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The Great Nuclear Winter Debate of 1983 · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff. You should know front House stuff
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: somewhere off in the ether. But I don't think on either.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Just in the ether, trying not to breathe right now.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: We have a tank. It either in here. It would
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: be a munch of different podcast. Josh and Chuck's either cats.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Do they put those things in tanks? Oh? I don't know,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: surely right? No? Is it look like in the bottle
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: still like that? I don't know. I don't. Yeah, I
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: think you're just having a little butt milk bottle. You
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: put it in a rag, you put it in your face,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: and then go to happy town. Yeah, exactly. If there's
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: any pharmacists out there that want to set us straight,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: let us know how ether comes these days. It's probably
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: a gas. Yeah, I imagine it's not like hunter Wis Thompson.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: I think we talked about it before in anesthesia. Probably
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: it's a ether asks what a weird start? Yeah, that
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: has nothing to do with what we're about to talk about.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: And I was trying to relate it, But there really
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: is nothing. One of my favorite favorite topics of all
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: time nuclear holocaust from the Cold War? Yeah, what we did?
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: We did one in the Cold War, didn't we We've
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: done several h Yeah, we we batted around this thing,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: but we've never done a full nuclear holocaust podcast, have we?
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: And nuclear holocaust is that's not quite right. That's not
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: the right way to put it, because what we're talking
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: about is actually the after effects from a nuclear holocaust.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Isn't that the holocaust? I mean, if you want to
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: be a purist, the nuclear holocaust is the immediate destruction
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: as a result of exploding nuclear bombs over like population
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: centers and suff Oh I didn't know that. I thought
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: it was the whole kitten cabboodle. I should say, if
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: you're a purist and you want to say it, from
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: my opinion, that's what a nuclear holiday. Okay, I think
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: we know what's going on here. Um. Yeah, Robert Lamb
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: wrote this, uh stuff to blow your mind. Yeah. I
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: have to say. I said, man, way to go on now,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: And I was a good one told him that I did.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: I actually uttered those words. What do you say? Thanks man?
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: That's nice. Uh. But the thing that gets me about
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: nuclear winner which we will talk about in depth. Um,
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: what fascinates me about it, just as much as the
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: nuclear winner itself, Chuck, is the controversy debate that that
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: arose from it throughout the eighties. There's a huge debate,
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: debate on the severity debate, Yeah, debate on whether it's
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: something to worry about or not. Yeah. Well, I looked
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: up because I was like, is does anyone think that
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: this is a myth? Out an outright myth? And from
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: what I saw in my research is that no, this
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: is fact. It's just a dispute. What's a dispute is
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: the scenario and the survey already of what would happen,
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: But no one says, like, no, there would be no
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: nuclear winter, there would be no problems after nuclear bombs.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: So there used to be like back in in the
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: early eighties when this was a huge new thing, Um,
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: there was a group of scientists who were hawkish, very
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: much in favor of the U S building up it's
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: nuclear arsenal as much as possible and started a basically
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: a pr letter writing campaign to discredit the science behind
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: this and the like, these guys don't know what they're
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: talking about, so what they think that the bomb would
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: drop and then like the next day the birds would
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: be out. They they they said, initially, yeah, there was
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: kind of their position was just a poke holes in
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: this and that it wasn't wasn't a it wasn't legitimate science, right,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: it doesn't sound like and then um they Ultimately the
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: whole point was that this came from an argument over
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: whether the U s should engage in the SDI, the
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: t Jeek Defense Initiative or star Wars, which is the
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: lasers that shoot nukes from space. Right, they shoot down
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: nukes from space? They did? That was another one, Um,
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: But that's what the whole thing was. It's the context
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: of it. It It was an argument over what over either
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: nuclear disarmament, which Carl Sagan and his friends were in
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: favor of, or um nuclear proliferation and the star wars
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: um program warmongers, the popiece versus the warm But the
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: weird thing is that this debate, Chuck, took place in
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: the pages of like academic journals, and it ended up
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: being a fight between science and science deniers. Yeah, it
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: sounds like the scientists that you mentioned might have been
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: had their coffers full from the US government, So potentially
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: or private industry or something like that. Um. And the
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: thing is is they used this old chestnut where um, So,
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: if you're a scientist, there's no certainty in anything you say.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: It can always be disproven. Remember we talked about this
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: in the Scientific Method episode. All your stuff can be
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: disproven ultimately, which is why it's just a theory. So
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: no scientist is going to be like, this is certain. Well,
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: these other scientists who are poking holes in it would
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: point out these guys aren't even certain, which means that
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: there's there's disagreement over whether we'll have a nuclear winner
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: or not. So they were being very disingenuous in poking
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: holes in it by saying these scientists aren't even certain
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: in their findings. Well, no scientists is certain in their finals.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: But to the public that you think, oh, well, these
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: scientists can't say that they're certain, so that they must
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: not know what they're talking about, that's dangerous. That's why
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: we're at the three minutes to midnight on the doomsday clock.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: It's exactly right because some people might say, well, you're
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: not certain, so let's just not act fast enough. Yeah,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: and I should say also check, we should prepare for
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: a lot of listener mail because this is a conservative
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: flash point. Nuclear winter is long standing one. Oh yeah, great,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: sounds good. Let's talk about this all right. Well, Robert
