November 17, 2023 • 53 mins
The world has teetered on the brink of nuclear war a few times. Sometimes, it was because of technical glitches. Sometimes, it was because of coincidences. We explore some very close calls.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
tech are you? It is time for a classic.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Episode, and this one is a bit of a sobering one.
It is called Close but.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
No Nuclear War.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
It originally published on May seventeenth, twenty seventeen, and it's
all about some close calls the world got into a
few times over the last few decades.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Enjoy. Let's go to basic science on this one. So
I'm going to start fundamental. I know you guys know this,
but I feel like it's always important to start from
the base and build your way up. So you probably
are familiar with this from elementary school science and atom
consists of a nucleus orbited by one or more electrons,
and the nucleus contains one or more protons and possibly
(01:00):
some neutrons. Electrons have a negative charge, protons have a
positive charge, and neutrons have no charge at all because
their credit is bad. Now, if you know the rules
about electromagnetic charges, you remember that opposites attract and the
same charges repel each other. So that raises a question,
(01:22):
how can an atom have a nucleus with two or
more protons in it and not just break apart? If
you have two positively charged particles sub atomic particles protons
that close to each other, how come they don't just
push against each other and the nucleus just pop splits apart.
And then we would just end up with hydrogen atoms,
(01:42):
because a hydrogen atom is just a proton and an electron,
your basic hydrogen atom. That would all make sense, right
if the entire universe was just hydrogen. Why do we
have nucleuses or nuclei I should say nuclei with multiple protons. Well,
to answer this question, we have to turn to the
Standard Model of physics, which is mostly how we think
(02:06):
the universe works. Mostly, the Standard model doesn't quite incorporate everything.
It doesn't explain absolutely everything. Gravity is a big mystery
with the Standard model. We consider it one of the
four fundamental forces, but we don't really have all the
mechanisms explained under the Standard Model of physics. It does, however,
(02:26):
give us a pretty good idea of what's going on.
It's held up to lots of experimentation and observations, so
The standard model says that stuff like protons and neutrons
are made up of even smaller particles called quarks, which
is not as I learned the sound made by a Dirk.
Quarks are the smallest building block we know of right now,
(02:46):
and you can't split them up into smaller things. That's
as small as you can get, at least as far
as we know at the moment. Anyway, there's a force
that holds these quark particles together to form larger particles
called hadrons, among which are protons and neutrons. Those are
both types of hadrons. There are lots and lots of
(03:09):
other ones as well, and this force is called the
strong nuclear force. It's also what binds nuclei together so
that they don't go splitting up all over the place,
and out of the four fundamental forces of our universe,
this is the strongest. However, it also takes effect over
the smallest distance. The range is incredibly small. It's on
(03:31):
the sub atomic scale, so while it's very strong, it
doesn't reach very far. There's also a weak nuclear force.
The physicist Enrico Fermi theorized that the weak nuclear force
was what he was observing when he saw certain atoms
undergoing what is called beta decay. Has nothing to do
(03:54):
with Siamese fish. Beta decay is about a neutron or
a proton atoms nucleus switching sides. Essentially, a neutron will
change it into a proton, and it will expel an
electron in the process, so you've got a neutrally charged particle,
it expels an electron. It becomes positive as a result,
(04:14):
And to make matters a bit more confusing, we call
this electron that gets expelled a beta particle, so it
is an electron, but specifically a beta particle. Another subatomic
particle also forms in this process. It's called an antineutrino.
So this type of beta decay is called beta minus decay. However,
(04:36):
there's also a beta plus decay. That's when you have
the opposite happen, where a proton becomes a neutron as
opposed to a neutron becoming a proton. Beta plus decay
products include not just the brand new neutron. It also
includes a subatomic particle called a positron and a neutrino.
(04:56):
So you get antineutrinos and electrons with one, and you
get positrons and neutrinos, with the other anyway weak. The
nuclear force explains this process of nuclear decay, this particular
type of nuclear decay. They're a couple of others as well.
So when atoms decay, one of the byproducts is also energy.
They give off energy as they decay, they radiate it.
(05:19):
So this is the source of radiation. That's why we
call it nuclear radiation. Not all atoms do this because
some of them are perfectly stable. That means that they're
not going to decay into some other form because they're
already stable. They're not there's nothing for them to get
more stable. It's kind of like if you were to have,
(05:42):
you know, a stack of things and they fall over
to a certain point, they're not going to fall anymore
because they're flat against the ground. That's as far as
they go. That's kind of the same idea. Now, in
the case of nuclear weapons, the elements we use, their
(06:03):
atoms need just the right push in order to have
their nuclei split, and when that happens, the split nuclei
shoot off a few neutrons, and that ultimately is the
secret sauce to nuclear weapons. So here's how it all works. Well,
let's say you get yourself a whole bunch of a
(06:24):
particular large, unstable atom. Let's say, for argument's sake, it's oh,
I don't know, uranium two thirty five, which is essentially
weaponized uranium. It also actually it's out there in nature.
It is not the most common form of uranium in
nature because it is by its very nature unstable. It
(06:47):
will decay on its own over a very long period
of time. The more common form of uranium in nature
is uranium two thirty eight, but for weapons you want
uranium two thirty five. It's an isope of uranium. Isotopes
are forms of an element that have the same number
of protons, because if you change the number of protons,
(07:08):
you change the element itself, so it has to have
the exact same number of protons from isotope to isotope,
but has a different number of neutrons. So, as another example,
carbon twelve is a type of carbon that has six
protons and six neutrons. Carbon fourteen is different. It's got
six protons and eight neutrons. It's also radioactive, meaning it
(07:32):
will decay into a more stable form or another a
more stable atom, and give off energy in that process
as well. As some neutrons. So uranium two thirty five
has ninety two protons and one hundred forty three neutrons.
The half life of uranium two thirty five is seven
hundred million years now half life. What that means is
(07:54):
that if you had a chunk of uranium two thirty five,
so you've got a whole bunch of these uranium two
thirty five atoms, it's statistically probable that after seven hundred
million years past, half of those atoms would decay have
decayed to other more stable atoms. Statistically speaking, this is
all about probability, not about a definite future. That's the
(08:17):
thing you have to remember about half life. It's about probability,
not definitive outcomes. Uranium two thirty eight, that more common
form of uranium I talked about, has a half life
of four point five billion years. So while uranium two
thirty five is seven hundred million years half life, that's
a long long time, I mean, particularly for human species. Right,
(08:39):
four point five billion years leaves it in the dust.
All right, So back to uranium two thirty five. Fermine
was able to create a controlled nuclear reaction using uranium
two thirty five. So what he did was he took
a He took low speed neutrons and fired them at
atoms of uranium two thirty five in order to break
the isotope part splitting it. That's what we call nuclear fission.
(09:04):
We're splitting an atom. In this process, the atom gives
off heat and radiation as well as generating new atoms. Right,
because you split it into two or more components. Also
in that process, it shoots off some extra neutrons, so
those go spinning off. Now that means that if you
had enough uranium two thirty five, and you had a
(09:25):
means of making sure those neutrons that gave off could
hit those other atoms of uranium two thirty five, you
could continue this reaction. It becomes a chain reaction. The
neutrons that get fired off hit other uranium two thirty
five atoms, which then produce more free neutrons flying outward,
(09:47):
which can hit more uranium two thirty five atoms, and
so on and so forth. And each time you're doing this,
it's generating more and more heat and energy and radiation.
And thus, if you were to do this in an
uncontrolled way, you get a bomb. If you do it
in a controlled way, you can have a nuclear power plant.
Our power plants are based off nuclear fission because that's
(10:07):
the type of nuclear power we have found to be sustainable.
Right now, there's a real push to make nuclear fusion
a sustainable means of generating electricity, but right now it
is very difficult to create a sustainable version of that.
We can we can start nuclear fusion, but generally speaking,
(10:29):
we tend to put as much or more energy into
the system as we're getting out of it, and so
that doesn't really work if you want a sustainable form
of generating electricity. If you're spending more than you take in,
you go broke eventually. Anyway, this uncontrolled chain reaction could
(10:50):
be more of a bomb situation, although to be fair,
in nuclear weapons it's still very much a controlled system.
It's just controlled in a way to release annormous amount
of energy in a very destructive way.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
We'll be back with more about close calls with nuclear war,
a fun filled topic after these quick messages.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Now, this requires enriched uranium. It requires a lot of
uranium two thirty five. You need a really high concentration
of uranium two thirty five because uranium two thirty eight
doesn't accept neutrons as readily. So if you shoot neutrons
at uranium two thirty five, you're it's much easier to
split that than if you were to fire it off
(11:39):
at uranium two thirty eight. So weapons grade uranium is
typically about ninety percent uranium two thirty five. This is
a much higher concentration than you would find out in nature.
So with these nuclear bombs, you have to make sure
that the fuel is kept in separate subcritical masses to
prevent premature detonation. So you obviously don't want this thing
(12:03):
to go off before you intend it to, or else
you're going to destroy yourself. To make it explode, you
need the bomb to achieve what is called critical mass.
This is the minimum amount of mass you need of
fissionable material to create a nuclear chain reaction sufficient enough
to act as a weapon. So over at HowStuffWorks dot Com,
we have an article all about this about how nuclear
(12:26):
weapons work, and it contains a really helpful analogy. It says,
imagine that the fissionable material, the stuff that you are
going to split, is represented as a bunch of marbles
inside a circle. If the marbles are really close together,
then you shoot a marble into that circle, it's going
to hit against a couple of other marbles. If you've
used enough force, it's going to create a little chain reaction.
