December 31, 2019 • 49 mins
Are broken arrows are a problem? After all, they are incidents and accidents involving nuclear warheads. Like, sometimes they go missing. But it hasn't happened much since the 50s and 60s. OR HAS IT? Learn all about them today.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
San Francisco. We're coming to see you soon. Yeah, we're
gonna be there on Saturday, January Chuck. And since it's
San Francisco, we're gonna be wearing nothing but appropriately placed
clumps of rice roni. It is the San Francisco treat. Yes,
and we're the San Francisco treat too whenever we're in town,
So everybody should come see us. That's right. It's part
of Sketch Fest as always. We love performing there. You
(00:22):
can go to s Y s K live dot com
for details or s F sketch Fest dot com. Uh.
And if you're around Sunday night you can come see
me do movie Crush Live and a very small fun
venue where you can shake my hand. Very nice, So
come see us, everybody. You won't regret it. We're pretty
sure that's correct. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and
(00:50):
welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, there's guest producer Roll over there. Uh. And
that makes this Stuff you Should Know um, featuring Chucks,
John Travolta, and me as Christians Later. Lowell is Frank Whaley.
(01:12):
Was he in that? Yep? He had the great line,
are you ready for it? I don't know what's scarier
losing a nuclear bomb? He didn't. He didn't say this
with this much reservation. He really delivered the line. Um.
He also didn't comment on his own line while he
was giving it, or that it happened so often there's
(01:34):
a name for it. Yeah, that's a good line. It's
a great line. It's it's a long, clumsy line. But
he delivered it really well. You know, I don't know
that I ever saw broken arrow Oh I didn't either.
I was just alive in the nineties, so I was
cognizant of it. Yeah. I thought at first you were
talking about Saturday Night Fever with Christians. Later sure, no, No,
(01:57):
I wasn't. Do you remember we talked about Sarah like
fever must have in the Disco episode where it turns
out that the article it was based on was just
totally fabricated. Remember that's right. That's such a great soundtrack, man,
maybe one of the all time best. Yep, But we're
here to talk about broken arrows, and uh, I got
this idea. This was one of my commissions, was because
(02:19):
I had um, I had someone on movie Crush. Then
we did Doctor Strange Love, the great great movie from
Stanley Kubrick, which factors into this stuff some And he
brought in a stack of papers and just said here
for your desk, and it was a list of all
the broken arrow incidents. And there were a lot more
(02:40):
than thirty of them, So I don't know if what
all was included. We'll get into some of the terminology
of what kind of falls under the banner of a
broken arrow. But but a broken well, we should just
go ahead and tell everyone what a broken arrow is, Yeah,
we should. As defined by the Department of Defense and
a little bit from the Air Force, is an accident
(03:00):
involving a nuclear weapon or warhead or nuclear component, or
an unexpected event involving nuclear weapons that could result in
um accidental or unauthorized launching, firing, what else, uh, detonation, Yeah,
jettising them, sending them, uh damage to him, accidentally dropping them.
(03:23):
And I mean, I've got to say, I don't know
what's worse, accidentally dropping a nuclear bomb or that it
happens so frequently. There's a name for it. Thank you,
Mr Whaley. Sure you can go to your trailer. Now,
so that's a I mean, that's a broken arrow. And
like there's a if you've seen that movie Broken Arrow,
it's um about Christians later foiling John Travolta, um after
(03:47):
he steals a nuclear bomb. That's actually technically not a
broken arrow from what we know. That's called an empty quiver,
which works with the broken arrow. But I thought it
had to do with a stolen nuclear bomb, which led
me to think, like, hey man, we've basically already done
this one. We did how easy is it to steal
a nuclear bomb? Remember that? Okay, this is really very
(04:09):
much different. This is basically when a US military personnel
screws up big time as far as a nuclear bomb
is concerned, or there's some terrible accident with a nuclear bomb.
But um, it's not something that's going to lead to war, right,
It's not like an accidental launch of a nuclear weapon
(04:31):
against the Soviet Union back in the Cold War. It's
dropping a nuclear bomb on your toe. That's a broken arrow, basically. Yeah,
And I've always thought broken arrow. I was wrong. I
thought it kind of only meant that you lose a
nuclear warhead somehow. Well, that's what Travolta's lies. He's the
father of lies. That's what he teaches us. Yeah, we've
(04:53):
been misled by Travolta. Yeah, have you seen him? He's
he's gone bald. Now have you seen him? Good for
a man? Has he? Yeah? He finally just just ripped
off the old rug said this is me, and he's
got a great being. He looks fantastic. Oh, I'm sure
I'm happy for him. That's good because he's been hiding
that for decades. So, uh, we should talk about a
(05:16):
few other points of terminology that might pop up. There's
something called a pinnacle level incident, and that basically means
that any kind of incident where it's so big that
it really goes up all the way up the military
chain to the very top. Yeah, it's a big deal.
In other words, it's a big deal as travel towards. Uh.
(05:37):
And there's a few more incident codes that I think
are pretty interesting. Um, there's one called a nuke flash,
and that means an accident or incident that could be
the precursor to the trigger of nuclear war. That's a
big one. That's the Yeah, that's the one where there's
like somebody accidentally sets off an intercontinental ballistic missile toward Russia.
(05:58):
That is like one that can lead to you nuclear war.