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: starts where most people should start when talking about nuclear winter,
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: and that's in the atmosphere. Uh. It's a very finely
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: tuned system we have. I want to say it's like homeostasis,
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: but um, it's not. People, So I guess it's like
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: an ecostasis where the sun. Uh, just enough sun gets
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: through to make things, make the earth habitable and proliferate
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: with plants and water and humans and animals and all
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: kinds of great stuff. Uh. Too much sun, even by
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: a little bit, could be catastrophic, and too little sun,
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: but even by a little bit could be catastrophic. So we've,
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: thanks to humans, we've struck a great balance here with
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: the sun. A great deal may and you can shine
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: to unshine too much sun. Yeah, and it's working out awesome. Uh.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: The idea of nuclear winter is that there would be
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: enough ash from and smoke. It's really not the fallout
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: from the nuclear bombs themselves, from what I understand, it's
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: more of the smoke from the resulting fires that would
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: cause the blacking out of the sky and the sun
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: not getting through it. Yeah, but everything I read across
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: the board said it's almost the smoke that goes on.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: It's true. Yeah, I mean you you you shouldn't negate
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: the idea that like nuclear radiation poisoning is going to
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: kill a lot of people as a result. But the
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: blacking out of the skies is due to the smoke
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: from fire, exactly from the bomb that happened. Right. So
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: this whole thing, the context of it again comes from
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: the seventies, right, chuck uh Yeah. In eighties, the yeah
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: and and back. And I think that a group issued
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: a statement that said, you know, there probably wouldn't be
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: that big of a fallout from nuclear explosions. A few
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: years after that, another group, I think that the first
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: two groups, the National Academy of Scientists. Another group said,
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: you know what, we don't think that's exactly true. We
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: think that there probably is some sort of, um, there
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: will be something, but our models are too um primitive
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: to say for certain what the fallout would be a
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: few years after that, Carl Sagan and his crew get
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: together and said, um, no, there's going to be serious consequences.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: And here's what they are billions of lives lost, billions
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: and billions, right. And one of the things they based
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: this on, this idea on that if you spew a
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: bunch of smoke or particulate matter into the atmosphere, that
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: it will have a negative um influence on the global climate.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: Is past history from volcanic eruptions. Yes, uh, most noted. Well,
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: there are a few over the years, but one of
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: the notable ones in eighty three at the time then
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: the dust Dutch East Indies now Indonesia Krakatoa. That volcano
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: was massive to the tune of thirty six thousand deaths
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: just from the volcano. And this is in Krakatoa in
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: three Yeah, there's only people there somehow, It's not like
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: it was super populated. And two thirds of Krakatoa collapsed. Uh.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: The smoke rose up and warmed the global temperature global
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: by two point two degrees fahrenheit. I think, No, it
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: lowered it, yeah, lowered. Sorry, it took five years uh
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: for temperatures to return to normal. And it affected this
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: was in Indonesia, and it actually they think increased the
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: rainfall in Los Angeles by more than double that next year.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: That's in l A in southern California. So that was
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: the Krakatoa blast from eight three, right, yeah, and that
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: it literally changed the color of the sky for like
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: years afterwards. The sky was red um such that they think,
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: you know, the scream, the painting the screen. Yeah, yeah,
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: the red sky they think that's the way this guy
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: looked was because of this volcano. It's so neat that crazy.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: That guy was like, that volcano was crazy. Let's what
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: the man is saying. And that's just one of them.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: What was the other one in Mount Tambora. Yeah, Indonesia
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: once again. Yeah, Indonesia's got bad luck with the volcanoes
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: back in the nineteenth century. And this was actually earlier
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: in eighteen fifteen. Yeah, I remember learning about this when
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: I was a kid, because Ohio got it really bad
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: volcano and off in Indonesia in eighteen fifteen and the
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: following year much of the United States did not have
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: a summer. It was actually called the Year without a Summer.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: In Ohio was affected so well yeah, well yeah, there
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: was like snow on the ground in the middle of July.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: Do you learn that in state history class? I did?
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: I remember that? Uh yeah, Georgia State History. That that
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: was like a full course at our school. Half of
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: it was just sitting around with the teacher, like staring
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: off into the distance. I remember ours was just like
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: a lot of talk about Crawford Long and the Civil War. Yeah,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: we've even talking about Crawford Long in ours because he
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: wasn't from Georgia. Anthony Wayne. Yeah, the Battle of Fallen Timbers. Yeah. Uh,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: well that summer without a winter, year without a summer.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: Im and then there's some like canals and locks that
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: donkeys used to pull barges on. Yeah. I just remember
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: Crawford Long and a lot of racism. Yeah basically, yeah,
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: uh that's right. So that was Mount Timboro, the year
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: without summer. Um. There have been other events like when, um,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: the oil fields burned during the during the war in
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: the early nineties. Yeah, apparently Carl Sagan predicted basically a
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: nuclear winner from that. Yeah, that's pan out. Yeah, that's
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: where they take some flak. Was um, it was not
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: nearly as bad to fall out from nut smoke as
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Sagan predicted. But what can you do but predict. You're
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: gonna be wrong. Yeah, occasionally, surely you're going to be wrong.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: It doesn't mean you should be like, oh, well that
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: smoke didn't do much, so let's start building nuclear bombs again.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: Well that's the whole thing, Chuck. I am so glad
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: you said that, because that's the whole mad thing to
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: this argument, because it's like, what are you arguing in
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: favor for If you're arguing against the idea of what
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: precisely are you arguing four? Yeah, like it won't be