(12:49):
That's what we're talking about with fissionable material and a
nuclear bomb. But if you fire a marble off into
a circle and all the individual marbles are further apart
from each other, it's less likely that you're going to
be able to set off that nuclear chain reaction because
even if you hit another marble, it's far enough away
(13:09):
from its fellow marbles that you're not likely to make
it a consistent, persistent nuclear chain reaction. And so that's
really the difference between critical and subcritical masses. Now. To
start the whole reaction, nuclear weapons typically use a pellet
of polonium and beryllium separated by a piece of foil.
(13:32):
When the subcritical masses come together, as in when a
bomb is set to detonate, and more about that in
a second, it causes the polonium to emit alpha particles,
and an alpha particle, in case you're curious, is a
pair of protons and a pair of neutrons that are
bound together. The alpha particles make contact with a beryllium,
which cause it to transform into an isotope of beryllium
(13:56):
and emit neutrons. So the beryllium changes into a different
type of beryllium, a different isotope of beryllium, and it
ejects these neutrons as part of it. Those ejected neutrons
then become the starting point for the nuclear chain reaction.
Now surrounding your enriched uranium two thirty five is a
(14:17):
casing called a tamper. That's what's designed to contain the
energy of the nuclear fission until it's time to release
it in the form of the nuclear explosion. And typically
it's uranium two thirty eight that ends up redirecting those
free neutrons back into the core so that they can
more efficiently impact other uranium two thirty five atoms, and
(14:42):
it aids in the continuation of fission. The more fissionable
material gets activated, the more efficient the bomb is, and
the bigger the explosion you get as a result. Now,
one way to detonate a nuclear weapon is with the
uranium bullet method. So typically you have the tamper, which
you know as this container of some sort kind of
(15:04):
like it's usually kind of a cylinder shape because you're
fitting it inside a larger form factor of a bomb,
and that's what's made of uranium two thirty eight. Inside
of this you have a sphere of uranium two thirty five,
and in the center of the sphere is your neutron generator,
in other words, your little pellet of polonium and brillium.
(15:25):
You've got a tube leading down into the center of
the sphere. At the other end of the tube are
some explosives, and inside the tube is a bullet of
uranium two thirty five. So when it's time to detonate
the bomb, you explode the explosives. These are conventional explosives,
not nuclear explosives. That propels the uranium two thirty five
(15:47):
bullet and a very high rate down the tube, colliding
with the pellet and thus initiating the neutron generator, which
shoots out neutrons and thus starts to fission the uranium
two thirty five. This fissioning activity happens in an instant,
(16:09):
like the fraction of a fraction of a fraction of
a second, but in that fraction each time this is
happening so so fast that energy builds and builds and
builds and builds, until it's greater than what the bomb
itself can contain. And then it explodes. It takes place
so fast that it's like billions of a second. You
(16:34):
want to be super careful with that, obviously, because it's
a massive amount of destruction. Now, there's another method for
detonating a nuclear weapon called the implosion method, in which
high explosives around the tamper. So again that uranium two
thirty eight, typically explosive surrounding it create a powerful shock
(16:58):
wave when they go off. So the explosive go off
creates a shockwave generated into the center of this that
compresses the tamper and thus compresses the fissionable core inside
the tamper, and that triggers the fissioning reaction, and you
get the same result as the one I mentioned earlier. Now,
(17:19):
in World War Two, we dropped two atomic bombs. We
the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. One
of them called Little Boy, and that was a uranium
bullet style bomb. The other was called Fat Man, and
that was an implosion style bomb, and it also used
plutonium two thirty nine as its core, not uranium, but
plutonium two thirty nine. Later, a guy named Edward Teller,
(17:42):
who we've talked about on tech stuff before, improved the
yield of nuclear weapons using what is called the boosting method.
This combines fusion reactions with fission bombs. The fusion reactions
would create the neutrons which then would trigger the fission
reactions at a really high rate, so more efficiently, so
(18:04):
you get more of the fissionable material to split, thus
generating more energy, and nearly ninety percent of American nuclear
weapons follow that particular design. But then you've also got
fusion bombs. Now, fusion is when you fuse two atoms
together and you still get a big release of energy
in this process. Essentially, these bombs fuse hydrogen isotopes including
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deuterium and tritium together and that ends up releasing an
enormous amount of energy. So to explode a bomb of
this type, you reverse the roles of fusion and fission.
You know, I just mentioned that to make a really
efficient fission bomb, you could incorporate fusion into it as
well well. In this case, you're talking about using fission
reactions in order to fuel a fusion reaction, which will
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generate the massive amount of energy for the bomb. So
the fission bomb would create an implosion shockwave, kind of
like the explosives I talked about in the previous example
with fat Man, and in that shockwave you would also
get a release of X rays. That's one of the
types of energy you would get as a release from
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a fission reaction. The X rays will end up heating
the tamper, which you still have, just like you would
with the other types of nuclear weapons, and that would
still be uranium two thirty eight typically inside of which
is a fuel of lithium deuteride, and that would end
up heating up because of the X rays. The X
rays heat up the lithium deuteride. The shockwave would compress
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the lithium deuteride by a factor of like thirty It's
crazy how compressed it gets. And also inside the tamper
is a plutonium rod which would start to fission as
a result of all this, and that would release more
heat more neutrons. Those neutrons would combine with the compressed
lithium deuteride to fuel to create tritium, so you would
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then have enough temperature and pressure to support fusion reactions.
That's one of the problems with nuclear fusion power plants
is that you have to create such an intense amount
of pressure and temperature that the energy you pour in
is equal to or greater than the energy you're getting
out of the actual fusion. Well, in a bomb, that's
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not so much a concern. You want to generate as
much of this heat and pressure as you possibly can,
so because the fission reactions are creating that tremendous amount
of heat and pressure, nuclear fusion can actually occur, and
you start getting tritium deuterium and deuterium deuterium reactions, and
that generates even more heat and more radiation, which is
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enough to induce fission in the uranium two thirty eight tamper.
So remember the uranium two thirty eight tamper doesn't typically
fission in most of these bombs, it requires so much
energy to do that. But these fusion bombs can actually
eat that kind of energy. The combination of all that
energy is enormous, and then the bomb explodes, releasing it
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into the environment. Now, at the point of explosion, you
would easily imagine there's an intense release of an incredible
amount of heat, and the blast also creates a really
powerful pressure wave moving outward from the point of explosion.
Then on top of that, you've got the radiation, the
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energy being radiated out like gamma rays and other very
harmful forms of radiation, followed by radiation fallout, which is
typically radioactive dust and debris that originated inside the bomb itself.
Stuff close to the hypocenter, which is another term for
ground zero, would be vaporized because of the temperatures involved.
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We're talking three hundred million degrees celsius or five hundred
million degrees fahrenheit. Further out from the center, the pressure
wave could cause entire buildings to collapse because it's so powerful,
and the heat is still intense enough to cause fatalities.
It's hot enough to burn people alive even if you're
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not right there at the point of explosion. The further
out you go, the less effect those initial events will have.
The heat will become less intense the further out, The
pressure wave less effective further out, but there are a
lot of secondary problems that could still be life threatening,
including things like fallout, radiation fallouts going to spread really
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far and will continue to spread based upon prevailing winds
of the area, and also stuff like fires. The heat
is going to be hot enough to generate a lot
of fires in a lot of areas, and that could
end up being a very prevalent and immediate danger to you.
So that's cheerful. Right. Nuclear weapons are terrifying, There's no
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question about it. They can wak devastation greater than anything
humans have ever witnessed. And since World War Two, many
have worked really hard to make sure no more nuclear
weapons see use ever again. But we've had a whole
lot of close calls, and I'm gonna go more into
that in just a minute, but first, let's take a
(23:21):
quick break to thank our sponsor. All Right, We're gonna
start with probably the closest we've ever been to getting
into a full on nuclear confrontation. There were other events
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that happened before this, and there are other events that
happened after this, and I'll cover some of those later on,
but let's start with the granddaddy, the big one. That
would be October nineteen sixty two, when the United States
of America and the then Soviet Union were at the
height of the Cold War. So you had these two
powerful countries standing in opposition to each other, and both
(24:09):
were building up their respective militaries and arsenals in an
effort to stay on top or at least not fall
behind their great rival. It's a pretty terrifying time for everybody,
whether you lived in the Soviet Union or the United
States or one of countless other nations that felt helpless
because these two giants were posturing against each other. And
(24:35):
one could argue, we're sort of returning to that kind
of world now, but that's really a discussion for a
different show anyway. In October nineteen sixty two, an event
called the Cuban Missile Crisis happened. This was a nuclear
game of chess between the White House and the Kremlin,
and it was the closest the United States and the
USSR ever got to a full fledged nuclear conflict on
(24:59):
both sides. This at least, this was the closest anyone
got that wasn't the creation of a computational error. More
on those types of close calls in a little bit.
So to catch you guys up on some history in
case you don't know about the Cuban Missile crisis, the
government in Cuba was Communist and that was something that
(25:22):
made the United States government really nervous. So the US
attempted to overthrow the Cuban government. But that was a
total disaster. That was the Bay of Pigs invasion, as
well as some other events that were around that time. Meanwhile,
the Soviet Union had reached an agreement with Cuba. The
Soviet Union would install nuclear missiles and nuclear aircraft nuclear
(25:47):
capable aircraft in Cuba as a deterrent to US invasions,
and it would also serve as a handy launchpad for
a strike against the US should things devolve into a
nuclear war. Now, the United States got wind of that plan,
and President Kennedy issued a warning to the Soviet Union
and essentially said, hey, stop putting stuff in Cuba. Man,
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it's not cool, especially nuclear stuff, all right. On October fourteenth,
nineteen sixty two, American spy aircraft captured images of what
was clearly medium and intermediate range ballistic nuclear missile sites
under construction in Cuba, and they were close to being finished.
