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Are broken arrows a problem? · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: San Francisco. We're coming to see you soon. Yeah, we're
0:04
Speaker 1: gonna be there on Saturday, January Chuck. And since it's
0:08
Speaker 1: San Francisco, we're gonna be wearing nothing but appropriately placed
0:12
Speaker 1: clumps of rice roni. It is the San Francisco treat. Yes,
0:15
Speaker 1: and we're the San Francisco treat too whenever we're in town,
0:18
Speaker 1: So everybody should come see us. That's right. It's part
0:20
Speaker 1: of Sketch Fest as always. We love performing there. You
0:22
Speaker 1: can go to s Y s K live dot com
0:24
Speaker 1: for details or s F sketch Fest dot com. Uh.
0:28
Speaker 1: And if you're around Sunday night you can come see
0:30
Speaker 1: me do movie Crush Live and a very small fun
0:33
Speaker 1: venue where you can shake my hand. Very nice, So
0:35
Speaker 1: come see us, everybody. You won't regret it. We're pretty
0:38
Speaker 1: sure that's correct. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a
0:42
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and
0:50
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W.
0:53
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, there's guest producer Roll over there. Uh. And
0:57
Speaker 1: that makes this Stuff you Should Know um, featuring Chucks,
1:03
Speaker 1: John Travolta, and me as Christians Later. Lowell is Frank Whaley.
1:12
Speaker 1: Was he in that? Yep? He had the great line,
1:17
Speaker 1: are you ready for it? I don't know what's scarier
1:21
Speaker 1: losing a nuclear bomb? He didn't. He didn't say this
1:24
Speaker 1: with this much reservation. He really delivered the line. Um.
1:27
Speaker 1: He also didn't comment on his own line while he
1:29
Speaker 1: was giving it, or that it happened so often there's
1:34
Speaker 1: a name for it. Yeah, that's a good line. It's
1:37
Speaker 1: a great line. It's it's a long, clumsy line. But
1:39
Speaker 1: he delivered it really well. You know, I don't know
1:41
Speaker 1: that I ever saw broken arrow Oh I didn't either.
1:45
Speaker 1: I was just alive in the nineties, so I was
1:47
Speaker 1: cognizant of it. Yeah. I thought at first you were
1:49
Speaker 1: talking about Saturday Night Fever with Christians. Later sure, no, No,
1:57
Speaker 1: I wasn't. Do you remember we talked about Sarah like
1:59
Speaker 1: fever must have in the Disco episode where it turns
2:01
Speaker 1: out that the article it was based on was just
2:03
Speaker 1: totally fabricated. Remember that's right. That's such a great soundtrack, man,
2:08
Speaker 1: maybe one of the all time best. Yep, But we're
2:11
Speaker 1: here to talk about broken arrows, and uh, I got
2:15
Speaker 1: this idea. This was one of my commissions, was because
2:19
Speaker 1: I had um, I had someone on movie Crush. Then
2:22
Speaker 1: we did Doctor Strange Love, the great great movie from
2:26
Speaker 1: Stanley Kubrick, which factors into this stuff some And he
2:30
Speaker 1: brought in a stack of papers and just said here
2:35
Speaker 1: for your desk, and it was a list of all
2:36
Speaker 1: the broken arrow incidents. And there were a lot more
2:40
Speaker 1: than thirty of them, So I don't know if what
2:43
Speaker 1: all was included. We'll get into some of the terminology
2:46
Speaker 1: of what kind of falls under the banner of a
2:47
Speaker 1: broken arrow. But but a broken well, we should just
2:51
Speaker 1: go ahead and tell everyone what a broken arrow is, Yeah,
2:54
Speaker 1: we should. As defined by the Department of Defense and
2:57
Speaker 1: a little bit from the Air Force, is an accident
3:00
Speaker 1: involving a nuclear weapon or warhead or nuclear component, or
3:04
Speaker 1: an unexpected event involving nuclear weapons that could result in
3:09
Speaker 1: um accidental or unauthorized launching, firing, what else, uh, detonation, Yeah,
3:17
Speaker 1: jettising them, sending them, uh damage to him, accidentally dropping them.
3:23
Speaker 1: And I mean, I've got to say, I don't know
3:25
Speaker 1: what's worse, accidentally dropping a nuclear bomb or that it
3:28
Speaker 1: happens so frequently. There's a name for it. Thank you,
3:33
Speaker 1: Mr Whaley. Sure you can go to your trailer. Now,
3:37
Speaker 1: so that's a I mean, that's a broken arrow. And
3:39
Speaker 1: like there's a if you've seen that movie Broken Arrow,
3:42
Speaker 1: it's um about Christians later foiling John Travolta, um after
3:47
Speaker 1: he steals a nuclear bomb. That's actually technically not a
3:51
Speaker 1: broken arrow from what we know. That's called an empty quiver,
3:55
Speaker 1: which works with the broken arrow. But I thought it
3:58
Speaker 1: had to do with a stolen nuclear bomb, which led
4:01
Speaker 1: me to think, like, hey man, we've basically already done
4:03
Speaker 1: this one. We did how easy is it to steal
4:05
Speaker 1: a nuclear bomb? Remember that? Okay, this is really very
4:09
Speaker 1: much different. This is basically when a US military personnel
4:14
Speaker 1: screws up big time as far as a nuclear bomb
4:18
Speaker 1: is concerned, or there's some terrible accident with a nuclear bomb.
4:22
Speaker 1: But um, it's not something that's going to lead to war, right,
4:28
Speaker 1: It's not like an accidental launch of a nuclear weapon
4:31
Speaker 1: against the Soviet Union back in the Cold War. It's
4:34
Speaker 1: dropping a nuclear bomb on your toe. That's a broken arrow, basically. Yeah,
4:39
Speaker 1: And I've always thought broken arrow. I was wrong. I
4:41
Speaker 1: thought it kind of only meant that you lose a
4:44
Speaker 1: nuclear warhead somehow. Well, that's what Travolta's lies. He's the
4:49
Speaker 1: father of lies. That's what he teaches us. Yeah, we've
4:53
Speaker 1: been misled by Travolta. Yeah, have you seen him? He's
4:56
Speaker 1: he's gone bald. Now have you seen him? Good for
5:00
Speaker 1: a man? Has he? Yeah? He finally just just ripped
5:03
Speaker 1: off the old rug said this is me, and he's
5:06
Speaker 1: got a great being. He looks fantastic. Oh, I'm sure
5:09
Speaker 1: I'm happy for him. That's good because he's been hiding
5:12
Speaker 1: that for decades. So, uh, we should talk about a
5:16
Speaker 1: few other points of terminology that might pop up. There's
5:20
Speaker 1: something called a pinnacle level incident, and that basically means
5:24
Speaker 1: that any kind of incident where it's so big that
5:28
Speaker 1: it really goes up all the way up the military
5:30
Speaker 1: chain to the very top. Yeah, it's a big deal.
5:33
Speaker 1: In other words, it's a big deal as travel towards. Uh.
5:37
Speaker 1: And there's a few more incident codes that I think
5:39
Speaker 1: are pretty interesting. Um, there's one called a nuke flash,
5:43
Speaker 1: and that means an accident or incident that could be
5:47
Speaker 1: the precursor to the trigger of nuclear war. That's a
5:51
Speaker 1: big one. That's the Yeah, that's the one where there's
5:53
Speaker 1: like somebody accidentally sets off an intercontinental ballistic missile toward Russia.
5:58
Speaker 1: That is like one that can lead to you nuclear war.