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: that bad. We'll talk a little bit more about it,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: like later on in the show what some people have
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: argued about. But it seems like what you say, ultimately
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: you're arguing in favor of more nuclear weapons that seems
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: wrongheaded by definition. Well not even just that, but using
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: them won't be as bad as you say, right, not
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: just have them, but well the fallout wouldn't be as
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: bad as they all predict, so use them. You almost
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: get the impression like they're just like, well, let's just
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: find out. Let's just shake a couple off and find
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: out what happens. Come on, you'll see him, right, And
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: then as they die from smoke inhalation, they say it
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: was wrong? What have I done? Oh goodness, let's take
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: a break, all right, let's do, and we'll come back
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: and we'll talk a little bit more about the nuclear winner.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: I said nuclear ingest, but I know I heard the
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: break good stuff, all right. I just want to point
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: that out because some people might think it was serious,
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: and now that you said it was ingest, some people
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: are like, maybe that man was my hero. I posted
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: something on Facebook the other day that said, you're sciencing
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: wrong as a joke, and people called me out there. Look,
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: I thought the century you could use like everything is
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: a verb. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, people have gotten extremely serious,
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: extremely self serious, and I'm a not self serious person.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: So I don't fit in in today's world. You're a
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: relic all dinosaur. It just a stupid, laughing dinosaur. Speaking
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: of dinosaurs, well, I guess we should talk about the
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: KT boundary extinction event, which was some people, some in
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: science if theorize that that's what happened to the dinosaurs.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: Was there was an impact winter, not quite the same
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: as a nuclear winter, but the same effect as a
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: nuclear winter due to the impact of an asteroids, right,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: and that would have happened at the border of the
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: Cretaceous in Tertiary periods. Again, when the dinosaurs all died
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: off still inexplicably. There's no there's no definitive answer. Again,
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: though we're talking science, No one found a journal diary today.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Something is streaking through the sky and it's making everyone nervous.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: It's very hot now. But I noticed the dinosaurs are dying,
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: so that's good. Oh this is a dinosaur writing in
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: my opinion, so that's bad. Right, Uh okay, So let's
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: talk nuclear winner, right, you you you kind of said
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: it earlier. But the whole idea behind nuclear winner is
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: that if you shoot off nuclear bombs, especially a bunch
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: of them. And you have to understand, at the time
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: that um scientists were really starting to debate this, there
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: were like seventy thousand nuclear warheads, like many, many times
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: more nuclear warheads in existence in like the early eighties
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: than there were today. And when they started debating them,
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: they really took up this cause because the Reagan administration
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: was saying, we need the star Wars program because we
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: can we can prevent almost with you know, certainty, a
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: Soviet nuclear attack with laser guns exactly. And so the
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: scientists who were concerned scientists, basically anti nuke scientists, said
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: wait a minute, there's something that you guys aren't thinking
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: through here. If you do that, the Soviets are gonna say, well,
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: wait a minute, if this thing is effective, then we
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: need to build up our nuclear arsenal so that when
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: we shoot everything we got at them still that ten
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: percent will totally annihilate the United States. That the presence
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: of the star Wars program was going to to to
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: put the nuclear arms race into even higher gear than
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: it already was. So they very much took it upon
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: themselves to to tackle this with science, but also publicize
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: it and sell it to the public. And it's that
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: that's stuck in the craw of a lot of other scientists,
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: particularly scientists who were in favor of nuclear proliferation as
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: a matter of national defense. The point of it is,
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: when they tackled this, they said, Um, here's the big
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: problem with it. If you shoot off a bunch of
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: nuclear bombs, a lot, a lot, a lot of nuclear
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: bombs which could totally go off as far as the
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: nuclear war is concerned, Um, it's going to cause a
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: lot of smoke to enter the atmosphere. And that is
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: where this domino effect is going to create this global
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: catastrophe and the whole outcome of it is based on
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: the number of nukes that you shoot off, which is
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: basically what Carl Sagan and his buddy Richard Turco divided
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: the different types of nuclear winter into. That's right, Mr
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: Sagan and Mr Turko. Are they doctors? Let's just call
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: everyone a doctor. Well, yeah, he was. Carl Sagan was
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: a doctor of astro chemistry, I believe, and Richard Turco is, Um,
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: he's a veterinarian. I can't remember what he was. Uh.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: They wrote a book called A Path Where No Man Thought,
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: A Path Where No Man Thought, and uh, that seemed
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: like there would be one more word there. Um. And
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: they have one to three, four or five six scenarios
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: for what a nuclear winter might look like, ranging from
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: minimal to extreme. Uh and minimal best case scenario, which
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: is just a little bit of a nuclear attack, not
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: many bombs going off, maybe like let's say Hiroshima or
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: not Kazaking. We'll talk about those were like, yeah, that
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: means that there would be minimal cloud cover, uh, not
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: much environmental impact globally, and um, the targeted areas would
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: be wiped out, of course, but the world itself would
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: not have big consequences, right, atmospherically, So if you are
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: talking nuclear war, especially a cold war nuclear war, that
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: was a fairly unlikely scenario. By the time this the
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: early nighties rolls around and people started talking about the
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: concept of a nuclear winner, those like Hiroshima Nagasaki level
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: nuclear bombs were like attached the average fighter jet. They
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: were considered like just tactical, like you just could shoot
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: them off on the battlefield if you needed to. So