They were on the fast track, and thus the Cuban
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Missile crisis was born. Kennedy ordered what he called a
naval quarantine on Cuba on October twenty second. Now this
was essentially a blockade, except they didn't call it a blockade.
They gave it the name quarantine because blockade suggests an
act of war, and they didn't want that to be
the case. And it's amazing to me how word choice
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can somehow make two things that are essentially the same
legally distinct. But I digress. The Soviet Union wasn't just
trying to poke the United States in this case. It
wasn't just an instance of them saying we're trying to
get the edge on you. The Soviets were concerned because
the United States had Jupiter missile systems stationed in Turkey,
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so they were within striking range of the Soviet Union,
and the Soviet Union wanted those missiles out of Turkey.
Installing missiles in Cuba would kind of level things out,
but simultaneous, simultaneously rather escalate tensions, you know that super fun,
awesome combo. So while you had the president of the
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United States and the premiere of the Soviet Union arguing
with each other and trying to convince each other to
back off, things were getting really really tense around and
inside Cuba. And what most folks didn't know for a
really long time was that the area around Cuba was
host to four secret submarines. Soviet submarines armed with nuclear
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tipped torpedoes, and these submarines were told to use those
nuclear weapons in the event that the Americans attacked Cuba
and attempt another invasion, which was an option that the
White House was seriously considering at the time, and several
of the President's advisors were actually advocating for an air
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strike against Cuba. So imagine if that air strike had happened,
and these submarine commanders were following orders that would have
initiated a nuclear strike against the United States, and then
October twenty seventh, nineteen sixty two happened. So conditions were
not great. Cuba, in case you're not aware, is much
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warmer than the USSR, and the submarines were ill equipped
to deal with that heat. They ran on diesel engines,
and they had battery power as well, and accasionally they
would have to resurface to recharge their batteries. The air
conditioning systems were not very good on these submarines, and
they would fail pretty frequently, so it would get stiflingly
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hot and stuffy inside of them. And then you had
this constant tension of aggression surrounding these crews, plus the
directive that you were to launch a nuclear attack against
one of the most powerful nations on the planet in
the event of any sort of military aggression against Cuba,
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and it was pretty much a cocktail for disaster. On
top of that, you would know that any attack you
made against the United States would be returned against the
Soviet Union, there would be a retaliatory strike, and that
this would initiate a full global conflict. So it was
serious business. Now. Making matters worse than that, as if
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you can imagine such a thing, was the fact that
the Soviet subs didn't have any con tact with their headquarters.
They could not get in contact with Moscow. The best
they could manage was picking up radio signals from a
civilian broadcast station in Florida, So they're getting all their
news from a US source in Florida, not from headquarters.
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American forces eventually spotted the submarines, so they did what
was under the rules for Americans at the time, which
was if they spotted submarines in the area, they set
off signaling charges. Now, signaling charge is an explosive, so
they were setting off explosives in the ocean near the submarines. Now,
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the purpose of the explosions was not to cause any
damage to the submarines. They were supposed to be harmless,
and in fact they were in this case harmless. They
did not cause damage to the submarines. What they're supposed
to do is essentially be the equivalent of knocking on
someone's door saying, hey, I know your home. Come to
the door, except in this case it's hey, I know
you're in there surface, because otherwise we're going to consider
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it a threat. So obviously increasing tensions even further. So
you would imagine that setting explosions off near nuclear armed
submarines is potentially a disastrous idea, and it could have been.
But no one fired any nuclear weapons at that stage,
and that's amazing. It was super close. Tensions could not
(31:29):
have been higher without any actual fighting U but no
one pulled the trigger on that. Now, the US had
moved to def Con three earlier in October. So deaf
con stands for defense condition, and there are five levels
of deaf con and they get worse the lower the
(31:50):
number is, so Defcon five is the best. Defcon one
is the most dangerous. So the lower the number, the
closer the un US is to maximum combat readiness. So
In other words, Defcon one means the US is ready
to commit some massive military power in an act of war.
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Level three means increase enforce readiness above normal readiness. So
that was the level they were at earlier in October,
was an increased level of readiness. As I recorded this,
we stand at Defcon four. Defcon four means normal increased
intelligence and strengthened security measures, so normal readiness, but we're
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paying way more attention than we would be at Defcon five.
Defcon five just means normal peacetime readiness. Sure would be
nice to be there, but for the United States, the
actions of North Korea and Russia recently have made this complicated.
So we've been at Defcon four, oh in China two
to some extent. Anyway, by October twenty seventh, the United
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States had decided to bump this up to Defcon level two,
which is further increase in force readiness but less than
maximum readiness, which I don't know how you determined that.
If you just ask people, Hey, are you guys ready,
And if they say yes, and you say are you
as ready as you can be and they say no,
(33:17):
then I guess maybe that's it. Anyway, I would say,
if we were to translate this, this would come into
you know, yo hold me back, bro level. That would
be essentially what Defcon level two is is YO hold
me back. So you're ready to swing your fist, but
you're not actively swinging your fist. And it shows that
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the tensions were really at a high point. So it
was not a sure thing that cooler heads would actually
prevail on that day in October on those Soviet submarines.
I'm thankful they did, though, but it was never a
sure thing. Now, in the end, Soviets remove their missiles
and bombers from Cuba and later the United States of
(34:00):
their Jupiter missile installations from Turkey, and apparently that had
been the plan the whole time. The United States was
already planning on removing those missile installations in Turkey, which
was one of the demands the Soviet Union had had, saying, hey,
if we're going to pull out a Cuba, you got
to pull out Turkey. But the US didn't agree upon
it as a point of negotiation, even though they had
(34:23):
already planned on doing that. So that was interesting that
the US had planned on removing those missiles, but they
did not agree to having that be part of the
terms to settle this crisis, maybe because it might have
made the country look weak or something. I don't know.
I don't pretend to understand global politics. The point is
(34:44):
that both the United States and the USSR backed off
from the button and opened up a channel of communication
that still exists to this day, this hotline between the
Kremlin and the White House, though there are times when
one site isn't that eager to take the other side's calls. Oh,
and by backed off, I don't mean that things calmed
down right away. The US Strategic Air Command or SAC
(35:08):
remained at deaf Con two from October twenty third, nineteen
sixty two to November fifteenth, nineteen sixty five, so more
than three years. Only then did it quote unquote posture
down to deaf Con three because it was scary. Now.
I recorded a few other shows that also tie into
(35:28):
this same era in various ways. For example, the space
race was largely an extension of the Cold War. In fact,
you could argue that without the Cold War we never
would have been to the moon. Both the Soviet Union
and the United States were racing to send people into
space and to the moon, and it was in part
an effort to prove that they that their country was
(35:50):
technologically superior to the rival country. But there was also
an element of intimidation involved. So essentially, if you could
send a rocket into orbit, you could also send a
rocket all the way around the Earth and hit a
target on the other side, like say the United States
from the Soviet Union, or the Soviet Union from the
(36:11):
United States. So in part, the space race was a
way of saying, hey, we have the capability of wiping
you off the planet, so don't push us. The thing
was both sides were making that argument at the same time. Again,
absolutely terrifying, although we got some awesome stuff out of it.
(36:33):
I mean, the space race gave us tons of technology
and pushed our scientific understanding of our solar system quite
a bit, so it's not like it was all bad,
but the motivations behind it were largely motivated by politics
and military goals. Luckily we were able to leverage that
(36:55):
into ways that were not indirectly connected to conflict. But yeah,
once the Soviet Union launched Sputnik into orbit. Sputnik was
the satellite, the first man made satellite in orbit around
the Earth. All it did was really beep, but amateur
(37:15):
radio operators in the United States picked up the beeping,
and it caused quite a bit of panic because suddenly
everyone realized that if the Soviet Union could launch something
into orbit, they could probably launch something all the way
to the United States. The innerconnal in the intercontinental Ballistic
missile or ICBM was essentially born at that point. Anyway,
(37:38):
let's go back to close calls with nuclear war, because
that's really what we're here to talk about. And let's
jump ahead to November ninth, nineteen seventy nine. That's when
the North American Aerospace Defense Headquarters, or NORAD for short,
went bonkers. I would say that they went ballistic, but
luckily they didn't, because that would have been a terrible,
(37:59):
terrifying punt. In that case, according to the computer systems
over at NOORAD, a huge missile attack from the Soviet
Union was on its way to targets within the United States.
And this is what we often in the technology world
would call a bad thing. So nor AD was following
protocol and they sent an alert to high level command
(38:20):
posts and the tippy top of US military leadership, and
immediately the command was given to put ICBM crews on
the highest possible alert, and nuclear bomber crews were scrambled
to their aircraft to prepare for takeoff. The airborne command Post,
which is the aircraft that the President of the United
States is supposed to be a board in the event
(38:43):
of a massive attack. This is what creates a mobile
base of operations. It took off, so the airborne Command
Post took off into the atmosphere. The President wasn't on
it at the time, which seems like a bit of
an oversight, but it did take off. So for more
than five incredibly tense minutes, United States operators were scouring
(39:07):
satellite data to confirm that the Soviets had indeed launched
missiles against the United States. They had the information from
the NORAD computers, but they wanted, obviously to confirm that
information with satellite data, but they couldn't find any data
to confirm it. United States leaders decided magnanimously not to
(39:30):
launch a full scale retaliation, which is a good thing
because it would have turned out that they would have
been committing a first strike. There was nothing to retaliate against.
So what the heck actually happened? And the answer is
pretty crazy, and it sounds like something from a movie
like Airplane. It sounds like a deleted scene from a
(39:52):
disaster spoof movie. What had happened was a technician had
inserted a training tape into an operational nor AD computer.