6:01
Speaker 1: And did you read that as new flash? I read
6:03
Speaker 1: it as nut flash. That's funny. Uh. What about front burner? Yeah,
6:13
Speaker 1: front Marina is triggered by any hostile It is pinnacle
6:18
Speaker 1: level and it is triggered by any hostile attack against
6:21
Speaker 1: US forces. Uh. And it's not necessarily a nuclear incident. No,
6:27
Speaker 1: but um, it can be. It can lead to a
6:30
Speaker 1: nuclear war. So it's kind of considered part of that
6:32
Speaker 1: whole family of nuclear jargon. Yeah. And also, don't think
6:37
Speaker 1: I said it's a hostile attack by someone that we're
6:39
Speaker 1: not already at war with. That is a big caveat,
6:42
Speaker 1: because I guess if you're if you're already at war's
6:46
Speaker 1: front burner, front burner, there's another front burner. Yes, that's
6:51
Speaker 1: that's a good point to make, dude. Um there's also
6:54
Speaker 1: empty Quiver, which is that's the name that should have
6:58
Speaker 1: been given to the travolt A Slater movie. Um, that's
7:02
Speaker 1: where the nuclear weapons stolen. Um. And I gotta say,
7:06
Speaker 1: I don't know what's scarier than a nuclear weapon can
7:09
Speaker 1: be stolen, or that it happens often enough that there's
7:11
Speaker 1: a name for it. Uh, do we go over bent
7:14
Speaker 1: spear yet? No, not to be confused with burning spear. No,
7:19
Speaker 1: a bent spear is an incident, nuclear incident that's a
7:23
Speaker 1: big deal, but it's not pinnacle level. And this is
7:26
Speaker 1: like if someone violated a regulation or a procedure or
7:30
Speaker 1: something when you're storing or transporting a nuclear weapon. Like
7:35
Speaker 1: it's like a three Stooges level type of nuclear accident
7:39
Speaker 1: um where nothing, nothing, really bad results from it. Uh,
7:43
Speaker 1: it's just somebody screwed up. And Ed gave this example.
7:46
Speaker 1: I had not heard of this one, but apparently in
7:49
Speaker 1: two thousand seven there was a burning spear. I'm sorry
7:52
Speaker 1: that was genuine. There was a bent spear incident um
7:56
Speaker 1: where six armed nuclear warheads were loaded on a B
8:01
Speaker 1: fifty two and they walked away slapping the dust off
8:05
Speaker 1: of their hands and turned in for a good night's
8:07
Speaker 1: rest and did not leave a guard. These six armed
8:10
Speaker 1: nuclear warheads were left aboard a B fifty two that
8:13
Speaker 1: was unguarded overnight and the next morning they flew him
8:16
Speaker 1: across the country as scheduled. Okay, so nothing happened. No,
8:20
Speaker 1: it's like one of those ones where you find that
8:22
Speaker 1: you've bitten down to your cuticles because you're just so
8:26
Speaker 1: mortified at the idea of how bad things could have gone.
8:28
Speaker 1: But they just just we just narrowly averted crisis. All right,
8:33
Speaker 1: Are there any of these other terms that matter to you? No? Okay,
8:40
Speaker 1: all right, well we'll talk about We'll go over some
8:43
Speaker 1: broken arrows later and some actual incidences. Um, but we
8:48
Speaker 1: should talk a little bit just about nuclear weapons. Uh.
8:51
Speaker 1: They are very much classified as to where they are,
8:55
Speaker 1: and the Upper Brass basically has an exception to that
9:00
Speaker 1: where if there is an incident and it presents a
9:05
Speaker 1: hazard to the public, like boy, we need to get
9:08
Speaker 1: people out of there, and we actually need to cop
9:09
Speaker 1: to this thing. Uh, then that is an exception where
9:12
Speaker 1: you can reveal that they're like surprised you're living near
9:17
Speaker 1: some nuclear warheads. He didn't realize it. But over there
9:20
Speaker 1: in that silo, it is it is not wheat I get.
9:24
Speaker 1: I get the impression. Also, where you know, seven hundred
9:27
Speaker 1: and fifty soldiers suddenly converge on a farm field where
9:31
Speaker 1: a plane went down, Um, it's it's usually kind of
9:35
Speaker 1: already old news to the locals that there's a nuclear
9:37
Speaker 1: bomb somewhere in play, especially if this happens to take
9:41
Speaker 1: place during the fifties or the sixties, which were the
9:45
Speaker 1: the worst decades in American history for near miss nuclear accidents. Yeah,
9:50
Speaker 1: and it's interesting. I never really uh, I kind of
9:53
Speaker 1: just thought like, oh, it's because technology, and that's sort
9:56
Speaker 1: of true, and that uh, in the fifties and sixties,
9:59
Speaker 1: if you wanted to drop a nuclear bomb, that's why
10:04
Speaker 1: they say drop a nuclear bomb, because you were literally
10:06
Speaker 1: doing that. It was not attached to some missile on
10:09
Speaker 1: some base. It was in the belly of a plane
10:12
Speaker 1: and you flew over a site and opened doors and
10:15
Speaker 1: dropped a bomb. Yes, the right, that's how you delivered
10:20
Speaker 1: a nuclear bomb. And so because planes were so intimately
10:24
Speaker 1: connected with delivering a nuclear bomb. Early on in the
10:28
Speaker 1: Cold War, there was a guy who took over Strategic
10:31
Speaker 1: Air Command and I think ninety seven, and he was
10:34
Speaker 1: an old bomber pilot and he said, look, man, here's
10:36
Speaker 1: our new strategy. We're going to keep bombers loaded with
10:41
Speaker 1: nuclear bombs in the air at all times. There will
10:45
Speaker 1: always be multiple B fifty twos flying around with loaded
10:49
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons all the time, ready within striking distance of Russia.
10:54
Speaker 1: And so this thing was called Operation Chrome Dome, where
10:57
Speaker 1: pairs of B fifty twos would take off for twenty
11:00
Speaker 1: four hour missions. They would refuel in the air. There
11:04
Speaker 1: would be multiple pilots aboard so that they could trade
11:06
Speaker 1: off shifts because they would stay aloft for twenty four hours,
11:09
Speaker 1: and then before they came back to base the land
11:11
Speaker 1: at the end of twenty four hours, another pair would
11:14
Speaker 1: have taken off. And from what I saw, UM, at
11:17
Speaker 1: the minimum of Operation Chrome Dome, there were always at
11:21
Speaker 1: least four B fifty twos in the air flying these
11:23
Speaker 1: routes like near Russia. UM, usually there was twelve in
11:28
Speaker 1: the air. And then during the Cuban Missile Crisis, at
11:30
Speaker 1: the height of Operation Chrome Dome, there were seventy five
11:34
Speaker 1: B fifty twos in the air with nuclear weapons ready
11:37
Speaker 1: to strike at any given time. And because there were
11:40
Speaker 1: so many planes taking off and landing constantly with nuclear bombs,
11:46
Speaker 1: the chances of an accident with one of these nuclear
11:49
Speaker 1: bombs escalated tremendously. And that was these decades, the decades
11:54
Speaker 1: that Operation Chrome Dome lasted, UM when these nuclear weapon problems,
12:00
Speaker 1: what we call broken arrows, really kind of stepped up. Yeah,
12:03
Speaker 1: and I mean that's if you've seen Doctor Strangelove, that's
12:05
Speaker 1: what that uh, you know, there's kind of three parts
12:08
Speaker 1: to the story. In one part is up in the
12:11
Speaker 1: air in one of these bomber planes. And that's what
12:13
Speaker 1: Slim Pickens and James Earl Jones are doing up there.
