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How easy is it to steal a nuclear bomb? · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: find out more. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
0:33
Speaker 1: Josh Clark. Sitting across from me is the always likable
0:36
Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant so not so Oh, It's treat Chuck.
0:40
Speaker 1: Everybody likes you. You're the most affable fella. I know.
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Speaker 1: I used to think so you are. I believe you. Thanks. Yeah,
0:48
Speaker 1: Chuck's a little down today, So we're gonna talk about
0:50
Speaker 1: stealing nuclear bombs. Little pork me up Penal Bright in
0:53
Speaker 1: your day, wont it? Chuck? Of course you've seen the
0:57
Speaker 1: five Robert Zemecka's classic Back to the Few. Sure I
1:00
Speaker 1: knew you were going to bring that up. Well, you
1:02
Speaker 1: know me pretty well. I even wrote down Back to
1:04
Speaker 1: the Future in here somewhere we're in sync my friend.
1:08
Speaker 1: Arguably that was that was Thomas F. Wilson's greatest role. Um,
1:13
Speaker 1: who was that the guy who played Biff? No, Actually,
1:17
Speaker 1: I was looking at him on internet movie database. Guy
1:20
Speaker 1: has been in a lot of stuff. Huh, Well he's Biff.
1:24
Speaker 1: He was also an Ecttion Jackson. He had a cameos deff.
1:30
Speaker 1: It's like Frank Oz and the Blues Brothers. Um. Well,
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Speaker 1: if you remember, as I'm sure you do, since you
1:35
Speaker 1: wrote down Back to the Future on your notes, Um,
1:38
Speaker 1: there was a kind of a subplot going on with
1:41
Speaker 1: Doc and his dealings with Middle Eastern terrorists. I didn't
1:45
Speaker 1: remember that. I thought this was a podcast on Jigawatts
1:49
Speaker 1: get it? Yeah? Um, so, okay, well then you do
1:53
Speaker 1: remember that Doc was he was selling some plutonium to
1:58
Speaker 1: these terrorists, right, or they wanted plutoni him from it.
2:01
Speaker 1: And the reason of course that they wanted plutonium, he
2:03
Speaker 1: kept it for the dolorium by the way, of course. Okay,
2:06
Speaker 1: but the reason they wanted plutonium is because ostensibly they
2:10
Speaker 1: were going to manufacture a nuclear weapon, right, And that
2:13
Speaker 1: is not outside the realm of possibilities. Scarily enough, it's
2:17
Speaker 1: not Chuck. There was another movie too. They're back to
2:20
Speaker 1: the future too yet know was a movie called The
2:24
Speaker 1: Manhattan Project where a teenager steals enriched uranium to make
2:28
Speaker 1: an atomic bomb for his science project. I remember that,
2:32
Speaker 1: John Liftgal, Yes, bad movie. I haven't seen it, though
2:35
Speaker 1: it wasn't bad, And if I remember correctly, everyone as
2:39
Speaker 1: you would say, that was right in my wheelhouse. I
2:41
Speaker 1: was ten at the time and thinking of making my
2:43
Speaker 1: own nuclear weapons. Well, right, it's at the same time
2:46
Speaker 1: as war games, which we'll get to in a minute.
2:48
Speaker 1: Oh we will, yes, right, oh yeah. Seeing the agenda
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Speaker 1: that you have war games written down a well, this
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Speaker 1: one is rife with movie and TV references. So Chuck,
2:56
Speaker 1: let's talk about stealing a nuclear weapon. Um, how easy
3:01
Speaker 1: is it? Well, there's a first of all, we should
3:05
Speaker 1: go ahead and say it's probably impossible to steal a
3:08
Speaker 1: nuclear warhead. Okay, I'm not gonna go along with that. Really, yeah,
3:14
Speaker 1: it would be really, really difficult. It would not be difficult.
3:17
Speaker 1: Let's say you're Iran and uh it's and you're in
3:24
Speaker 1: contact with a bunch of kb KGB officers or maybe
3:27
Speaker 1: some Soviet military generals. The coups just happened. There's no
3:31
Speaker 1: longer USS are maybe your friends with somebody in Kazakhstan.