And did you read that as new flash? I read
it as nut flash. That's funny. Uh. What about front burner? Yeah,
front Marina is triggered by any hostile It is pinnacle
level and it is triggered by any hostile attack against
(06:21):
US forces. Uh. And it's not necessarily a nuclear incident. No,
but um, it can be. It can lead to a
nuclear war. So it's kind of considered part of that
whole family of nuclear jargon. Yeah. And also, don't think
I said it's a hostile attack by someone that we're
not already at war with. That is a big caveat,
(06:42):
because I guess if you're if you're already at war's
front burner, front burner, there's another front burner. Yes, that's
that's a good point to make, dude. Um there's also
empty Quiver, which is that's the name that should have
been given to the travolt A Slater movie. Um, that's
where the nuclear weapons stolen. Um. And I gotta say,
(07:06):
I don't know what's scarier than a nuclear weapon can
be stolen, or that it happens often enough that there's
a name for it. Uh, do we go over bent
spear yet? No, not to be confused with burning spear. No,
a bent spear is an incident, nuclear incident that's a
big deal, but it's not pinnacle level. And this is
like if someone violated a regulation or a procedure or
(07:30):
something when you're storing or transporting a nuclear weapon. Like
it's like a three Stooges level type of nuclear accident
um where nothing, nothing, really bad results from it. Uh,
it's just somebody screwed up. And Ed gave this example.
I had not heard of this one, but apparently in
two thousand seven there was a burning spear. I'm sorry
(07:52):
that was genuine. There was a bent spear incident um
where six armed nuclear warheads were loaded on a B
fifty two and they walked away slapping the dust off
of their hands and turned in for a good night's
rest and did not leave a guard. These six armed
nuclear warheads were left aboard a B fifty two that
(08:13):
was unguarded overnight and the next morning they flew him
across the country as scheduled. Okay, so nothing happened. No,
it's like one of those ones where you find that
you've bitten down to your cuticles because you're just so
mortified at the idea of how bad things could have gone.
But they just just we just narrowly averted crisis. All right,
(08:33):
Are there any of these other terms that matter to you? No? Okay,
all right, well we'll talk about We'll go over some
broken arrows later and some actual incidences. Um, but we
should talk a little bit just about nuclear weapons. Uh.
They are very much classified as to where they are,
(08:55):
and the Upper Brass basically has an exception to that
where if there is an incident and it presents a
hazard to the public, like boy, we need to get
people out of there, and we actually need to cop
to this thing. Uh, then that is an exception where
you can reveal that they're like surprised you're living near
(09:17):
some nuclear warheads. He didn't realize it. But over there
in that silo, it is it is not wheat I get.
I get the impression. Also, where you know, seven hundred
and fifty soldiers suddenly converge on a farm field where
a plane went down, Um, it's it's usually kind of
already old news to the locals that there's a nuclear
(09:37):
bomb somewhere in play, especially if this happens to take
place during the fifties or the sixties, which were the
the worst decades in American history for near miss nuclear accidents. Yeah,
and it's interesting. I never really uh, I kind of
just thought like, oh, it's because technology, and that's sort
of true, and that uh, in the fifties and sixties,
(09:59):
if you wanted to drop a nuclear bomb, that's why
they say drop a nuclear bomb, because you were literally
doing that. It was not attached to some missile on
some base. It was in the belly of a plane
and you flew over a site and opened doors and
dropped a bomb. Yes, the right, that's how you delivered
(10:20):
a nuclear bomb. And so because planes were so intimately
connected with delivering a nuclear bomb. Early on in the
Cold War, there was a guy who took over Strategic
Air Command and I think ninety seven, and he was
an old bomber pilot and he said, look, man, here's
our new strategy. We're going to keep bombers loaded with
(10:41):
nuclear bombs in the air at all times. There will
always be multiple B fifty twos flying around with loaded
nuclear weapons all the time, ready within striking distance of Russia.
And so this thing was called Operation Chrome Dome, where
pairs of B fifty twos would take off for twenty
four hour missions. They would refuel in the air. There
(11:04):
would be multiple pilots aboard so that they could trade
off shifts because they would stay aloft for twenty four hours,
and then before they came back to base the land
at the end of twenty four hours, another pair would
have taken off. And from what I saw, UM, at
the minimum of Operation Chrome Dome, there were always at
least four B fifty twos in the air flying these
routes like near Russia. UM, usually there was twelve in
(11:28):
the air. And then during the Cuban Missile Crisis, at
the height of Operation Chrome Dome, there were seventy five
B fifty twos in the air with nuclear weapons ready
to strike at any given time. And because there were
so many planes taking off and landing constantly with nuclear bombs,
the chances of an accident with one of these nuclear
(11:49):
bombs escalated tremendously. And that was these decades, the decades
that Operation Chrome Dome lasted, UM when these nuclear weapon problems,
what we call broken arrows, really kind of stepped up. Yeah,
and I mean that's if you've seen Doctor Strangelove, that's
what that uh, you know, there's kind of three parts
to the story. In one part is up in the
(12:11):
air in one of these bomber planes. And that's what
Slim Pickens and James Earl Jones are doing up there.
They are just manning a flight that is flying close
to the Soviet border and uh, hoping that they just
land and take off again the next day and fly
and it's boring and they land again, and like I said,
the ideas, you do this over and over and over
(12:32):
and nothing ever happens. Um. But of course in Strangelove
things go wrong. Um. But that yeah, that's what they
were doing up there. Yep. So that's operation Chrome Dome
and UM. Eventually the we developed innercontinental ballistic missiles, those
ones that you talked about, like in in the ground
in a base. They were capable of striking Moscow from Kansas.
