July 18, 2023 • 39 mins
Nuclear weapons are one of the most dangerous things humanity ever invented. So while we might reasonably assume people would keep a close eye on these potentially world-ending bombs and missiles...we would be wrong. In this week's two-part series, Ben, Noel and Max explore the harrowing, ridiculous times humans absolutely lost track of live nukes -- some of which are still out there, somewhere, in the modern day.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Let's hear it for our super producer,
Max Defcon Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
What's it?
Speaker 3 (00:38):
What's like a clason? Is that the sound that you
hear remain indores, remain in doors. There's been an event? Yeah, no,
I'm bad, Yeah you are indeed. Yeah, and today we're
talking about the seminal nineteen nineties action film Broken Arrow,
starring John Travolta and Christian Slater.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Seminal seminal. That's pretty bold. Yeah, yeah, you think it's
a semin I'm misusing it. No, no, I've been known
to misused words. That is correct, because that is an
amazing film. Did I get it right? Isn't Christian Slater
in it? I don't know. He's a good guy.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Travolt is the bad guy. I remember, he's the bad guy.
What is a broken arrow? It's also, by the way,
Brian Adams.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Who else is going to bring you?
Speaker 3 (01:22):
I think he's talking about an actual broken arrow, though, yeah,
he's naming off weird objects like a bottle of rain.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
You know, sure, don't think he's talking about lost nukes.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Maybe they're all code words for different governmental disasters. Brian, Yeah,
it's like a biocontaminant that's lost the bottle of rain.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
That's good.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
So I want to kind of just jump in here
and go completely off topic though, because Ben, screw you, man.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Okay, screw you. What does what happens? We just recorded
stuff that I want you to know.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
Ben was talking about how much he loves I Will
Follow You in the Dark by Death caf for CUTI.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I will stay this right now.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
I just spent two hundred and sixty dollars on tickets,
sixty sixty one dollars on tickets. You go see Death
Cab for Cutie twentieth anniversary translations. I'm along with twentieth
anniversary of Gave Up my post post service. I love
Death Cab for Cuitie, but I stayed to band. That
song is terrible. Yeah, he told me listen to it now.
I was stuck in my head.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Well, it's a catchy jam and it's not terrible. It's
just a sacarin and it just makes you kind of
I yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Killed it, you know, Like it's one of those songs
where when the band plays it. The front guy doesn't
have to do much because the crowd's going.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
They love that, that's right.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
I saw them at a festival in Atlanta recently or
a couple of years ago. Caught Time is weird, uh,
and it's one of the ones he does on acoustic.
It doesn't really have a big explosive, so it's a
bit of a snoozer, but I think it's pretty. It's
just so elegantly written.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
It is elegantly written.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
And I'm a much bigger fan of the Postal Service
than I am of Death Cab for Cutie and I
Will Die.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
On that hill. Speaking of dying on hills, Wait wait, wait, wait, Max,
where are you going with this? You listen to it?
So I listened to it and it was pretty good.
Speaker 4 (02:59):
I went then put on styrophone Plates, off the Off
the Photo album. Much better song. If you Think I
Will Follow You in the Dark is a great song.
Listen to starrophone Plates. It's a less famous album, but
it's a much better song.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
I refuse to nol I refuse for us to do
a Max with the Facts on that one, because that
is a musical opinion.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
That was Max with the Wax The whack worth it,
worth it you guys want a real facts. There are
lost nukes.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
There are tons of lost nukes. This where we were going, right, like, okay.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Somehow we were gonna get there. Yeah, here we set up,
We took it, are right, we did a couple of things.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
So, according to atomic archive dot com, since nineteen fifty,
there have been no less than thirty two nuclear weapon accidents,
and to your point earlier, Noel, those are conventionally known
as broken arrows.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Yeah, or as we like to refer to them collectively, whoopsies. Yeah,
new kuipsies, neukuipsies. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
It's like, how does this happen? One might ask, Well,
we're going to talk about that today. Thirty two nuclear
weapon accidents broken arrows, like you said, ben an unexpected event,
according to atomic archive dot com, involving nuclear weapons that
result in the accidental launching, firing, detonating, theft.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Or loss of the weapon.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Important distinction, right, because it's not always just losing the thing.
You could accidentally launch it. And it might sound strange, folks,
because as you know, there are tons of redundancies involved.
The US nuclear Arsenal is created in such a way
that as long as everything works. You can't just have
(04:41):
one guy have a bad afternoon and then all of
a sudden, you know, destroy the Marshall Islands. But the
big ones, the scary ones, are the ones that have
been lost. Like you were saying, six nuclear weapons over
the course of history have been lost. They've never been found.
That number, we should say is big thanks to Max here.
(05:03):
We should say that number is highly debated because some
people think there are just three missing nukes. Some people
think they're way, way more. And that's the tricky part.
That's why it's two part episode, right, because we don't
we don't know, we don't know, and I mean, let's
think about it.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Nukes are a thing that like some people get and
other people don't get. They don't like it when I'm
talking like geopolitically speaking, Yeah, and we're one of the
ones that get them, you know, and I guess because
of compacts and agreements and you know, whatever accords. Let's
say they're nuclear deproliferation and all of that. And then
we know also that there are countries that want them,
(05:42):
oh want them so bad, or possibly are making them
and not telling us about it, and they're not playing fair.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
But fair is what's fair in love and war, you know,
and love and.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Nukes right right, right, and this is uh, this takes
us down so many interesting paths, you know, because nuclear weapons,
at least in the view of the US, nuclear weapons
are one of those things where if we have them,
it's great. If someone else has them, it's terrible. It's
like flying cars, right, Like if you have if flying
(06:18):
cars are a great idea, if there's only one and
you're the one who owns.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
It, and if we all have them, then it's sort
of a zero sum game, you're right, and or mutually
assured destruction.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
M yeah, mad, and so people got real mad during
the first recorded case of broken arrow situation. It happened
on February thirteenth, nineteen fifty. There's a B thirty six
going out of an Air Force based southeast of fair Banks, Alaska,
and it's flying to base in Fort Worth, Texas, and
(06:51):
it's due in training. It's a simulating a combat mission,
and the weapon aboard this B thirty six had a
dummy installed, so it's like a fake gun. And six
hours into the flight, the aircraft gets some serious mechanical difficulties,
has to shut down three engines at twelve thousand feet
(07:13):
and it couldn't maintain a level flight. It headed off
over the Pacific Ocean. It dropped the weapon from eight
thousand feet altitude. A flash occurred on impact, a sound,
a shock wave, The weapons high explosive material detonated, but
not the whole thing. The crew bailed out over Princess
(07:37):
Royal Island and they later found the wreckage of the aircraft.
So everything went wrong on this one. But it was
not a nuclear detonation.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
No, but it did sort of have a domino effect,
you know, it set some parts in motion. In nineteen fifty,
we know of at least five broken arrow events in.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
One year on year.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Great great, and the last one took place on November
tenth of that year in Quebec, that's in Canada. And
there's a quote here from a writer named Zaria Gorvette
writing for bbcfuture dot com that describes these events as such.
A B fifty jettisened a Mark four baumb over the
(08:22):
Saint Lawrence River near Rivier Delu, about three hundred miles
northeast of Montreal. The weapons high explosive detonated on impact,
although lacking its es central plutonium core the explosion did
scatter nearly one hundred pounds of uranium.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Okay, tuy, not great, not like catastrophic, No, man, it's awesome.
Just uraniums. This little uranium, Just a.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Little uranium, right, just a sprinkle, you know, like Salt
Bay level. Unfortunately, you know, as you established, there were
many more Broken Arrow events, fifteen more throughout the nineteen fifties,
and we're not sure how many during the nineteen sixties.
Because this is the height of the Cold War, there's
(09:08):
a lot of secrecy on both sides of the curtain.
And Tzaria Gorvette you mentioned earlier, talks a bit about
the concept of mutually assured destruction with the Soviet Union.
This is the time of the Dead Hand. Remember we
did a stuff. They'll want you a new episode on that.