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: the idea that it would just amount to that is unlikely.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: It was, but that's the best case scenario they're trying
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: to cover. All. Yes, Number two was marginal all uh
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: And that's a few detonations uh again in the northern hemisphere,
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: and they said it would lower the temperature by a
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: few degrees and there would be some crops in some
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: agriculture that suffered, and probably some famine, but it would
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: not uh. Oh black rain, of course, but who wants
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: that did happen in Hiroshima? Uh? They drank it and
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: died from packing it to go. Yes, because it was
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: radioactive rain. Yeah, but they drank it because they were
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: thirsty because they had no water. It's devastating you and
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: everyone should have to go to the city of Hiroshima, Like,
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: it is amazing what they've done to to preserve what
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: happened there as like a teaching lesson for everyone. Yeah,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: it's really moving. We should have one of those here.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: We should Instead people are like, yeah, Japan forced the
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: US to drop the bomb. It's fact, which is not correct, right.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: Uh so black rain would happen in that marginal scenario. Man,
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: this is a really political episode, isn't. I think anytime
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: you tackle nuclear war it's going to be divisive because
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: some people think it's awesome nuke the Wales got a
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: nuke something. Things below the equator in that scenario in
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: the southern hemisphere would be just fine. So here's something
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: that I found really interesting and wrong in this um
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: analysis of it. Sagan. I guess he was strictly talking
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: about atmospheric effects, but he mentions like famine and stuff
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: like that. The thing is that would have a global
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: effect for sure, Yeah, the rest of the world. It
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: depends in large part on North American wheat and corn.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: So if there's a nuclear fallout in North America that
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: affects our crop yields dramatically and causes famin in the US,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: it's gonna cause famine elsewhere to I think what he's
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: saying is as far as climatologically speaking, what he in
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: Turco or saying is, as long as you're not shooting
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: off nuclear bombs in the southern hemisphere, it's gonna climatologically speaking,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: be unaffected or largely inaffective because the wind goes down
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: to the equator and then back up like the equator
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: separates the hemispheres. As far as the atmosphere is concerned, Yeah, totally,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: there would still be global troubles, yes, Uh, but in
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: reading all these scenarios that made me really want to
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: move to Australia. Well that's another thing too. How many
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: people would be like, I need to get out of
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: the United States, so I'm moving down to Mexico, I'm
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: moving down to Brazil, or I'm moving down to Australia,
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: and then the infrastructure in those countries are just super
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: stressed because of the northern hemisphere that survived, and suddenly
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: moving down to the southern hemisphere with another widespread effect
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: Mexico would help you too much? Though, Well, what weren't
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: they like super helpful in uh Independence Day? Was the
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: Independence day or the morning or No, the day after tomorrow,
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: everybody starts having to move south because North America is
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: just frozen n ice sheet. Yeah, but I just mean
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: as far as you'd have to go pretty far south,
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: further south in Mexico if you want to escape the
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: atmospheric fallout. Oh, you're right, so Ecuador. Yeah, Like what
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: is it like half of Africa and South America and
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: the hemisphere half. Yeah, so the northern hemisphere would show
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: up at the southern Hemisphere's doorstep and be like Christmas
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: in July. We'll get used to it. That's right. Your
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: drain goes the other way when you release the water
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: from the tub needo, and I know Christmas doesn't fall
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: in July. It was a metaphorical statement everyone. Nominal nuclear
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: winners number three, uh, that is what they consider the
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: low end full scale nuclear war, but still full scale
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: six thousand to twelve thousand nuclear weapons. That's all just
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: six to twelve thousand nuclear bombs, and we're talking um
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: a megaton or more bombs and a good time was
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: um I think fifty Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs combined, So
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: twelve thousand times fifty of those for this kind of
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: nominal nuclear war. That's a lot of zeros. Uh. They
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: predicted noon sunlight would be about a third of what
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: it was. Global temperature drops of eighteen degrees. That's bad news,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: my friend. Um, it would destroy a lot of the
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: ozone layer. Uh. And again the Southern hemisphere wouldn't experience
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: major climactic change. Just cut to the Southern hemisphere. They're
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: all at the beach. There's like topical music playing, but
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: they have no wheat, right, who needs wheat? When you
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: got wrong drinks? Dude, that's a tea shirt. Josh Clark
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: said that one uh number four substantial, that is full
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: scale nuclear war, UM, freezing temperatures, big time fallout. The
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: whole day would be like it's we cast um. Billions
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: of humans dead, billions, billions and billions species going extinct um.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: And finally possible damage to the Southern hemisphere finally possibly uh.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: And then the last two we can just bunch together.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: I think severe and extreme um less than one percent
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: of the sunlight getting through for months and months on end,
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: global temperature dropping, no photosynthesis happening, every crop dying, all
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: life perishing. Let's just go ahead and wrap it up
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: right there. As Robert puts it um, most of the
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: planet's life would perish within the chili comfines of this
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: black atmospheric tomb. Yeah, he's got a little love craft
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: in him. Done this unnamable tomb. Um, chuckers. Let's take
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: another break and then we will come back and talk
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: about um the fallout from nuclear winner theory. So Um,
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: like we said, Carl Sagan and his friends got together
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: and basically took it upon themselves to educate the public
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: about the potential catastrophe that could happen as a result
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: of nuclear war. Everybody before was like, Yeah, that would
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: really suck to be in a city that a nuclear
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: bomb went off on, but maybe it wouldn't be my city.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: I live in Schenectady, New York's going to bomb connected,
