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What is Mutual Assured Destruction? · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know from House Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
0:13
Speaker 1: Clark with me as always as the lovely and talented
0:15
Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuckers Bryant. Hi, Hey, Chuck. Hi. See you
0:20
Speaker 1: switched hats uh from When to Win from the Chicago
0:24
Speaker 1: Bears hat to the Atlanta Braves hate. That was yesterday
0:27
Speaker 1: today today. You're a man of many hats, John, many
0:30
Speaker 1: fan allegiances. I'm not a Bears fan. You know what
0:33
Speaker 1: that was all done? Punkin's Yes, punkin Chunkin, Yes, Josh.
0:37
Speaker 1: We are going to mention once again. The Discovery Channel
0:41
Speaker 1: are awesome. Parent company is releasing two television shows on
0:45
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving night. Don't confuse people, Chuck. They're gonna be on
0:48
Speaker 1: the Science Channel well on Thursday, November twenty six, which
0:51
Speaker 1: is Thanksgiving. That's a dead dead turkeys that day, The
0:55
Speaker 1: Road to Punkin Chunkin and Punkin Chunkin Right. The Road
0:58
Speaker 1: to Punkin Chunking comes on eight pm Eastern Time on
1:01
Speaker 1: the Science Channel, followed by the Real punkin Chunking at
1:06
Speaker 1: nine pm Eastern. I would follow it up with a
1:08
Speaker 1: show called The Road from Punkin Film Right Going back
1:11
Speaker 1: home after punkin chunking in Delaware. No less, So that's
1:15
Speaker 1: that right? Sure? Alrighty so Chuck, Yes, Josh, Um, this
1:20
Speaker 1: I have like a little this seems vaguely familiar. We're
1:24
Speaker 1: talking about mutual assured destruction. Okay, well, how does that
1:27
Speaker 1: seem familiar? Because I did it with Candice many many
1:30
Speaker 1: moons ago on Stuffy miss in history class, back when
1:34
Speaker 1: it was called factor fiction. Dude, that was another lifetime,
1:38
Speaker 1: wasn't it. It really was. I have so many more
1:40
Speaker 1: gray hairs now, and like my posture is much more
1:43
Speaker 1: stooped the Seattle slump I do. Actually, nice one, Chuck.
1:49
Speaker 1: We've talked about this, I think here there we've mentioned it.
1:51
Speaker 1: Remember we did a podcast on how easy is it
1:54
Speaker 1: is steal a nuclear bomb? We concluded that if the
1:57
Speaker 1: Jamaicans are buying it and you steal it en route
1:59
Speaker 1: to Maka, you can probably get away with it. Um.
2:04
Speaker 1: This podcast is specifically on a Cold War strategic doctrine
2:10
Speaker 1: called mutual issued destruction, which was abbreviated as MAD appropriately enough. Yeah,
2:15
Speaker 1: it's funny. It's like it's scary as I'll get out,
2:18
Speaker 1: but it's also comforting in the same breath, it's weird.