The dead Hands system that the Soviet Union had and
(09:28):
Russia probably still has at this to this day, is
a thing that is designed to instantly retaliate against a
nuclear strike, even if Moscow is wiped out. It's very,
very spooky stuff. People were rightly terrified, and because both
sides felt like they were on the brink of a
(09:49):
war at any given moment, the US made the decision
to keep airplanes armed with nuclear weapons in.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
The sky.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
At all time, all year round. Twenty four to seven.
They're gonna have some birds in the sky with nukes,
and they do that for eight years in an operation
with a hilariously dumb name chrome dome.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Chrome dome. Why not? That's fun. Isn't a chrome dome
like sort of a I mean, it's kind of a
term of abuse for a bald person.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Oh, I thought chrome dome for some reason, I'm thinking
of like implants in someone's head.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
I think calling someone a chrome dome because speech, Yeah,
if you're a larious it's it's like figure.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Mean towards like Jonathan Strickland. Correct.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
So, uh, this is kind of funny because the inspiration
of this episode came from me playing fall at four.
But chrome Dome is what they called the Gen one
since and fall at four, you know those creepy robots
that show up and try to kill you, pretty sure
they're chrome domes. And you know, there's a lot of
nuke jokes in Fallouts, such as you know, the like
(10:58):
devastating weapons called the fat Man, which is the name
of the nukes that got dropped on.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
And Little Boy. Yeah, and in the game it's like
a personal nuke. It's like shot. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
But yeah, just also, just just to clarify, to chrome,
dumb is in fact a bald person. Specifically, it's idiomatic, indelicate,
and offensive. According to dictionary dot.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Org, we are against prejudice, of course, in any form here,
bald people are still people, right, right, right, And.
Speaker 4 (11:29):
Even if their names trickland, I mean, Jonathan, don't want
to say lost name many times and all I'm showing
up or anything.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Yeah, yeah, let's be careful. We're on the precipice across
that rubicon. So where are these broken arrows happening all
over the place? South Dakota, Maryland, Texas, California, North Carolina,
New Jersey, Indiana, Ohio. Also, of course, is Savannah, George.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
It's right, Savannah, Georgia, the Redneck Riviera. Okay, that's not
quite right, but it is. It's a riviera of sorts.
I think the Redneck riv Era is like myrtle beach, right.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
I guess you know. It's a state of mind exactly.
It's like salt life.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Savannah is really cool, though, it's kind of our own
little New Orleans, I said, this here.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Yeah, you got there. It's A'm embarrassed already, but I
can't take it back.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
It's just sort of New Orleans ask you know, there's
a bit of a history of piracy because of its proximity,
you know, to the ocean. So there is like a
really cool kind of goofy restaurant called the Pirates House.
I remember there where you can get I just remember,
like I was a weird kid. I really liked escargo.
I still do like it. It's snails. Grew up eating
it in Germany, where it was called schnecken. I've never could.
(12:38):
It's actually, you know, what you can get in the
can not bad.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Yeah, the thing Lord and Vogelbaum and I used to
do stack stuff. Yeahes cargo has been unfairly maligned. We
promise you it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
It's just a sponge for garlic butters.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
And if you you know what, if you eat oysters
or clams, the boogers of the sea, you have no
you have nothing to stand on if you condemn enjoyers
of vest cargoes.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Snails are just a little cheerier than an oyster. Somewhere
between the consistency of like a calamari uh and and
an oyster. But I find them to be delightful anyway.
Pirates House has them. Childhood Memory, Savannah, Georgia a beautiful place,
Tybee Island, all of that good stuff, but also home
to a buried nuke if I'm not mistake.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Yes, and we're gonna We're gonna get to that one now.
This is gonna be a two part episode, folks. We
just want you to know that they are way more
of these out there than you would reasonably assume. And
they're not limited to the United States either, right.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
No, no, no, they're definitely not. We've got some, you know,
throughout the Pacific Ocean. And Paul maris Spain in a toolul.
How do you say that? Is that in Greenland or something?
What is the White Sea? Which is Scannon Scandinavian green
What is perhaps dol To? I don't know that one man.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Let's see I would I have been saying dool But
we're not from Greenland, so let's give it.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Let's give it a go. Here, we'll actually just play this.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
We are looking at how to pronounce the name of
the Swedish company.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Oh, I love this and that.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Owns a collection of brands related to outdoor and transportation problems.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
So delightful do you say it? You may think it
could be Thule or we did without all of these things.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
For some reason, probably because it is a Swedish company.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
This is to be said as truly reason.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
Hey, well cool, we learned something, thanks Internet guy.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Probably because it is a Swedish company.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Yeah, with also sort of an indiscernible accent, because for
a minute I.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Was like, is this guy Swedish?
Speaker 3 (14:52):
But then he says it as though the Swedes are
another Yeah, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
You know we're gonna learn more about that guy.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
So yeah, the these broken arrows are all around. There
are even a few incidents that remain highly classified today,
such as a little bit of a food bar situation
somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. And then on the other
side of the Iron Curtain, we've got reports of Soviet
(15:18):
broken arrows because they were making some of the same
mistakes that Uncle Sam was making.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Okay, So enter the Golden Age of excess, the nineteen seventies.
That's when the wave of peace and love and hippie
good vibes broke.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
As me paraphrasing Hunter S. Thompson very poorly. And also
the other other thing that broke in the nineteen.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Seventies arrows, baby, oh the broken arrow get it.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
That was my attempt at transition.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
Atomic archive dot Org once again talks about a couple
of incidents in the seventies. So seventies was like exactly
the golden age of broken arrows. Four however, in the
eighty three of which to your point, ben were Soviet
and we've got four more in the combined decades that followed.
Max comes in hot with the facts here, saying there
(16:16):
are two ways that we know about broken arrows. One
of them is that it's too big of a story
for you know, the government to hush up. The second
is from classified data that has been declassified and when
the first point would be it would be some sort
of incident or event that was like observed, right.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Yeah, it's it's just it's too big to keep quiet.
We're near a major city or community, you know, so
hundreds of people see a plane crash, What are you
what are you going to tell them?
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Exactly?
Speaker 3 (16:49):
And again declassified classified documents. To the point we've been
kind of hitting at this whole time, there are probably
more of these that we don't know about yet. Yes,
these documents haven't been declassified. That takes time one hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
You know why because if someone is directly responsible and
they fumbled the nuclear football, then you want to wait
till they're retired or dead totally so they don't get embarrassed.
But this let's you mentioned Spain, so that's the home
of one of the most famous broken arrowcases. It's nineteen
sixty six, the golden age for losing nuclear weapons, and
(17:30):
we're going.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Back to Zaria Gorvette for BBC Future. She writes.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
It was a mild winter's morning at the height of
the Cold War on January seventeenth, nineteen sixty six, at
around ten thirty am, a Spanish shrimp fisherman watched a
misshapen white parcel fall from the sky and glide towards
the sea. It had something to hang him beneath it.
He couldn't make out what it was. He saw a
(17:56):
slip beneath the waves, and then in a nearby fishing
village Palomades, they looked up and from their perspective they
saw two giant fireballs hurtling toward them and explosions ensued.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Yeah, that's what you call a big story.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
Yeah right, two giant fireballs hurling towards people. So yeah, this,
the quaint solitude of this tiny berg was absolutely upended.
Speaker 4 (18:29):
Also, I kind of jump in here. I cut a
line out of this because they got a little too graphic.
But there was other stuff hurling at them too.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
That we will just leave it. Was it poop? No, No,
I don't know why my mind went straight to poop.
Body parts.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
I'm not gonna say yes to you that ben okay, okay,
but body parts?
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Got it? Got it?
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Well, that was a diplomat. I'm sorry I led with poop.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Guys. That was just the child in me.
Speaker 4 (18:53):
It's a fair questions quest share on the planes for
a long time. It has to go start somewhere.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
It's true. So the building ground shook.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
You know, there's you know, flying pieces of of boop
boop potentially, and when we're not confirming nor denying, Yeah,
all right, I'll take as far as this is a
joke is going to go.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Shrapnel, right, the stuff that the stuff, what's what slices? Oh?