(12:53):
When we developed those in the sixties, we said, okay,
we don't need this Chrome Dome strategy any longer. But
also because there were so many accidents, and because the
accidents were so costly bad and yet still just near
misses from a nuclear explosion. UM, the idea of this
chrome dome strategy was like, we we can't do this anymore.
(13:13):
This it's just too too risky. Basically, should we take
a break? I believe so, Charles, all right, we're gonna
take a break and we'll talk a little bit about
the nuts and bolts of how a nuclear bomb works
right after this. All right, Chuck. So if you're I
(13:51):
think we should do a nuclear um bomb episode someday,
where do we go over? This? Was it during the
meltdowns episode? Yeah? It must have been like a fission reaction, yeah,
because it does seem pretty pretty familiar, it doesn't it. Yeah,
because you know what a nuclear bomb is is is
detonating and instigating or causing always starting stuff a fission reaction. Um.
(14:18):
Well that was the early ones, right yeah. Yeah, So
how this works as a nuclear reaction is plutonium and
uranium UM being compressed and smashing into other plutonium and
uranium to get a nuclear fission reaction going right. Uh?
And the early uh, I guess h bombs is what
(14:40):
they call them initially, right, hydrogen bombs? Well, atomic bombs,
I think initially yeah, atomic bombs who were very rudimentary,
rudimentary Wow, Yeah, tried to dress them up by adding
an extra syllable, but they were still rudimentary. They were rudimentary. Uh.
And in fact, the UH, the very first bombs that
(15:02):
were dropped on Hiroshima actually fired a gun type mechanism
to set off this reaction. Right, It was like, yeah,
they would shoot uranium at uranium and that that would
set off the fission reaction, and like, you can produce
a pretty substantial um explosion like they did over her
(15:23):
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Right, And but compared to the other
way that they later quickly figured out, I believe in
the fifties they moved over I think those were the
hydrogen bombs thermonuclear bombs where they used fusion, where it
was an implosion that pressed the material, the plutonium or
or the uranium together to create this nuclear reaction. That's
(15:46):
when you got something in the yield of mega tons,
millions and millions of tons worth of TNT explosive power,
where the one in Hiroshima was like fifteen kilo tons,
like fifteen thousand tons of t n T. Yeah, and
thank god they hadn't figured that out at that point. Yeah,
because those earliest broken arrow ones were like, dude, if like,
(16:09):
if this had been like a fusion bomb, who knows
what would have happened, although I can't tell if if
one was safer than the other. And Ed rightly points
out the reason all these were near mrs was because
along the way, scientists thought, we need to include some
fail safes here so that if something does go wrong, um,
a cascading string of multiple failures have to happen in
(16:32):
a certain order for this thing to actually go off,
or you have to make it so it's purposefully happens
in this order to actually go off, and that if
one thing doesn't happen in this this cascade, then the
thing won't actually have a nuclear detonation. And the the
fact that the scientists worked in these safety mechanisms, that's
what kept like South Carolina and North Carolina from having
(16:56):
entire town's level the nuclear explosions accidentally. That's because what
happens now with this implosion that it is this nuclear
material is packed and surrounded by high explosives, just regular
conventional explosives, and this is you know, these things go
off and they create a big boom in and of
themselves that is very dangerous. But like you said, there
(17:18):
are so many safety features built in and unless you
have that um, that exact implosion pattern that you need,
it might be scary. But uh, these high explosive going
off don't necessarily mean that there will be that fusion reaction.
And if it gets shot, like let's say somebody, you know,
somebody bombs your bomb, that doesn't doesn't necessarily mean and
(17:42):
probably means it won't happen. It will it will again
be a big boom, and but it will break apart
that nuclear material and just scatter it around. It's not
going to compress it. And the way you need to
create that fission reaction. No, And that's that's what a
dirty bomb is. It's where you're you're not creating a
nuclear explosion, but you're explo osian is spreading radioactive material
(18:02):
that contaminates an area, which is bad enough, but it's
not nearly as bad as an actual sustain nuclear explosion.
And because the the nuclear bombs were made in such
a way, like you said, that explosive pattern has to
happen exactly just so you're probably not going to get
that same pattern if that those explosives go off from
(18:23):
hitting the ground after being dropped fifteen thousand feet or
in a burning in a jet fuel fire from a
crash jet. They will still explode, like you were saying,
but it's not going to create that nuclear explosion. It
still will make you bite your finger nois cuticle though, Yeah,
it'll it'll go up that pinnacle chain, right. Um. I'm
also not sure about how bombs are now, but I
(18:45):
know that for a while and maybe that's still still
the case. They're just physically distanced, like those explosives are
are not right next to the nuclear capsule, and that
distance can actually help event those nuclear explosions. Yeah. Or
there's like um an electra, an electronic circuit that has
(19:06):
to be completed for the detonator to go off, and
so if even if it's exposed to flames or impact,
it's still not going to go off because it's detonated electronically.
There's like more safety systems that they worked in. But
initially one of the earliest ones they had with those
imploding h bombs was that they just simply wouldn't put
the core of the nuclear material that was to be
(19:28):
imploded in the bomb. It really just be like a
five thousand or you know, twenty thousand ton bomb of
high high yield explosives, of high explosives, but the nuclear
core wasn't plugged into the center, so it might be
on the same plane, but it wasn't plugged in. And
(19:50):
at least some cases in other cases in the the
military used that the the core wasn't inserted into the
bomb at the time excuse very frequently to basically say
there was really no chance of this becoming a nuclear explosion.
