of their being this mad king. That might at some point. So you know, and That's what I think. So I was asking myself, eventually If we if we play this forward, I don't know, a thousand years. Yeah w what what is most likely to cause the end of humanity, is it

17:56 A mad king somewhere who doesn't want that you know, he realizes that he's gonna either die, he's got cancer, he realizes that you know, he's got some sickness and he doesn't really want the his son to take power. He starts getting a bit agitated, maybe he has some kind of psychosis, schizophrenia, I don't know, decides to And it's

18:14 Dying days to let a couple of these things fly. Is that eventually gonna happen. The laws of probability, the laws of averages say that. The longer we're here, the longer we have these weapons. The higher the probability.

18:27 I mean I leave that to People like you to think about and talk about because I do and I am fascinated that I find that people of your generation Ask that question a lot more than perhaps people of my generation and older. Like that was not a mindset that people necessarily hadn't talked about. And I think that has to do with the confluence of events that you talk about. First of all, people are have access to information in a manner they didn't You know

18:55 thirty, forty years ago, or it took a lot more effort. And also that there are these incredible new threats that you're talking about that are that you cannot overlook. And so you would think that it's time to kind of and I'm not a Pollyanna, but you have to move away from seeing everyone and everything as an enemy and moving toward It's fine to have adversaries. Having opponents is, you know V sportsmen have opponents, right? But Everyone being an enemy and having You know

19:26 Wars. Mm. Escalating It seems as if what you are saying is there has to be a fundamental shift.

19:37 And what People are considering important. But war has always existed, and it's existed as long as humans have. So it makes me think that war is just Part of the

19:47 Humans trying to coexist. And all of the things that are hardwired into us, our search for status and ego and reproduction and resources and survival result in Well like they result in Recessions. So I read a lot about the origin of war. Like there it's a debate. No one, you know, it but it is discussed. And the anthropologists I think have the most interesting

20:08 sort of thoughtful concepts around it, which I'll share with you, which is this, because yes, technically meant there has always been war. And there one of the debates is, you know, did war begin with civilization or were hunter gatherers warring? But more interesting to that, I think, is about the anthropologists who studied in the sixties, the hunter gatherer tribes like in the Amazon, when there were still access to them and they were sort of, you know, they were unaffected by civilization at all. And they could look at how They perceived enemies. And an interesting idea came out of that which makes me think about optimist versus pessimist, right? So or rather, those who trust versus those who are suspicious that and that no matter if a hunter is out hunting

20:55 in a h that's part of a hunter gatherer tribal environment. And he comes across another person Obviously there could be two that person is either threatening Or that person is someone to team up with. against the greater threat.

21:10 And the anthropologists do not know why it is that some people And others would interpret that person as A teammate. And

21:27 So if we don't know How human, you know, j is it genetics? Like how do people either fall on one of those two sides. But what we do know is that people Can Learn.

21:41 To think differently. You talk with half your guests on the podcast about this. People Can be trained. Not, you know, propagandized, but people can learn to think differently. So if you're me who Yeah. is a hopeful person and wants to see the positive

21:58 side of Even my dark reporting because That's A better choice for me and for my family. I train myself to find

22:09 if you will, the silver lining. Or rather, if that's too Pollyannish, to find the way in which how do I look at the person coming at me as someone who could be An opponent. But not an enemy that I would have to kill.

22:25 What you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode. If you want to listen to that full episode, I've linked it down below. Check the description. Thank you. Uh