The training tape contained various scenarios on it, including one
in which the Soviet Union launches a full scale missile
attack against the United States. And this was just to
(40:13):
run simulations, to run what would happen in this case
and how effective would a retaliatory strike be. That's all
it was. But it was being run on an operational
nor AD computer, which interpreted this to mean the Soviet
Union had actually launched an attack, not that it was
a simulation. So a training tape very nearly started World
(40:34):
War Three. In nineteen seventy nine, the United States wisely
decided that it would be a really good idea to
make sure nor AD computers would not be able to
run training tapes in the future, and so they NERFD it. Essentially,
they removed that ability for nor AD computers to run
these simulations. Now, I've got a lot more to talk
(40:57):
about as far as FOSSE alarms and close calls go.
But before I jump into that, last section. Let's take
another quick break to thank our sponsor. So these sort
of things happen really rarely, right, please.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
Not.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
According to Marshall Shulman, who was a State Department advisor,
he said that false alerts would happen fairly regularly, which
is absolutely terrifying, and in fact said they happen regularly
enough that handling them almost became a matter of routine,
which is troubling all by itself. And that's what Shulman said.
He said, it's almost terrifying to see the level of
(41:41):
complacency in dealing with these because they happened that frequently.
I mean, you want your team to respond calmly in
the wake of an alert because you want to make
sure that they are going through the steps to verify
that it is in fact at what it seems to be.
You don't want them acting on misinformation. At the same time,
(42:04):
you don't want them to fall victim to boy who
cried Wolfe scenarios where they don't take it seriously enough.
So you want to balance there, and according to Shulman,
the complacency issue was getting to be a bit troubling
for him. Now, just so you don't go thinking that
the United States was alone and having faulty systems. Let
(42:26):
me tell you about September twenty sixth, nineteen eighty three.
That is when a Soviet satellite, part of an early
detection system for missile launches, sent down a message indicating
the United States had fired a nuclear missile, and then
another nuclear missile, and then three more nuclear missiles, so
(42:47):
it might have looked like an initial attack with five
missiles heading toward the Soviet Union. Now, tensions were already
high across the Soviet Union and the United States for
other reasons. Earlier that month, the Soviet Union had shot
down a South Korean passenger plane thinking that it was
(43:09):
a military plane invading their airspace, and that's not what
it was. So it was a tragic accident. But there
was also a lot of worry that the United States
could potentially retaliate for this, and so the first reaction
could have been that this was the US's response to
that act. Now, the man in charge over at a
(43:32):
early detection center in the Soviet Union was Lieutenant Colonel
Stanislav Petrov, and he held the authority to launch a
retaliatory strike, but he didn't exercise this authority he deduced
that a genuine attack on the Soviet Union from the
United States would involve hundreds of missiles, not just five.
(43:54):
He said, if you're going to start a war, you
wouldn't launch only five missiles. It wouldn't be an enough
of a quantity to knock out enough of the Soviet
Union's capability to retaliate, so it would just be inviting
worldwide destruction. So Petrov said, I'm pretty sure this isn't real.
I'm gonna stake my life and my reputation on it,
(44:17):
and he was right. So then they began to investigate
what was the cause of this false alarm, because that
is what it turned out to be. So the cause
was the satellite itself. It had misidentified a reflection from
the top of some clouds. The sun was hitting these
clouds at just the right angle for the reflection to
(44:39):
hit the satellite, and the position the orientation of the
satellite with respect to the United States made it look
like this was coming from known US missile launch sites,
So the satellite misidentified the reflections as missile launches, and
really the satellite was in a good orbit to avoid
(45:00):
this kind of misunderstanding. The problem was it was just
the perfect set of circumstances. It was the equinox, the
sun was setting, and the satellite was in a position
at just the right time with clouds in the right
position to cause this confusion. And normally it wouldn't have happened,
and any other time of the year, the angles wouldn't
(45:21):
have been right. It was just a coincidence. Fortunately, because
there was a human being in charge who had the
capacity to question the results presented by the satellite, we
didn't see a nuclear strike from the Soviet Union launched
at the United States as a result. Sometimes a science
(45:43):
experiment runs the risk of plunging us into nuclear conflict,
so that's exciting. So for example, there was the Black
Brant twelve rocket, which was a cooperative effort between the
United States and Norway. It launched out of Norway along
the coastline of Norway, and it had a mission to
(46:05):
send up a probe essentially to study the northern lights,
the Aurora borealis. Norway had picked up the phone to
call up their Russian neighbors and say, hey, by the way,
we're going to launch this satellite, so don't freak out,
but we're going to do it on such and such
a day, at such and such a time, and so
(46:26):
Russia knew about this. The only problem was that information
never got to the people in charge of the early
warning detection systems, so they had no knowledge of a
planned scientific rocket launch. Instead, they had radar detectors looking
at their screens and saying, it appears that a missile
(46:50):
has launched, potentially from a United States submarine and on
a trajectory that could take it to the Soviet Union.
So there was immediately a reaction that this could potentially
be an early attack, and in fact there was worry
that perhaps this was a warhead meant to explode to
knockout radar detection so that we can then have an
(47:15):
entire full blown attack follow it and the radar systems
would be down. In the meantime, the word went up
to the Krivlin and Boris Yeltsin went so far as
to activate his nuclear football. The nuclear football is a
device that leaders used to authorize a nuclear strike. Other
(47:36):
radar centers and Russian satellites couldn't find any evidence of
any other missile preparations, so there was no other corroborating
evidence to suggest that this was in fact a legitimate
missile strike aimed at the United States. So this led
the Russians to conclude it wasn't actually an attack, and
eventually the word got out that this was a scientific
(47:58):
mission that had previous authorization and that Russia had been
in communication with Norway the whole time. It just never
got to the military side. Whoopsie Daisy almost went to
full nuclear war over that. And you probably heard the
story about how a flock of birds nearly initiated World
War III. That was actually an oversimplification of what had happened.
(48:22):
It was a story that actually predates the Cuban missile crisis.
This goes back to the Suez Canal crisis in Egypt.
The Suez Canal had proven to be critical during both
World War One and World War Two, and so lots
of different entities wanted to have control over the canal
for strategic purposes. This included the Soviet Union, Egypt, and
(48:46):
the United Kingdom. So you had a lot of tensions
in the area, and the whole conflict is way too
complex to get into. I'm pretty sure the stuff you
missed in history class hosts have talked to about the
Suez Canal crisis in the past, and like I said,
it gets super complicated, but I can talk about a
(49:08):
series of coincidental events that nearly led us to World
War Three. It happened on November fifth, nineteen fifty six.
NORAD detected these coincidental events, which collectively looked like it
could have been a big aggressive move by the Soviet Union,
like an actual massing to attack other areas of Europe
(49:29):
and possibly launched attacks against the United States. Those coincidences
included a fleet of ships Soviet ships moving from the
Black Sea to the Aegean Sea. There were a large
number of MiG jets reported flying over Syria. There was
a report of a British bomber being shot down also
(49:50):
in Syria, and then there was an unknown number of
unidentified aircraft detected over Turkey. But each of those events
turned out to not be that big of a deal
once the details were learned, so it's fortunate that no
one thought those collective events actually amounted to a full attack.
(50:11):
The fleet maneuver turned out to just be a routine
exercise among the Soviet fleet. It had nothing to do
with any sort of aggressive act. The group of MiGs
was much smaller than had been reported. It wasn't like
one hundred jets. It was actually a typical escort detail.
The British bomber hadn't been shot down, the aircraft had
(50:32):
suffered a mechanical failure and they had to make an
emergency landing in Syria. And the mysterious aircraft flying over
Turkey turned out to be a flock of swans, which
after a lengthy questioning, turned out not to be Soviet agents.
And let me give you one last example of a
close call. There are more besides this one, by the way,
(50:56):
lots more, but here's one last one. On June third, ninth,
defense displays at the Pentagon, the White House and a
NORAD flipped out. Now they had a display of four digits,
which usually read as zero zero zero zero, just four
zero straight across. These were numbers to indicate any nuclear
(51:18):
missiles that had been detected as being launched. So you
want to see all zeros. There's any number besides a
zero on that display, that's a big problem. The counters
began to show the number two instead of zero, indicating
a massive missile attack, and so to be certain, bomber
crews were given orders to prepare their aircraft and missile
(51:39):
launch systems began to warm up for a retaliatory strike,
while the top brass tried to figure out if this
was in fact for real z's or not. Luckily, said
brass determined that it was not for realsy's and they
ordered everyone to stand down. As a result, three days later,
the same thing had happen again, and again everyone got
(52:01):
prepared for a massive retaliatory strike, and two false alarms
that could cause a nuclear apocalypse warranted a full look
at the system. Technicians trace the problem to a single
computer chip, just one computer chip in the entire system
that wasn't wired correctly. So replacing that chip solved the
problem and they stopped having this issue with the display
(52:24):
giving a false indicator of missile launches. That one faulty
chip could have resulted in a nuclear war or at
least a nuclear strike, which is absolutely terrifying. So what
is the moral of the story here, Well, one thing
is that nuclear weapons are super duper scary. I'd love
(52:45):
to see them become a thing of the past, but
they're incredibly powerful and all it takes is one critical
error to cause untold amounts of damage or precipitate a
globally catastrophic series of events. But another lesson to take
here is that we at least have been fortunate so
far to have people calm enough to reevaluate a situation
(53:05):
before committing the ultimate act of warfare. It sure would
be nice if it weren't necessary to say, thank goodness,
we have the right folks in the right place at
the wrong time, but thank goodness we do have them.
Speaker 2 (53:19):
That's it for the classic episode close but no Nuclear War.
I guess the takeaway from all this is, despite the
close calls, we never had a nuclear war. So that's
something that we should hold on to. I hope you
are all well. I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1 (53:43):
Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
tech are you? It is time for a classic.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Episode, and this one is a bit of a sobering one.