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: so I'm probably gonna be Okay. These guys said, Hey,
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: Western civilism nation, not just in the US but also
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: the USSR. That's not necessarily the case. You two will
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: be affected. There's gonna be big problems after this after
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: a nuclear war. So much so that let's make sure
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: that our leaders never do this right. Wake up basically
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: is what they were doing. And so Um Sagan and
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: his friends created a paper and it's now called the
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: t Taps paper after all of their names, right Ackerman, Okay.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: And they wrote this paper and had it published in Science,
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: the pre eminent scientific journal in the United States. It
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: was a big deal that they also held a very
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: well publicized conference, and Carl Sagan, apparently without the the
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: group's knowledge or blessing, went off and also wrote a
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: piece of Parade magazine, Yeah, to make sure that every
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: dick and Jane in the US knew about this. It
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: was like a three page article about the nuclear winner,
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: which is a new term at the time, complete with
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: illustrations where like the earth was like the dead, lifeless,
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: what's called like a gray chalk billiard ball basically, um,
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: just really scary stuff. And then he also simultaneously wrote
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: another longer piece that was in Foreign Affairs. Um, that's
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: a little more wonky. So Sagan went off after writing
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: this this scientific paper and publicized it to policymakers and
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: to the American public. This is the early and yes,
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: and you this was before all the sciences and this
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: is from the first paper, before the first papers conference
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: was even held, right, And a lot of people, including
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: people who were on his side about this issue, were
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: really mad at him because it opened up the this
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: group and the whole idea of nuclear winner to allegations
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: that they were fearmongering and that they were basically trying
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: to sell the public on science, which is, you know,
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: that's not what science does. Yes, pure science is about
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: research and coming up with facts, and whether they're popular
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: or unpopular, it doesn't matter. Sciences science and fact is fact, right.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: A good theory is a good theory. But these guys
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: again were concerned that something really, really bad could happen,
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: and they went to the trouble of taking it upon
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: themselves to advertise it to the public. But again second
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: going off and do this, it really opened them up
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: for a lot of allegations and debate that took place afterwards.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: But some say that the uh, their work and the
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: te Taps report actually did help cool things down, uh
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: in the Cold War a little bit. Yeah, And I
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: mean it wasn't just these American scientists. They worked with
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: Soviet scienceists as well, and apparently, um, sometimes it went good,
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: sometimes it didn't go so well, But they're both sides
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: were working on this issue, and the fact that it
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: got so much publicity actually created a firestorm of back
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: and forth in the scientific community, and this issue ended
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: up getting really well studied. Yeah, it it and uh.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: Seven years later they revised the report and uh it
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: had new, more modernized data and it um wasn't quite
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: as dire, which some critics are like, all right, that
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: this is a little more reasonable. Yes, they revised it
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: to call it the nuclear Autumn. Yeah, and everyone loves autumn. Yeah,
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: autumn all the time. They'd be wonderful. Oh man, that
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: would be wonderful Chuck's world. Uh, and they there are
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: disagreements over that still, and they basically there's um a
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: few four variables that are always the factors that are
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: the unknowns, and it's really they're all to me kind
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: of one four versions of the same variable, which is,
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: we don't know how much smoke there would be, Yes,
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: we just don't know, uh. And number one is how
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: much material is there to burn? So the idea is
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: you drop a bomb on a city, a nuclear bomb,
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: and everything catches on fire, and that creates tremendous amounts
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: of smoke. But since these are all theoretical and you
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: don't know what would happen if you drop something the
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: size on like let's say a major city like New York.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: They like, what would be there to burn? Like, we
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: just don't know. Well, that's that's yeah. So if you
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: dropped it on a city, is it an old city
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: that's that isn't supermodern and therefore isn't built out of
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: like lots of plastic that can get into the atmosphere
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: and really mess things up. Yeah, like the really bad stuff. Yeah,
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: if it's an old city, maybe the burning wouldn't be
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: so bad even after a nuclear holocaust. Um. Or maybe
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: you're not shooting nuclear bombs to cities but to other
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: nuclear installations that are out in the middle of like
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: nowhere in Nebraska. Um, because we have I mean we've
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: there's been like two thousand nuclear bombs detonated, but they
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: only two on the city's exactly. Everything else has been
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: out of the ocean or out in the middle of
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: nowhere and there's been no fire. Right. Um. The assumption
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: is is that though if you shot a nuclear bomb
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: at an at a modern city, a lot of really
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: toxic smoke would be produced. That's probably the worst case scenario,
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: and both the immediate nuclear holocaust and the fallout the
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: nuclear winner as a result. Because of all the smoke
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: that would be created. I mean, look at the fallout
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: from nine eleven and that was two buildings. Uh. The
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: second variable is how much would remain in the atmosphere
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: and then how much goes back to the earth. Yeah,
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: no one really knows that at all. How much sunlight
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: would be deflected? Again, just theorizing, and you can go
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: back and plug in these numbers. The problem is, if
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: you're a detractor of nuclear winner theory, you would say,
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: where'd you get that number? You know? And you could
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: take every number and come up with a different model
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: for each one. They usually don't do that, but even still,
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: it's like which one is going to be the one?