Speaker 1 (19:20):
I learned a dumb fact about shrapnel. Would you like
to hear it?
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Uh, it is invented the inventor of shrapnel is a
guy whose name is I kid you not Henry Shrapnel.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
That's amazing and that's what he's known for. Now, that's cool,
do you think?
Speaker 3 (19:39):
Yeah, like people like famous doctors whose names get associated
with like horrible diseases.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Sure, that's kind of a bummer, right, Like how or
just uh public figures like they did Lou Garrick dirty?
Speaker 2 (19:51):
He really did?
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Yeah, yeah, that's his legacy is no longer being an
amazing sports baller.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
I don't even know what sport he played. Was a baseball?
Was baseball? Was? He has nowhere war an als shirt?
Right now? Did you do the Brice Bucket challenge? Oh?
Stand up the best? Uh so yeah, that's a good point.
I know.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
We're all over the place right now, just like broken
arrow situations, just like these nukes. So, like you said,
Uncle Sam can't keep this quiet. They tried to, but
they definitely can't. The story is already too big. It's
an entire village. Everyone's seen this. Newspapers are reporting rumors
(20:36):
for terrible accidents. Shortly thereafter, they're saying two US planes
collided in mid air and they scattered not one, not two,
but four twenty eight thermonuclear bombs across the area. I
was sure it was going to be three, right, we
skipped three? They found three? Okay, they found three? See
(20:57):
of the four? Okay, got it? That is why out
man one of them sank into into the sea. Uh
and and was lost beneath the waves of the Mediterranean.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Yeah that's right. Uh.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
And now it was game on to to to get
down in there and find it. So this thing, it
was a one point one mega ton. I always love
that megaton is sort of spelled like British style, Yes,
like t O N n E. Whenever we use the
word ton to refer to a measurement. Isn't it just
spelled t O n Yeah?
Speaker 1 (21:30):
It's a US v U K thing, right, And I
like mega ton just because to me it sounds like
it's an anime.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Isn't mega ton the name of a city or a settlement?
And fallout as well? I don't know you guys, do
you guys know more of sky Rim kids? Nearly certain
it is? Yeah? Which one is that? It's not? It's not?
Speaker 3 (21:50):
Isn't it the ship? Isn't it that the the big
old repurposed U warship?
Speaker 1 (21:56):
No?
Speaker 3 (21:57):
No, no, No, Mega ton is the is the is
the place that you go very first in the game.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
I think the prid wind is the zeppelin and four.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Yeah, because the mayor or the sheriff of Megaton is
this fella with like a totally goofy western hat on
and like a kind of a mad max vest and
you you interact with him.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
He's an NPC that you hang out with character. That's right. Yeah,
we're giant nerds. Sorry, we keep bouncing on this one.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
We're having fun with what is ultimately kind of a
heavy topic at the end of the day, the fact
that any one country or group possesses this technology.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
By the way, looking forward to checking out the Barbie movie.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Uh and of courseheim on the same day.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Perhaps, But it's wild that that any that it could.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
There could ever be a situation where something with this
much destructive power could just be whoop seed.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
You knows, it's wild.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
One megaton is a unit of explosive force that equals
one metric tons of T and T, so when we
talk about something that is a mega ton warhead million
metric tons. Yeah, it's just we have to remember it's
terrifying that these things exist, even when we know where
they are, right.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
I mean, let's picture somebody holding a single stick of dynamite. Okay,
remember it kept happening in Loss where they had that
unstable dynamite and inevitably somebody bumped it and then just
got blown up. And it was like with one or
two sticks. You know, this is million tons of those.
I mean this, this is the force to decimate cities, obliterate.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
I mean if anybody wants to truly experience a very
very accurate depiction of what this is like, and you
want to watch it as a cartoon, highly recommend the
anime film Barefoot Gin. It is incredibly messed up and sad,
but it is beautiful and it really does. There's a
sequence where a nuke goes off where it just shows
(23:58):
and very graphic detail what would happen.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
And the US military, the world's militaries are aware of
the dangers inherent in this kind of technology and weaponry,
so they want to get their nuke back, and the
military sends a crack team of experts to search the
bottom of the Mediterranean for this nuke. One of the
members of this team is a guy named Philip Myers.
(24:23):
Myers and his crew are thinking out of the box.
They're trying to imagine any possible way they can find
this nuke. So they get they get some help from
some weird sources. Two crazy inventions. One is some is
it a weird idea made up in the eighteenth century
(24:44):
by an amateur mathematician who used to be a Presbyterian minister,
and it helps people use information about past events to
calculate the probability of them happening in the future.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Yeah, it's called Beijian inference, I believe. Is that how
that's pronounced?
Speaker 3 (25:04):
And then just you know, we're we're not math surgeons
here a ridiculous history, but it is, according to the interwebs,
a method of statistical inference in which this theorem Bayes'
theorem is used to update the product probability for a
hypothesis as more evidence or information becomes available. Beyesian inference
is an important technique in statistics, and especially in mathematical statistics. Cool,
(25:27):
I feel dumber somehow. Yeah, they definitely were thinking outside
of the nuclear box.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Yeah, and they were saying, okay, maybe this will help
us predict where the bomb ultimately landed, like where it's
sank that's right, because it's a needle.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
In a Hayes one hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
And then we have the delightfully named Alvin, which whenever
I see that where I can't help but say it
in Dave's angry voice, you know, from the Chipmunker. But gosh,
this is kind of prescient for some news of events.
A cutting edge deep sea ocean submarine able to dive
to unprecedented depths, described as looking like a rotund white shark.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
And I have people in it. And this is in
the sixties.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Why are these startup douchebags imploding people in the two thousands.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Because they're going down much, much further and they're skipping
safety checks.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
It was a bit of a rhetorical question.
Speaker 4 (26:29):
And I just want to point out I wrote this
before that all happened, so no one accused me of
writing some bad taste.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
It was fallout that motivated nobody. And it's an important fact.
It's an important fact because bays and inference is the
theory that informs their search, and Alvin is the vessel
that takes them there. They do find this miss nuke.
(27:00):
It's on March first, nineteen sixty six, and from the
declassified imagery. What you can see is that the the
tip of the missing nuclear weapon is covered by a
white parachute that it partially deployed, and it tangled itself
up with the nuke with the missile, and uh.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Looked kind of like a spooky ghost, isn't it. That's
what they're saying.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
Yeah, yeah, I'm still blown away by this sub.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
You know, existing in nineteen sixty six, in the way
that they can find this. Yeah, it's Iran a million,
it's a lot.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
And they certainly they were basically using maths and this
the sub, you know, and it's not like they had
crazy cameras or anything unmanned you know, vessels. You know,
this is sata really wild and really you know, enterprising.
But yeah, apparently you know how those those nukes when
they deploy them, they often have a parachute.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Sure, so that, like you said, the thing was wrapped.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
Around and it had this billowy They described it actually
in the piece for BBC Future as.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
A ghostly shroud, ghostly shroud.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Well, and here's where it gets even weirder, Folks, finding
the nuke is not the same thing as retrieving the nuke.
They know where it is and the odds were against them,
and now Philip Myers and his team have to figure
out how to get this bomb out of the ocean
floor where it's thousands of feet into the depths, and
(28:30):
they have to do it without detonating the thing. So
they they tried they basically do if this is old school,
but if you've ever locked yourself out of a car
and used like.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
A gym to get under and then.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Yeah, close Hagler for sure that they tried to do
that with the with a nuclear weapon. The way they
describe it is, we improvise a kind of fishing line
out of thousands of feet of heavy duty nylon rope
and a metal hook at the end, just like breaking
into a car or try or trying to use those
(29:09):
I'm standing up trying to use those claw machine arcade
claw machine.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
That's what they tried to do really quickly. Bet why
did the thing not detonate?