But there's a lot of debate about just how true
that is in some of these instances where some of
(20:12):
these were fully armed nuclear bombs that just so happened.
We lucked out that the the um the pattern of
explosion with the high explosives didn't follow the right the
right pattern to set off that that nuclear reaction. Yeah,
and again, um, these protocols came about in the sixties
and seventies, which is why most of these, I almost
(20:33):
all these broken arrow incidences were in the fifties and sixties. Uh.
In the nineteen nineties, I think in nineteen ninety there
was a technical report on the safety of our arsenal
conducted by independently by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and they
vary and this is great for for you know, the
general public. In dumb dums like us. They just gave
(20:55):
it like a school rating, like A through F basically
on all the all the weapons that we've used from
nineteen fifty to seventy six and or no, I guess
up until the nineties. But every weapon from fifty to
seventy six received a D except for one, and that
that one was the minute Man two and it got
(21:16):
a C plus C plus C plus, which is pretty
nice especially among these. But everything else got a D
for twenty six years. Right, that just got it just
goes to show you, like just how poorly these things
were um safety mechanized, I guess. But even still, even
(21:39):
despite you know that, like they still went to some
extent to make them safer, but they just hadn't gone
far enough. And yet despite that, we still didn't manage
to accidentally blow ourselves up with the nuclear bomb. Despite
all the broken arrows that we have gone through, which
will now go through, should we take a break and
then go through some of these are sure? Do some
(22:00):
I can break that little word playing no, no, Well,
we'll take a break, all right, take a break, right, yeah,
We'll be right back with broken arrows. Okay, Chuck, So
(22:34):
we um we As far as we know, the military
will cop to thirty two broken arrows in the history
of the Atomic Age as far as the United States goes, um,
other countries have their own, and apparently the Soviet Union
had at least as many, if not more, than we did,
which if you've seen Chernobyl you know that they were
(22:56):
probably like hundreds more. Yeah, yeah, and and possibly the
same for us. It makes a really good point that,
you know, the once the intercontinental ballistic missiles came along
and we didn't need Operation Chrome Dome anymore, broken arrows
all but vanished. But it's also possible that the military
just decided, like, we're just not going to publicly announce
(23:17):
these things any longer, which is entirely possible. Who knows.
But as as far as it goes officially, there have
been thirty two broken arrow pinnacle incidents that have happened
in the nation's history, and some of them are just
absolute doozies. Yeah, so we'll go over some of these. Um.
I guess we can start with the first one, just
for nostalgia's sake. This was February a B thirty six
(23:42):
B Peacemaker bomber uh set flight from Alaska, and this
is just a training mission where they want to simulate
a nuclear strike against Russia. But they did have a
big bomb on board. It was a five thousand pound
bomb with just a conventional explosives that wasn't uh UM
or at least a Department of Defense in the Air
Force say, and we're gonna be caveating all these because
(24:06):
you know we we can only say what they told us.
But they said that there was no plutonium core on
the plane. Um. But this is one of the planes
that took off had engine trouble. The crew bailed out
and set off the bomb in the air and then
bailed out of the plane and the bomb luckily went
off over the ocean, right. And this this kind of
(24:27):
strikes at the core of a lot of these accidents.
Like whenever you hear about um like or whenever you
think about, why haven't we've been obliterated by a meteor
or something, it seems like the world is just full
of people, but there is way more empty land and
water still then there are massive amounts of people. So
the fact that we haven't been hit by the big asteroid,
(24:50):
or that a lot of these bombs go off in
places where there are no people. It is lucky, but
the stats are also in our favor. Yeah, it's either
that or we're live being in a computer simulation one
of the two exactly, or in the matrix. So um
that was the first one that was in nineteen fifty
and the fact that the government says there was there
(25:11):
was only like a um A uh what what did
you call it? Uh? Like what was the kind of
UM flight it was on? Just like a training mission? Training? Yes,
so there was a training plug inside of the thing.
It was it's made of lead rather than plutonium. And
that actually probably holds up to scrutiny because in the
(25:31):
early fifties they that's the kind that they were using.
There were small enough that you could send one of
the pilots or one of the co pilots or somebody
to the back to actually arm the nuclear weapon with
the plug, and if they were on a training mission,
there really wouldn't be much used for that. So that
probably was a non nuclear bomb that went off. But
by the the late fifties, the the government had moved
(25:55):
on to much bigger bombs and because they decided that
they needed to be hair trigger ready. They were armed,
despite what the government says. They're These type of bombs
that they moved to are called sealed pit weapons, where
that core was inserted and then the bomb was sealed
and then it was loaded onto the plane. So the
plane was flying around with a fully active, ready to
(26:17):
go nuclear bomb. So anything starting in the late fifties
onward is suspicious. If the government saying that it wasn't
an active nuclear bomb, that's right, very true. Here's another one,
and we're just kind of picking through these. I think
gave us like seventeen or eighteen to choose from, but
I thought like all thirty two were on here. No, No,
(26:39):
it just seemed that way. Uh, this one in March,
and this represents sort of one that's happened a few times,
which is where a plane and the bomb in the
plane will just vanish, never to be heard from again.
And that happened on March tenth, the B forty seven
strato Jet. It was most to refuel in mid air
(27:01):
over the Mediterranean Sea, but the plane never showed up
for that dinner date. And uh, they never found the plane,
and it had two nuclear capsules and they were never
found either. And Um, that was I think nineteen fifty six.