3:35
Speaker 1: All of these people had access to strategic and tactical
3:40
Speaker 1: nuclear arms. Actually, there was a huge question over what
3:44
Speaker 1: was going to happen with the former Soviet unions twenty
3:48
Speaker 1: seven thousand tactical and strategic nuclear weapons when the when
3:52
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union dissolved, what happened to him? Actually, there
3:56
Speaker 1: was a really good effort that was made by the
3:59
Speaker 1: former Soviet republics like Kazakhstan, UM and Ukraine and and
4:04
Speaker 1: all of these groups that actually we're already in fighting
4:07
Speaker 1: with Russia, UH and the Russian government to move all
4:12
Speaker 1: of these nukes into Russia. And I think they did
4:15
Speaker 1: it with pretty amazing speed. There were U n resolutions,
4:19
Speaker 1: there were talks between UM, the U S and the
4:21
Speaker 1: U and in Russia and these former Soviet republics, and
4:25
Speaker 1: everybody got their nukes back into Russian borders in Russian control.
4:30
Speaker 1: To see that. I read a Reuter's article when I
4:32
Speaker 1: was researching this, and that is one of the scenarios
4:34
Speaker 1: they pose as one way it could happen is during transport.
4:38
Speaker 1: That's when they're probably most vulnerable. Yeah, you would think so,
4:41
Speaker 1: intot but let's say you're in Iranian official, you got
4:43
Speaker 1: the you got the money, you got the means, And
4:46
Speaker 1: not to pick on Iran here, maybe we should go
4:48
Speaker 1: with Jamaica. I don't want to take off anyone in Iran,
4:52
Speaker 1: but let's say you know, you're a Jamaican official, You've
4:55
Speaker 1: got tons of cash, and um, you want a nuke.
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Speaker 1: There's a huge coup going on, there's the dissolution of
5:03
Speaker 1: a former superpower, and there's twenty seven thousand nukes out there.
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Speaker 1: If you got the money to to purchase one and
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Speaker 1: the means of getting it out of the country and
5:10
Speaker 1: back to Jamaica, my friend, you have a nuke. Yeah,
5:12
Speaker 1: I guess I was thinking in terms of these days,
5:14
Speaker 1: it's a lot more difficult than it would have been
5:16
Speaker 1: in so well, I think UH security has been tightened
5:21
Speaker 1: down somewhat. Do you think since ninety you're about to
5:25
Speaker 1: shoot me down? Right? You know not? From what I
5:28
Speaker 1: could tell from reading up on this is that it's
5:30
Speaker 1: more likely that someone could steal the components of a
5:32
Speaker 1: nuclear weapon and resembol it themselves, rather than load you know,
5:36
Speaker 1: thirty ft bomb on the back of their truck and
5:39
Speaker 1: drive it through borders, right Chuck, Which makes people with
5:42
Speaker 1: the information in their heads of how to assemble a
5:46
Speaker 1: nuclear bomb from all these various parts or you know,
5:49
Speaker 1: more to the point, what parts you'd need to make
5:51
Speaker 1: a nuclear bomb incredibly valuable. Absolutely. Have you heard of
5:55
Speaker 1: a q con? I have, but I know you're the man,
5:58
Speaker 1: the con man, nice one. Uh. Well, Khan actually is
6:02
Speaker 1: the father of Pakistani nuclear proliferation, which is a country's
6:07
Speaker 1: program that we're pretty worried about. Well, yeah, they well
6:10
Speaker 1: they have the bomb. India has the bomb. Uh. He
6:13
Speaker 1: also was under house arrest for five years from two
6:17
Speaker 1: thousand four until February two thou nine because he admitted
6:21
Speaker 1: to being involved in nuclear pro proliferation. Illegal nuclear proliferation.
6:28
Speaker 1: I can't say that, uh, in other countries like Libya, Iran,
6:33
Speaker 1: he was basically selling his knowledge to the highest bidder
6:37
Speaker 1: for their own nuclear program. Doesn't surprise me. So, I mean,
6:41
Speaker 1: it may be hard to steal. Actually, it's incredibly hard
6:44
Speaker 1: to put together a nuclear bomb. It's very hard to
6:47
Speaker 1: steal one. But if you really look at it, using
6:49
Speaker 1: maybe Akam's razor or something like that, it would actually
6:52
Speaker 1: probably be the easiest thing to do, would be to
6:54
Speaker 1: just go in and steal a nuclear bomb than stealing
6:57
Speaker 1: the parts. What's the easiest part to steal too when
7:01
Speaker 1: you want to assemble a nuclear bomb? Well, the easiest
7:03
Speaker 1: part would be the explosive mechanism, the T and T,
7:07
Speaker 1: which you need a lot of. You know, enrich uranium
7:10
Speaker 1: doesn't do much on its own. You need to explode it, sure,
7:13
Speaker 1: as they say, and that would be the easiest part.