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Aren't these things often like in these days on some
sort of pressure change detonator or like how is it
literally it's not a button do you hit? Is it
like remote controlled? Fully, I'm just different ones. Yeah, yeah,
it's a good question.
Speaker 4 (29:36):
So I know on this one or at least around
this time, there was like a switch that had to
be had to be switched for like the material for
the bond to really come together to actually build a detonate.
So a lot of these cases it hadn't been switched
so like the stuff, they were separate elements had him
been pushed together.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
It's like you drop this thing.
Speaker 4 (29:54):
There's you know, the first one that the high matter
explosion went off, but since there.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Wasn't actually I don't think any uranium in it. There wasn't.
It wasn't a lot of them.
Speaker 4 (30:02):
They'll say a nuclear detonation was not possible ICEE, which
is like safety, which is one of the safety measures
protecting it, which is good. We have one of them
down the road, and we tell you, guys, right now
where that safety measure fails.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Right, Yeah, we're going to get to it again. These
are the B twenty eight thermonuclear bombs. There are a
couple of different variants. But even though it hasn't detonated,
and even though the team has been briefed on the
danger of these things, they're still, you know, rightly kind
of terrified. Meyers says, we were going very slowly, very cautiously,
(30:35):
and there's a funny line here. This guy feels like
he's cool to hang out with. Yeah, he says, So.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
We just kind of waited around.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
We were anxious, We wanted to we wanted to figure
out what we would do if we actually were able
to hoist it out of the water. And things go
wrong because they lift this thing from the ocean floor
and the parachute, which is in play, is slowing down
(31:03):
the effort because think about it now, it's a parachute
working in the.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Water in reverse.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
And here's the thing too, man, I was already blown
away by the existence of this manned deep sea sub,
the small deep sea sub. They this doesn't work, They
ultimately fail. They deploy another kind of sub a month later,
that is robotic. I would not have thought in the
sixties they would even have the ability to have remote
controlled robotic subs. It just goes to show, yes, but
(31:32):
also goes to show how much like the government holds
back from the consumer availability or from.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
You know what I mean, from even just like they're
always a couple steps ahead.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Oh of course, Yeah, the technological suppression is real. And
they had to use this robotic sub because Alvin or
little Alvin was almost stuck down there, tangled in the
parachute with the missing.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
New wa Why didn't they send the robot in the
first place. It seems like that would have been the
smart move.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
Maybe it was still very experimental. Maybe you know, I.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
Wouldn't you say, given the time period, something like that
would be very ahead of its time.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Yeah, I would think so. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
So that's one example of a successful retrieval of a
broken arrow. What happens is the RoboSub is controlled by
a cable. It's able to grab the bomb by its
parachute and haul it up, and then they had to
disarm it. They managed to do it. It's a harrowing,
(32:31):
terrifying process. But it's one of the most successful broken
arrow cases. And as we're going to see, maybe maybe
we finished part one talking a little bit more about
the less successful cases here, because there are a number
of lost or broken arrows. So, like we said earlier,
(32:52):
how many broken arrows are out there, it depends on
who you ask. It's really tough to tell because a
lot of this is still classified. Some folks say it's six,
some say it's three, and some say many, many more.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
It kind of.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Also depends on how you want to define it. So
if you don't have all the components installed on a weapon,
on a missile or a bomb, then does it count as.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
A broken arrow? Ah?
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Okay, if it's like a training session, you got a
dummy bomb there, then does I feel like this stuff
is dangerous enough that it should still count? You know,
like how you always treat a gun like it's loaded,
even if it's a prop.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Exactly, Yeah, Because I mean, as we know, sometimes when.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
People think it's just a problem, it can still put
one right in your dumb.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Oh your chrome dough Yeah, indeed your chrome dome. Props
to the bald community.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
So the first of the first of these lost arrows
is from our initial example. It's from the February thirteenth,
nineteen fifty B thirty six bomber incident where they had
that engine trouble and the US military said, Okay, no
(34:09):
matter what happens, we're not going to have a crash
with a nuclear warhead on US soil. So drop the bomb,
the fat Man thirty kiloton Mark four into the Pacific Ocean.
And according to the official report, the bomb like you
you had said earlier, and all the bomb didn't have
that plutonium core you need for a nuclear detonation, so
(34:32):
some of the more pedantic people will say it doesn't
count as a broken arrow.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
Another case, on March the tenth of nineteen fifty six
took place around six years after that first bomb was lost. Too.
Nuclear cores from a B forty seven bomber were lost
when that plane.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Crashed into the Mediterranean. Once again, it's Mediterranean. It's really
lousy with this stuff. It's a nukesponge. Yes, so perhaps
it had to do with the flight path.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
It was specifically making the journey from McDill Air Force
Base in Florida to Ben Gerreer Air Force Base in Morocco.
It did it one of those really badass aerial refuels.
We're so cool, the pipe kind of comes down, they
Hovered's what a neat maneuver. But it failed to make
(35:22):
contact with a tanker for an additional refueling and was
then reported missing with the plane right.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Yeah, and we don't know what kind of NUKA was carrying,
but we do know the B forty seven, this type
of plane at this time usually had a thirty four
hundred kilogram Mark fifteen nuclear bomb, and to this day,
no trace of the bomb nor the plane have ever
been found. So Mediterranean scavengers, treasure hunters, now it's your time.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
Indeed, is that the kind of I don't know, man,
do you think do you think they are like amateur
nuke hunters?
Speaker 2 (36:03):
You really?
Speaker 3 (36:04):
I guess, I guess it'd be a bit. But to
what end as an artifact or like for nefarius nefarious things.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Some of it nefarious, some of it just for the glory,
like eccentric treasure hunters.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
The final bomb that.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
Got lost, the final of the three lost and never recovered,
occurred sometime in the beginning of nineteen sixty eight. It
was the USS Scorpion, a nuclear sub that sank about
four hundred miles southwest of the Azores, and almost one
(36:42):
hundred people died ninety nine crew members. No one survived
on the sub. It was also carrying a pair of
nuclear tipped weapons, which yield like two hundred and fifty kilotons,
So immensely dangerous. And that's just part of the worry
right now, you know what, No, we've gotta got to
(37:03):
call this our two parter, gotta get out of here.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Uh. I gotta tell you I love this stuff.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
I am I will rewatch Broken Arrow for you, dude,
I'm gonna see.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
Listen if I consider a seminal.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
I use that term very very liberally. I have not
seen the film since it came out. It does currently
whole day. I think two and a half star rating
on IMDb.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Check. I did check, and I was right about the cast.
Speaker 3 (37:29):
I remember practically nothing about the movie other than that
is where I first.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
Learned the term Broken Arrow outside of the Brian Adams song.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
I'm trying to remember. I remember liking it because I
love those kind of movies when I was a kid.
I'm trying to remember which film John Travolta, this is
Dary in his like face off villain face.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Right around there. Yeah, I'm trying to remember what the
film was where he was a hacker with a ponytail.
Was this swordfish? I didn't see sword Is that a thing?
It is a thing.
Speaker 4 (37:54):
Remember him being a hacker with a pony hill? And
I have no idea, So I'm gonna say swordfish.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
Okay, Well we'll see. We'll see.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
That is clearly, you know, maybe not the most important
mystery of today's show. I think that prize goes to
the missing nuclear weapons but please tune in for part two, folks,
We have much more to explore. Big big thanks to
our super producer and research associate for today's episode, mister
Max Williams.
Speaker 3 (38:21):
Huge thanks to Alex Williams who composed this Slam and
jam and bam and bob you're listening to at this
very moment. Chris frasciotis here in spirit, Eves Jeff Coats
traversing this wild world.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
Jonathan Strickland aka the Quister aka the John Travolta of
ridiculous history.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
That's right, Yeah, except no point hell which it is swordfish.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
Our personal Yeah, Crumdone would also be a really good
name for like a bald Bond villain m perhaps with
some sort of implant, like.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
A metal are a he Man action figure? Oh definitely, yeah,
no question because they really kind of with basic with
the universe of he Man. That's the name of the
may character. We've talked about this, It's totally true. Why
is it she row anyway?