12:16
Speaker 1: They are just manning a flight that is flying close
12:20
Speaker 1: to the Soviet border and uh, hoping that they just
12:24
Speaker 1: land and take off again the next day and fly
12:27
Speaker 1: and it's boring and they land again, and like I said,
12:30
Speaker 1: the ideas, you do this over and over and over
12:32
Speaker 1: and nothing ever happens. Um. But of course in Strangelove
12:35
Speaker 1: things go wrong. Um. But that yeah, that's what they
12:37
Speaker 1: were doing up there. Yep. So that's operation Chrome Dome
12:41
Speaker 1: and UM. Eventually the we developed innercontinental ballistic missiles, those
12:46
Speaker 1: ones that you talked about, like in in the ground
12:48
Speaker 1: in a base. They were capable of striking Moscow from Kansas.
12:53
Speaker 1: When we developed those in the sixties, we said, okay,
12:56
Speaker 1: we don't need this Chrome Dome strategy any longer. But
12:59
Speaker 1: also because there were so many accidents, and because the
13:03
Speaker 1: accidents were so costly bad and yet still just near
13:06
Speaker 1: misses from a nuclear explosion. UM, the idea of this
13:11
Speaker 1: chrome dome strategy was like, we we can't do this anymore.
13:13
Speaker 1: This it's just too too risky. Basically, should we take
13:16
Speaker 1: a break? I believe so, Charles, all right, we're gonna
13:19
Speaker 1: take a break and we'll talk a little bit about
13:21
Speaker 1: the nuts and bolts of how a nuclear bomb works
13:24
Speaker 1: right after this. All right, Chuck. So if you're I
13:51
Speaker 1: think we should do a nuclear um bomb episode someday,
13:55
Speaker 1: where do we go over? This? Was it during the
13:57
Speaker 1: meltdowns episode? Yeah? It must have been like a fission reaction, yeah,
14:02
Speaker 1: because it does seem pretty pretty familiar, it doesn't it. Yeah,
14:06
Speaker 1: because you know what a nuclear bomb is is is
14:09
Speaker 1: detonating and instigating or causing always starting stuff a fission reaction. Um.
14:18
Speaker 1: Well that was the early ones, right yeah. Yeah, So
14:22
Speaker 1: how this works as a nuclear reaction is plutonium and
14:26
Speaker 1: uranium UM being compressed and smashing into other plutonium and
14:31
Speaker 1: uranium to get a nuclear fission reaction going right. Uh?
14:37
Speaker 1: And the early uh, I guess h bombs is what
14:40
Speaker 1: they call them initially, right, hydrogen bombs? Well, atomic bombs,
14:45
Speaker 1: I think initially yeah, atomic bombs who were very rudimentary,
14:49
Speaker 1: rudimentary Wow, Yeah, tried to dress them up by adding
14:54
Speaker 1: an extra syllable, but they were still rudimentary. They were rudimentary. Uh.
14:58
Speaker 1: And in fact, the UH, the very first bombs that
15:02
Speaker 1: were dropped on Hiroshima actually fired a gun type mechanism
15:07
Speaker 1: to set off this reaction. Right, It was like, yeah,
15:11
Speaker 1: they would shoot uranium at uranium and that that would
15:14
Speaker 1: set off the fission reaction, and like, you can produce
15:18
Speaker 1: a pretty substantial um explosion like they did over her
15:23
Speaker 1: Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Right, And but compared to the other
15:28
Speaker 1: way that they later quickly figured out, I believe in
15:30
Speaker 1: the fifties they moved over I think those were the
15:33
Speaker 1: hydrogen bombs thermonuclear bombs where they used fusion, where it
15:38
Speaker 1: was an implosion that pressed the material, the plutonium or
15:42
Speaker 1: or the uranium together to create this nuclear reaction. That's
15:46
Speaker 1: when you got something in the yield of mega tons,
15:49
Speaker 1: millions and millions of tons worth of TNT explosive power,
15:54
Speaker 1: where the one in Hiroshima was like fifteen kilo tons,
15:57
Speaker 1: like fifteen thousand tons of t n T. Yeah, and
16:01
Speaker 1: thank god they hadn't figured that out at that point. Yeah,
16:05
Speaker 1: because those earliest broken arrow ones were like, dude, if like,
16:09
Speaker 1: if this had been like a fusion bomb, who knows
16:11
Speaker 1: what would have happened, although I can't tell if if
16:14
Speaker 1: one was safer than the other. And Ed rightly points
16:17
Speaker 1: out the reason all these were near mrs was because
16:20
Speaker 1: along the way, scientists thought, we need to include some
16:23
Speaker 1: fail safes here so that if something does go wrong, um,
16:27
Speaker 1: a cascading string of multiple failures have to happen in
16:32
Speaker 1: a certain order for this thing to actually go off,
16:35
Speaker 1: or you have to make it so it's purposefully happens
16:38
Speaker 1: in this order to actually go off, and that if
16:40
Speaker 1: one thing doesn't happen in this this cascade, then the
16:43
Speaker 1: thing won't actually have a nuclear detonation. And the the
16:47
Speaker 1: fact that the scientists worked in these safety mechanisms, that's
16:51
Speaker 1: what kept like South Carolina and North Carolina from having
16:56
Speaker 1: entire town's level the nuclear explosions accidentally. That's because what
17:01
Speaker 1: happens now with this implosion that it is this nuclear
17:04
Speaker 1: material is packed and surrounded by high explosives, just regular
17:09
Speaker 1: conventional explosives, and this is you know, these things go
17:13
Speaker 1: off and they create a big boom in and of
17:15
Speaker 1: themselves that is very dangerous. But like you said, there
17:18
Speaker 1: are so many safety features built in and unless you
17:21
Speaker 1: have that um, that exact implosion pattern that you need,
17:26
Speaker 1: it might be scary. But uh, these high explosive going
17:30
Speaker 1: off don't necessarily mean that there will be that fusion reaction.
17:34
Speaker 1: And if it gets shot, like let's say somebody, you know,
17:38
Speaker 1: somebody bombs your bomb, that doesn't doesn't necessarily mean and
17:42
Speaker 1: probably means it won't happen. It will it will again
17:45
Speaker 1: be a big boom, and but it will break apart
17:47
Speaker 1: that nuclear material and just scatter it around. It's not
17:50
Speaker 1: going to compress it. And the way you need to
17:52
Speaker 1: create that fission reaction. No, And that's that's what a
17:56
Speaker 1: dirty bomb is. It's where you're you're not creating a
17:58
Speaker 1: nuclear explosion, but you're explo osian is spreading radioactive material
18:02
Speaker 1: that contaminates an area, which is bad enough, but it's
18:05
Speaker 1: not nearly as bad as an actual sustain nuclear explosion.
18:09
Speaker 1: And because the the nuclear bombs were made in such
18:12
Speaker 1: a way, like you said, that explosive pattern has to
18:14
Speaker 1: happen exactly just so you're probably not going to get
18:19
Speaker 1: that same pattern if that those explosives go off from
18:23
Speaker 1: hitting the ground after being dropped fifteen thousand feet or
18:26
Speaker 1: in a burning in a jet fuel fire from a
18:29
Speaker 1: crash jet. They will still explode, like you were saying,
18:31
Speaker 1: but it's not going to create that nuclear explosion. It
18:35
Speaker 1: still will make you bite your finger nois cuticle though, Yeah,
18:38
Speaker 1: it'll it'll go up that pinnacle chain, right. Um. I'm
18:42
Speaker 1: also not sure about how bombs are now, but I
18:45
Speaker 1: know that for a while and maybe that's still still
18:48
Speaker 1: the case. They're just physically distanced, like those explosives are
18:53
Speaker 1: are not right next to the nuclear capsule, and that
18:58
Speaker 1: distance can actually help event those nuclear explosions. Yeah. Or
19:02
Speaker 1: there's like um an electra, an electronic circuit that has
19:06
Speaker 1: to be completed for the detonator to go off, and
19:10
Speaker 1: so if even if it's exposed to flames or impact,
19:14
Speaker 1: it's still not going to go off because it's detonated electronically.