7:16
Speaker 1: Um you'd have to build a casing for it, which
7:19
Speaker 1: wouldn't be super easy, but it's at least something you
7:21
Speaker 1: can manufacture yourself. And the hardest thing would probably be
7:25
Speaker 1: to get the enriched super enriched uranium plutonium if you
7:30
Speaker 1: could find doc. Yeah, that that would be tough. Do
7:33
Speaker 1: you know why you would want plutonium or highly enriched uranium?
7:36
Speaker 1: What kind of bomb or why I would say to
7:38
Speaker 1: go back to the future or to build a bomb? Yes,
7:42
Speaker 1: specifically a fission bomb. Okay, Now what's the difference? I know,
7:45
Speaker 1: you know the difference between FISSI and TU. You know that? Well,
7:48
Speaker 1: I'm a smart guy, because I don't know, and I
7:51
Speaker 1: hope one of us does, do would you like to know? Okay, So,
7:54
Speaker 1: a fission bomb is where you're taking a really heavy,
7:57
Speaker 1: dense material the nuclei are heavy, right, Uh, the atomic
8:01
Speaker 1: weight is heavy. And what you're doing is you're stripping
8:05
Speaker 1: the nuclei of neutrons, okay, which in turn releases more
8:12
Speaker 1: neutrons and so on. Right, So you have a chain reaction,
8:17
Speaker 1: and once it's highly sustained, it's called supercritical mass. You've
8:22
Speaker 1: reached supercritical mass because neutron neutron is knocking neutrons from
8:28
Speaker 1: nuclei and so on and so on and so on,
8:29
Speaker 1: and it's happening really quickly and it raises this huge
8:31
Speaker 1: amount of energy. And now going back at that point, No,
8:34
Speaker 1: and like you're saying you need t N T to
8:36
Speaker 1: start this chain reaction and um with a with a
8:40
Speaker 1: fusion bomb, you're actually doing the opposite. You take a
8:43
Speaker 1: very light substance like hydrogen, and you take a tremendous
8:47
Speaker 1: amount of heat and you know from a explosion of
8:51
Speaker 1: T N T and you smash the stuff together and
8:54
Speaker 1: that creates another very big explosions. So which one is
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Speaker 1: more likely scenario for stealing one? I would imagine a
9:01
Speaker 1: fission bomb because it's the easiest to make. But the
9:03
Speaker 1: problem is is getting highly enriched uranium or plutonium is
9:07
Speaker 1: very difficult, although you can find a lot of it
9:10
Speaker 1: in Russia and the US. Right, Yeah, there's a lot
9:12
Speaker 1: of it that's um un accounted for, which is kind
9:16
Speaker 1: of scary. Yeah, or left over? Did you read that
9:18
Speaker 1: thing about Robert Gates from two thousand and eight now
9:22
Speaker 1: he uh, He basically came out and accused Moscow of
9:25
Speaker 1: not knowing where a lot of their plutonium and highly
9:28
Speaker 1: enriched uranium was. Well, I could see that because when
9:31
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union dissolved, there was a lot of chaos
9:34
Speaker 1: and disorganization going on and a lot of this excess
9:37
Speaker 1: nuclear material floating around, right, So there's no way that
9:40
Speaker 1: they could account for all of it. Well, he was saying, like,
9:43
Speaker 1: we have no problem with the tactical nukes or the
9:45
Speaker 1: strategic nukes. You want to know the difference between this two. Okay,
9:49
Speaker 1: So a strategic nuke, this is right up my alley.