Speaker 3 (39:04):
Yeah, you're in a raw stand for it sounds like
a like a battle cry. Yeah, We'll see you next time.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Books.
Speaker 3 (39:17):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Let's hear it for our super producer,
Max Defcon Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
What's it?
Speaker 3 (00:38):
What's like a clason? Is that the sound that you
hear remain indores, remain in doors. There's been an event? Yeah, no,
I'm bad, Yeah you are indeed. Yeah, and today we're
talking about the seminal nineteen nineties action film Broken Arrow,
starring John Travolta and Christian Slater.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Seminal seminal. That's pretty bold. Yeah, yeah, you think it's
a semin I'm misusing it. No, no, I've been known
to misused words. That is correct, because that is an
amazing film. Did I get it right? Isn't Christian Slater
in it? I don't know. He's a good guy.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Travolt is the bad guy. I remember, he's the bad guy.
What is a broken arrow? It's also, by the way,
Brian Adams.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Who else is going to bring you?
Speaker 3 (01:22):
I think he's talking about an actual broken arrow, though, yeah,
he's naming off weird objects like a bottle of rain.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
You know, sure, don't think he's talking about lost nukes.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Maybe they're all code words for different governmental disasters. Brian, Yeah,
it's like a biocontaminant that's lost the bottle of rain.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
That's good.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
So I want to kind of just jump in here
and go completely off topic though, because Ben, screw you, man.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Okay, screw you. What does what happens? We just recorded
stuff that I want you to know.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
Ben was talking about how much he loves I Will
Follow You in the Dark by Death caf for CUTI.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I will stay this right now.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
I just spent two hundred and sixty dollars on tickets,
sixty sixty one dollars on tickets. You go see Death
Cab for Cutie twentieth anniversary translations. I'm along with twentieth
anniversary of Gave Up my post post service. I love
Death Cab for Cuitie, but I stayed to band. That
song is terrible. Yeah, he told me listen to it now.
I was stuck in my head.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Well, it's a catchy jam and it's not terrible. It's
just a sacarin and it just makes you kind of
I yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Killed it, you know, Like it's one of those songs
where when the band plays it. The front guy doesn't
have to do much because the crowd's going.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
They love that, that's right.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
I saw them at a festival in Atlanta recently or
a couple of years ago. Caught Time is weird, uh,
and it's one of the ones he does on acoustic.
It doesn't really have a big explosive, so it's a
bit of a snoozer, but I think it's pretty. It's
just so elegantly written.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
It is elegantly written.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
And I'm a much bigger fan of the Postal Service
than I am of Death Cab for Cutie and I
Will Die.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
On that hill. Speaking of dying on hills, Wait wait, wait, wait, Max,
where are you going with this? You listen to it?
So I listened to it and it was pretty good.
Speaker 4 (02:59):
I went then put on styrophone Plates, off the Off
the Photo album. Much better song. If you Think I
Will Follow You in the Dark is a great song.
Listen to starrophone Plates. It's a less famous album, but
it's a much better song.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
I refuse to nol I refuse for us to do
a Max with the Facts on that one, because that
is a musical opinion.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
That was Max with the Wax The whack worth it,
worth it you guys want a real facts. There are
lost nukes.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
There are tons of lost nukes. This where we were going, right, like, okay.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Somehow we were gonna get there. Yeah, here we set up,
We took it, are right, we did a couple of things.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
So, according to atomic archive dot com, since nineteen fifty,
there have been no less than thirty two nuclear weapon accidents,
and to your point earlier, Noel, those are conventionally known
as broken arrows.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Yeah, or as we like to refer to them collectively, whoopsies. Yeah,
new kuipsies, neukuipsies. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
It's like, how does this happen? One might ask, Well,
we're going to talk about that today. Thirty two nuclear
weapon accidents broken arrows, like you said, ben an unexpected event,
according to atomic archive dot com, involving nuclear weapons that
result in the accidental launching, firing, detonating, theft.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Or loss of the weapon.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Important distinction, right, because it's not always just losing the thing.
You could accidentally launch it. And it might sound strange, folks,
because as you know, there are tons of redundancies involved.
The US nuclear Arsenal is created in such a way
that as long as everything works. You can't just have
(04:41):
one guy have a bad afternoon and then all of
a sudden, you know, destroy the Marshall Islands. But the
big ones, the scary ones, are the ones that have
been lost. Like you were saying, six nuclear weapons over
the course of history have been lost. They've never been found.
That number, we should say is big thanks to Max here.
(05:03):
We should say that number is highly debated because some
people think there are just three missing nukes. Some people
think they're way, way more. And that's the tricky part.
That's why it's two part episode, right, because we don't
we don't know, we don't know, and I mean, let's
think about it.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Nukes are a thing that like some people get and
other people don't get. They don't like it when I'm
talking like geopolitically speaking, Yeah, and we're one of the
ones that get them, you know, and I guess because
of compacts and agreements and you know, whatever accords. Let's
say they're nuclear deproliferation and all of that. And then
we know also that there are countries that want them,
(05:42):
oh want them so bad, or possibly are making them
and not telling us about it, and they're not playing fair.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
But fair is what's fair in love and war, you know,
and love and.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Nukes right right, right, and this is uh, this takes
us down so many interesting paths, you know, because nuclear weapons,
at least in the view of the US, nuclear weapons
are one of those things where if we have them,
it's great. If someone else has them, it's terrible. It's
like flying cars, right, Like if you have if flying
(06:18):
cars are a great idea, if there's only one and
you're the one who owns.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
It, and if we all have them, then it's sort
of a zero sum game, you're right, and or mutually
assured destruction.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
M yeah, mad, and so people got real mad during
the first recorded case of broken arrow situation. It happened
on February thirteenth, nineteen fifty. There's a B thirty six
going out of an Air Force based southeast of fair Banks, Alaska,
and it's flying to base in Fort Worth, Texas, and
(06:51):
it's due in training. It's a simulating a combat mission,
and the weapon aboard this B thirty six had a
dummy installed, so it's like a fake gun. And six
hours into the flight, the aircraft gets some serious mechanical difficulties,
has to shut down three engines at twelve thousand feet
(07:13):
and it couldn't maintain a level flight. It headed off
over the Pacific Ocean. It dropped the weapon from eight
thousand feet altitude. A flash occurred on impact, a sound,
a shock wave, The weapons high explosive material detonated, but
not the whole thing. The crew bailed out over Princess
(07:37):
Royal Island and they later found the wreckage of the aircraft.
So everything went wrong on this one. But it was
not a nuclear detonation.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
No, but it did sort of have a domino effect,
you know, it set some parts in motion. In nineteen fifty,
we know of at least five broken arrow events in.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
One year on year.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Great great, and the last one took place on November
tenth of that year in Quebec, that's in Canada. And
there's a quote here from a writer named Zaria Gorvette
writing for bbcfuture dot com that describes these events as such.
A B fifty jettisened a Mark four baumb over the
(08:22):
Saint Lawrence River near Rivier Delu, about three hundred miles
northeast of Montreal. The weapons high explosive detonated on impact,
although lacking its es central plutonium core the explosion did
scatter nearly one hundred pounds of uranium.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Okay, tuy, not great, not like catastrophic, No, man, it's awesome.
Just uraniums. This little uranium, Just a.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Little uranium, right, just a sprinkle, you know, like Salt
Bay level. Unfortunately, you know, as you established, there were
many more Broken Arrow events, fifteen more throughout the nineteen fifties,
and we're not sure how many during the nineteen sixties.
Because this is the height of the Cold War, there's
(09:08):
a lot of secrecy on both sides of the curtain.
And Tzaria Gorvette you mentioned earlier, talks a bit about
the concept of mutually assured destruction with the Soviet Union.
This is the time of the Dead Hand. Remember we
did a stuff. They'll want you a new episode on that.