2:22
Speaker 1: Well yeah, because I mean, if you think about it,
2:24
Speaker 1: you and I grew up we were Cold War babies,
2:26
Speaker 1: and we grew up with the express knowledge that at
2:30
Speaker 1: any moment nuclear wark breakout and if that happened, everyone
2:34
Speaker 1: on the planet was debt. And like, that's how we
2:36
Speaker 1: were raised, like kids that were born like what in
2:39
Speaker 1: like mid eighties today, which is just nuts to me
2:42
Speaker 1: that there's people walking around that are sentient that we're
2:44
Speaker 1: born in the mid eighties. But kids that were born
2:47
Speaker 1: in the mid eighties and after did not grow up
2:49
Speaker 1: with that specter looming over him, and I imagine are
2:52
Speaker 1: completely different people personality wise than like you and I. Well,
2:55
Speaker 1: that's like everyone else on our staff almost agreed. Do
2:58
Speaker 1: you ever think about that? I did not. There are
3:00
Speaker 1: a few old folks like us, although I'm much older
3:03
Speaker 1: than you. Obviously. You definitely point out checks wearing right
3:07
Speaker 1: now a Jeane jacket with a sharpie marker used to
3:12
Speaker 1: to do the Journey logo on the back. It's pretty
3:15
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Check you burnout. Um, So Chuck, as I
3:19
Speaker 1: was saying, we grew up as as Cold War kids, um,
3:22
Speaker 1: and every once in a while you have to stop
3:24
Speaker 1: and think, why didn't the US and the USS are
3:27
Speaker 1: blow one another up? Are you asking me that? Yeah, well,
3:32
Speaker 1: let's talk about the Cold world, because the answer is
3:34
Speaker 1: the end of the podcast, all right, So let's save that,
3:36
Speaker 1: all right, The Cold War, Josh, I had a couple
3:40
Speaker 1: of really scary moments. If you want to talk about those,
3:43
Speaker 1: I do. The Cuban missile crisis was a pretty tense
3:46
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks. Probably the first one in nine two,
3:50
Speaker 1: President Kennedy threatened to strike once he found out that
3:53
Speaker 1: Russia had moved or I guess the Soviet Union had
3:55
Speaker 1: moved missiles to Cuba, and we're pointing them at his face.
4:00
Speaker 1: And Cuba seems like a world away, but it's really
4:02
Speaker 1: just ninety miles off the southern coast of Florida, a
4:05
Speaker 1: short boat ride, right, And so if you have nuclear,
4:08
Speaker 1: long range nuclear warheads pointed at the US, they can
4:12
Speaker 1: hit their mark, probably as far as Kansas City, let's say,
4:16
Speaker 1: and they could definitely hit temperature. That was a scary
4:18
Speaker 1: couple of weeks. Sure it was because there was a standoff. Basically,
4:23
Speaker 1: we were saying, hey, we're gonna nuke you if you
4:25
Speaker 1: don't remove these missiles and the Soviet Union said, oh yeah,
4:28
Speaker 1: well we'll nuke you back. And actually you can, actually
4:32
Speaker 1: you can. You can point to this is perhaps the
4:36
Speaker 1: beginning of the mad doctrine. And the other scary one
4:41
Speaker 1: was in weird Chuck, This actually happened like several times.
4:48
Speaker 1: This is probably the worst. That's some bad communication going on.
4:51
Speaker 1: What happened was, Uh, nora Ad got some information that
4:55
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union had launched two thousand, two hundred and
4:59
Speaker 1: twenty nuclear missiles our way. So chuck, Yeah, UM in
5:02
Speaker 1: nora Ad, which is like our the command center for
5:06
Speaker 1: our missile system defense deep in Shyenne Mountain in Colorado. UM,
5:13
Speaker 1: on some computer screen, some guys computer screen that that
5:16
Speaker 1: tracks UM Soviet missile movement. All of a sudden, it
5:20
Speaker 1: was just peppered with missiles that were coming this way.
5:23
Speaker 1: And and UM National Security Director of Brasniski. Nice jobs that, right,
5:31
Speaker 1: I think it's right. I can't remember a lot of continants.
5:35
Speaker 1: And it's not that I can't remember, it's that I've
5:37
Speaker 1: never heard it. Prasinski, We're going with Prasinski. Um, he
5:43
Speaker 1: was alerted. It's pretty early in the morning, right, yeah,
5:47
Speaker 1: two am. He was alerted and woken up and they're like, hey,
5:49
Speaker 1: there's a Soviet missile strike and all out missile strike,
5:54
Speaker 1: twenty missiles coming our way, sir, and he is picking
5:56
Speaker 1: up the phone to call President Carter, who I don't
5:58
Speaker 1: know what Carter would have done. Carter wasn't exactly um,
6:03
Speaker 1: the most militant president we've ever had. Great guy, great statesmen,
6:06
Speaker 1: great diplomat. He might have pooped his pants and gone
6:10
Speaker 1: back to bed, you know, maybe so um, but the
6:15
Speaker 1: terrible um he he never got that phone call because
6:19
Speaker 1: Brazinski was informed that, oh wait, it's a computer glitch.