9:54
Speaker 1: A strategic nuke is say, like a long range intercontinental
9:58
Speaker 1: ballistic missile, right, um and uh. A tactical nuke would
10:02
Speaker 1: be maybe attached to a missile on a bomber. And
10:06
Speaker 1: the real distinction I read someone put it was a
10:09
Speaker 1: strategic nuke is meant to prevent war. A tactical nuke
10:13
Speaker 1: is meant to end a war, to win a war, right,
10:16
Speaker 1: so you have mutual destruction. Those are strategic nukes. If
10:19
Speaker 1: somebody goes in and drops the bomb in Hiroshima, that
10:22
Speaker 1: would be a tactical nuke. Right, Look at you, you're
10:24
Speaker 1: a regular Philip Oppenheimert Robert Oppenheimer. By the way, for
10:30
Speaker 1: those of you who are paying attention, let's see father
10:33
Speaker 1: of the Adam Bomb, not Philip. He was the director
10:36
Speaker 1: of the Manhattan Project, right, And Philip was his brother
10:38
Speaker 1: who was from what I understand, didn't do much with
10:40
Speaker 1: his life. Philip was played by John Lithke. Okay, that's good. Uh,
10:45
Speaker 1: you want to talk about security a little bit? I do.
10:48
Speaker 1: The US says whenever there's a large arsenal weapons they
10:52
Speaker 1: have barriers, guards, surveillance cameras, motion sensors, and of course
10:57
Speaker 1: background checks. Seemed like enough to you, No, because at
11:01
Speaker 1: Reuter's article I read was talking about. The other scenario
11:04
Speaker 1: I talked about, besides being a hijacked and transport, was
11:09
Speaker 1: that potentially a Taliban or al Qaeda member could gain
11:13
Speaker 1: employment at a at a nuclear facility despite background checks. Sure, well,
11:18
Speaker 1: very few of them have like a member of Taliban,
11:21
Speaker 1: you know, two thousand two to present, and you would
11:23
Speaker 1: think that someone could get in there. But you also
11:24
Speaker 1: wouldn't think that someone could take lessons on how to
11:26
Speaker 1: fly a plane uh here in the United States and
11:30
Speaker 1: fly them into buildings. That didn't seem likely either. So
11:33
Speaker 1: it is likely or not likely, but possible. It is possible, agreed, um.
11:37
Speaker 1: And there's also another real threat that's probably the most prominent.
11:42
Speaker 1: And I guess we should probably say here maybe a
11:45
Speaker 1: little too late. We don't mean to stir up any
11:46
Speaker 1: paranoia among anybody. It's just an interesting question. We meant
11:51
Speaker 1: to stir up paranoia about Florid, but not this one. Um.
11:55
Speaker 1: The probably the most realistic through it would be a
11:57
Speaker 1: dirty bomb, right yeah, which is made from what they
12:00
Speaker 1: call nuclear junk, which is not highly enriched uranium and plutonium. Correct,
12:06
Speaker 1: it's a lesser quality, no, I think, Um, it's it's
12:11
Speaker 1: a nuclear bomb lacking a device to properly detonate it.
12:15
Speaker 1: It is so you don't have the material needed or
12:17
Speaker 1: the energy needed to create like a supercritical mass. But
12:21
Speaker 1: let's say you blew it up with a bunch of
12:23
Speaker 1: TNT that was less than critical or super critical um.
12:29
Speaker 1: You're still spreading radioactivity. Okay, I didn't know if you're
12:32
Speaker 1: talking about depleted uranium. Did you hear about the Russian
12:35
Speaker 1: guy that was caught who the guy who poisoned Lucchenko
12:39
Speaker 1: or No? This is in two thousand two, and this
12:42
Speaker 1: is one of those deals where I couldn't find a
12:43
Speaker 1: lot following up. In two thousand two, a Russian man
12:47
Speaker 1: was busted smuggling twenty seven tons of enriched uranium at
12:51
Speaker 1: a Siberian border checkpoint. I did a little follow up
12:55
Speaker 1: and they said it first, oh, no, this was just
12:57
Speaker 1: a regular shipment because we send um depleted uranium to
13:02
Speaker 1: UH to Kazakhstan so it can be made into nuclear
13:06
Speaker 1: fuel to be sent back to Russia. That's all it was.