It is called Close but.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
No Nuclear War.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
It originally published on May seventeenth, twenty seventeen, and it's
all about some close calls the world got into a
few times over the last few decades.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Enjoy. Let's go to basic science on this one. So
I'm going to start fundamental. I know you guys know this,
but I feel like it's always important to start from
the base and build your way up. So you probably
are familiar with this from elementary school science and atom
consists of a nucleus orbited by one or more electrons,
and the nucleus contains one or more protons and possibly
(01:00):
some neutrons. Electrons have a negative charge, protons have a
positive charge, and neutrons have no charge at all because
their credit is bad. Now, if you know the rules
about electromagnetic charges, you remember that opposites attract and the
same charges repel each other. So that raises a question,
(01:22):
how can an atom have a nucleus with two or
more protons in it and not just break apart? If
you have two positively charged particles sub atomic particles protons
that close to each other, how come they don't just
push against each other and the nucleus just pop splits apart.
And then we would just end up with hydrogen atoms,
(01:42):
because a hydrogen atom is just a proton and an electron,
your basic hydrogen atom. That would all make sense, right
if the entire universe was just hydrogen. Why do we
have nucleuses or nuclei I should say nuclei with multiple protons. Well,
to answer this question, we have to turn to the
Standard Model of physics, which is mostly how we think
(02:06):
the universe works. Mostly, the Standard model doesn't quite incorporate everything.
It doesn't explain absolutely everything. Gravity is a big mystery
with the Standard model. We consider it one of the
four fundamental forces, but we don't really have all the
mechanisms explained under the Standard Model of physics. It does, however,
(02:26):
give us a pretty good idea of what's going on.
It's held up to lots of experimentation and observations, so
The standard model says that stuff like protons and neutrons
are made up of even smaller particles called quarks, which
is not as I learned the sound made by a Dirk.
Quarks are the smallest building block we know of right now,
(02:46):
and you can't split them up into smaller things. That's
as small as you can get, at least as far
as we know at the moment. Anyway, there's a force
that holds these quark particles together to form larger particles
called hadrons, among which are protons and neutrons. Those are
both types of hadrons. There are lots and lots of
(03:09):
other ones as well, and this force is called the
strong nuclear force. It's also what binds nuclei together so
that they don't go splitting up all over the place,
and out of the four fundamental forces of our universe,
this is the strongest. However, it also takes effect over
the smallest distance. The range is incredibly small. It's on
(03:31):
the sub atomic scale, so while it's very strong, it
doesn't reach very far. There's also a weak nuclear force.
The physicist Enrico Fermi theorized that the weak nuclear force
was what he was observing when he saw certain atoms
undergoing what is called beta decay. Has nothing to do
(03:54):
with Siamese fish. Beta decay is about a neutron or
a proton atoms nucleus switching sides. Essentially, a neutron will
change it into a proton, and it will expel an
electron in the process, so you've got a neutrally charged particle,
it expels an electron. It becomes positive as a result,
(04:14):
And to make matters a bit more confusing, we call
this electron that gets expelled a beta particle, so it
is an electron, but specifically a beta particle. Another subatomic
particle also forms in this process. It's called an antineutrino.
So this type of beta decay is called beta minus decay. However,
(04:36):
there's also a beta plus decay. That's when you have
the opposite happen, where a proton becomes a neutron as
opposed to a neutron becoming a proton. Beta plus decay
products include not just the brand new neutron. It also
includes a subatomic particle called a positron and a neutrino.
(04:56):
So you get antineutrinos and electrons with one, and you
get positrons and neutrinos, with the other anyway weak. The
nuclear force explains this process of nuclear decay, this particular
type of nuclear decay. They're a couple of others as well.
So when atoms decay, one of the byproducts is also energy.
They give off energy as they decay, they radiate it.
(05:19):
So this is the source of radiation. That's why we
call it nuclear radiation. Not all atoms do this because
some of them are perfectly stable. That means that they're
not going to decay into some other form because they're
already stable. They're not there's nothing for them to get
more stable. It's kind of like if you were to have,
(05:42):
you know, a stack of things and they fall over
to a certain point, they're not going to fall anymore
because they're flat against the ground. That's as far as
they go. That's kind of the same idea. Now, in
the case of nuclear weapons, the elements we use, their
(06:03):
atoms need just the right push in order to have
their nuclei split, and when that happens, the split nuclei
shoot off a few neutrons, and that ultimately is the
secret sauce to nuclear weapons. So here's how it all works. Well,
let's say you get yourself a whole bunch of a
(06:24):
particular large, unstable atom. Let's say, for argument's sake, it's oh,
I don't know, uranium two thirty five, which is essentially
weaponized uranium. It also actually it's out there in nature.
It is not the most common form of uranium in
nature because it is by its very nature unstable. It
(06:47):
will decay on its own over a very long period
of time. The more common form of uranium in nature
is uranium two thirty eight, but for weapons you want
uranium two thirty five. It's an isope of uranium. Isotopes
are forms of an element that have the same number
of protons, because if you change the number of protons,
(07:08):
you change the element itself, so it has to have
the exact same number of protons from isotope to isotope,
but has a different number of neutrons. So, as another example,
carbon twelve is a type of carbon that has six
protons and six neutrons. Carbon fourteen is different. It's got
six protons and eight neutrons. It's also radioactive, meaning it
(07:32):
will decay into a more stable form or another a
more stable atom, and give off energy in that process
as well. As some neutrons. So uranium two thirty five
has ninety two protons and one hundred forty three neutrons.
The half life of uranium two thirty five is seven
hundred million years now half life. What that means is
(07:54):
that if you had a chunk of uranium two thirty five,
so you've got a whole bunch of these uranium two
thirty five atoms, it's statistically probable that after seven hundred
million years past, half of those atoms would decay have
decayed to other more stable atoms. Statistically speaking, this is
all about probability, not about a definite future. That's the
(08:17):
thing you have to remember about half life. It's about probability,
not definitive outcomes. Uranium two thirty eight, that more common
form of uranium I talked about, has a half life
of four point five billion years. So while uranium two
thirty five is seven hundred million years half life, that's
a long long time, I mean, particularly for human species. Right,
(08:39):
four point five billion years leaves it in the dust.
All right, So back to uranium two thirty five. Fermine
was able to create a controlled nuclear reaction using uranium
two thirty five. So what he did was he took
a He took low speed neutrons and fired them at
atoms of uranium two thirty five in order to break
the isotope part splitting it. That's what we call nuclear fission.
(09:04):
We're splitting an atom. In this process, the atom gives
off heat and radiation as well as generating new atoms. Right,
because you split it into two or more components. Also
in that process, it shoots off some extra neutrons, so
those go spinning off. Now that means that if you
had enough uranium two thirty five, and you had a
(09:25):
means of making sure those neutrons that gave off could
hit those other atoms of uranium two thirty five, you
could continue this reaction. It becomes a chain reaction. The
neutrons that get fired off hit other uranium two thirty
five atoms, which then produce more free neutrons flying outward,
(09:47):
which can hit more uranium two thirty five atoms, and
so on and so forth. And each time you're doing this,
it's generating more and more heat and energy and radiation.
And thus, if you were to do this in an
uncontrolled way, you get a bomb. If you do it
in a controlled way, you can have a nuclear power plant.
Our power plants are based off nuclear fission because that's
(10:07):
the type of nuclear power we have found to be sustainable.
Right now, there's a real push to make nuclear fusion
a sustainable means of generating electricity, but right now it
is very difficult to create a sustainable version of that.
We can we can start nuclear fusion, but generally speaking,
(10:29):
we tend to put as much or more energy into
the system as we're getting out of it, and so
that doesn't really work if you want a sustainable form
of generating electricity. If you're spending more than you take in,
you go broke eventually. Anyway, this uncontrolled chain reaction could
(10:50):
be more of a bomb situation, although to be fair,
in nuclear weapons it's still very much a controlled system.
It's just controlled in a way to release annormous amount
of energy in a very destructive way.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
We'll be back with more about close calls with nuclear war,
a fun filled topic after these quick messages.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Now, this requires enriched uranium. It requires a lot of
uranium two thirty five. You need a really high concentration
of uranium two thirty five because uranium two thirty eight
doesn't accept neutrons as readily. So if you shoot neutrons
at uranium two thirty five, you're it's much easier to
split that than if you were to fire it off
(11:39):
at uranium two thirty eight. So weapons grade uranium is
typically about ninety percent uranium two thirty five. This is
a much higher concentration than you would find out in nature.
So with these nuclear bombs, you have to make sure
that the fuel is kept in separate subcritical masses to
prevent premature detonation. So you obviously don't want this thing
(12:03):
to go off before you intend it to, or else
you're going to destroy yourself. To make it explode, you
need the bomb to achieve what is called critical mass.
This is the minimum amount of mass you need of
fissionable material to create a nuclear chain reaction sufficient enough
to act as a weapon. So over at HowStuffWorks dot Com,
we have an article all about this about how nuclear
(12:26):
weapons work, and it contains a really helpful analogy. It says,
imagine that the fissionable material, the stuff that you are
going to split, is represented as a bunch of marbles
inside a circle. If the marbles are really close together,
then you shoot a marble into that circle, it's going
to hit against a couple of other marbles. If you've
used enough force, it's going to create a little chain reaction.
(12:49):
That's what we're talking about with fissionable material and a
nuclear bomb. But if you fire a marble off into
a circle and all the individual marbles are further apart
from each other, it's less likely that you're going to
be able to set off that nuclear chain reaction because
even if you hit another marble, it's far enough away
(13:09):
from its fellow marbles that you're not likely to make
it a consistent, persistent nuclear chain reaction. And so that's
really the difference between critical and subcritical masses. Now. To
start the whole reaction, nuclear weapons typically use a pellet
of polonium and beryllium separated by a piece of foil.