You said, if you fast forward a little bit to
nineteen fifty eight, that was a really really bad year
(27:24):
for broken arrow incidents. I mean, if you're a fan
of broken arrow incidents, it's a great year. But for
the rest of us, it was a bad year. Um.
From January thirty one to March eleven, there were three
So in less than six weeks there were three broken
arrow incidents, two of which were among the most famous
broken arrow incidents ever to take place. The first one
(27:44):
produced what's known as the Tybee bomb. You've heard of
the Tybee bomb. Okay, So, Um, there was a B
forty seven that was on a training flight and stance,
this is nineteen fifty eight. It's entirely possible that it
was a fully active nuclear weapon that it was flying
around with the government says no. Other people say absolutely was.
But Um, the on the training mission, the B fifty
(28:06):
two or I'm sorry, the B forty seven was, um,
became in contact with a fighter jet it was also
training and pretending to attack it, and they accidentally knocked
itself out and knocked the B forty seven out the
the B forty seven crew ejected the jettison the bomb,
and four weeks afterward they looked around Tybee Island to
find this bomb and they still to this day haven't
(28:28):
found it Tybee Island, which is off the coast of Savannah, Georgia. Uh.
And he said that the Fight six was pretending to attack.
It was a just like a training thing. Yeah. Yeah,
and it got too close and I think took its
own wing off and crippled the B forty seven. I
think peo peo peo the whole time. Yeah, basically, And
(28:51):
it was a it was a Mark thirty six bomb too.
This is really important. It was a four ton hydrogen
bomb that may have been fully active. And it's just
somewhere off, like right off of the coast of Tybee Island, somewhere.
If you've ever been to Tybee Island, this explains quite
a bit about Tybee Island that there's a four ton
(29:11):
hydrogen bomb just sitting right off the coat. Now, what
does that mean? Are you knocking Tybee? No? I think
j yeah. Jerry loves Tybee. It's a great place. It's
its own place, and I love it for that. But
also super duper weird. Well, what I can't figure out
is why they can't find this thing. That just seems
it just seems impossible to me that you can't find
(29:32):
this given that Tybee is not the hugest place. Uh No,
I agree. I think it's just one of those needle
in the haystack things. By now, it's probably been covered
with so much like silt and sediment, they may never
find it. But I read this really interesting article, and
there's been a lot of articles written about the search.
There's a guy who I think is a former Air Force,
uh commander. I can't remember what he did in the
(29:54):
Air Force or the military, but he Um, he got
interested in the idea of chasing down these lost oaken arrows,
and um, he searched for the Tybee bomb and he
claimed to have found it at one point. Um, But
I'm not sure what happened with that. But this article
called the Saga of the Tybee Bomb. It was by
Roger Pinckney and Gardening Gun Magazine, and oh, he really
(30:18):
played up the southern thing that he in his writing.
Oh my god, but it was good. It was a
good article. But he interviewed a shrimp boat captain or no.
He interviewed the nephew of a friend of a shrimp
boat captain who on his deathbed says that he found
the bomb and said exactly where he trawled it too,
and then cut it loose when he realized it was
a bomb and never told anybody, or he did try
(30:41):
to tell somebody and they ignored him. But um, he
kind of left this legacy of potentially where the bomb
is and he said it was right off of the
dock of the Coastguard post on Tybee Island. Well, maybe
they never found it because it was after his long
list of shrimp recipes. It's possible, shimp Newberg. That was
a great, great movie, was it? Was it not? I
(31:06):
don't I don't think so. I don't think Forrest compass Aged? Well,
oh really, I'll have to go see it then again. Yeah,
that was a sweet movie. Yeah all right, well, okay, okay,
we'll take that up later. All right, Well, let's go
with another one, another very famous one. On March eleventh,
when the United States Air Force it was a B
(31:26):
fifty seven I'm sorry, by going to Britain and it
had an issue with the locking pin on the bombaye doors,
there's a story supposedly that one of the co pilots
went to fix it movie style by hitting the fault
light with the butt of his gun. It's like right
out of a movie the Planes Captain just like And
(31:50):
this may have been a big inspiration for Dr Strange
Love because if you remember in that movie Slim Pickens,
there's an issue with the bombay doors and he basically
rides the bomb and very famously at the ending wearing
his cowboy hat right out of the bombay door. But
the planes Captain uh climbed into that bombay to go
check things out and accidentally pulled the emergency release lever
(32:15):
or pushed a button that he shouldn't have pushed, uh,
depending on who you're asking. The bomb dropped. These doors
were closed. Remember, but this is a four ton bombs
who had just smashed right through those doors, fell fifteen
thousand feet and blew up a farm in South Carolina. Yeah, like,
they bombed South Carolina with a nuclear bomb, and just
(32:35):
by the grace of the nature goddess, there was no
nuclear explosion, that's right, I mean, but a big boom, yes,
a huge boom, and it actually ruined the farm of
the greg family. The Walter Gregg family, and he was
he lived bitterly the rest of his life because he
finally sued and got like thirty six grand or something
(32:58):
like that, which even at the time him wasn't enough
for him to rebuild his house and his farm. And
no one died that it was just miraculous, but um,
several members of his family were injured and had to
go to the hospital. Um, but it was a big deal.
It left a crater that's still there. It's in mars Bluff,
South Carolina, which is not too far from Florence, but
it was something like five miles from Florence something like that.