13:08
Speaker 1: And then they came out with a second UH statement
13:11
Speaker 1: that said, oh, I'm sorry, it wasn't enriched exactly depleted uranium,
13:15
Speaker 1: and so it wasn't really a big deal. And I
13:18
Speaker 1: couldn't find anything else after that. Twenty seven tons, though,
13:21
Speaker 1: that's scary. Well, this proves there's a black market for it. Oh, definitely.
13:25
Speaker 1: You know we're using a depleted uranium is tank piercing
13:30
Speaker 1: bullets or artillery, right, and apparently there's a real growing
13:33
Speaker 1: concern among Iraq veterans in Afghanistan veterans that they're around
13:38
Speaker 1: this and handling this this ammunition, right, like, what's going
13:41
Speaker 1: to happen? You know? And I radioactive and we're gonna
13:44
Speaker 1: be able to have kids. It's probably going to be
13:46
Speaker 1: the next agent Orange is depleted depleted uranium shells. Yeah,
13:50
Speaker 1: but apparently they go right through a tank. Well, I
13:54
Speaker 1: would imagine. So, yeah, you want to talk about Los Alamos, Sure,
13:57
Speaker 1: go ahead, you go ahead. November two thousand six, Los
14:02
Speaker 1: Alamos National Laboratory there was a security breach and officials
14:06
Speaker 1: were worried that an employee past information concerning special access
14:11
Speaker 1: controls that would detonate a bomb. So uh, it wasn't
14:15
Speaker 1: a whole device, but important and valuable information and secrets
14:18
Speaker 1: were being sold. Yeah these pals right, Yes, Okay, so
14:22
Speaker 1: pal I checked out there. It can be what what
14:26
Speaker 1: John Fuller, who wrote this fine article, mentions is that
14:29
Speaker 1: you know it takes two people to enter a code
14:31
Speaker 1: at the same time war games exactly. Go ahead. Well
14:35
Speaker 1: what's that called. It's called permissive action link. Yes, and
14:38
Speaker 1: if you remember the very first scene of the movie Wargames,
14:41
Speaker 1: A young Michael Madison was actually one of the security guards.
14:44
Speaker 1: You can buckle dal little dog. That was excellent. Wow.
14:49
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, young Michael Madison was one of the two
14:52
Speaker 1: uh security personnel and the silo that was supposed to
14:55
Speaker 1: turn the key at the same time. So it's a
14:57
Speaker 1: two man operation. One person cannot set off the bomb.
15:01
Speaker 1: So it's a pretty good measure. That's well, that's one.
15:03
Speaker 1: That's one type of pal. There's also um quantum encryption
15:07
Speaker 1: UM to create all sorts of different UM codes. And
15:11
Speaker 1: he basically, if you can't just press a button, any
15:15
Speaker 1: barrier between you and pressing that button, any step you
15:18
Speaker 1: have to take to launch a nuclear weapon is a
15:21
Speaker 1: permissive action link. So when you hear the fingers on
15:24
Speaker 1: the button, that's really two fingers on two buttons. And
15:27
Speaker 1: it took at least several steps to get to that point. Thankfully, Um,
15:30
Speaker 1: there's another way you can get a bomb. And I realized, Chuck,
15:34
Speaker 1: I never um, I never finished a sentence. Earlier, I
15:38
Speaker 1: went off on a tangent about the difference between tactical
15:41
Speaker 1: and strategic right. Um, the the what Gates was talking
15:46
Speaker 1: about when he said that he was accusing Moscow of
15:49
Speaker 1: not knowing where all their stuff was. Um, there's a
15:51
Speaker 1: whole bunch of nuclear minds, nuclear artillery shells, basically nuclear junk.
15:57
Speaker 1: Um that he suspects Mosque has no idea where it is.
16:01
Speaker 1: That's the stuff that would likely it make its way
16:03
Speaker 1: into a dirty bomb, which is why it's a bigger threat.