(13:32):
When the subcritical masses come together, as in when a
bomb is set to detonate, and more about that in
a second, it causes the polonium to emit alpha particles,
and an alpha particle, in case you're curious, is a
pair of protons and a pair of neutrons that are
bound together. The alpha particles make contact with a beryllium,
which cause it to transform into an isotope of beryllium
(13:56):
and emit neutrons. So the beryllium changes into a different
type of beryllium, a different isotope of beryllium, and it
ejects these neutrons as part of it. Those ejected neutrons
then become the starting point for the nuclear chain reaction.
Now surrounding your enriched uranium two thirty five is a
(14:17):
casing called a tamper. That's what's designed to contain the
energy of the nuclear fission until it's time to release
it in the form of the nuclear explosion. And typically
it's uranium two thirty eight that ends up redirecting those
free neutrons back into the core so that they can
more efficiently impact other uranium two thirty five atoms, and
(14:42):
it aids in the continuation of fission. The more fissionable
material gets activated, the more efficient the bomb is, and
the bigger the explosion you get as a result. Now,
one way to detonate a nuclear weapon is with the
uranium bullet method. So typically you have the tamper, which
you know as this container of some sort kind of
(15:04):
like it's usually kind of a cylinder shape because you're
fitting it inside a larger form factor of a bomb,
and that's what's made of uranium two thirty eight. Inside
of this you have a sphere of uranium two thirty five,
and in the center of the sphere is your neutron generator,
in other words, your little pellet of polonium and brillium.
(15:25):
You've got a tube leading down into the center of
the sphere. At the other end of the tube are
some explosives, and inside the tube is a bullet of
uranium two thirty five. So when it's time to detonate
the bomb, you explode the explosives. These are conventional explosives,
not nuclear explosives. That propels the uranium two thirty five
(15:47):
bullet and a very high rate down the tube, colliding
with the pellet and thus initiating the neutron generator, which
shoots out neutrons and thus starts to fission the uranium
two thirty five. This fissioning activity happens in an instant,
(16:09):
like the fraction of a fraction of a fraction of
a second, but in that fraction each time this is
happening so so fast that energy builds and builds and
builds and builds, until it's greater than what the bomb
itself can contain. And then it explodes. It takes place
so fast that it's like billions of a second. You
(16:34):
want to be super careful with that, obviously, because it's
a massive amount of destruction. Now, there's another method for
detonating a nuclear weapon called the implosion method, in which
high explosives around the tamper. So again that uranium two
thirty eight, typically explosive surrounding it create a powerful shock
(16:58):
wave when they go off. So the explosive go off
creates a shockwave generated into the center of this that
compresses the tamper and thus compresses the fissionable core inside
the tamper, and that triggers the fissioning reaction, and you
get the same result as the one I mentioned earlier. Now,
(17:19):
in World War Two, we dropped two atomic bombs. We
the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. One
of them called Little Boy, and that was a uranium
bullet style bomb. The other was called Fat Man, and
that was an implosion style bomb, and it also used
plutonium two thirty nine as its core, not uranium, but
plutonium two thirty nine. Later, a guy named Edward Teller,
(17:42):
who we've talked about on tech stuff before, improved the
yield of nuclear weapons using what is called the boosting method.
This combines fusion reactions with fission bombs. The fusion reactions
would create the neutrons which then would trigger the fission
reactions at a really high rate, so more efficiently, so
(18:04):
you get more of the fissionable material to split, thus
generating more energy, and nearly ninety percent of American nuclear
weapons follow that particular design. But then you've also got
fusion bombs. Now, fusion is when you fuse two atoms
together and you still get a big release of energy
in this process. Essentially, these bombs fuse hydrogen isotopes including
(18:31):
deuterium and tritium together and that ends up releasing an
enormous amount of energy. So to explode a bomb of
this type, you reverse the roles of fusion and fission.
You know, I just mentioned that to make a really
efficient fission bomb, you could incorporate fusion into it as
well well. In this case, you're talking about using fission
reactions in order to fuel a fusion reaction, which will
(18:54):
generate the massive amount of energy for the bomb. So
the fission bomb would create an implosion shockwave, kind of
like the explosives I talked about in the previous example
with fat Man, and in that shockwave you would also
get a release of X rays. That's one of the
types of energy you would get as a release from
(19:16):
a fission reaction. The X rays will end up heating
the tamper, which you still have, just like you would
with the other types of nuclear weapons, and that would
still be uranium two thirty eight typically inside of which
is a fuel of lithium deuteride, and that would end
up heating up because of the X rays. The X
rays heat up the lithium deuteride. The shockwave would compress
(19:40):
the lithium deuteride by a factor of like thirty It's
crazy how compressed it gets. And also inside the tamper
is a plutonium rod which would start to fission as
a result of all this, and that would release more
heat more neutrons. Those neutrons would combine with the compressed
lithium deuteride to fuel to create tritium, so you would
(20:02):
then have enough temperature and pressure to support fusion reactions.
That's one of the problems with nuclear fusion power plants
is that you have to create such an intense amount
of pressure and temperature that the energy you pour in
is equal to or greater than the energy you're getting
out of the actual fusion. Well, in a bomb, that's
(20:23):
not so much a concern. You want to generate as
much of this heat and pressure as you possibly can,
so because the fission reactions are creating that tremendous amount
of heat and pressure, nuclear fusion can actually occur, and
you start getting tritium deuterium and deuterium deuterium reactions, and
that generates even more heat and more radiation, which is
(20:44):
enough to induce fission in the uranium two thirty eight tamper.
So remember the uranium two thirty eight tamper doesn't typically
fission in most of these bombs, it requires so much
energy to do that. But these fusion bombs can actually
eat that kind of energy. The combination of all that
energy is enormous, and then the bomb explodes, releasing it
(21:06):
into the environment. Now, at the point of explosion, you
would easily imagine there's an intense release of an incredible
amount of heat, and the blast also creates a really
powerful pressure wave moving outward from the point of explosion.
Then on top of that, you've got the radiation, the
(21:27):
energy being radiated out like gamma rays and other very
harmful forms of radiation, followed by radiation fallout, which is
typically radioactive dust and debris that originated inside the bomb itself.
Stuff close to the hypocenter, which is another term for
ground zero, would be vaporized because of the temperatures involved.
(21:51):
We're talking three hundred million degrees celsius or five hundred
million degrees fahrenheit. Further out from the center, the pressure
wave could cause entire buildings to collapse because it's so powerful,
and the heat is still intense enough to cause fatalities.
It's hot enough to burn people alive even if you're
(22:12):
not right there at the point of explosion. The further
out you go, the less effect those initial events will have.
The heat will become less intense the further out, The
pressure wave less effective further out, but there are a
lot of secondary problems that could still be life threatening,
including things like fallout, radiation fallouts going to spread really
(22:33):
far and will continue to spread based upon prevailing winds
of the area, and also stuff like fires. The heat
is going to be hot enough to generate a lot
of fires in a lot of areas, and that could
end up being a very prevalent and immediate danger to you.
So that's cheerful. Right. Nuclear weapons are terrifying, There's no
(23:01):
question about it. They can wak devastation greater than anything
humans have ever witnessed. And since World War Two, many
have worked really hard to make sure no more nuclear
weapons see use ever again. But we've had a whole
lot of close calls, and I'm gonna go more into
that in just a minute, but first, let's take a
(23:21):
quick break to thank our sponsor. All Right, We're gonna
start with probably the closest we've ever been to getting
into a full on nuclear confrontation. There were other events
(23:46):
that happened before this, and there are other events that
happened after this, and I'll cover some of those later on,
but let's start with the granddaddy, the big one. That
would be October nineteen sixty two, when the United States
of America and the then Soviet Union were at the
height of the Cold War. So you had these two
powerful countries standing in opposition to each other, and both
(24:09):
were building up their respective militaries and arsenals in an
effort to stay on top or at least not fall
behind their great rival. It's a pretty terrifying time for everybody,
whether you lived in the Soviet Union or the United
States or one of countless other nations that felt helpless
because these two giants were posturing against each other. And
(24:35):
one could argue, we're sort of returning to that kind
of world now, but that's really a discussion for a
different show anyway. In October nineteen sixty two, an event
called the Cuban Missile Crisis happened. This was a nuclear
game of chess between the White House and the Kremlin,
and it was the closest the United States and the
USSR ever got to a full fledged nuclear conflict on
(24:59):
both sides. This at least, this was the closest anyone
got that wasn't the creation of a computational error. More
on those types of close calls in a little bit.
So to catch you guys up on some history in
case you don't know about the Cuban Missile crisis, the
government in Cuba was Communist and that was something that
(25:22):
made the United States government really nervous. So the US
attempted to overthrow the Cuban government. But that was a
total disaster. That was the Bay of Pigs invasion, as
well as some other events that were around that time. Meanwhile,
the Soviet Union had reached an agreement with Cuba. The
Soviet Union would install nuclear missiles and nuclear aircraft nuclear
(25:47):
capable aircraft in Cuba as a deterrent to US invasions,
and it would also serve as a handy launchpad for
a strike against the US should things devolve into a
nuclear war. Now, the United States got wind of that plan,
and President Kennedy issued a warning to the Soviet Union
and essentially said, hey, stop putting stuff in Cuba. Man,
(26:09):
it's not cool, especially nuclear stuff, all right. On October fourteenth,
nineteen sixty two, American spy aircraft captured images of what
was clearly medium and intermediate range ballistic nuclear missile sites
under construction in Cuba, and they were close to being finished.
They were on the fast track, and thus the Cuban
(26:31):
Missile crisis was born. Kennedy ordered what he called a
naval quarantine on Cuba on October twenty second. Now this
was essentially a blockade, except they didn't call it a blockade.