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: And again it goes back to how much smoke would
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: there be to begin? And then finally when did it happen? Um,
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: if it was actually in winter, perhaps it's not so bad. Yeah,
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: nuclear winter and winter ironically is the best case scenario,
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: the best case scenario of the bad scenarios. So they
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: did initially back off of their findings. They said that
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: it was there could initially be like a thirty five
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: to forty degree drop in global temperatures. Um, it's celsius,
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: So we're talking like seventy degrees seventy two degrees fahrenheight
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: drop in temperature. So that's a full on nuclear war, yes. Um.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: Later on, as they revised their findings and more again, more,
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: more and more scientists got involved and studied this issue.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: They came upon what seemed to be a consensus that
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: you could probably count on something like a fifteen degree
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: celsius drop in um global temperatures, which would be substantial
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: and could still have widespread effects. Right, So this from
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: this debate, nuclear winner kind of got settled on. There
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: was a scientific consensus that came about, and there was
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: also consensus that not only would UM there'll be huge
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: problems inland, there would be ocean oceanic problems as well
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: because one of the things one of the great casualties
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: of detonating nuclear bombs is the ozone layer. UM. The
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: fireball from the blast burns up nitrogen converting into nitrogen oxide.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: Nitrogen oxide just punches holes, basically chemically burns the ozone layer.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: So then when all that smoke that's acting as like
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: an umbrella that's blocking out the sunlight falls back to Earth,
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: all that particular matter falls back to Earth and is radioactive.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: By the way, now the sunlight that does come through
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: is way hotter and has way more UV light than
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: it had before the nuclear bombs went off. We had
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: our little delicate balance that's disrupted exactly. The problem with
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: that for the oceans is that that you V light
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: would likely be too intense for phytoplankton at the ocean surface. Well,
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: that is the keystone species for the ocean aquatic environments.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: The ecosystems all start with phytoplankton. Zooplankton feed on phytoplankton,
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: Little fish feed on zooplankton, Larger fish feed on little fish,
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: and so on and so on until if so, if
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: you get rid of the phytoplankton, you're in big trouble.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: So there would be huge ramifications, and science came to
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: a consensus on this, but again it was attacked very
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: early on by nuclear proliferation hawks as basically being against
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: the interests of United States national security, and then later
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: on it continued to be attacked. It became a customary
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: traditional flash point among conservatives as a great example of
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: the links that hippie h environmental scientists will go to
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: to to dupe the American public into being scared about
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: nuclear bombs and and just nuclear stuff in general. Like
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: Michael Crichton famously attacked it in a two three speech
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: and he his whole thing. He he was very famously
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: a climate denier. He was a climate skeptic until his
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: death as far as I know. Um, yeah, and and
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: he wrote some great books. But it's also like contrarian
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: by nature is what he said as well. But I
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: get the impression that he tended to land on the
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: more conservative, anti environmental side. And on this case, he
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: also attacked the Nuclear Winner as well. And what he
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: accused these guys of doing is is creating science by consensus, right,
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: That to me is that's just like a one two
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: sucker punch. So the initial scientists that that challenged, um
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Nuclear Winner said, you guys can't even agree. There's no consensus,
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: like you can't be certain and what you're saying, so
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: therefore we don't need to take you seriously. So they said, okay,
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: you know what, We're gonna get all these scientists around
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: the world together to study this issue and we're gonna
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: come to a consensus. And when they did years later,
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: guys like Michael Crichton said, you guys are practicing science
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: by consensus and politicizing science. It's not real science. So
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: it's like they were very much damned if they did
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: and damned if they didn't, and ultimately you just have
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: to kind of decide is it worth the risk. Maybe
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: we can't say for certain, and at the time you
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: couldn't say for certain. What's cool is that some of
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: these same climate scientists are still at work and they
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: have come up with fairly recent models, using very sophisticated
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: climate models. Compared to the stuff they were using back
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: in the eighties and even the nineties, The stuff they're
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: using now says, actually, we think nuclear winner might be
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: worse than was initially predicted. Yeah, and even if it's
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: not a full scale nuclear war, I think the worry
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: there's not as much work these days for something like that. Uh,
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: what the worry is now is that some rogue nation
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: gets ahold of one or maybe even not a rogue nation,
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: just Indian Pakistan drop a couple of nuclear bombs. Well,
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: that's the model, and like that is entirely possible. I
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: think of one megaton detonation is what they did this
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: model on, and it was it had a substantial effect. Yeah,
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: they said ten years of smoke clouds in a three
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: year temperature drop of about two point to five degrees fahrenheit,
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: which doesn't sound like much. But if you go back
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: and you read that scientists study. His executive summary of
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: the study, he points out that that kind of drop
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: ultimately equals a shortened growing season by ten to twenty days,
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: and that last ten to twenty days makes or breaks
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: a crop Like that means you can either harvest it
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: or it dies before it matures and can be harvested.
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: And so even just a couple of degrees can lead
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: to widespread crop failure. Yeah, but this is just if
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: Indian Pakist then shoot fifty bombs at one another in
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: a regional war, it could have that effect around the world. Uh.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: So we mentioned Hiroshima, Nagasaki. Um, those are the only
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: places we can look, But like we pointed out, the
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: bombs were so different back then, it's not the best comparison.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: But as far as looking at what kind of fires
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: could happen, you can't tell a whole lot. Um In
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: Hiroshima there were more fires than in Nagasaki, just because
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: of the way the geography is in the two cities.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: But um, in neither case did they see a ton
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: of uh secondary fires Like it wasn't blacking out the sky.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: There was, there was black rain, but um apparently you know,
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: like a week later, uh, most of that stuff had
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: had cleared up. But again that is you can't even
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: really compare the two. Now it's a single kill a
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: ton bomb, yeah exactly, we're talking a fifty of the
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: going off in the same area. But that report that
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: you mentioned on just like if Indian Pakistan, Um, well
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: how much was it tin megatons? No, it was one megaton,
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: so fifty of the Hiroshima and um Nagasaki mombs, Well
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: it was enough to cause the Atomic Scientists Science and
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: Security Board to move the doomsday clock two minutes closer
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: to midnight. Uh. And the doomsday clock is uh. Some
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: people say it's good science, some people say they're fearmongering.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: But what it is is it is uh. It's a
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: design that basically says, here's how close we are to
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: destroying ourselves as a civilization. And um, there are a
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: lot of factors that go into it, like biotechnology or
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: cyber technology, but the main two are obviously nuclear weapons
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: and climate change are the two main things that factor
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: into where the doomsday clock sits. And uh, I think
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties they've only changed it. How many
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: times eighteen times since it was created nineteen forty seven
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: have they changed the hands on the clock? Uh? In
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, it was at two minutes till midnight.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: In the early nineteen fifties. Um, the best I think
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: it's been in the early nineties was seventeen minutes till midnight. Yeah,
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: then they feel good. That's a lot of time. What
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: do we are right now? Right now, we are the
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: closest we've been since nineteen eighty three. Uh. And on
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: January twenty two of this year, it was changed to UM,
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: three minutes till midnight is where they sit. And they
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: have a big had a big press release. I'll just
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: read the opening and closing paragraphs. The opening paragraph in
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: Unchecked climate Change, Global nuclear weapon modernizations and outsize nuclear
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: weapons arsenals pose extraordinary and undeniable threats to the continued
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: to existence of humanity, and world leaders have failed to
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: act with the speed or on the scale required to
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: protect citizens from potential catastrophe. These failures of political leadership
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: and endanger every person on Earth. And then the final paragraph,
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: and there's lots of fun stuff in between, just like
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: fart jokes and stuff, and then they close with with
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: the clock hand move forward to three minutes to midnight.