16:06
Speaker 1: I could see that for sure. I'm glad I got
16:07
Speaker 1: that off my chest. You know, one official we're talking
16:10
Speaker 1: about Pakistan earlier, one US officials said that if they
16:13
Speaker 1: can smuggle out the amount of heroin that they smuggle out,
16:16
Speaker 1: then they could smuggle out nuclear materials pretty much. Although
16:20
Speaker 1: I suspect that, Um, there is tested approval of heroin
16:25
Speaker 1: smuggling in Afghanistan as far as the US goes. Yeah,
16:30
Speaker 1: I've read articles on it. US generals are just like,
16:32
Speaker 1: we're not even paying attention to that. There's nothing to
16:34
Speaker 1: do with what we're here for. Right, I could the
16:36
Speaker 1: d A's over there like pulling out their hair, right, Yeah,
16:39
Speaker 1: thanks a lot. Sure. Well. One thing I was going
16:43
Speaker 1: to mention too is if this weren't a concern, legitimate concern,
16:46
Speaker 1: then there probably wouldn't be an official name for this. Yeah,
16:50
Speaker 1: by the US the Navy. Right, Yeah, the Navy um
16:53
Speaker 1: calls it a broken arrow, which is from the John
16:55
Speaker 1: Well not from the John Wu Move John Move. I
16:58
Speaker 1: think got it from the Navy. But that is the
17:00
Speaker 1: name for the seizure, theft, loss or loss of a
17:03
Speaker 1: nuclear weapon or component. So component is kind of the
17:06
Speaker 1: key component. Yeah, or if you steal the whole thing.
17:10
Speaker 1: If Jamaicas stole one or bought one, that would be bad. Right.
17:14
Speaker 1: I love your idea here. I want to see this
17:16
Speaker 1: like a Jamaican guy on a flatbed with a nuclear
17:18
Speaker 1: bomb in the back of it. So, Chuck, there's another
17:20
Speaker 1: way you could get a nuclear weapon if you wanted to.
17:23
Speaker 1: You could travel to Tybee Island, Georgia. Yeah, there is
17:29
Speaker 1: a fifty one year old nuclear bomb, Thermo nuclear weapon
17:33
Speaker 1: somewhere off the coast of Tybee and not too far
17:35
Speaker 1: off of it. They could get right off of the coast.
17:38
Speaker 1: You have no idea where it is. Yeah, so close
17:40
Speaker 1: that they can't find it. Yeah, distressing. You know what
17:43
Speaker 1: else is distressing? What? The Department of Defense recognizes that
17:47
Speaker 1: at least one serious nuclear accident has occurred every single
17:50
Speaker 1: year since the atomic age began. Distressing, I don't know
17:54
Speaker 1: what's more unsettling that once happened every year they qualified
17:57
Speaker 1: it with at least, right, you know, one or more. Yeah,
18:02
Speaker 1: should we talk about some of these accidents, Yeah, totally
18:04
Speaker 1: reported accidents. Yeah, there's been a bunch of them. There have. Uh,
18:08
Speaker 1: this one's good. Um in n B forty seven bomber
18:12
Speaker 1: flying over Mars Bluff, South Carolina, accidentally dropped an atomic
18:16
Speaker 1: bomb which left a crater st wide and thirty five
18:20
Speaker 1: ft deep, And we've talked about that one. That was
18:22
Speaker 1: the one that, um, they abandoned searching for that nuke
18:25
Speaker 1: in off the coast of Savannah to go deal with
18:28
Speaker 1: Oh is that what happened? Yeah? Okay, Yeah, So they
18:31
Speaker 1: were looking for this nuke for about a month, couldn't
18:33
Speaker 1: find it, and then one goes off for the the
18:35
Speaker 1: TNT went a bigger problem and they all evacuated over
18:39
Speaker 1: to South Carolina. Yeah, that's a good one. You want
18:41
Speaker 1: you got another one for me? Yeah, this one is
18:43
Speaker 1: kind of unsettling. In nineteen sixty, some guys were basically,
18:49
Speaker 1: I guess, docking an airplane that had nuclear weapons aboard
18:53
Speaker 1: on the U S S. Takondo Roga. I guess they
18:55
Speaker 1: hit a wave and the airplane and its nukes rolled
18:58
Speaker 1: off into the Sea of Japan. Transport, dude, Luckily, it
19:04
Speaker 1: seems like all the accidents and and security threats to
19:07
Speaker 1: deal with transport. Yeah, or what about the transfer from
19:11
Speaker 1: a submarine onto the USS halland yeah, go ahead. Well
19:15
Speaker 1: that's pretty much it, except for while they were while
19:18
Speaker 1: they were moving the nuke from the submarine to the
19:20
Speaker 1: USS halland uh, it started to fall seventeen feet and
19:24
Speaker 1: somebody very quickly pulled an emergency brake and it stopped
19:27
Speaker 1: right above the deck that was close a handbrake. Yes,
19:32
Speaker 1: I'd like to see that. Yeah. Did the guy literally
19:34
Speaker 1: like yank it up? Yeah? And I'll bet he was
19:37
Speaker 1: treated two around that night. Yeah, but more than one. Uh.