(33:20):
And had this thing gone off, it would have um
wiped Florence right off of the map. Yeah, it would
have been a really big deal. And this was just
in a nuclear accident where somebody accidentally dropped a bomb
on a farm in in South Carolina. Uh. This other
one in night and you were right, there were a
lot in but this one in November was pretty bad.
(33:42):
It was a B forty seven crashed. It just seems
like there were nuclear planes crashing all over the place
because there were so many nuclear flights taking off in landing.
Every single day. Yeah, and they were moving the bombs
like from one place to another constantly to Well, this
one crashed in Texas and it was carrying a nuclear
(34:03):
weapon and the Air Force kept this one classified for
a long time. Um, but it had enriched uranium, so
they figure it was a sealed pit weapon that was
armed and the high explosive did detonate, but there was
no nuclear explosion again um, hopefully because of these fail safes.
But the kicker here is, uh, there was an environmental
(34:25):
clean up. This was the Air Force said, you know what,
we should go in there and clean this stuff up
because it's two thousand eleven, right, That's how long they
waited to clean the side up. Yeah, and apparently they
grew grain and fed cattle that grain on this land
that was a nuclear disaster site because again, like the bomb,
(34:47):
the nuclear bomb might not actually go off, but those
high explosives are blowing the nuclear material all over the
place and just totally contaminating the area. And they didn't
do anything about it for for what uh three years,
while they were feeding cattle grown on the land there.
That's crazy. What else you got? So there were two
(35:08):
incidents that kind of brought um, the operation Chrome Dome
era to the to an end. Um. Remember we said
the intercontinental ballistic missile development really put an end to it.
But also the idea like this is just too risky,
and they knew it going into it. They were like,
you know, we're gonna be flying around with armed nuclear weapons.
(35:30):
It's far riskier, but it's a great strategy in case
the the USSR strikes us, we'll be able to strike back. Um.
So it's worth the trade off. They knew going into it,
But after all of these accidents, they finally were like, Okay,
it's not worth the trade off anymore. Um. And the
last two that really did it in were in January
(35:50):
of nineteen sixty eight, I believe, And those the last
two that really did Chrome Dome in both happened in January,
but two years apart, January sixty six and January. And
I think one of the reasons that really hastened the
end of Chrome Dome is because they happened on foreign
soil where we had air force bases. But we're guests
of the country and the country that this happened in
(36:12):
the countries that happened, and we're not very happy with
us for for allowing these nuclear accidents to take place. Yeah,
there was one in January. Uh it was a mid
air another mid air collision during refueling, which if you've
ever seen those mid air refuelings, it's a tricky thing.
So you can see how that would happen. And that's,
of course how strange Love opens over the opening credits
(36:35):
very famously with the refueling scene. Um shot into very
sexual nature right on purpose, of course, because it was
Stanley Kubrick. But this one was near uh palamattas Spain.
Nice is that right? Um? Yeah, I think that's good enough,
all right, Um? And that was, like I said, the
(36:55):
two planes crashed into each other, and four bombs were
on board. Four. One fell into the ocean, one fell
on land, and the other two fell on land and
detonated the high explosives. One went to market And you say, so, yeah,
one of them one went off I think, uh and
(37:17):
blew up, you said, out of the four, that's actually
pretty lucky. No, no, no, one of the three that
fell on land to actually detonated the high explosives. Okay, gotcha, gotcha.
And then one the one that went in the ocean,
like they looked for that for weeks and they finally
managed to find it, which based on these broken arrow
um reports, is really rare that to actually find the bomb.
(37:39):
But they found this one in Spain, and then they
actually cleaned up the site because this was in Spain,
it wasn't just in Texas. So they went to the
trouble of cleaning up the site and they removed four
hundred tons of contaminated soil from the crash site where
this radioactive material had been scattered by the explosion. Amazing.
(38:00):
So that was that was two years before Chrome Dome.
And the last one, the one that really brought about
the end of Chrome Dome, was in Greenland, the incident
at tu Lea Air Force Base in Greenland in January
of nineteen sixty eight. This one happened and literally from
what I read, the next day, operation Chrome Dome was ended.
So this was a B fifty two crash crashed onto
(38:22):
sea ice and apparently they had to get rid of
two hundred and thirty seven thousand cubic meters of snow, ice,
water and plane junk. Yeah, they removed it to the
United States because it was contaminated with radioactivity. So the
fact that happened in Greenland was was bad enough, but
(38:42):
the Greenland was a territory of Denmark at the time.
In Denmark had a no nuke policy, so they were
really unhappy with this. But what's cool is Denmark forced
the US to conduct an environmental estimate and study this
stuff to make sure that there were no prolonged effects.
And I found that there weren't. That's that's what the
(39:02):
study turned up. But yeah, but this is back in
the sixties and they're doing this kind of thing, So
way to go, Denmark. I think we should talk about
the one over North Carolina too, even though it jumps
back in time. Is that all right? Yeah, I'm fine
with jumping back in time. Janu A B fifty two
(39:22):
got a fuel leak, starts getting out of control, and
it's trying to get back to its base. The crew ejects.
The plane breaks apart and crashes near Goldsboro, North Carolina,
and there were two nuclear bombs on board here uh
that's separated from the plane and fell to the ground.
One of them was fully armed hydrogen bomb, had nuclear material.
(39:47):
Everything was there for a three point eight megaton explosion,
and it crashed to the ground at high speed and
disintegrated without either the high explosive or the nuclear explosion,
going off into sort of a swamp. And what happened
to the other one, Uh, it actually fell gently to earth.