19:17
Speaker 1: There's like more safety systems that they worked in. But
19:20
Speaker 1: initially one of the earliest ones they had with those
19:23
Speaker 1: imploding h bombs was that they just simply wouldn't put
19:26
Speaker 1: the core of the nuclear material that was to be
19:28
Speaker 1: imploded in the bomb. It really just be like a
19:32
Speaker 1: five thousand or you know, twenty thousand ton bomb of
19:37
Speaker 1: high high yield explosives, of high explosives, but the nuclear
19:42
Speaker 1: core wasn't plugged into the center, so it might be
19:46
Speaker 1: on the same plane, but it wasn't plugged in. And
19:50
Speaker 1: at least some cases in other cases in the the
19:53
Speaker 1: military used that the the core wasn't inserted into the
19:57
Speaker 1: bomb at the time excuse very frequently to basically say
20:02
Speaker 1: there was really no chance of this becoming a nuclear explosion.
20:05
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of debate about just how true
20:09
Speaker 1: that is in some of these instances where some of
20:12
Speaker 1: these were fully armed nuclear bombs that just so happened.
20:16
Speaker 1: We lucked out that the the um the pattern of
20:19
Speaker 1: explosion with the high explosives didn't follow the right the
20:23
Speaker 1: right pattern to set off that that nuclear reaction. Yeah,
20:27
Speaker 1: and again, um, these protocols came about in the sixties
20:29
Speaker 1: and seventies, which is why most of these, I almost
20:33
Speaker 1: all these broken arrow incidences were in the fifties and sixties. Uh.
20:37
Speaker 1: In the nineteen nineties, I think in nineteen ninety there
20:40
Speaker 1: was a technical report on the safety of our arsenal
20:44
Speaker 1: conducted by independently by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and they
20:49
Speaker 1: vary and this is great for for you know, the
20:52
Speaker 1: general public. In dumb dums like us. They just gave
20:55
Speaker 1: it like a school rating, like A through F basically
21:00
Speaker 1: on all the all the weapons that we've used from
21:03
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty to seventy six and or no, I guess
21:07
Speaker 1: up until the nineties. But every weapon from fifty to
21:10
Speaker 1: seventy six received a D except for one, and that
21:14
Speaker 1: that one was the minute Man two and it got
21:16
Speaker 1: a C plus C plus C plus, which is pretty
21:22
Speaker 1: nice especially among these. But everything else got a D
21:25
Speaker 1: for twenty six years. Right, that just got it just
21:29
Speaker 1: goes to show you, like just how poorly these things
21:32
Speaker 1: were um safety mechanized, I guess. But even still, even
21:39
Speaker 1: despite you know that, like they still went to some
21:42
Speaker 1: extent to make them safer, but they just hadn't gone
21:45
Speaker 1: far enough. And yet despite that, we still didn't manage
21:49
Speaker 1: to accidentally blow ourselves up with the nuclear bomb. Despite
21:52
Speaker 1: all the broken arrows that we have gone through, which
21:55
Speaker 1: will now go through, should we take a break and
21:57
Speaker 1: then go through some of these are sure? Do some
22:00
Speaker 1: I can break that little word playing no, no, Well,
22:02
Speaker 1: we'll take a break, all right, take a break, right, yeah,
22:04
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with broken arrows. Okay, Chuck, So
22:34
Speaker 1: we um we As far as we know, the military
22:37
Speaker 1: will cop to thirty two broken arrows in the history
22:41
Speaker 1: of the Atomic Age as far as the United States goes, um,
22:45
Speaker 1: other countries have their own, and apparently the Soviet Union
22:49
Speaker 1: had at least as many, if not more, than we did,
22:53
Speaker 1: which if you've seen Chernobyl you know that they were
22:56
Speaker 1: probably like hundreds more. Yeah, yeah, and and possibly the
23:00
Speaker 1: same for us. It makes a really good point that,
23:02
Speaker 1: you know, the once the intercontinental ballistic missiles came along
23:06
Speaker 1: and we didn't need Operation Chrome Dome anymore, broken arrows
23:10
Speaker 1: all but vanished. But it's also possible that the military
23:14
Speaker 1: just decided, like, we're just not going to publicly announce
23:17
Speaker 1: these things any longer, which is entirely possible. Who knows.
23:21
Speaker 1: But as as far as it goes officially, there have
23:24
Speaker 1: been thirty two broken arrow pinnacle incidents that have happened
23:29
Speaker 1: in the nation's history, and some of them are just
23:31
Speaker 1: absolute doozies. Yeah, so we'll go over some of these. Um.
23:35
Speaker 1: I guess we can start with the first one, just
23:37
Speaker 1: for nostalgia's sake. This was February a B thirty six
23:42
Speaker 1: B Peacemaker bomber uh set flight from Alaska, and this
23:47
Speaker 1: is just a training mission where they want to simulate
23:50
Speaker 1: a nuclear strike against Russia. But they did have a
23:53
Speaker 1: big bomb on board. It was a five thousand pound
23:55
Speaker 1: bomb with just a conventional explosives that wasn't uh UM
24:00
Speaker 1: or at least a Department of Defense in the Air
24:02
Speaker 1: Force say, and we're gonna be caveating all these because
24:06
Speaker 1: you know we we can only say what they told us.
24:08
Speaker 1: But they said that there was no plutonium core on
24:11
Speaker 1: the plane. Um. But this is one of the planes
24:14
Speaker 1: that took off had engine trouble. The crew bailed out
24:18
Speaker 1: and set off the bomb in the air and then
24:20
Speaker 1: bailed out of the plane and the bomb luckily went
24:24
Speaker 1: off over the ocean, right. And this this kind of
24:27
Speaker 1: strikes at the core of a lot of these accidents.
24:30
Speaker 1: Like whenever you hear about um like or whenever you
24:33
Speaker 1: think about, why haven't we've been obliterated by a meteor
24:36
Speaker 1: or something, it seems like the world is just full
24:40
Speaker 1: of people, but there is way more empty land and
24:42
Speaker 1: water still then there are massive amounts of people. So
24:47
Speaker 1: the fact that we haven't been hit by the big asteroid,
24:50
Speaker 1: or that a lot of these bombs go off in
24:52
Speaker 1: places where there are no people. It is lucky, but
24:55
Speaker 1: the stats are also in our favor. Yeah, it's either
24:59
Speaker 1: that or we're live being in a computer simulation one
25:01
Speaker 1: of the two exactly, or in the matrix. So um
25:06
Speaker 1: that was the first one that was in nineteen fifty
25:09
Speaker 1: and the fact that the government says there was there
25:11
Speaker 1: was only like a um A uh what what did
25:15
Speaker 1: you call it? Uh? Like what was the kind of
25:18
Speaker 1: UM flight it was on? Just like a training mission? Training? Yes,
25:21
Speaker 1: so there was a training plug inside of the thing.
25:24
Speaker 1: It was it's made of lead rather than plutonium. And
25:27
Speaker 1: that actually probably holds up to scrutiny because in the
25:31
Speaker 1: early fifties they that's the kind that they were using.