19:41
Speaker 1: You know, there's a U. N agency that is entrusted
19:44
Speaker 1: with preempting this kind of thing, illegal proliferation, and they
19:48
Speaker 1: said in two thousand seven they said that the theft
19:52
Speaker 1: and loss of nuclear and radio material the radioactive materials
19:55
Speaker 1: remains a persistent problem that the I A E. A. Yeah,
19:59
Speaker 1: So they're every one is on record basically saying this,
20:02
Speaker 1: this happens all the time. There are hundreds of cases
20:04
Speaker 1: in Russia of people stealing or trying to steal this stuff?
20:09
Speaker 1: What was it? J Philip Oppenheimer said when he saw
20:13
Speaker 1: the first nuclear bomb explode, I have become death destroy
20:17
Speaker 1: of world, world talk about Pandora's box, man, No kidding.
20:22
Speaker 1: I've got some more stats if you're in need. There
20:27
Speaker 1: were a hundred and fifty incidents of such such action
20:31
Speaker 1: of of loss or theft in two thousand six alone,
20:34
Speaker 1: And Josh, the majority of these involved sealed radioactive sources,
20:38
Speaker 1: and in seventy three per cent of these cases, the
20:41
Speaker 1: lost or stolen materials have not been recovered. That's fantastic.
20:45
Speaker 1: So basically what you're finding, what you're saying here is
20:49
Speaker 1: that there is a lot of unaccounted for nuclear material
20:53
Speaker 1: on the world market. Right. Well, there's no international treaty
20:56
Speaker 1: for this. I found out. Oh yeah, yeah, they're there.
20:59
Speaker 1: Um their treaties. There's the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material
21:03
Speaker 1: Treaty of nineteen, but it's all for domestic use, storage,
21:07
Speaker 1: and transport. There's no international uh work going on here. Well,
21:11
Speaker 1: the problem is in the post nine eleven world as well, Chuck.
21:14
Speaker 1: I mean, we're not fighting people who honor treaties like
21:16
Speaker 1: we're still looking at nuclear um nuclear non proliferation through
21:21
Speaker 1: the paradigm of the Cold War, which is long over.
21:24
Speaker 1: You know, it used to be we had, like I
21:26
Speaker 1: said earlier, mutual a sure destruction where the USSR in
21:30
Speaker 1: the US had so many nukes that they could wipe
21:33
Speaker 1: out the world within seconds of one another launching, and
21:37
Speaker 1: it kept anybody from doing anything about exactly. There's no
21:45
Speaker 1: that that doesn't exist anymore. There's no polarization, and we
21:48
Speaker 1: have to rethink this, especially if there's no accountability or
21:53
Speaker 1: not enough accountability. It's almost less safe now than during
21:55
Speaker 1: the arms race. And how do you get something how
21:58
Speaker 1: do you take something out of existence when it when,
22:02
Speaker 1: when it's already been created. I don't know, can it happen?
22:06
Speaker 1: I it would take I don't think it can happen.
22:10
Speaker 1: I think it could happen, but you'd have to be
22:13
Speaker 1: really dedicated, and you would also have to be pretty
22:16
Speaker 1: cool blooded because guy's like a q con would have
22:18
Speaker 1: to get shot in the back of the head, and
22:21
Speaker 1: not just a q com but all of our guys
22:22
Speaker 1: to basically anybody who knows how to make a nuclear
22:25
Speaker 1: bomb would have to be executed. So thanks for joining us.
22:29
Speaker 1: If you want to know more, about nuclear anything. We've
22:32
Speaker 1: got a bunch of it on the site. That's how
22:34
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. We are a handy search bar
22:36
Speaker 1: for your convenience, so you don't have to troll from
22:38
Speaker 1: the channel the channel page by page. Uh. And since
22:42
Speaker 1: I said that and Jerry's eyes are crossed because she's
22:45
Speaker 1: so bored, I think that means it's time for the
22:48
Speaker 1: listener mail. Josh, I'm just gonna call this an eerie
22:55
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania email. Get get it. This from Sarah. She's a
23:01
Speaker 1: student there at Collegiate High School. I guess Collegiate Academy.