6:23
Speaker 1: They whacked the side of the monitor and it all corrected.
6:26
Speaker 1: That said. What shocked me was it was a seven
6:28
Speaker 1: minute window that we had to decide what to do. Well,
6:33
Speaker 1: it's a long way from the Soviet Union to the US,
6:36
Speaker 1: even by way of Alaska. Seven minutes. S Yeah, you
6:40
Speaker 1: have to make up your mind in seven minutes whether
6:42
Speaker 1: or not you're going to destroy the world. Basically, I'm saying,
6:44
Speaker 1: you would think that it would be less than seven minutes. Okay,
6:47
Speaker 1: so so, and I'm telling you like that was probably
6:50
Speaker 1: the worst case. But that happened many times during the
6:53
Speaker 1: course of the Cold War. And from what I understand,
6:55
Speaker 1: the Soviets had similar incidents too, right, yeah, so we
6:59
Speaker 1: have these incidents, we have the human missile crisis. Why
7:03
Speaker 1: didn't either side pull the trigger? Because of the doctrine,
7:07
Speaker 1: the mad doctrine basically, which indicates that everyone will die.
7:13
Speaker 1: So the uh, you know, we blow everybody up on
7:16
Speaker 1: both sides, So let's not do that, right, And the
7:20
Speaker 1: U s SR In the United States could actually very
7:23
Speaker 1: quickly from seven and nineteen forty one, both nations were
7:27
Speaker 1: building up their nuclear arsenals, which is called nuclear proliferation. Right,
7:31
Speaker 1: I think I got that out, um in the nuclear
7:35
Speaker 1: proliferation Do you take that one for the rest of
7:37
Speaker 1: the podcast. Okay, okay, okay, um? And uh they so
7:41
Speaker 1: each side had this arsenal and we're keeping up in
7:44
Speaker 1: step with one another. You know what. That's called nuclear parity,
7:48
Speaker 1: which is ideally what you want. Strangely, yes, in this case,
7:52
Speaker 1: you definitely do. So both sides had more than enough
7:55
Speaker 1: nuclear missiles to wipe out not just the other side,
7:59
Speaker 1: but the tire planet. Several times over. That's a really
8:03
Speaker 1: important point. Several times over. Why would you need a
8:08
Speaker 1: nuclear arsenal that could wipe out the world, the planet
8:12
Speaker 1: several times over. Now, maybe if they destroyed some of
8:15
Speaker 1: our weaponry with their strikes, that's part of it. But
8:18
Speaker 1: another part of it is because if one side adds
8:21
Speaker 1: a missile, you gotta add a missile. Well if you
8:24
Speaker 1: if you're seeking nuclear parity, which is really important, um,
8:28
Speaker 1: then you there can't be. It can't be out of whack.
8:31
Speaker 1: How did they did they release all this information to
8:33
Speaker 1: each other? Was it? No? It was intelligence guesses that
8:36
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, Like all of a sudden, there's like
8:38
Speaker 1: a metal hole in the ground in Wyoming that wasn't
8:42
Speaker 1: there before. The Soviets probably assumed, well, they have a
8:45
Speaker 1: new nuclear warhead there. They didn't I m each other
8:48
Speaker 1: and say built new messile. L o O click you're
8:51
Speaker 1: going to say that. I knew you were going to
8:53
Speaker 1: say that. So both sides are building up their arsenal.