25:34
Speaker 1: There were small enough that you could send one of
25:36
Speaker 1: the pilots or one of the co pilots or somebody
25:38
Speaker 1: to the back to actually arm the nuclear weapon with
25:42
Speaker 1: the plug, and if they were on a training mission,
25:44
Speaker 1: there really wouldn't be much used for that. So that
25:47
Speaker 1: probably was a non nuclear bomb that went off. But
25:51
Speaker 1: by the the late fifties, the the government had moved
25:55
Speaker 1: on to much bigger bombs and because they decided that
25:59
Speaker 1: they needed to be hair trigger ready. They were armed,
26:03
Speaker 1: despite what the government says. They're These type of bombs
26:06
Speaker 1: that they moved to are called sealed pit weapons, where
26:08
Speaker 1: that core was inserted and then the bomb was sealed
26:11
Speaker 1: and then it was loaded onto the plane. So the
26:14
Speaker 1: plane was flying around with a fully active, ready to
26:17
Speaker 1: go nuclear bomb. So anything starting in the late fifties
26:21
Speaker 1: onward is suspicious. If the government saying that it wasn't
26:25
Speaker 1: an active nuclear bomb, that's right, very true. Here's another one,
26:32
Speaker 1: and we're just kind of picking through these. I think
26:33
Speaker 1: gave us like seventeen or eighteen to choose from, but
26:36
Speaker 1: I thought like all thirty two were on here. No, No,
26:39
Speaker 1: it just seemed that way. Uh, this one in March,
26:42
Speaker 1: and this represents sort of one that's happened a few times,
26:46
Speaker 1: which is where a plane and the bomb in the
26:49
Speaker 1: plane will just vanish, never to be heard from again.
26:53
Speaker 1: And that happened on March tenth, the B forty seven
26:57
Speaker 1: strato Jet. It was most to refuel in mid air
27:01
Speaker 1: over the Mediterranean Sea, but the plane never showed up
27:04
Speaker 1: for that dinner date. And uh, they never found the plane,
27:09
Speaker 1: and it had two nuclear capsules and they were never
27:12
Speaker 1: found either. And Um, that was I think nineteen fifty six.
27:17
Speaker 1: You said, if you fast forward a little bit to
27:19
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty eight, that was a really really bad year
27:24
Speaker 1: for broken arrow incidents. I mean, if you're a fan
27:27
Speaker 1: of broken arrow incidents, it's a great year. But for
27:29
Speaker 1: the rest of us, it was a bad year. Um.
27:32
Speaker 1: From January thirty one to March eleven, there were three
27:35
Speaker 1: So in less than six weeks there were three broken
27:38
Speaker 1: arrow incidents, two of which were among the most famous
27:41
Speaker 1: broken arrow incidents ever to take place. The first one
27:44
Speaker 1: produced what's known as the Tybee bomb. You've heard of
27:47
Speaker 1: the Tybee bomb. Okay, So, Um, there was a B
27:51
Speaker 1: forty seven that was on a training flight and stance,
27:53
Speaker 1: this is nineteen fifty eight. It's entirely possible that it
27:55
Speaker 1: was a fully active nuclear weapon that it was flying
27:58
Speaker 1: around with the government says no. Other people say absolutely was.
28:03
Speaker 1: But Um, the on the training mission, the B fifty
28:06
Speaker 1: two or I'm sorry, the B forty seven was, um,
28:09
Speaker 1: became in contact with a fighter jet it was also
28:12
Speaker 1: training and pretending to attack it, and they accidentally knocked
28:15
Speaker 1: itself out and knocked the B forty seven out the
28:18
Speaker 1: the B forty seven crew ejected the jettison the bomb,
28:22
Speaker 1: and four weeks afterward they looked around Tybee Island to
28:25
Speaker 1: find this bomb and they still to this day haven't
28:28
Speaker 1: found it Tybee Island, which is off the coast of Savannah, Georgia. Uh.
28:33
Speaker 1: And he said that the Fight six was pretending to attack.
28:36
Speaker 1: It was a just like a training thing. Yeah. Yeah,
28:40
Speaker 1: and it got too close and I think took its
28:42
Speaker 1: own wing off and crippled the B forty seven. I
28:45
Speaker 1: think peo peo peo the whole time. Yeah, basically, And
28:51
Speaker 1: it was a it was a Mark thirty six bomb too.
28:54
Speaker 1: This is really important. It was a four ton hydrogen
28:58
Speaker 1: bomb that may have been fully active. And it's just
29:02
Speaker 1: somewhere off, like right off of the coast of Tybee Island, somewhere.
29:05
Speaker 1: If you've ever been to Tybee Island, this explains quite
29:08
Speaker 1: a bit about Tybee Island that there's a four ton
29:11
Speaker 1: hydrogen bomb just sitting right off the coat. Now, what
29:13
Speaker 1: does that mean? Are you knocking Tybee? No? I think
29:16
Speaker 1: j yeah. Jerry loves Tybee. It's a great place. It's
29:21
Speaker 1: its own place, and I love it for that. But
29:23
Speaker 1: also super duper weird. Well, what I can't figure out
29:26
Speaker 1: is why they can't find this thing. That just seems
29:30
Speaker 1: it just seems impossible to me that you can't find
29:32
Speaker 1: this given that Tybee is not the hugest place. Uh No,
29:36
Speaker 1: I agree. I think it's just one of those needle
29:38
Speaker 1: in the haystack things. By now, it's probably been covered
29:40
Speaker 1: with so much like silt and sediment, they may never
29:43
Speaker 1: find it. But I read this really interesting article, and
29:46
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of articles written about the search.
29:48
Speaker 1: There's a guy who I think is a former Air Force,
29:52
Speaker 1: uh commander. I can't remember what he did in the
29:54
Speaker 1: Air Force or the military, but he Um, he got
29:57
Speaker 1: interested in the idea of chasing down these lost oaken arrows,
30:01
Speaker 1: and um, he searched for the Tybee bomb and he
30:04
Speaker 1: claimed to have found it at one point. Um, But
30:08
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what happened with that. But this article
30:10
Speaker 1: called the Saga of the Tybee Bomb. It was by
30:13
Speaker 1: Roger Pinckney and Gardening Gun Magazine, and oh, he really
30:18
Speaker 1: played up the southern thing that he in his writing.
30:21
Speaker 1: Oh my god, but it was good. It was a
30:23
Speaker 1: good article. But he interviewed a shrimp boat captain or no.