23:06
Speaker 1: And you're stupid? Are stupid? People Happier? Podcast? You talked
23:10
Speaker 1: a lot about the subjectiveness of happiness, as well as
23:13
Speaker 1: all the references you made to your super Stuff Guide
23:15
Speaker 1: to the Economy, now on sale and iTunes. It reminded
23:19
Speaker 1: me of a project my AP macro economics class conducted
23:23
Speaker 1: at the end of last year. Most nations measure their
23:26
Speaker 1: economic success and increments of GDP and the like, but
23:29
Speaker 1: the nation of Bhutan created a similar scale called gross
23:32
Speaker 1: National Happiness. I've written on that. Really, Yeah, okay, I
23:37
Speaker 1: believe you. Basically, it's an extensive survey that they did
23:41
Speaker 1: and she and her classmates decided to for a project
23:44
Speaker 1: to do the same thing at her high school to
23:46
Speaker 1: find out what the happiness scale was at a collegiate academy.
23:50
Speaker 1: So she wrote in and told me this, and I
23:51
Speaker 1: was like, that's cool. I was like, but you didn't
23:53
Speaker 1: tell me any of the results or anything, so how
23:55
Speaker 1: about it? So she emailed me back and said, all right,
23:57
Speaker 1: here we go. Twelve statements in four categories is what
24:01
Speaker 1: they were rating, as well as male and female and
24:04
Speaker 1: grade level to define the gross collegiate happiness scale. Each
24:08
Speaker 1: was rated on a scale of one zero to five,
24:11
Speaker 1: with one being the least agreeable to our statement I
24:13
Speaker 1: guess zero. I predicted that we would have achieved an
24:16
Speaker 1: overall happiness index of about two five, but surprisingly we
24:20
Speaker 1: scored significantly higher, and our happiness scale is at three
24:23
Speaker 1: point five eight out of five, which is pretty good
24:27
Speaker 1: on an economic scale, and including outliers is pretty great.
24:30
Speaker 1: She says. The most agreeable statement and positive quality that
24:33
Speaker 1: made students feel happy. It was a statement I feel
24:35
Speaker 1: accepted at collegiate academy, which received an average of four
24:39
Speaker 1: point two nine, and the principle was satisfied with it.
24:42
Speaker 1: Although you could tell she wanted a perfect five point. Oh,
24:45
Speaker 1: she obviously hasn't studied economics or statistics recently. So that
24:48
Speaker 1: was from Sarah and Erie Pennsylvania. Why Sarah is headed
24:52
Speaker 1: to Yale as well? Yeah, Sarah's ary bright student and
24:54
Speaker 1: sounds like her classmates are pretty happy there collegiate academy. Yeah,
24:57
Speaker 1: it's good for them. Yeah, the gross national up and
25:00
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. Yeah, Bhutan is very serious about it.
25:02
Speaker 1: The king abdicated his throne to establish a democracy because
25:07
Speaker 1: it was they determined that democracy made for happier people. Yeah,
25:11
Speaker 1: that's pretty cool. Yeah, Well, thanks a lot, Sarah. Well,
25:14
Speaker 1: if you're Yale bound like Sarah, or don't know where
25:17
Speaker 1: you're headed yet, you can send us an email like
25:19
Speaker 1: us detailing anything you like. Do we have anything we
25:22
Speaker 1: want to ask for Chuck? Uh No, we've been getting
25:25
Speaker 1: good feedback lately. Thanks, thanks for that, So if you
25:28
Speaker 1: want to just send us an email, I guess is
25:29
Speaker 1: what we're trying to say, right, you can send that
25:32
Speaker 1: to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com for
25:39
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it
25:42
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Want more house stuff Works,
25:45
Speaker 1: check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
25:48
Speaker 1: Com home page. Hey, if you're a fan of Altoyd's
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Speaker 1: curiously strong mints, you probably have a lot of empty
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Speaker 1: with them. You can make survival kits, flash drives, even robots.
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Speaker 1: Check out Altoids on Facebook to find out more. Brought
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