8:55
Speaker 1: And early on, Chuck Um, I was reading another article
8:58
Speaker 1: on game theory which will see plays into this, written
9:01
Speaker 1: by our steem colleague and might be ff Tom sheeve Um,
9:06
Speaker 1: and he talks about how early on, apparently Eisenhower, who
9:10
Speaker 1: is uh what, the second president to have the bomb,
9:14
Speaker 1: but really the first president to manage like an amassed
9:17
Speaker 1: nuclear arsenal. He yeah, he stopped worrying. Um. He looked
9:22
Speaker 1: at them as like any other type of weapon, because
9:24
Speaker 1: he was a military man. Um. But luckily there was
9:28
Speaker 1: a game theorist named Thomas Shelling, who had the ear
9:31
Speaker 1: of Eisenhower, managed to convince him that no, no, no,
9:35
Speaker 1: these things are way way more powerful and destructive than
9:39
Speaker 1: anything else in our arsenal. They exist in this in
9:42
Speaker 1: this vacuum that has to be kept separate, and therefore
9:46
Speaker 1: they should be viewed only as deterrence. And he managed
9:49
Speaker 1: to change Eisenhower's view, and from that point on it
9:52
Speaker 1: was the presence of a nuclear arsenal was a weapon
9:57
Speaker 1: in and of itself. It was the preventative and not
10:00
Speaker 1: only to nuclear war. But the point that did you
10:03
Speaker 1: write this one, uh, The point that you made, which
10:05
Speaker 1: I found interesting was that it also was a deterrent
10:08
Speaker 1: to conventional war. Excellent point, because conventional war they're really after.
10:13
Speaker 1: After the arms race, there was no such thing as
10:15
Speaker 1: conventional war. No, and um, not between the U S
10:18
Speaker 1: and the U S s R. Right, or a guaranteed
10:20
Speaker 1: conventional war. It might start out that way, but it
10:22
Speaker 1: would escalate and all of a sudden the button is
10:24
Speaker 1: pushed at some point, right, because our nuclear arsenal did
10:27
Speaker 1: exist and say, a vacuum outside of the rest of
10:30
Speaker 1: our arsenal. But once you exhausted the rest of the arsenal,
10:33
Speaker 1: then the inevitable conclusion was that that nuclear arsenal being deployed. Right,
10:38
Speaker 1: or even if you didn't exhaust it, even if you
10:40
Speaker 1: just said you just got man, let's just end this
10:42
Speaker 1: game exactly. Um. So, as a result, the US and
10:45
Speaker 1: the USS are just fought a Cold war. They never
10:48
Speaker 1: directly engaged with another, but they fought one another through
10:50
Speaker 1: proxy wars in places like Nicaragua in Afghanistan. Right, um
10:55
Speaker 1: got a lot of good movies out of the Cold War,
10:57
Speaker 1: definitely Rambo three and a good some good James Bond
11:01
Speaker 1: movies in that time. I liked it when the Rooskies
11:03
Speaker 1: were the villain. It was you like the James Bond
11:05
Speaker 1: movies of the Cold Well, okay, yeah, maybe the early ones.
11:08
Speaker 1: I'm thinking like Timothy Dalton there, yeah, I mean, trust me,
11:11
Speaker 1: Roger Moore is kind of a laughable Bond. Now that
11:14
Speaker 1: I'm older and looked back, You're crazy. Roger Moore is
11:16
Speaker 1: the best team because we grew up with him. But
11:19
Speaker 1: looking back, I mean, come on, Roger Moore was kind
11:21
Speaker 1: of a dufe maybe, but that was I think that
11:24
Speaker 1: was his director that he was working with. I kind
11:27
Speaker 1: of like Pierce bros And and and he was good. He
11:28
Speaker 1: was okay, I'm pretty hip on the Daniel Craig. He's
11:31
Speaker 1: all right, Well that's the only direction they could take.
11:33
Speaker 1: That really left blonde. No, just uh more realistic butt
11:38
Speaker 1: kicking with fists and that kind of thing. You don't
11:41
Speaker 1: think Moonraker was realistic, you know, he was constantly like
11:44
Speaker 1: winking at the camp. Yeah, it's like Jonathan Strickland is
11:50
Speaker 1: James Bond. I guess good one. Alright, so sorry about
11:54
Speaker 1: the sidetrack. Yeah, what happened was we created a detent.
11:58
Speaker 1: It wasn't like, Okay, we all have the same amount
12:00
Speaker 1: of weapons, so we're BFFs now and it's all good.