The dead Hands system that the Soviet Union had and
(09:28):
Russia probably still has at this to this day, is
a thing that is designed to instantly retaliate against a
nuclear strike, even if Moscow is wiped out. It's very,
very spooky stuff. People were rightly terrified, and because both
sides felt like they were on the brink of a
(09:49):
war at any given moment, the US made the decision
to keep airplanes armed with nuclear weapons in.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
The sky.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
At all time, all year round. Twenty four to seven.
They're gonna have some birds in the sky with nukes,
and they do that for eight years in an operation
with a hilariously dumb name chrome dome.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Chrome dome. Why not? That's fun. Isn't a chrome dome
like sort of a I mean, it's kind of a
term of abuse for a bald person.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Oh, I thought chrome dome for some reason, I'm thinking
of like implants in someone's head.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
I think calling someone a chrome dome because speech, Yeah,
if you're a larious it's it's like figure.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Mean towards like Jonathan Strickland. Correct.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
So, uh, this is kind of funny because the inspiration
of this episode came from me playing fall at four.
But chrome Dome is what they called the Gen one
since and fall at four, you know those creepy robots
that show up and try to kill you, pretty sure
they're chrome domes. And you know, there's a lot of
nuke jokes in Fallouts, such as you know, the like
(10:58):
devastating weapons called the fat Man, which is the name
of the nukes that got dropped on.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
And Little Boy. Yeah, and in the game it's like
a personal nuke. It's like shot. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
But yeah, just also, just just to clarify, to chrome,
dumb is in fact a bald person. Specifically, it's idiomatic, indelicate,
and offensive. According to dictionary dot.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Org, we are against prejudice, of course, in any form here,
bald people are still people, right, right, right, And.
Speaker 4 (11:29):
Even if their names trickland, I mean, Jonathan, don't want
to say lost name many times and all I'm showing
up or anything.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Yeah, yeah, let's be careful. We're on the precipice across
that rubicon. So where are these broken arrows happening all
over the place? South Dakota, Maryland, Texas, California, North Carolina,
New Jersey, Indiana, Ohio. Also, of course, is Savannah, George.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
It's right, Savannah, Georgia, the Redneck Riviera. Okay, that's not
quite right, but it is. It's a riviera of sorts.
I think the Redneck riv Era is like myrtle beach, right.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
I guess you know. It's a state of mind exactly.
It's like salt life.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Savannah is really cool, though, it's kind of our own
little New Orleans, I said, this here.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Yeah, you got there. It's A'm embarrassed already, but I
can't take it back.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
It's just sort of New Orleans ask you know, there's
a bit of a history of piracy because of its proximity,
you know, to the ocean. So there is like a
really cool kind of goofy restaurant called the Pirates House.
I remember there where you can get I just remember,
like I was a weird kid. I really liked escargo.
I still do like it. It's snails. Grew up eating
it in Germany, where it was called schnecken. I've never could.
(12:38):
It's actually, you know, what you can get in the
can not bad.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Yeah, the thing Lord and Vogelbaum and I used to
do stack stuff. Yeahes cargo has been unfairly maligned. We
promise you it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
It's just a sponge for garlic butters.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
And if you you know what, if you eat oysters
or clams, the boogers of the sea, you have no
you have nothing to stand on if you condemn enjoyers
of vest cargoes.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Snails are just a little cheerier than an oyster. Somewhere
between the consistency of like a calamari uh and and
an oyster. But I find them to be delightful anyway.
Pirates House has them. Childhood Memory, Savannah, Georgia a beautiful place,
Tybee Island, all of that good stuff, but also home
to a buried nuke if I'm not mistake.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Yes, and we're gonna We're gonna get to that one now.
This is gonna be a two part episode, folks. We
just want you to know that they are way more
of these out there than you would reasonably assume. And
they're not limited to the United States either, right.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
No, no, no, they're definitely not. We've got some, you know,
throughout the Pacific Ocean. And Paul maris Spain in a toolul.
How do you say that? Is that in Greenland or something?
What is the White Sea? Which is Scannon Scandinavian green
What is perhaps dol To? I don't know that one man.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Let's see I would I have been saying dool But
we're not from Greenland, so let's give it.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Let's give it a go. Here, we'll actually just play this.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
We are looking at how to pronounce the name of
the Swedish company.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Oh, I love this and that.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Owns a collection of brands related to outdoor and transportation problems.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
So delightful do you say it? You may think it
could be Thule or we did without all of these things.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
For some reason, probably because it is a Swedish company.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
This is to be said as truly reason.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
Hey, well cool, we learned something, thanks Internet guy.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Probably because it is a Swedish company.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Yeah, with also sort of an indiscernible accent, because for
a minute I.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Was like, is this guy Swedish?
Speaker 3 (14:52):
But then he says it as though the Swedes are
another Yeah, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
You know we're gonna learn more about that guy.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
So yeah, the these broken arrows are all around. There
are even a few incidents that remain highly classified today,
such as a little bit of a food bar situation
somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. And then on the other
side of the Iron Curtain, we've got reports of Soviet
(15:18):
broken arrows because they were making some of the same
mistakes that Uncle Sam was making.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Okay, So enter the Golden Age of excess, the nineteen seventies.
That's when the wave of peace and love and hippie
good vibes broke.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
As me paraphrasing Hunter S. Thompson very poorly. And also
the other other thing that broke in the nineteen.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Seventies arrows, baby, oh the broken arrow get it.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
That was my attempt at transition.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
Atomic archive dot Org once again talks about a couple
of incidents in the seventies. So seventies was like exactly
the golden age of broken arrows. Four however, in the
eighty three of which to your point, ben were Soviet
and we've got four more in the combined decades that followed.
Max comes in hot with the facts here, saying there
(16:16):
are two ways that we know about broken arrows. One
of them is that it's too big of a story
for you know, the government to hush up. The second
is from classified data that has been declassified and when
the first point would be it would be some sort
of incident or event that was like observed, right.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Yeah, it's it's just it's too big to keep quiet.
We're near a major city or community, you know, so
hundreds of people see a plane crash, What are you
what are you going to tell them?
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Exactly?
Speaker 3 (16:49):
And again declassified classified documents. To the point we've been
kind of hitting at this whole time, there are probably
more of these that we don't know about yet. Yes,
these documents haven't been declassified. That takes time one hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
You know why because if someone is directly responsible and
they fumbled the nuclear football, then you want to wait
till they're retired or dead totally so they don't get embarrassed.
But this let's you mentioned Spain, so that's the home
of one of the most famous broken arrowcases. It's nineteen
sixty six, the golden age for losing nuclear weapons, and
(17:30):
we're going.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Back to Zaria Gorvette for BBC Future. She writes.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
It was a mild winter's morning at the height of
the Cold War on January seventeenth, nineteen sixty six, at
around ten thirty am, a Spanish shrimp fisherman watched a
misshapen white parcel fall from the sky and glide towards
the sea. It had something to hang him beneath it.
He couldn't make out what it was. He saw a
(17:56):
slip beneath the waves, and then in a nearby fishing
village Palomades, they looked up and from their perspective they
saw two giant fireballs hurtling toward them and explosions ensued.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Yeah, that's what you call a big story.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
Yeah right, two giant fireballs hurling towards people. So yeah, this,
the quaint solitude of this tiny berg was absolutely upended.
Speaker 4 (18:29):
Also, I kind of jump in here. I cut a
line out of this because they got a little too graphic.
But there was other stuff hurling at them too.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
That we will just leave it. Was it poop? No, No,
I don't know why my mind went straight to poop.
Body parts.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
I'm not gonna say yes to you that ben okay, okay,
but body parts?
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Got it? Got it?
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Well, that was a diplomat. I'm sorry I led with poop.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Guys. That was just the child in me.
Speaker 4 (18:53):
It's a fair questions quest share on the planes for
a long time. It has to go start somewhere.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
It's true. So the building ground shook.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
You know, there's you know, flying pieces of of boop
boop potentially, and when we're not confirming nor denying, Yeah,
all right, I'll take as far as this is a
joke is going to go.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Shrapnel, right, the stuff that the stuff, what's what slices? Oh?
Speaker 1 (19:20):
I learned a dumb fact about shrapnel. Would you like
to hear it?