30:26
Speaker 1: He interviewed the nephew of a friend of a shrimp
30:30
Speaker 1: boat captain who on his deathbed says that he found
30:33
Speaker 1: the bomb and said exactly where he trawled it too,
30:36
Speaker 1: and then cut it loose when he realized it was
30:38
Speaker 1: a bomb and never told anybody, or he did try
30:41
Speaker 1: to tell somebody and they ignored him. But um, he
30:44
Speaker 1: kind of left this legacy of potentially where the bomb
30:46
Speaker 1: is and he said it was right off of the
30:48
Speaker 1: dock of the Coastguard post on Tybee Island. Well, maybe
30:51
Speaker 1: they never found it because it was after his long
30:53
Speaker 1: list of shrimp recipes. It's possible, shimp Newberg. That was
31:01
Speaker 1: a great, great movie, was it? Was it not? I
31:06
Speaker 1: don't I don't think so. I don't think Forrest compass Aged? Well,
31:09
Speaker 1: oh really, I'll have to go see it then again. Yeah,
31:12
Speaker 1: that was a sweet movie. Yeah all right, well, okay, okay,
31:16
Speaker 1: we'll take that up later. All right, Well, let's go
31:20
Speaker 1: with another one, another very famous one. On March eleventh,
31:24
Speaker 1: when the United States Air Force it was a B
31:26
Speaker 1: fifty seven I'm sorry, by going to Britain and it
31:31
Speaker 1: had an issue with the locking pin on the bombaye doors,
31:35
Speaker 1: there's a story supposedly that one of the co pilots
31:39
Speaker 1: went to fix it movie style by hitting the fault
31:43
Speaker 1: light with the butt of his gun. It's like right
31:46
Speaker 1: out of a movie the Planes Captain just like And
31:50
Speaker 1: this may have been a big inspiration for Dr Strange
31:54
Speaker 1: Love because if you remember in that movie Slim Pickens,
31:56
Speaker 1: there's an issue with the bombay doors and he basically
31:59
Speaker 1: rides the bomb and very famously at the ending wearing
32:03
Speaker 1: his cowboy hat right out of the bombay door. But
32:06
Speaker 1: the planes Captain uh climbed into that bombay to go
32:10
Speaker 1: check things out and accidentally pulled the emergency release lever
32:15
Speaker 1: or pushed a button that he shouldn't have pushed, uh,
32:17
Speaker 1: depending on who you're asking. The bomb dropped. These doors
32:21
Speaker 1: were closed. Remember, but this is a four ton bombs
32:24
Speaker 1: who had just smashed right through those doors, fell fifteen
32:27
Speaker 1: thousand feet and blew up a farm in South Carolina. Yeah, like,
32:33
Speaker 1: they bombed South Carolina with a nuclear bomb, and just
32:35
Speaker 1: by the grace of the nature goddess, there was no
32:40
Speaker 1: nuclear explosion, that's right, I mean, but a big boom, yes,
32:46
Speaker 1: a huge boom, and it actually ruined the farm of
32:48
Speaker 1: the greg family. The Walter Gregg family, and he was
32:52
Speaker 1: he lived bitterly the rest of his life because he
32:55
Speaker 1: finally sued and got like thirty six grand or something
32:58
Speaker 1: like that, which even at the time him wasn't enough
33:00
Speaker 1: for him to rebuild his house and his farm. And
33:03
Speaker 1: no one died that it was just miraculous, but um,
33:06
Speaker 1: several members of his family were injured and had to
33:08
Speaker 1: go to the hospital. Um, but it was a big deal.
33:11
Speaker 1: It left a crater that's still there. It's in mars Bluff,
33:14
Speaker 1: South Carolina, which is not too far from Florence, but
33:17
Speaker 1: it was something like five miles from Florence something like that.
33:20
Speaker 1: And had this thing gone off, it would have um
33:23
Speaker 1: wiped Florence right off of the map. Yeah, it would
33:26
Speaker 1: have been a really big deal. And this was just
33:29
Speaker 1: in a nuclear accident where somebody accidentally dropped a bomb
33:32
Speaker 1: on a farm in in South Carolina. Uh. This other
33:35
Speaker 1: one in night and you were right, there were a
33:37
Speaker 1: lot in but this one in November was pretty bad.
33:42
Speaker 1: It was a B forty seven crashed. It just seems
33:45
Speaker 1: like there were nuclear planes crashing all over the place
33:48
Speaker 1: because there were so many nuclear flights taking off in landing.
33:52
Speaker 1: Every single day. Yeah, and they were moving the bombs
33:56
Speaker 1: like from one place to another constantly to Well, this
33:59
Speaker 1: one crashed in Texas and it was carrying a nuclear
34:03
Speaker 1: weapon and the Air Force kept this one classified for
34:06
Speaker 1: a long time. Um, but it had enriched uranium, so
34:10
Speaker 1: they figure it was a sealed pit weapon that was
34:13
Speaker 1: armed and the high explosive did detonate, but there was
34:17
Speaker 1: no nuclear explosion again um, hopefully because of these fail safes.
34:22
Speaker 1: But the kicker here is, uh, there was an environmental
34:25
Speaker 1: clean up. This was the Air Force said, you know what,
34:29
Speaker 1: we should go in there and clean this stuff up
34:31
Speaker 1: because it's two thousand eleven, right, That's how long they
34:35
Speaker 1: waited to clean the side up. Yeah, and apparently they
34:39
Speaker 1: grew grain and fed cattle that grain on this land
34:43
Speaker 1: that was a nuclear disaster site because again, like the bomb,
34:47
Speaker 1: the nuclear bomb might not actually go off, but those
34:50
Speaker 1: high explosives are blowing the nuclear material all over the
34:53
Speaker 1: place and just totally contaminating the area. And they didn't
34:56
Speaker 1: do anything about it for for what uh three years,
35:01
Speaker 1: while they were feeding cattle grown on the land there.
35:03
Speaker 1: That's crazy. What else you got? So there were two
35:08
Speaker 1: incidents that kind of brought um, the operation Chrome Dome
35:14
Speaker 1: era to the to an end. Um. Remember we said
35:17
Speaker 1: the intercontinental ballistic missile development really put an end to it.
35:20
Speaker 1: But also the idea like this is just too risky,
35:24
Speaker 1: and they knew it going into it. They were like,
35:25
Speaker 1: you know, we're gonna be flying around with armed nuclear weapons.
35:30
Speaker 1: It's far riskier, but it's a great strategy in case
35:33
Speaker 1: the the USSR strikes us, we'll be able to strike back. Um.
35:37
Speaker 1: So it's worth the trade off. They knew going into it,
35:40
Speaker 1: But after all of these accidents, they finally were like, Okay,
35:44
Speaker 1: it's not worth the trade off anymore. Um. And the
35:46
Speaker 1: last two that really did it in were in January
35:50
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty eight, I believe, And those the last
35:54
Speaker 1: two that really did Chrome Dome in both happened in January,
35:57
Speaker 1: but two years apart, January sixty six and January. And
36:01
Speaker 1: I think one of the reasons that really hastened the
36:02
Speaker 1: end of Chrome Dome is because they happened on foreign
36:05
Speaker 1: soil where we had air force bases. But we're guests
36:09
Speaker 1: of the country and the country that this happened in
36:12
Speaker 1: the countries that happened, and we're not very happy with
36:15
Speaker 1: us for for allowing these nuclear accidents to take place. Yeah,
36:19
Speaker 1: there was one in January. Uh it was a mid
36:22
Speaker 1: air another mid air collision during refueling, which if you've
36:26
Speaker 1: ever seen those mid air refuelings, it's a tricky thing.
36:29
Speaker 1: So you can see how that would happen. And that's,
36:31
Speaker 1: of course how strange Love opens over the opening credits
36:35
Speaker 1: very famously with the refueling scene. Um shot into very
36:38
Speaker 1: sexual nature right on purpose, of course, because it was
36:42
Speaker 1: Stanley Kubrick. But this one was near uh palamattas Spain.
36:49
Speaker 1: Nice is that right? Um? Yeah, I think that's good enough,
36:53
Speaker 1: all right, Um? And that was, like I said, the
36:55
Speaker 1: two planes crashed into each other, and four bombs were
36:59
Speaker 1: on board. Four. One fell into the ocean, one fell
37:02
Speaker 1: on land, and the other two fell on land and
37:06
Speaker 1: detonated the high explosives. One went to market And you say, so, yeah,
37:13
Speaker 1: one of them one went off I think, uh and
37:17
Speaker 1: blew up, you said, out of the four, that's actually
37:19
Speaker 1: pretty lucky. No, no, no, one of the three that
37:22
Speaker 1: fell on land to actually detonated the high explosives. Okay, gotcha, gotcha.
37:26
Speaker 1: And then one the one that went in the ocean,
37:28
Speaker 1: like they looked for that for weeks and they finally
37:31
Speaker 1: managed to find it, which based on these broken arrow
37:34
Speaker 1: um reports, is really rare that to actually find the bomb.