12:03
Speaker 1: It was a day tome, meaning it was sort of
12:05
Speaker 1: a what's the best description, an uneasy truce. Yeah. Yeah, so, um, basically,
12:11
Speaker 1: the US and the USSR had our weapons and we're
12:14
Speaker 1: keeping an eye on one another, and anytime one added
12:17
Speaker 1: a new missile or some new capability, the other scrambled
12:20
Speaker 1: to catch up and vice versa, and we just basically
12:23
Speaker 1: went to sleep with one eye open for the next
12:25
Speaker 1: several decades. Right. Uh So, Josh, what two things have
12:29
Speaker 1: to take place in order to achieve this uh weird stability. Well,
12:33
Speaker 1: the weird stability the very fact that it existed. It's
12:37
Speaker 1: not it wasn't an organic Um, it wasn't organically created
12:41
Speaker 1: by the presence of nuclear weapons. Right. Um. Henry Kissinger,
12:46
Speaker 1: who was Secretary of State throughout much of the Cold War, Um,
12:49
Speaker 1: he actually was a huge fan of game theory. He
12:53
Speaker 1: took a lot of game theory classes when he was
12:56
Speaker 1: an underclassman at Harvard, and he kept in touch with
12:59
Speaker 1: game theory and hung out with game theorists, and he
13:03
Speaker 1: actually was one of the people who was responsible for
13:06
Speaker 1: applying game theory to nuclear strategy. Yeah, and other people
13:10
Speaker 1: kind of caught on and saw that there was a
13:12
Speaker 1: lot of merit and validity to to viewing um, nuclear
13:16
Speaker 1: strategy through game theory. Right. Um, So the two things
13:20
Speaker 1: really are having that I'll answer my own question that
13:25
Speaker 1: what's key is a to have the weapons to begin with.
13:27
Speaker 1: And then, as Robert McNamara points out, the Defense Secretary
13:31
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixties was that you have to believe that
13:34
Speaker 1: the other guys actually has the cojones to pull the trigger, right,
13:37
Speaker 1: And apparently both the US and the USS are like
13:40
Speaker 1: to leak false information about how crazy their leaders were.
13:44
Speaker 1: Do you remember how we were brought up viewing like
13:46
Speaker 1: the Russians like they were all nuts, right, and they
13:50
Speaker 1: would just push the button at any second. Yeah, they
13:52
Speaker 1: wanted American blood. Apparently that was planted by the Russians,
13:55
Speaker 1: because you have to believe that the other guy is
13:59
Speaker 1: willing to strike and and not just create a first strike,
14:03
Speaker 1: but definitely a counter strike as well. Right, sure, So
14:06
Speaker 1: if you are assured that if you launch a first
14:10
Speaker 1: strike that the next the other sides going to launch
14:13
Speaker 1: a retaliatory strike, what you've just done by launching that
14:16
Speaker 1: first strike is committed suicide. Pretty much. The basis of
14:21
Speaker 1: mutual assured destruction is that nobody wants to die, right Okay? Yeah, yeah, okay?
14:28
Speaker 1: And uh also at the time, I mean, at first,
14:30
Speaker 1: the way the nuclear warheads um developed over the years
14:35
Speaker 1: is pretty cool because, like you pointed out, at first,
14:38
Speaker 1: it was just a big, huge, dopey bomb that would
14:41
Speaker 1: just blow up everything. Yeah, have you seen pictures of
14:45
Speaker 1: Fat Boy and Little Man. They really do they do?
14:48
Speaker 1: The money would drop out of the back of a plane. Yeah,
14:51
Speaker 1: did you know they weren't the same type of bomb.