It's parachute deployed and it just went got stuck in
a tree and they got it out. Hydrogen bomb stuck
(40:12):
in a tree with tons of high explosives attached to it,
just hanging out. But they managed to get that one back.
It's amazing when he reads through some of these, it's
looks like and I know it's not in the case,
of course, our military does a great job, but it
looks at times like it's a three Stooges episode. Yeah, Like,
there was one plane that was pushed off an aircraft
(40:32):
carrier that had a nuclear bomb, just sort of pushed
off the side of the carrier off the coast of Japan,
and it's still down there from what they from what
we understand, here's something horrific, Chuck. The pilot was in
the plane at the time. Really, they've never recovered the plane,
the pilot, the bomb. It's just down there in like
twelve thou feet of water, I believe. Yeah, imagine you
sink pretty fast. Oh god man, No, that's just terrible.
(40:56):
There was one where ah, this was missiles word ready
and armed at an Air Force base in New Jersey
when a helium tank burst. I guess they were blown
up birthday party balloons, right, And this did not have
a high explosive detonation, but the missile's fuel tank ruptured,
and um, there was a big fire. A bunch of these.
(41:19):
There were fires, like big fires where they thought, you know,
is it gonna happen or is it not? And luckily
it did not. No, and I'm sure that was a
consideration every single time, like is this thing going to
blow up into a nuclear explosion? I mean some of
these are are just we just would have been massive.
The one in um Goldsboro, North Carolina we were talking about,
(41:42):
had they gone off, it would have been two hundred
and fifty three times larger than the Hiroshima blasts. Yeah,
they would have been in normous. I mean, look what
that one fifteen kiloton bomb did to Hiroshima. Imagine two
hundred and fifty three times worse over North Carolina. I'm sure.
Mean it's just that would have been Georgia, would have
(42:02):
been South Carolina. It would have been massive and enormous
and and and the fact that we didn't ever for
every single one of these, not once did a nuclear
explosion go off. It's really a testament to the scientists
who designed this thing to be as safe as as
humanly possible. And yeah, I mean there's some others like, um,
(42:25):
the USS Scorpion nuclear sub went down. It had a
nuclear reactor aboard and a couple of nuclear torpedoes. Um, Like,
if you go through this list, there's a substantial number
of nuclear bombs like out there in in the Sea
of the Philippines, off the azores Um off of Tybee Island,
just hanging out waiting around, hopefully indefinitely or forever and
(42:49):
never you know, going off. But I remember that was
like one of the big concerns among the people living
on Tybee is like, you know this this high explosives
are aging. You know, what's gonna happened when they reach
a certain age? Are they going to become are they
just gonna blow up? And is somebody's boat going to
be over the area at the time, Like what what
are we doing here? And the official thing is like
(43:10):
it's it's just gone and it's safer to just leave
it wherever it is and try to move it at
this point. Yeah, The other I think funny thing ed
included here towards the end was uh. He says. There
are hundreds of other incidentss that would be classified as
bent spears. Uh, Like you know, dropping fully armed nukes
onto the concrete, he said, more so many times I
lost count, or just like dropping off the wing of
(43:33):
an aircraft onto the ground when they were doing something.
It's um, isn't that a movie? Wasn't that in a movie?
I don't know that happened in a movie. And it's like, oh,
it's just so cringe e. It's like a top secret
or something. Maybe I can only think of the Zucker brothers.
I went and watched a loaded weapon? Is that good?
(43:56):
It is? It's good for what it is for sure? Yes? Now,
was that the Zucker? Yeah? I believe it was one
of the Zuckers, if not both of them. But Emilia
west of As he's great. You're a big fan of him.
I love it. He's he's a good actor. Don't you
always champion the the sanitation Worker movie Men at Work Work.
(44:17):
It's such a good movie. I still haven't seen that one.
You gotta see that one. It's got a real plot
to it and everything. Yeah, and I mean it's Amilia
west of As and Charlie Sheen. When else are you
going to see those two together? Agreed? Thanksgiving? Maybe? Yeah,
that's right. Maybe maybe Easter depending Maybe they're brothers. They're brothers,
(44:40):
I know they are. That's why you'd see him together.
That's right. Are you telling me that or we're telling
me the listeners that. Oh I don't know. I'm just
talking to the ether. Okay, good, Um, Well, since we
started talking about Emilia west of Az and Charlie Sheen,
I think it's time for a listener man and Charles, Uh,
this episode MS out It so happens on the thirty one.
(45:04):
I believe that's New Year's Eve. That's right. I was
trying to get you to say it did so. A
couple of things. Uh. We want to wish everyone a
happy New Year, first of course, um, and also I
want to wish a happy birthday to my dear sweet
wife you me, Happy birthday MS. Thanks man. So happy
new Year everybody. We hope that it is a spectacular
(45:27):
for you. It's the future now, that's right. So let's
all kind of shape up and act right for it.
Let's do okay, So happy New Year everyone, Uh, and
now it's time for a listener Matt. Yeah, we're gonna
share a dream here. We don't usually do this because,
let's face it, listening to someone's dreams is the worst.