They gave it the name quarantine because blockade suggests an
act of war, and they didn't want that to be
the case. And it's amazing to me how word choice
(26:53):
can somehow make two things that are essentially the same
legally distinct. But I digress. The Soviet Union wasn't just
trying to poke the United States in this case. It
wasn't just an instance of them saying we're trying to
get the edge on you. The Soviets were concerned because
the United States had Jupiter missile systems stationed in Turkey,
(27:16):
so they were within striking range of the Soviet Union,
and the Soviet Union wanted those missiles out of Turkey.
Installing missiles in Cuba would kind of level things out,
but simultaneous, simultaneously rather escalate tensions, you know that super fun,
awesome combo. So while you had the president of the
(27:40):
United States and the premiere of the Soviet Union arguing
with each other and trying to convince each other to
back off, things were getting really really tense around and
inside Cuba. And what most folks didn't know for a
really long time was that the area around Cuba was
host to four secret submarines. Soviet submarines armed with nuclear
(28:05):
tipped torpedoes, and these submarines were told to use those
nuclear weapons in the event that the Americans attacked Cuba
and attempt another invasion, which was an option that the
White House was seriously considering at the time, and several
of the President's advisors were actually advocating for an air
(28:27):
strike against Cuba. So imagine if that air strike had happened,
and these submarine commanders were following orders that would have
initiated a nuclear strike against the United States, and then
October twenty seventh, nineteen sixty two happened. So conditions were
not great. Cuba, in case you're not aware, is much
(28:48):
warmer than the USSR, and the submarines were ill equipped
to deal with that heat. They ran on diesel engines,
and they had battery power as well, and accasionally they
would have to resurface to recharge their batteries. The air
conditioning systems were not very good on these submarines, and
they would fail pretty frequently, so it would get stiflingly
(29:09):
hot and stuffy inside of them. And then you had
this constant tension of aggression surrounding these crews, plus the
directive that you were to launch a nuclear attack against
one of the most powerful nations on the planet in
the event of any sort of military aggression against Cuba,
(29:31):
and it was pretty much a cocktail for disaster. On
top of that, you would know that any attack you
made against the United States would be returned against the
Soviet Union, there would be a retaliatory strike, and that
this would initiate a full global conflict. So it was
serious business. Now. Making matters worse than that, as if
(29:55):
you can imagine such a thing, was the fact that
the Soviet subs didn't have any con tact with their headquarters.
They could not get in contact with Moscow. The best
they could manage was picking up radio signals from a
civilian broadcast station in Florida, So they're getting all their
news from a US source in Florida, not from headquarters.
(30:20):
American forces eventually spotted the submarines, so they did what
was under the rules for Americans at the time, which
was if they spotted submarines in the area, they set
off signaling charges. Now, signaling charge is an explosive, so
they were setting off explosives in the ocean near the submarines. Now,
(30:44):
the purpose of the explosions was not to cause any
damage to the submarines. They were supposed to be harmless,
and in fact they were in this case harmless. They
did not cause damage to the submarines. What they're supposed
to do is essentially be the equivalent of knocking on
someone's door saying, hey, I know your home. Come to
the door, except in this case it's hey, I know
you're in there surface, because otherwise we're going to consider
(31:08):
it a threat. So obviously increasing tensions even further. So
you would imagine that setting explosions off near nuclear armed
submarines is potentially a disastrous idea, and it could have been.
But no one fired any nuclear weapons at that stage,
and that's amazing. It was super close. Tensions could not
(31:29):
have been higher without any actual fighting U but no
one pulled the trigger on that. Now, the US had
moved to def Con three earlier in October. So deaf
con stands for defense condition, and there are five levels
of deaf con and they get worse the lower the
(31:50):
number is, so Defcon five is the best. Defcon one
is the most dangerous. So the lower the number, the
closer the un US is to maximum combat readiness. So
In other words, Defcon one means the US is ready
to commit some massive military power in an act of war.
(32:11):
Level three means increase enforce readiness above normal readiness. So
that was the level they were at earlier in October,
was an increased level of readiness. As I recorded this,
we stand at Defcon four. Defcon four means normal increased
intelligence and strengthened security measures, so normal readiness, but we're
(32:33):
paying way more attention than we would be at Defcon five.
Defcon five just means normal peacetime readiness. Sure would be
nice to be there, but for the United States, the
actions of North Korea and Russia recently have made this complicated.
So we've been at Defcon four, oh in China two
to some extent. Anyway, by October twenty seventh, the United
(32:56):
States had decided to bump this up to Defcon level two,
which is further increase in force readiness but less than
maximum readiness, which I don't know how you determined that.
If you just ask people, Hey, are you guys ready,
And if they say yes, and you say are you
as ready as you can be and they say no,
(33:17):
then I guess maybe that's it. Anyway, I would say,
if we were to translate this, this would come into
you know, yo hold me back, bro level. That would
be essentially what Defcon level two is is YO hold
me back. So you're ready to swing your fist, but
you're not actively swinging your fist. And it shows that
(33:38):
the tensions were really at a high point. So it
was not a sure thing that cooler heads would actually
prevail on that day in October on those Soviet submarines.
I'm thankful they did, though, but it was never a
sure thing. Now, in the end, Soviets remove their missiles
and bombers from Cuba and later the United States of
(34:00):
their Jupiter missile installations from Turkey, and apparently that had
been the plan the whole time. The United States was
already planning on removing those missile installations in Turkey, which
was one of the demands the Soviet Union had had, saying, hey,
if we're going to pull out a Cuba, you got
to pull out Turkey. But the US didn't agree upon
it as a point of negotiation, even though they had
(34:23):
already planned on doing that. So that was interesting that
the US had planned on removing those missiles, but they
did not agree to having that be part of the
terms to settle this crisis, maybe because it might have
made the country look weak or something. I don't know.
I don't pretend to understand global politics. The point is
(34:44):
that both the United States and the USSR backed off
from the button and opened up a channel of communication
that still exists to this day, this hotline between the
Kremlin and the White House, though there are times when
one site isn't that eager to take the other side's calls. Oh,
and by backed off, I don't mean that things calmed
down right away. The US Strategic Air Command or SAC
(35:08):
remained at deaf Con two from October twenty third, nineteen
sixty two to November fifteenth, nineteen sixty five, so more
than three years. Only then did it quote unquote posture
down to deaf Con three because it was scary. Now.
I recorded a few other shows that also tie into
(35:28):
this same era in various ways. For example, the space
race was largely an extension of the Cold War. In fact,
you could argue that without the Cold War we never
would have been to the moon. Both the Soviet Union
and the United States were racing to send people into
space and to the moon, and it was in part
an effort to prove that they that their country was
(35:50):
technologically superior to the rival country. But there was also
an element of intimidation involved. So essentially, if you could
send a rocket into orbit, you could also send a
rocket all the way around the Earth and hit a
target on the other side, like say the United States
from the Soviet Union, or the Soviet Union from the
(36:11):
United States. So in part, the space race was a
way of saying, hey, we have the capability of wiping
you off the planet, so don't push us. The thing
was both sides were making that argument at the same time. Again,
absolutely terrifying, although we got some awesome stuff out of it.
(36:33):
I mean, the space race gave us tons of technology
and pushed our scientific understanding of our solar system quite
a bit, so it's not like it was all bad,
but the motivations behind it were largely motivated by politics
and military goals. Luckily we were able to leverage that
(36:55):
into ways that were not indirectly connected to conflict. But yeah,
once the Soviet Union launched Sputnik into orbit. Sputnik was
the satellite, the first man made satellite in orbit around
the Earth. All it did was really beep, but amateur
(37:15):
radio operators in the United States picked up the beeping,
and it caused quite a bit of panic because suddenly
everyone realized that if the Soviet Union could launch something
into orbit, they could probably launch something all the way
to the United States. The innerconnal in the intercontinental Ballistic
missile or ICBM was essentially born at that point. Anyway,
(37:38):
let's go back to close calls with nuclear war, because
that's really what we're here to talk about. And let's
jump ahead to November ninth, nineteen seventy nine. That's when
the North American Aerospace Defense Headquarters, or NORAD for short,
went bonkers. I would say that they went ballistic, but
luckily they didn't, because that would have been a terrible,
(37:59):
terrifying punt. In that case, according to the computer systems
over at NOORAD, a huge missile attack from the Soviet
Union was on its way to targets within the United States.
And this is what we often in the technology world
would call a bad thing. So nor AD was following
protocol and they sent an alert to high level command
(38:20):
posts and the tippy top of US military leadership, and
immediately the command was given to put ICBM crews on
the highest possible alert, and nuclear bomber crews were scrambled
to their aircraft to prepare for takeoff. The airborne command Post,
which is the aircraft that the President of the United
States is supposed to be a board in the event
(38:43):
of a massive attack. This is what creates a mobile
base of operations. It took off, so the airborne Command
Post took off into the atmosphere. The President wasn't on
it at the time, which seems like a bit of
an oversight, but it did take off. So for more
than five incredibly tense minutes, United States operators were scouring
(39:07):
satellite data to confirm that the Soviets had indeed launched
missiles against the United States. They had the information from
the NORAD computers, but they wanted, obviously to confirm that
information with satellite data, but they couldn't find any data
to confirm it. United States leaders decided magnanimously not to
(39:30):
launch a full scale retaliation, which is a good thing
because it would have turned out that they would have
been committing a first strike. There was nothing to retaliate against.
So what the heck actually happened? And the answer is
pretty crazy, and it sounds like something from a movie
like Airplane. It sounds like a deleted scene from a
(39:52):
disaster spoof movie. What had happened was a technician had
inserted a training tape into an operational nor AD computer.