14:52
Speaker 1: Fat Man, which was dropped on Nagasaki was plutonium and
14:56
Speaker 1: a Little Boy, which was dropped on Hiroshima was uranium. Interesting,
15:00
Speaker 1: I didn't know that, and they were. They were working
15:02
Speaker 1: on both of these. So basically we split the atom
15:04
Speaker 1: in the like for the late thirties and all of
15:05
Speaker 1: a sudden, we're just working on any kind of atomic
15:07
Speaker 1: bomb we want nuts. So over the years though that
15:11
Speaker 1: it became very precise and much more strategic, so you could, um,
15:15
Speaker 1: let's say, send your nuclear warheads to specific military targets
15:19
Speaker 1: at first, obviously to wipe out, you know, some of
15:22
Speaker 1: that capability. Hold on, you're talking about escalation. Let's talk
15:25
Speaker 1: about the nuclear proliferation. It wasn't just a ladder of escalation. Well,
15:29
Speaker 1: hold on, let's talk about where the nukes were, right,
15:32
Speaker 1: and so at the height of the Cold War, it
15:35
Speaker 1: wasn't just missile silos and wyoming and you know this Ukraine,
15:39
Speaker 1: it was um, there was the European theater, Eastern and
15:42
Speaker 1: Western we had nuclear warheads all over the place there
15:46
Speaker 1: um at any given time, both the Soviets and the
15:49
Speaker 1: US had aircraft in the air at any point in
15:52
Speaker 1: time with nuclear with nukes, right, we had nuclear submarines
15:55
Speaker 1: all over the globe, so lancey and air both sides
15:58
Speaker 1: had it covered. Right. So okay, we're the world is
16:02
Speaker 1: completely covered with thermonuclear devices, very high tech delivery systems
16:08
Speaker 1: specific and both sides have enough to wipe the other
16:12
Speaker 1: one off the planet several times. We're at a day time, right,
16:15
Speaker 1: So what happens if somebody does launch a first strike
16:18
Speaker 1: because it's no longer a holocaust where we're just shooting
16:23
Speaker 1: missiles anymore, we have the capability to launch precise surgical strike. Well,
16:27
Speaker 1: there will be a counter strike, there is. But this
16:30
Speaker 1: is where the ladder of escalation you were talking about
16:32
Speaker 1: comes in. Well, yeah, you like in it to a
16:34
Speaker 1: chess game, there's a strike than a counter strike, and
16:37
Speaker 1: then you know increasing levels of of strikes as they
16:42
Speaker 1: climb up the ladder. Right now, So basically, yeah, it's
16:45
Speaker 1: like trading punches, right, right, So you start out, you
16:48
Speaker 1: start out soft, and I hit you. I don't you
16:52
Speaker 1: bring it all from the beginning. Then I'm really glad
16:54
Speaker 1: you weren't at the helm of the United States or
16:56
Speaker 1: the uss are during the Cold War. But let's say
17:00
Speaker 1: let's say we were evenly matched, right, and I punch you,
17:03
Speaker 1: you punched me a little harder, I punch you a
17:06
Speaker 1: little harder, and then uh, it keeps going on until
17:08
Speaker 1: finally one of us like, okay, stop. But what we've
17:12
Speaker 1: done is we've escalated the damage we're doing to one another.
17:16
Speaker 1: But there's something very important that that's easily overlooked in
17:20
Speaker 1: that trade of punches. There's a moment that comes after
17:24
Speaker 1: each punch where someone might quit, where somebody has the
17:27
Speaker 1: options to quit right or trade another punch. And if
17:30
Speaker 1: you trade another punch, you're gonna escalate. Right. So if
17:33
Speaker 1: in the case of nuclear arms that are real precise
17:35
Speaker 1: at this point, they take out a few of our
17:38
Speaker 1: military bases, we take a few of their's are out,
17:40
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, one of the leaders steps
17:42
Speaker 1: back and says, wait a minute, we're gonna annihilate everybody.
17:46
Speaker 1: We have to stop. You win, right exactly. Um, And
17:50
Speaker 1: what's crazy is it's like the fact that there would
17:53
Speaker 1: even be a retaliatory strike is all based on saving face,
17:57
Speaker 1: which is kind of disgusting in and of itself. But um, yeah,
18:01
Speaker 1: both sides had this kind of agreement. I can't remember
18:03
Speaker 1: it was called where it's It's like in the ladder
18:06
Speaker 1: of escalation. First to start with like say nuclear silo,
18:11
Speaker 1: and then you the next the next wrong on the
18:14
Speaker 1: ladder is you know, actual troops, right, and then the
18:17
Speaker 1: next wrong after that is like maybe a rural area.