37:39
Speaker 1: But they found this one in Spain, and then they
37:42
Speaker 1: actually cleaned up the site because this was in Spain,
37:44
Speaker 1: it wasn't just in Texas. So they went to the
37:47
Speaker 1: trouble of cleaning up the site and they removed four
37:50
Speaker 1: hundred tons of contaminated soil from the crash site where
37:55
Speaker 1: this radioactive material had been scattered by the explosion. Amazing.
38:00
Speaker 1: So that was that was two years before Chrome Dome.
38:02
Speaker 1: And the last one, the one that really brought about
38:04
Speaker 1: the end of Chrome Dome, was in Greenland, the incident
38:07
Speaker 1: at tu Lea Air Force Base in Greenland in January
38:10
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty eight. This one happened and literally from
38:13
Speaker 1: what I read, the next day, operation Chrome Dome was ended.
38:18
Speaker 1: So this was a B fifty two crash crashed onto
38:22
Speaker 1: sea ice and apparently they had to get rid of
38:26
Speaker 1: two hundred and thirty seven thousand cubic meters of snow, ice,
38:30
Speaker 1: water and plane junk. Yeah, they removed it to the
38:36
Speaker 1: United States because it was contaminated with radioactivity. So the
38:39
Speaker 1: fact that happened in Greenland was was bad enough, but
38:42
Speaker 1: the Greenland was a territory of Denmark at the time.
38:44
Speaker 1: In Denmark had a no nuke policy, so they were
38:49
Speaker 1: really unhappy with this. But what's cool is Denmark forced
38:52
Speaker 1: the US to conduct an environmental estimate and study this
38:57
Speaker 1: stuff to make sure that there were no prolonged effects.
38:59
Speaker 1: And I found that there weren't. That's that's what the
39:02
Speaker 1: study turned up. But yeah, but this is back in
39:04
Speaker 1: the sixties and they're doing this kind of thing, So
39:07
Speaker 1: way to go, Denmark. I think we should talk about
39:09
Speaker 1: the one over North Carolina too, even though it jumps
39:13
Speaker 1: back in time. Is that all right? Yeah, I'm fine
39:17
Speaker 1: with jumping back in time. Janu A B fifty two
39:22
Speaker 1: got a fuel leak, starts getting out of control, and
39:26
Speaker 1: it's trying to get back to its base. The crew ejects.
39:30
Speaker 1: The plane breaks apart and crashes near Goldsboro, North Carolina,
39:35
Speaker 1: and there were two nuclear bombs on board here uh
39:38
Speaker 1: that's separated from the plane and fell to the ground.
39:42
Speaker 1: One of them was fully armed hydrogen bomb, had nuclear material.
39:47
Speaker 1: Everything was there for a three point eight megaton explosion,
39:51
Speaker 1: and it crashed to the ground at high speed and
39:53
Speaker 1: disintegrated without either the high explosive or the nuclear explosion,
39:57
Speaker 1: going off into sort of a swamp. And what happened
40:01
Speaker 1: to the other one, Uh, it actually fell gently to earth.
40:04
Speaker 1: It's parachute deployed and it just went got stuck in
40:07
Speaker 1: a tree and they got it out. Hydrogen bomb stuck
40:12
Speaker 1: in a tree with tons of high explosives attached to it,
40:15
Speaker 1: just hanging out. But they managed to get that one back.
40:18
Speaker 1: It's amazing when he reads through some of these, it's
40:20
Speaker 1: looks like and I know it's not in the case,
40:22
Speaker 1: of course, our military does a great job, but it
40:26
Speaker 1: looks at times like it's a three Stooges episode. Yeah, Like,
40:30
Speaker 1: there was one plane that was pushed off an aircraft
40:32
Speaker 1: carrier that had a nuclear bomb, just sort of pushed
40:35
Speaker 1: off the side of the carrier off the coast of Japan,
40:38
Speaker 1: and it's still down there from what they from what
40:40
Speaker 1: we understand, here's something horrific, Chuck. The pilot was in
40:43
Speaker 1: the plane at the time. Really, they've never recovered the plane,
40:47
Speaker 1: the pilot, the bomb. It's just down there in like
40:49
Speaker 1: twelve thou feet of water, I believe. Yeah, imagine you
40:52
Speaker 1: sink pretty fast. Oh god man, No, that's just terrible.
40:56
Speaker 1: There was one where ah, this was missiles word ready
41:01
Speaker 1: and armed at an Air Force base in New Jersey
41:04
Speaker 1: when a helium tank burst. I guess they were blown
41:07
Speaker 1: up birthday party balloons, right, And this did not have
41:11
Speaker 1: a high explosive detonation, but the missile's fuel tank ruptured,
41:16
Speaker 1: and um, there was a big fire. A bunch of these.
41:19
Speaker 1: There were fires, like big fires where they thought, you know,
41:23
Speaker 1: is it gonna happen or is it not? And luckily
41:26
Speaker 1: it did not. No, and I'm sure that was a
41:29
Speaker 1: consideration every single time, like is this thing going to
41:32
Speaker 1: blow up into a nuclear explosion? I mean some of
41:35
Speaker 1: these are are just we just would have been massive.
41:37
Speaker 1: The one in um Goldsboro, North Carolina we were talking about,
41:42
Speaker 1: had they gone off, it would have been two hundred
41:44
Speaker 1: and fifty three times larger than the Hiroshima blasts. Yeah,
41:50
Speaker 1: they would have been in normous. I mean, look what
41:52
Speaker 1: that one fifteen kiloton bomb did to Hiroshima. Imagine two
41:56
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty three times worse over North Carolina. I'm sure.
42:00
Speaker 1: Mean it's just that would have been Georgia, would have
42:02
Speaker 1: been South Carolina. It would have been massive and enormous
42:07
Speaker 1: and and and the fact that we didn't ever for
42:11
Speaker 1: every single one of these, not once did a nuclear
42:14
Speaker 1: explosion go off. It's really a testament to the scientists
42:17
Speaker 1: who designed this thing to be as safe as as
42:19
Speaker 1: humanly possible. And yeah, I mean there's some others like, um,
42:25
Speaker 1: the USS Scorpion nuclear sub went down. It had a
42:28
Speaker 1: nuclear reactor aboard and a couple of nuclear torpedoes. Um, Like,
42:33
Speaker 1: if you go through this list, there's a substantial number
42:37
Speaker 1: of nuclear bombs like out there in in the Sea
42:40
Speaker 1: of the Philippines, off the azores Um off of Tybee Island,
42:44
Speaker 1: just hanging out waiting around, hopefully indefinitely or forever and
42:49
Speaker 1: never you know, going off. But I remember that was
42:52
Speaker 1: like one of the big concerns among the people living
42:55
Speaker 1: on Tybee is like, you know this this high explosives
42:58
Speaker 1: are aging. You know, what's gonna happened when they reach
43:00
Speaker 1: a certain age? Are they going to become are they
43:03
Speaker 1: just gonna blow up? And is somebody's boat going to
43:05
Speaker 1: be over the area at the time, Like what what
43:07
Speaker 1: are we doing here? And the official thing is like
43:10
Speaker 1: it's it's just gone and it's safer to just leave
43:12
Speaker 1: it wherever it is and try to move it at
43:14
Speaker 1: this point. Yeah, The other I think funny thing ed
43:16
Speaker 1: included here towards the end was uh. He says. There
43:20
Speaker 1: are hundreds of other incidentss that would be classified as
43:23
Speaker 1: bent spears. Uh, Like you know, dropping fully armed nukes
43:27
Speaker 1: onto the concrete, he said, more so many times I
43:29
Speaker 1: lost count, or just like dropping off the wing of
43:33
Speaker 1: an aircraft onto the ground when they were doing something.