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: The board feels compelled to add with a sense of
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: great urgency, the probability of global catastrophe is very high,
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: and the actions needed to reduce the risk of disaster
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: must be taken very soon. They'll mess around, uh And
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: even though that we've um we had been doing a
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: good job of reducing the amount of warheads between the
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: United States and Russia, but things have slowed to a
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: snails pace now. From two thousand nine to two thousand thirteen,
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: Obama cut only three nine warheads from the stockpile. And
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: they're basically saying, we're not doing this as fast as
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: we need you too, like we need to act now. Yeah. Well,
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: there's other people who are saying we need to rebuild
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: their nuclear arsenal because it's aging and rotting and will
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: be useless. By how are we going to drop nuclear
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: bombs on people in the future. It's it's weird, like
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: some people are trying to reignite the Cold War. Well,
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: I don't agree with it, but I know that most
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: of those people aren't saying, hey, so we can bomb people,
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: it's so we can keep each other in check, which
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: was the Cold War. We could also over again get
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: rid of nuclear bombs entirely. We could do that. Um.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: And you know, Sagan's the whole thing I should say.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: And it's funny that he's kind of like the villain
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: of this whole thing, of the whole nuclear winner debate,
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: because he's such a revered figure, such a great guy.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: But he really, I purposefully made some serious missteps as
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: far as publicizing the results went before they were fully in.
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: But his whole thing was and if you read his
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: foreign policy thing, his article, it's really really good. Um,
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: it's not too of two so like it's kind of
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: fun to read. But it's called nuclear war and Climactic
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: Catastrophe colon some policy implications and he says like, we
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: don't know, you know, what the what the right answer is.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: We don't know if it's entirely possible that nuclear winner.
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: Maybe our ideas are overblown or whatever. But he says,
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: I'm not willing to take the chance. Why should we
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: take the chances? It's like why risk it? Right? So
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: his solution is, how about this US and USS are,
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: how about you de escalate the arms race, de proliferate
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: until you get down to a threshold that science hasts said. Okay,
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: nuclear winner probably couldn't happen beyond this payload. Right, So
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: even if all the nuclear bombs in the world at
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: this lower number, we're set off, we still wouldn't go
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: into nuclear winter. Right. But you guys can take out
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: all of your major city centers and still fight your
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: nuclear war, but the rest of the world won't won't
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: be destroyed by it. Yeah, that was his solution, and
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: no one took him up on it. I've never understood.
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: I don't know, man, we'll we'll do one on climate
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: change at some point too. But I've never understood why
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: people and I get the economics play factor, but why
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: risking the future of mankind for your ancestors to follow
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: is worth it. A lot of it is fear, like
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: a lot of these people who have over the last decades,
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: you know, push for that kind of thing, like fear
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: that you know, the US will be caught with his
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: pants down, like genuinely feared the Soviet Union, and like
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: their heart was in it like that. But I mean,
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: if it's fascinating to me this whole like basically secret
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: publicity war that's been going that what went on throughout
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: the twentie and it's well into the twenty one centuries.
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: There's a book again, I think I mentioned it called
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: merch and some doubt everybody should read. Yeah, and you
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: know what, save your emails to me because you can
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: still think what you want to think. Yeah, I just
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: I just personally don't get it. I'm not gonna throw
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: stones at you and say you're wrong. I probably should,
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: but that won't because it's not nice to throw stones.
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: It isn't Chuck. Are you good? I'm great. If you
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: want to know more about Nuclear Winner, you can read
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: this fine article written by Robert Lamb by typing Nuclear
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: Winner in the search part how stuff works dot com.
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: Since I said search parts, time for listener mail. Oh no,
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: my friend, it's time for d all right. This is
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: the time that we all know one love. When Josh
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: and I read out and say thanks, we give thanks.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: We should call this Thanksgiving and not administrative details. Okay, ready, no, no,
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: that's okay, uh, because administrative details is such a weird name.
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: This is long. It's meant to be. Uh So, this
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: is when we thank people for the for the very
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: kind gifts that they have sent us over the months.
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: And dude, I think this goes back all the way
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: to January for me. Oh man, I've got one for
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: Christmas cookies. The Mona collent Tine and Grandma colling Tine.
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: I think we always say her name wrong. By the way, No,
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: I think she corrected us in staid it was like Valentine.
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: So I think I'm saying it right. Man, It's gonna
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: be so mad at all. Right, is the administrative detailed
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: music playing? It sounds like it great, can't you hear that?
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: I'll get it started with. Richard sent us a guide
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: to the round things of the Solar System. Very fun,
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: very nice. I remember that. Yeah, Blair sent us a
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: plug in key holder. You come home, plug your key
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: chain in and you never forget it. It's pretty awesome. Actually,
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: you can get them on Amazon Electric socket unplugged chain holder.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: Search for that. It will bring it up. That's right.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: I got a postcard, very nice post carred from Jean
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: Pierre Bonasco and Stephanie Crick from Port Lockroy, Antarctica. Nice
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: and it's worth saying again thank you to Mona Colling
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: Tine and Grandma calling time for Christmas cookies. We look
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: forward to them again this year, yes, we certainly do.