18:19
Speaker 1: Then after that it is like a city, and it
18:21
Speaker 1: keeps you going and I aming each other between give up.
18:24
Speaker 1: Yet both sides knew what was coming next. It was
18:27
Speaker 1: part of the ladder of escalation. Yeah, luckily we never
18:30
Speaker 1: engaged in that. Luckily there was no instant messaging back
18:32
Speaker 1: then too. I know it would have been fun or
18:35
Speaker 1: it could have saved us that well, I guess we
18:37
Speaker 1: we were saved. But chuck, um, I know you recognize
18:40
Speaker 1: the ladder of escalation because your favorite movie or one
18:44
Speaker 1: of them had this factor heavily into four games. What
18:48
Speaker 1: did we talk about this one in the Steel Nuclear Bomber?
18:50
Speaker 1: Was it another one we've talked about at least one
18:52
Speaker 1: other time. Yeah, it's a great movie. What are we
18:54
Speaker 1: up to? Like ten thousand and ninety podcast? So far?
18:57
Speaker 1: I think so. We've mentioned four games in about half
18:59
Speaker 1: of the I would say, uh, in three Matthew young
19:04
Speaker 1: Matthew Broderick, although he still looks exactly the same thing,
19:07
Speaker 1: it really does, doesn't He doesn't age. Sarah Jessica Parker
19:10
Speaker 1: has an aged either. Yeah, but if you look at
19:12
Speaker 1: square pegs her versus Sex in the City her, there
19:15
Speaker 1: was quite a difference. Okay, although I still don't find
19:18
Speaker 1: her very attractive. To be honest, I'm gonna hear from
19:22
Speaker 1: the ladies on that one. And Sara Jessica Parker, Dude,
19:25
Speaker 1: if she listen to the show, they'd be great. You're
19:27
Speaker 1: really hot, Sarah Jessica Parker. Yeah. Josh and war Games, Uh,
19:32
Speaker 1: Matthew Broderick um hacks into the Norad system and to
19:35
Speaker 1: play some games, and what he chooses to play is
19:39
Speaker 1: thermonuclear war and the computer constantly at the end of
19:42
Speaker 1: the movie, you know, it's like the only way to
19:45
Speaker 1: win is not to play, which is actually correct, and
19:48
Speaker 1: that is right on the money. It's um. It's also
19:51
Speaker 1: akin to uh, an actual game theory exercise called the
19:55
Speaker 1: prisoners Dilemma. Yeah, that's cool, tell us about that, Josh, Well,
19:58
Speaker 1: the prisoners Lemma. Let's say you have two accomplices in
20:00
Speaker 1: a crime that are separated. Let's say to you and me,
20:03
Speaker 1: all right, so Chuck, you're being interrogated in room A.
20:07
Speaker 1: Josh did it. That's well, we're both in trouble, right, Um, Well,
20:12
Speaker 1: I'm in trouble and you're not right. But let's say
20:14
Speaker 1: we're we're actually buddies and we like each other outside
20:17
Speaker 1: of the podcast be and we we've committed a jewel heist.
20:21
Speaker 1: So we've been caught, but nobody said anything yet. You're
20:24
Speaker 1: an interrogation room A. I'm an interrogation room beat. The
20:27
Speaker 1: problem is I have no idea what you're doing. You
20:29
Speaker 1: have no idea what I'm doing. If you implicate me,
20:34
Speaker 1: I go to jail. You go free. If I implicate you,
20:37
Speaker 1: you go to jail. I go free. We both implicate
20:40
Speaker 1: each other, we both go to jail. What's the best
20:43
Speaker 1: option here to not say a word? Not say a word,
20:46
Speaker 1: and then either one of us is implicated and we
20:48
Speaker 1: both go free. That's a classic TV and movie thing too.
20:51
Speaker 1: In the you always split them up, and you and
20:54
Speaker 1: you always go into the one room and say your
20:57
Speaker 1: partners in there singing like a bird. Yeah, Willie. Yeah,
21:00
Speaker 1: see Rocky's gonna fixture saying, and then all of a
21:04
Speaker 1: sudden they get that prisoner too or that criminal to
21:08
Speaker 1: uh rat out the other guy because they think that
21:10
Speaker 1: they're being read at, which is stupid. Man. They should
21:13
Speaker 1: just keep your here's the lesson to our younger viewers.