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Uh, it is invented the inventor of shrapnel is a
guy whose name is I kid you not Henry Shrapnel.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
That's amazing and that's what he's known for. Now, that's cool,
do you think?
Speaker 3 (19:39):
Yeah, like people like famous doctors whose names get associated
with like horrible diseases.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Sure, that's kind of a bummer, right, Like how or
just uh public figures like they did Lou Garrick dirty?
Speaker 2 (19:51):
He really did?
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Yeah, yeah, that's his legacy is no longer being an
amazing sports baller.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
I don't even know what sport he played. Was a baseball?
Was baseball? Was? He has nowhere war an als shirt?
Right now? Did you do the Brice Bucket challenge? Oh?
Stand up the best? Uh so yeah, that's a good point.
I know.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
We're all over the place right now, just like broken
arrow situations, just like these nukes. So, like you said,
Uncle Sam can't keep this quiet. They tried to, but
they definitely can't. The story is already too big. It's
an entire village. Everyone's seen this. Newspapers are reporting rumors
(20:36):
for terrible accidents. Shortly thereafter, they're saying two US planes
collided in mid air and they scattered not one, not two,
but four twenty eight thermonuclear bombs across the area. I
was sure it was going to be three, right, we
skipped three? They found three? Okay, they found three? See
(20:57):
of the four? Okay, got it? That is why out
man one of them sank into into the sea. Uh
and and was lost beneath the waves of the Mediterranean.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Yeah that's right. Uh.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
And now it was game on to to to get
down in there and find it. So this thing, it
was a one point one mega ton. I always love
that megaton is sort of spelled like British style, Yes,
like t O N n E. Whenever we use the
word ton to refer to a measurement. Isn't it just
spelled t O n Yeah?
Speaker 1 (21:30):
It's a US v U K thing, right, And I
like mega ton just because to me it sounds like
it's an anime.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Isn't mega ton the name of a city or a settlement?
And fallout as well? I don't know you guys, do
you guys know more of sky Rim kids? Nearly certain
it is? Yeah? Which one is that? It's not? It's not?
Speaker 3 (21:50):
Isn't it the ship? Isn't it that the the big
old repurposed U warship?
Speaker 1 (21:56):
No?
Speaker 3 (21:57):
No, no, No, Mega ton is the is the is
the place that you go very first in the game.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
I think the prid wind is the zeppelin and four.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Yeah, because the mayor or the sheriff of Megaton is
this fella with like a totally goofy western hat on
and like a kind of a mad max vest and
you you interact with him.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
He's an NPC that you hang out with character. That's right. Yeah,
we're giant nerds. Sorry, we keep bouncing on this one.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
We're having fun with what is ultimately kind of a
heavy topic at the end of the day, the fact
that any one country or group possesses this technology.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
By the way, looking forward to checking out the Barbie movie.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Uh and of courseheim on the same day.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Perhaps, But it's wild that that any that it could.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
There could ever be a situation where something with this
much destructive power could just be whoop seed.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
You knows, it's wild.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
One megaton is a unit of explosive force that equals
one metric tons of T and T, so when we
talk about something that is a mega ton warhead million
metric tons. Yeah, it's just we have to remember it's
terrifying that these things exist, even when we know where
they are, right.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
I mean, let's picture somebody holding a single stick of dynamite. Okay,
remember it kept happening in Loss where they had that
unstable dynamite and inevitably somebody bumped it and then just
got blown up. And it was like with one or
two sticks. You know, this is million tons of those.
I mean this, this is the force to decimate cities, obliterate.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
I mean if anybody wants to truly experience a very
very accurate depiction of what this is like, and you
want to watch it as a cartoon, highly recommend the
anime film Barefoot Gin. It is incredibly messed up and sad,
but it is beautiful and it really does. There's a
sequence where a nuke goes off where it just shows
(23:58):
and very graphic detail what would happen.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
And the US military, the world's militaries are aware of
the dangers inherent in this kind of technology and weaponry,
so they want to get their nuke back, and the
military sends a crack team of experts to search the
bottom of the Mediterranean for this nuke. One of the
members of this team is a guy named Philip Myers.
(24:23):
Myers and his crew are thinking out of the box.
They're trying to imagine any possible way they can find
this nuke. So they get they get some help from
some weird sources. Two crazy inventions. One is some is
it a weird idea made up in the eighteenth century
(24:44):
by an amateur mathematician who used to be a Presbyterian minister,
and it helps people use information about past events to
calculate the probability of them happening in the future.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Yeah, it's called Beijian inference, I believe. Is that how
that's pronounced?
Speaker 3 (25:04):
And then just you know, we're we're not math surgeons
here a ridiculous history, but it is, according to the interwebs,
a method of statistical inference in which this theorem Bayes'
theorem is used to update the product probability for a
hypothesis as more evidence or information becomes available. Beyesian inference
is an important technique in statistics, and especially in mathematical statistics. Cool,
(25:27):
I feel dumber somehow. Yeah, they definitely were thinking outside
of the nuclear box.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Yeah, and they were saying, okay, maybe this will help
us predict where the bomb ultimately landed, like where it's
sank that's right, because it's a needle.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
In a Hayes one hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
And then we have the delightfully named Alvin, which whenever
I see that where I can't help but say it
in Dave's angry voice, you know, from the Chipmunker. But gosh,
this is kind of prescient for some news of events.
A cutting edge deep sea ocean submarine able to dive
to unprecedented depths, described as looking like a rotund white shark.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
And I have people in it. And this is in
the sixties.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Why are these startup douchebags imploding people in the two thousands.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Because they're going down much, much further and they're skipping
safety checks.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
It was a bit of a rhetorical question.
Speaker 4 (26:29):
And I just want to point out I wrote this
before that all happened, so no one accused me of
writing some bad taste.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
It was fallout that motivated nobody. And it's an important fact.
It's an important fact because bays and inference is the
theory that informs their search, and Alvin is the vessel
that takes them there. They do find this miss nuke.
(27:00):
It's on March first, nineteen sixty six, and from the
declassified imagery. What you can see is that the the
tip of the missing nuclear weapon is covered by a
white parachute that it partially deployed, and it tangled itself
up with the nuke with the missile, and uh.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Looked kind of like a spooky ghost, isn't it. That's
what they're saying.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
Yeah, yeah, I'm still blown away by this sub.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
You know, existing in nineteen sixty six, in the way
that they can find this. Yeah, it's Iran a million,
it's a lot.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
And they certainly they were basically using maths and this
the sub, you know, and it's not like they had
crazy cameras or anything unmanned you know, vessels. You know,
this is sata really wild and really you know, enterprising.
But yeah, apparently you know how those those nukes when
they deploy them, they often have a parachute.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Sure, so that, like you said, the thing was wrapped.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
Around and it had this billowy They described it actually
in the piece for BBC Future as.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
A ghostly shroud, ghostly shroud.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Well, and here's where it gets even weirder, Folks, finding
the nuke is not the same thing as retrieving the nuke.
They know where it is and the odds were against them,
and now Philip Myers and his team have to figure
out how to get this bomb out of the ocean
floor where it's thousands of feet into the depths, and
(28:30):
they have to do it without detonating the thing. So
they they tried they basically do if this is old school,
but if you've ever locked yourself out of a car
and used like.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
A gym to get under and then.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Yeah, close Hagler for sure that they tried to do
that with the with a nuclear weapon. The way they
describe it is, we improvise a kind of fishing line
out of thousands of feet of heavy duty nylon rope
and a metal hook at the end, just like breaking
into a car or try or trying to use those
(29:09):
I'm standing up trying to use those claw machine arcade
claw machine.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
That's what they tried to do really quickly. Bet why
did the thing not detonate?
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Aren't these things often like in these days on some
sort of pressure change detonator or like how is it
literally it's not a button do you hit? Is it
like remote controlled? Fully, I'm just different ones. Yeah, yeah,
it's a good question.
Speaker 4 (29:36):
So I know on this one or at least around
this time, there was like a switch that had to
be had to be switched for like the material for
the bond to really come together to actually build a detonate.