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: Oh we've gotten Newgat, homemade Newgat from christin Ferguson. Okay,
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: it's so delicious. I am hooked on that stuff. It's great.
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: It is she you can find her at Solace Sweets. Man,
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: it is so good. Yeah. Kristen has been sending us
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: this homemade Newgat for years and I was always like,
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, nugat, I don't know about that, and then
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: I put up my mouth. It's amazing stuff. It's really
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: good enough. Uh. And then we also got some sweets
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: from Dude Sweet Chocolate out of Texas. I think they
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: might be out of Dallas. They made like they sent
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: us really great chocolate. But they also make these incredible
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: marshmallows too. They made a sweet potato marshmallow, and dudes
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: at Dude Sweet Chocolate, thank you for those. They were amazing.
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: Yumi was crazy for those marshmelloss like I am for
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: the Newgat. That was the bounty. I remember that as
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: always every Christmas. Our buddy Aaron Cooper in Kansas sends
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: us great pronounce of these great photoshops that he does
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: of us that he puts online and you can see
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: him on Internet round up. Yeah, we even got T
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: shirts this year of Shake Gavara, Josh and Chuck. So
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: Coop you're the best. Yeah, that is true, Coop Uh,
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: Mark Allen and the Trade Monkey team sent us some
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: beautiful jewelry made by female artisans in Southeast Asia and
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: traded fairly key are Buddy band Astrims in this book?
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: Which one? Which book? Well, he's always sending his stuff,
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: so honestly can't even remember which book, but we have
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: like boxes full of things that he sent. He sent
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: us a CD of The Shags Philosophy of the World,
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: you know, what's known as the worst album ever recorded.
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: Got it in my death here. The problem is my
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: computer doesn't have a CD drive any longer. Have you
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: noticed that's gone? Yeah, computers don't have those any longer.
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: Try to find it on my computer. I defy you.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: I was like, what's that little slot and you're like,
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: that's where the tissues come out. It's a coffee cup holder.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: Our buddies from Venice's Sinking Band sent us an LP
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: sand and lines and a c D. What we do
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: is secret and there are our friends from Athens, Georgia. Huge,
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: huge thanks to Hillary Lowsar, who has sent us a
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: lot of cheese over the last year, some of the
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: best cheese flathead like cheese in Montana, which like they
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: make a happy gooda that's to die for. It is
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: very good at flathead like cheese. And she sent us
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: some awesome T shirts that's a mouth feel on them. Yeah,
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: our bar episode. She's the best. She and her husband
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: Mike have been big time fans. They're very active on
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: our Facebook page and they like drove to Seattle for
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: our show for months from Montana. Yeah, she's a teacher. Yeah.
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: And they sent um you me and Emily earrings. So
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: thanks for that from all of us. Terry got nothing.
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: Uh Tommy Luke Rick, Uh, Tommy look Rich, Lucric lut Rich.
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: He said, it's a nice letter man. His last name
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: you say four times. Well, he's the guy. He's walking
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: from Seattle in New York City. And if you want
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: to follow this, I don't. He might be there by now. Uh.
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: Tommy Walks dot tumbler dot com. You can check that out. Okay, um, huge,
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: huge thanks from me personally to Loris No, who I
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: don't know if you remember when we did the Hot
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: Wheels episode, boy do I I said that the hot
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: Wheels I would love to have was this like uh
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: like station wagon camper. That's a good time camper on
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: I remember shemailed it to me. That's pretty remarkable. Yep,
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: So thank you very much, lauris No. That was very
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: nice of you. Yeah, if anyone's listening. Uh, my favorite
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: hot wheel was the one that had a thousand dollars
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: stuffed in the body of the car. Um Stephen, uh,
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: Stephen Brahm. He sent as some currency bank notes which
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: I've never collected money, but he sent a nineteen fifty
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: three dollar certificate in nineteen fifty seven series two dollar
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: bill in in eighteen seventy four fractional currency ten cent note. Yeah,
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: that was pretty neat. I think you got the ten
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: cent note, didn't you, because I spent it on candy. No,
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: what's this, it's incense, sir, It's a fraction of a note. Uh.
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: Meteor all Just Michael Herb, who also moons Moonlights as
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: a young adult murder mystery author, sent us a book
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: of one of his murder mysteries, Kevin McLeod in The
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: Seaside Storm. It's about a little weather detective. It's pretty cute.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: Jeff Payton sent us a book Darwin's Black Box, and Uh,
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: Bethany at the Base Element d dot base dot element
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: at gmail dot com. If you want any of the
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: fleur to sell caramel, she sent us, we can highly
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: recommend them. And I got one more from both of us.
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: Chuck all right, Dan Kent name ring a bell? Uh
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: it does? He sent us the pints of Planning the Elder. Yes,
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: thank you. That your top notch human being. I think
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: we met him in San Francisco or show. Yes. Thanks
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: yea the famous world renowned Planning the Elder beer, which
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: I finally tried and that was delicious. It is dealist ship. Uh,
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: thank you very much, everybody. We have more. If you
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: didn't hear your name, hang tight, We've got probably a
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: couple more episodes worth of administrative details or Thanksgiving is
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: what we're calling it now. And uh, in the meantime,
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: you can get in touch with us if you want
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: to tweet to us. It's s Y s K podcast.
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook dot com. It's Facebook
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know, send us an
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: email to Stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com,
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: and as always, join us at at home on the web.
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff Works
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: dot com