21:17
Speaker 1: Keep your mouth shut. Yeah, that's good. That's always good.
21:20
Speaker 1: Never wrat people out. All right, So if you want
21:22
Speaker 1: to read more about mutual assured destruction, frankly, I think
21:26
Speaker 1: that I wrote this a little flowery, but it was
21:30
Speaker 1: one of my my UM favorite ones. It was just interesting.
21:35
Speaker 1: You can type in mutual assured destruction on the cite
21:37
Speaker 1: will also bring up UM Tom Sheaves game theory article,
21:41
Speaker 1: which is definitely worth reading as well. Uh and you
21:44
Speaker 1: will type that into the handy search bar, which means
21:47
Speaker 1: that it's time for listener mail. Indeed, Josh, I'm gonna
21:53
Speaker 1: call this our first genuine unicorn email, all right, sort
21:58
Speaker 1: of what about the ones where people send a pictures
22:00
Speaker 1: of unicorns? It's not genuine? Okay, that's falsome. Hi, Chuck
22:04
Speaker 1: and Josh, you mentioned that you wanted some unicorn stories,
22:07
Speaker 1: and I couldn't resist sending me this one. It might
22:09
Speaker 1: be a good lead into a podcast on traditional medicines.
22:13
Speaker 1: This alam makes sense in a minute. I just got
22:15
Speaker 1: back from a trip to Vietnam, and as a part
22:18
Speaker 1: of my trip, I went into the hill country and
22:20
Speaker 1: northern Vietnam called Sapa. This is where many minority tribes
22:24
Speaker 1: are residing, and part of their way of life is
22:27
Speaker 1: selling their wares to tourists and offering homestays. Kind of
22:30
Speaker 1: cool um. After a day hike, a group of us
22:33
Speaker 1: ended up at a family home and they served us
22:35
Speaker 1: a delicious dinner of traditional food and something they called
22:38
Speaker 1: happy water. I liked some of them. Some made rice wine.
22:43
Speaker 1: You can imagine why it's called nappy water. Got us
22:45
Speaker 1: a little giggly to begin with, and what really got
22:48
Speaker 1: us going was seeing the lady of the house nonchalantly
22:50
Speaker 1: walk out of the kitchen with a cow's horn stuck
22:53
Speaker 1: to her forehead as if she were a unicorn. When
22:57
Speaker 1: we finally contained ourselves, we all felt like sleps because
23:00
Speaker 1: our guide explained that this was a traditional way of
23:03
Speaker 1: getting rid of headaches. You put on the you put
23:05
Speaker 1: the horn in the fire, you brand it to your forehead,
23:09
Speaker 1: and then after a short time, you take it off
23:12
Speaker 1: for the next two weeks you have to run. Uh,
23:15
Speaker 1: you have the round red mark on your forehead. Maybe
23:18
Speaker 1: it hurt more than the headache and therefore took remind
23:20
Speaker 1: uf of it. I'm not sure, doesn't that sounds like anyway?
23:25
Speaker 1: This is my semi unicorn story. Thanks for the great
23:28
Speaker 1: podcast from Ang. It was a Canadian listening in Indonesia
23:32
Speaker 1: and say Vietnam again Vietnam and am well, thanks Ang
23:36
Speaker 1: for that. UM. Actually, yes, that is definitely the closest
23:39
Speaker 1: thing to an actual unicorn UM listener mail we've gotten
23:42
Speaker 1: so far. Indeed, if you have any Cold War stories
23:46
Speaker 1: or any unicorn stories, or your name is Ang or
23:49
Speaker 1: contains those letters in that same arrangement, send us an email.
23:54
Speaker 1: You can send it to Stuff podcast at how stuff
23:58
Speaker 1: works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
24:04
Speaker 1: other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Want more
24:08
Speaker 1: how stuff works, check out our blogs on the how
24:10
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com home page. M