So a lot of these cases it hadn't been switched
so like the stuff, they were separate elements had him
been pushed together.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
It's like you drop this thing.
Speaker 4 (29:54):
There's you know, the first one that the high matter
explosion went off, but since there.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Wasn't actually I don't think any uranium in it. There wasn't.
It wasn't a lot of them.
Speaker 4 (30:02):
They'll say a nuclear detonation was not possible ICEE, which
is like safety, which is one of the safety measures
protecting it, which is good. We have one of them
down the road, and we tell you, guys, right now
where that safety measure fails.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Right, Yeah, we're going to get to it again. These
are the B twenty eight thermonuclear bombs. There are a
couple of different variants. But even though it hasn't detonated,
and even though the team has been briefed on the
danger of these things, they're still, you know, rightly kind
of terrified. Meyers says, we were going very slowly, very cautiously,
(30:35):
and there's a funny line here. This guy feels like
he's cool to hang out with. Yeah, he says, So.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
We just kind of waited around.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
We were anxious, We wanted to we wanted to figure
out what we would do if we actually were able
to hoist it out of the water. And things go
wrong because they lift this thing from the ocean floor
and the parachute, which is in play, is slowing down
(31:03):
the effort because think about it now, it's a parachute
working in the.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Water in reverse.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
And here's the thing too, man, I was already blown
away by the existence of this manned deep sea sub,
the small deep sea sub. They this doesn't work, They
ultimately fail. They deploy another kind of sub a month later,
that is robotic. I would not have thought in the
sixties they would even have the ability to have remote
controlled robotic subs. It just goes to show, yes, but
(31:32):
also goes to show how much like the government holds
back from the consumer availability or from.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
You know what I mean, from even just like they're
always a couple steps ahead.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Oh of course, Yeah, the technological suppression is real. And
they had to use this robotic sub because Alvin or
little Alvin was almost stuck down there, tangled in the
parachute with the missing.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
New wa Why didn't they send the robot in the
first place. It seems like that would have been the
smart move.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
Maybe it was still very experimental. Maybe you know, I.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
Wouldn't you say, given the time period, something like that
would be very ahead of its time.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Yeah, I would think so. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
So that's one example of a successful retrieval of a
broken arrow. What happens is the RoboSub is controlled by
a cable. It's able to grab the bomb by its
parachute and haul it up, and then they had to
disarm it. They managed to do it. It's a harrowing,
(32:31):
terrifying process. But it's one of the most successful broken
arrow cases. And as we're going to see, maybe maybe
we finished part one talking a little bit more about
the less successful cases here, because there are a number
of lost or broken arrows. So, like we said earlier,
(32:52):
how many broken arrows are out there, it depends on
who you ask. It's really tough to tell because a
lot of this is still classified. Some folks say it's six,
some say it's three, and some say many, many more.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
It kind of.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Also depends on how you want to define it. So
if you don't have all the components installed on a weapon,
on a missile or a bomb, then does it count as.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
A broken arrow? Ah?
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Okay, if it's like a training session, you got a
dummy bomb there, then does I feel like this stuff
is dangerous enough that it should still count? You know,
like how you always treat a gun like it's loaded,
even if it's a prop.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Exactly, Yeah, Because I mean, as we know, sometimes when.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
People think it's just a problem, it can still put
one right in your dumb.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Oh your chrome dough Yeah, indeed your chrome dome. Props
to the bald community.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
So the first of the first of these lost arrows
is from our initial example. It's from the February thirteenth,
nineteen fifty B thirty six bomber incident where they had
that engine trouble and the US military said, Okay, no
(34:09):
matter what happens, we're not going to have a crash
with a nuclear warhead on US soil. So drop the bomb,
the fat Man thirty kiloton Mark four into the Pacific Ocean.
And according to the official report, the bomb like you
you had said earlier, and all the bomb didn't have
that plutonium core you need for a nuclear detonation, so
(34:32):
some of the more pedantic people will say it doesn't
count as a broken arrow.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
Another case, on March the tenth of nineteen fifty six
took place around six years after that first bomb was lost. Too.
Nuclear cores from a B forty seven bomber were lost
when that plane.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Crashed into the Mediterranean. Once again, it's Mediterranean. It's really
lousy with this stuff. It's a nukesponge. Yes, so perhaps
it had to do with the flight path.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
It was specifically making the journey from McDill Air Force
Base in Florida to Ben Gerreer Air Force Base in Morocco.
It did it one of those really badass aerial refuels.
We're so cool, the pipe kind of comes down, they
Hovered's what a neat maneuver. But it failed to make
(35:22):
contact with a tanker for an additional refueling and was
then reported missing with the plane right.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Yeah, and we don't know what kind of NUKA was carrying,
but we do know the B forty seven, this type
of plane at this time usually had a thirty four
hundred kilogram Mark fifteen nuclear bomb, and to this day,
no trace of the bomb nor the plane have ever
been found. So Mediterranean scavengers, treasure hunters, now it's your time.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
Indeed, is that the kind of I don't know, man,
do you think do you think they are like amateur
nuke hunters?
Speaker 2 (36:03):
You really?
Speaker 3 (36:04):
I guess, I guess it'd be a bit. But to
what end as an artifact or like for nefarius nefarious things.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Some of it nefarious, some of it just for the glory,
like eccentric treasure hunters.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
The final bomb that.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
Got lost, the final of the three lost and never recovered,
occurred sometime in the beginning of nineteen sixty eight. It
was the USS Scorpion, a nuclear sub that sank about
four hundred miles southwest of the Azores, and almost one
(36:42):
hundred people died ninety nine crew members. No one survived
on the sub. It was also carrying a pair of
nuclear tipped weapons, which yield like two hundred and fifty kilotons,
So immensely dangerous. And that's just part of the worry
right now, you know what, No, we've gotta got to
(37:03):
call this our two parter, gotta get out of here.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Uh. I gotta tell you I love this stuff.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
I am I will rewatch Broken Arrow for you, dude,
I'm gonna see.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
Listen if I consider a seminal.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
I use that term very very liberally. I have not
seen the film since it came out. It does currently
whole day. I think two and a half star rating
on IMDb.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Check. I did check, and I was right about the cast.
Speaker 3 (37:29):
I remember practically nothing about the movie other than that
is where I first.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
Learned the term Broken Arrow outside of the Brian Adams song.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
I'm trying to remember. I remember liking it because I
love those kind of movies when I was a kid.
I'm trying to remember which film John Travolta, this is
Dary in his like face off villain face.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Right around there. Yeah, I'm trying to remember what the
film was where he was a hacker with a ponytail.
Was this swordfish? I didn't see sword Is that a thing?
It is a thing.
Speaker 4 (37:54):
Remember him being a hacker with a pony hill? And
I have no idea, So I'm gonna say swordfish.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
Okay, Well we'll see. We'll see.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
That is clearly, you know, maybe not the most important
mystery of today's show. I think that prize goes to
the missing nuclear weapons but please tune in for part two, folks,
We have much more to explore. Big big thanks to
our super producer and research associate for today's episode, mister
Max Williams.
Speaker 3 (38:21):
Huge thanks to Alex Williams who composed this Slam and
jam and bam and bob you're listening to at this
very moment. Chris frasciotis here in spirit, Eves Jeff Coats
traversing this wild world.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
Jonathan Strickland aka the Quister aka the John Travolta of
ridiculous history.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
That's right, Yeah, except no point hell which it is swordfish.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
Our personal Yeah, Crumdone would also be a really good
name for like a bald Bond villain m perhaps with
some sort of implant, like.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
A metal are a he Man action figure? Oh definitely, yeah,
no question because they really kind of with basic with
the universe of he Man. That's the name of the
may character. We've talked about this, It's totally true. Why
is it she row anyway?
Speaker 3 (39:04):
Yeah, you're in a raw stand for it sounds like
a like a battle cry. Yeah, We'll see you next time.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Books.
Speaker 3 (39:17):
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Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.