The training tape contained various scenarios on it, including one
in which the Soviet Union launches a full scale missile
attack against the United States. And this was just to
(40:13):
run simulations, to run what would happen in this case
and how effective would a retaliatory strike be. That's all
it was. But it was being run on an operational
nor AD computer, which interpreted this to mean the Soviet
Union had actually launched an attack, not that it was
a simulation. So a training tape very nearly started World
(40:34):
War Three. In nineteen seventy nine, the United States wisely
decided that it would be a really good idea to
make sure nor AD computers would not be able to
run training tapes in the future, and so they NERFD it. Essentially,
they removed that ability for nor AD computers to run
these simulations. Now, I've got a lot more to talk
(40:57):
about as far as FOSSE alarms and close calls go.
But before I jump into that, last section. Let's take
another quick break to thank our sponsor. So these sort
of things happen really rarely, right, please.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
Not.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
According to Marshall Shulman, who was a State Department advisor,
he said that false alerts would happen fairly regularly, which
is absolutely terrifying, and in fact said they happen regularly
enough that handling them almost became a matter of routine,
which is troubling all by itself. And that's what Shulman said.
He said, it's almost terrifying to see the level of
(41:41):
complacency in dealing with these because they happened that frequently.
I mean, you want your team to respond calmly in
the wake of an alert because you want to make
sure that they are going through the steps to verify
that it is in fact at what it seems to be.
You don't want them acting on misinformation. At the same time,
(42:04):
you don't want them to fall victim to boy who
cried Wolfe scenarios where they don't take it seriously enough.
So you want to balance there, and according to Shulman,
the complacency issue was getting to be a bit troubling
for him. Now, just so you don't go thinking that
the United States was alone and having faulty systems. Let
(42:26):
me tell you about September twenty sixth, nineteen eighty three.
That is when a Soviet satellite, part of an early
detection system for missile launches, sent down a message indicating
the United States had fired a nuclear missile, and then
another nuclear missile, and then three more nuclear missiles, so
(42:47):
it might have looked like an initial attack with five
missiles heading toward the Soviet Union. Now, tensions were already
high across the Soviet Union and the United States for
other reasons. Earlier that month, the Soviet Union had shot
down a South Korean passenger plane thinking that it was
(43:09):
a military plane invading their airspace, and that's not what
it was. So it was a tragic accident. But there
was also a lot of worry that the United States
could potentially retaliate for this, and so the first reaction
could have been that this was the US's response to
that act. Now, the man in charge over at a
(43:32):
early detection center in the Soviet Union was Lieutenant Colonel
Stanislav Petrov, and he held the authority to launch a
retaliatory strike, but he didn't exercise this authority he deduced
that a genuine attack on the Soviet Union from the
United States would involve hundreds of missiles, not just five.
(43:54):
He said, if you're going to start a war, you
wouldn't launch only five missiles. It wouldn't be an enough
of a quantity to knock out enough of the Soviet
Union's capability to retaliate, so it would just be inviting
worldwide destruction. So Petrov said, I'm pretty sure this isn't real.
I'm gonna stake my life and my reputation on it,
(44:17):
and he was right. So then they began to investigate
what was the cause of this false alarm, because that
is what it turned out to be. So the cause
was the satellite itself. It had misidentified a reflection from
the top of some clouds. The sun was hitting these
clouds at just the right angle for the reflection to
(44:39):
hit the satellite, and the position the orientation of the
satellite with respect to the United States made it look
like this was coming from known US missile launch sites,
So the satellite misidentified the reflections as missile launches, and
really the satellite was in a good orbit to avoid
(45:00):
this kind of misunderstanding. The problem was it was just
the perfect set of circumstances. It was the equinox, the
sun was setting, and the satellite was in a position
at just the right time with clouds in the right
position to cause this confusion. And normally it wouldn't have happened,
and any other time of the year, the angles wouldn't
(45:21):
have been right. It was just a coincidence. Fortunately, because
there was a human being in charge who had the
capacity to question the results presented by the satellite, we
didn't see a nuclear strike from the Soviet Union launched
at the United States as a result. Sometimes a science
(45:43):
experiment runs the risk of plunging us into nuclear conflict,
so that's exciting. So for example, there was the Black
Brant twelve rocket, which was a cooperative effort between the
United States and Norway. It launched out of Norway along
the coastline of Norway, and it had a mission to
(46:05):
send up a probe essentially to study the northern lights,
the Aurora borealis. Norway had picked up the phone to
call up their Russian neighbors and say, hey, by the way,
we're going to launch this satellite, so don't freak out,
but we're going to do it on such and such
a day, at such and such a time, and so
(46:26):
Russia knew about this. The only problem was that information
never got to the people in charge of the early
warning detection systems, so they had no knowledge of a
planned scientific rocket launch. Instead, they had radar detectors looking
at their screens and saying, it appears that a missile
(46:50):
has launched, potentially from a United States submarine and on
a trajectory that could take it to the Soviet Union.
So there was immediately a reaction that this could potentially
be an early attack, and in fact there was worry
that perhaps this was a warhead meant to explode to
knockout radar detection so that we can then have an
(47:15):
entire full blown attack follow it and the radar systems
would be down. In the meantime, the word went up
to the Krivlin and Boris Yeltsin went so far as
to activate his nuclear football. The nuclear football is a
device that leaders used to authorize a nuclear strike. Other
(47:36):
radar centers and Russian satellites couldn't find any evidence of
any other missile preparations, so there was no other corroborating
evidence to suggest that this was in fact a legitimate
missile strike aimed at the United States. So this led
the Russians to conclude it wasn't actually an attack, and
eventually the word got out that this was a scientific
(47:58):
mission that had previous authorization and that Russia had been
in communication with Norway the whole time. It just never
got to the military side. Whoopsie Daisy almost went to
full nuclear war over that. And you probably heard the
story about how a flock of birds nearly initiated World
War III. That was actually an oversimplification of what had happened.
(48:22):
It was a story that actually predates the Cuban missile crisis.
This goes back to the Suez Canal crisis in Egypt.
The Suez Canal had proven to be critical during both
World War One and World War Two, and so lots
of different entities wanted to have control over the canal
for strategic purposes. This included the Soviet Union, Egypt, and
(48:46):
the United Kingdom. So you had a lot of tensions
in the area, and the whole conflict is way too
complex to get into. I'm pretty sure the stuff you
missed in history class hosts have talked to about the
Suez Canal crisis in the past, and like I said,
it gets super complicated, but I can talk about a
(49:08):
series of coincidental events that nearly led us to World
War Three. It happened on November fifth, nineteen fifty six.
NORAD detected these coincidental events, which collectively looked like it
could have been a big aggressive move by the Soviet Union,
like an actual massing to attack other areas of Europe
(49:29):
and possibly launched attacks against the United States. Those coincidences
included a fleet of ships Soviet ships moving from the
Black Sea to the Aegean Sea. There were a large
number of MiG jets reported flying over Syria. There was
a report of a British bomber being shot down also
(49:50):
in Syria, and then there was an unknown number of
unidentified aircraft detected over Turkey. But each of those events
turned out to not be that big of a deal
once the details were learned, so it's fortunate that no
one thought those collective events actually amounted to a full attack.
(50:11):
The fleet maneuver turned out to just be a routine
exercise among the Soviet fleet. It had nothing to do
with any sort of aggressive act. The group of MiGs
was much smaller than had been reported. It wasn't like
one hundred jets. It was actually a typical escort detail.
The British bomber hadn't been shot down, the aircraft had
(50:32):
suffered a mechanical failure and they had to make an
emergency landing in Syria. And the mysterious aircraft flying over
Turkey turned out to be a flock of swans, which
after a lengthy questioning, turned out not to be Soviet agents.
And let me give you one last example of a
close call. There are more besides this one, by the way,
(50:56):
lots more, but here's one last one. On June third, ninth,
defense displays at the Pentagon, the White House and a
NORAD flipped out. Now they had a display of four digits,
which usually read as zero zero zero zero, just four
zero straight across. These were numbers to indicate any nuclear
(51:18):
missiles that had been detected as being launched. So you
want to see all zeros. There's any number besides a
zero on that display, that's a big problem. The counters
began to show the number two instead of zero, indicating
a massive missile attack, and so to be certain, bomber
crews were given orders to prepare their aircraft and missile
(51:39):
launch systems began to warm up for a retaliatory strike,
while the top brass tried to figure out if this
was in fact for real z's or not. Luckily, said
brass determined that it was not for realsy's and they
ordered everyone to stand down. As a result, three days later,
the same thing had happen again, and again everyone got
(52:01):
prepared for a massive retaliatory strike, and two false alarms
that could cause a nuclear apocalypse warranted a full look
at the system. Technicians trace the problem to a single
computer chip, just one computer chip in the entire system
that wasn't wired correctly. So replacing that chip solved the
problem and they stopped having this issue with the display
(52:24):
giving a false indicator of missile launches. That one faulty
chip could have resulted in a nuclear war or at
least a nuclear strike, which is absolutely terrifying. So what
is the moral of the story here, Well, one thing
is that nuclear weapons are super duper scary. I'd love
(52:45):
to see them become a thing of the past, but
they're incredibly powerful and all it takes is one critical
error to cause untold amounts of damage or precipitate a
globally catastrophic series of events. But another lesson to take
here is that we at least have been fortunate so
far to have people calm enough to reevaluate a situation
(53:05):
before committing the ultimate act of warfare. It sure would
be nice if it weren't necessary to say, thank goodness,
we have the right folks in the right place at
the wrong time, but thank goodness we do have them.
Speaker 2 (53:19):
That's it for the classic episode close but no Nuclear War.
I guess the takeaway from all this is, despite the
close calls, we never had a nuclear war. So that's
something that we should hold on to. I hope you
are all well. I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1 (53:43):
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