43:37
Speaker 1: It's um, isn't that a movie? Wasn't that in a movie?
43:40
Speaker 1: I don't know that happened in a movie. And it's like, oh,
43:43
Speaker 1: it's just so cringe e. It's like a top secret
43:46
Speaker 1: or something. Maybe I can only think of the Zucker brothers.
43:52
Speaker 1: I went and watched a loaded weapon? Is that good?
43:56
Speaker 1: It is? It's good for what it is for sure? Yes? Now,
43:59
Speaker 1: was that the Zucker? Yeah? I believe it was one
44:02
Speaker 1: of the Zuckers, if not both of them. But Emilia
44:05
Speaker 1: west of As he's great. You're a big fan of him.
44:07
Speaker 1: I love it. He's he's a good actor. Don't you
44:11
Speaker 1: always champion the the sanitation Worker movie Men at Work Work.
44:17
Speaker 1: It's such a good movie. I still haven't seen that one.
44:20
Speaker 1: You gotta see that one. It's got a real plot
44:22
Speaker 1: to it and everything. Yeah, and I mean it's Amilia
44:26
Speaker 1: west of As and Charlie Sheen. When else are you
44:28
Speaker 1: going to see those two together? Agreed? Thanksgiving? Maybe? Yeah,
44:33
Speaker 1: that's right. Maybe maybe Easter depending Maybe they're brothers. They're brothers,
44:40
Speaker 1: I know they are. That's why you'd see him together.
44:42
Speaker 1: That's right. Are you telling me that or we're telling
44:44
Speaker 1: me the listeners that. Oh I don't know. I'm just
44:46
Speaker 1: talking to the ether. Okay, good, Um, Well, since we
44:49
Speaker 1: started talking about Emilia west of Az and Charlie Sheen,
44:52
Speaker 1: I think it's time for a listener man and Charles, Uh,
44:59
Speaker 1: this episode MS out It so happens on the thirty one.
45:04
Speaker 1: I believe that's New Year's Eve. That's right. I was
45:08
Speaker 1: trying to get you to say it did so. A
45:11
Speaker 1: couple of things. Uh. We want to wish everyone a
45:13
Speaker 1: happy New Year, first of course, um, and also I
45:17
Speaker 1: want to wish a happy birthday to my dear sweet
45:19
Speaker 1: wife you me, Happy birthday MS. Thanks man. So happy
45:22
Speaker 1: new Year everybody. We hope that it is a spectacular
45:27
Speaker 1: for you. It's the future now, that's right. So let's
45:30
Speaker 1: all kind of shape up and act right for it.
45:33
Speaker 1: Let's do okay, So happy New Year everyone, Uh, and
45:36
Speaker 1: now it's time for a listener Matt. Yeah, we're gonna
45:39
Speaker 1: share a dream here. We don't usually do this because,
45:41
Speaker 1: let's face it, listening to someone's dreams is the worst.
45:45
Speaker 1: But this was kind of funny. Is from Cassie. She
45:48
Speaker 1: wrote it at five thirty am, right off the bat
45:50
Speaker 1: after having this dream. Uh. She said, the dream was
45:53
Speaker 1: a run I won some random drawing and the prize
45:57
Speaker 1: was to sit down on the recording of a podcast
45:59
Speaker 1: while you were my area. So you guys come to
46:01
Speaker 1: my cabin, which I don't have in real life. You
46:04
Speaker 1: explain that you want to record the podcast in bed,
46:06
Speaker 1: and uh. So there we are, all three in bed
46:09
Speaker 1: together wearing button up jammies that no one really wears
46:12
Speaker 1: in real life. And you guys are you have your
46:15
Speaker 1: microphones and everything, and you're doing your stuff. You should
46:18
Speaker 1: know thing, and I'm just sitting there watching and laughing
46:20
Speaker 1: and learning. Uh. When you decide that you're done and
46:23
Speaker 1: it's time to go to sleep, So we go to
46:26
Speaker 1: sleep in the same bed that you recorded from. Josh
46:28
Speaker 1: is in the middle and Chuck and I are on
46:30
Speaker 1: opposite ends. I was extremely self aware that I roll
46:34
Speaker 1: around in my sleep and there's no way your guys
46:36
Speaker 1: are gonna be able to sleep. And sure enough, after
46:38
Speaker 1: a while, Joshua is up and says, I'm gonna go
46:40
Speaker 1: watch TV. I can't sleep, So I was mortified that
46:44
Speaker 1: I kept him up. And then Chuck rolls over and
46:46
Speaker 1: wraps his arm around me and spoons me. And I said,
46:49
Speaker 1: what the heck are you doing? And Chuck says, oh, no, no, no,
46:52
Speaker 1: this isn't a sexual thing. I'm happily married, as you know.
46:55
Speaker 1: But Emily knows that I have to hold on to
46:57
Speaker 1: someone in order to fall asleep, so it's okay, so uh,
47:02
Speaker 1: and he says, normally it's Josh when we do these overnighters,
47:05
Speaker 1: but you know, so I usually spoon you. Apparently, yeah,
47:10
Speaker 1: well sure everybody knows that. So now there's no way
47:13
Speaker 1: I'm falling asleep. I told Chuck I was gonna go
47:15
Speaker 1: watch TV with Josh and Chuck says I can't sleep either,
47:19
Speaker 1: and ask for pepto bismol and winks at me like
47:22
Speaker 1: it's code for something. So Chuck starts laughing and says, no,
47:27
Speaker 1: don't worry about the pepto bismol. So then there we
47:29
Speaker 1: are all three watching TV on the couch and you
47:32
Speaker 1: guys are asking for snacks. I opened my fridge and
47:35
Speaker 1: I have tons of expired snacks and I'm embarrassed and
47:39
Speaker 1: realized that the snacks are expired and I never even
47:42
Speaker 1: fed you dinner. You guys are pretty embarrassing. You guys
47:45
Speaker 1: awkwardly pretend to be okay not eating while we're sitting
47:50
Speaker 1: on the couch, and your stomachs are literally rumbling extremely loud,
47:53
Speaker 1: and finally we all fall asleep on the couch. Uh.
47:56
Speaker 1: The next day, you were doing a live show and
47:58
Speaker 1: apparently are great friends with my armacist and my pharmacists
48:02
Speaker 1: posted selfies with Josh lifting weights at the gym before
48:05
Speaker 1: you guys went to do your live show. Are they crazy?
48:10
Speaker 1: Where these dreams go? They go all over the place, man,
48:13
Speaker 1: all over the place. I don't know how they knew
48:15
Speaker 1: that your pre show routine was lifting weights? All right?
48:19
Speaker 1: You like to buff up before the show. Sure. Anyway,
48:22
Speaker 1: I'm still laughing now and I'm definitely gonna have a
48:25
Speaker 1: great day because of this dream. Thank you, I'm sorry,
48:28
Speaker 1: and you're welcome. That is from Cassie. Thanks a lot, Cassie,
48:32
Speaker 1: much appreciated. Um. Yeah, we'll just move on from that one.
48:37
Speaker 1: That's right. Uh. If you want to get in touch
48:41
Speaker 1: with this, like Cassie did, you can go onto stuff
48:44
Speaker 1: you Should Know dot com. You can check out our
48:46
Speaker 1: social links there and you can send us an email
48:50
Speaker 1: send it off to stuff podcast and I heart radio
48:54
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a product and
49:00
Speaker 1: of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for
49:02
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
49:05
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H