But this was kind of funny. Is from Cassie. She
(45:48):
wrote it at five thirty am, right off the bat
after having this dream. Uh. She said, the dream was
a run I won some random drawing and the prize
was to sit down on the recording of a podcast
while you were my area. So you guys come to
my cabin, which I don't have in real life. You
explain that you want to record the podcast in bed,
and uh. So there we are, all three in bed
(46:09):
together wearing button up jammies that no one really wears
in real life. And you guys are you have your
microphones and everything, and you're doing your stuff. You should
know thing, and I'm just sitting there watching and laughing
and learning. Uh. When you decide that you're done and
it's time to go to sleep, So we go to
sleep in the same bed that you recorded from. Josh
is in the middle and Chuck and I are on
(46:30):
opposite ends. I was extremely self aware that I roll
around in my sleep and there's no way your guys
are gonna be able to sleep. And sure enough, after
a while, Joshua is up and says, I'm gonna go
watch TV. I can't sleep, So I was mortified that
I kept him up. And then Chuck rolls over and
wraps his arm around me and spoons me. And I said,
what the heck are you doing? And Chuck says, oh, no, no, no,
(46:52):
this isn't a sexual thing. I'm happily married, as you know.
But Emily knows that I have to hold on to
someone in order to fall asleep, so it's okay, so uh,
and he says, normally it's Josh when we do these overnighters,
but you know, so I usually spoon you. Apparently, yeah,
well sure everybody knows that. So now there's no way
(47:13):
I'm falling asleep. I told Chuck I was gonna go
watch TV with Josh and Chuck says I can't sleep either,
and ask for pepto bismol and winks at me like
it's code for something. So Chuck starts laughing and says, no,
don't worry about the pepto bismol. So then there we
are all three watching TV on the couch and you
guys are asking for snacks. I opened my fridge and
(47:35):
I have tons of expired snacks and I'm embarrassed and
realized that the snacks are expired and I never even
fed you dinner. You guys are pretty embarrassing. You guys
awkwardly pretend to be okay not eating while we're sitting
on the couch, and your stomachs are literally rumbling extremely loud,
and finally we all fall asleep on the couch. Uh.
(47:56):
The next day, you were doing a live show and
apparently are great friends with my armacist and my pharmacists
posted selfies with Josh lifting weights at the gym before
you guys went to do your live show. Are they crazy?
Where these dreams go? They go all over the place, man,
all over the place. I don't know how they knew
that your pre show routine was lifting weights? All right?
(48:19):
You like to buff up before the show. Sure. Anyway,
I'm still laughing now and I'm definitely gonna have a
great day because of this dream. Thank you, I'm sorry,
and you're welcome. That is from Cassie. Thanks a lot, Cassie,
much appreciated. Um. Yeah, we'll just move on from that one.
That's right. Uh. If you want to get in touch
(48:41):
with this, like Cassie did, you can go onto stuff
you Should Know dot com. You can check out our
social links there and you can send us an email
send it off to stuff podcast and I heart radio
dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a product and
of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for
(49:02):
my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H
San Francisco. We're coming to see you soon. Yeah, we're
gonna be there on Saturday, January Chuck. And since it's
San Francisco, we're gonna be wearing nothing but appropriately placed
clumps of rice roni. It is the San Francisco treat. Yes,
and we're the San Francisco treat too whenever we're in town,
So everybody should come see us. That's right. It's part
of Sketch Fest as always. We love performing there. You
(00:22):
can go to s Y s K live dot com
for details or s F sketch Fest dot com. Uh.
And if you're around Sunday night you can come see
me do movie Crush Live and a very small fun
venue where you can shake my hand. Very nice, So
come see us, everybody. You won't regret it. We're pretty
sure that's correct. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and
(00:50):
welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, there's guest producer Roll over there. Uh. And
that makes this Stuff you Should Know um, featuring Chucks,
John Travolta, and me as Christians Later. Lowell is Frank Whaley.
(01:12):
Was he in that? Yep? He had the great line,
are you ready for it? I don't know what's scarier
losing a nuclear bomb? He didn't. He didn't say this
with this much reservation. He really delivered the line. Um.
He also didn't comment on his own line while he
was giving it, or that it happened so often there's
(01:34):
a name for it. Yeah, that's a good line. It's
a great line. It's it's a long, clumsy line. But
he delivered it really well. You know, I don't know
that I ever saw broken arrow Oh I didn't either.
I was just alive in the nineties, so I was
cognizant of it. Yeah. I thought at first you were
talking about Saturday Night Fever with Christians. Later sure, no, No,
(01:57):
I wasn't. Do you remember we talked about Sarah like
fever must have in the Disco episode where it turns
out that the article it was based on was just
totally fabricated. Remember that's right. That's such a great soundtrack, man,
maybe one of the all time best. Yep, But we're
here to talk about broken arrows, and uh, I got
this idea. This was one of my commissions, was because
(02:19):
I had um, I had someone on movie Crush. Then
we did Doctor Strange Love, the great great movie from
Stanley Kubrick, which factors into this stuff some And he
brought in a stack of papers and just said here
for your desk, and it was a list of all
the broken arrow incidents. And there were a lot more
(02:40):
than thirty of them, So I don't know if what
all was included. We'll get into some of the terminology
of what kind of falls under the banner of a
broken arrow. But but a broken well, we should just
go ahead and tell everyone what a broken arrow is, Yeah,
we should. As defined by the Department of Defense and
a little bit from the Air Force, is an accident
(03:00):
involving a nuclear weapon or warhead or nuclear component, or
an unexpected event involving nuclear weapons that could result in
um accidental or unauthorized launching, firing, what else, uh, detonation, Yeah,
jettising them, sending them, uh damage to him, accidentally dropping them.
(03:23):
And I mean, I've got to say, I don't know
what's worse, accidentally dropping a nuclear bomb or that it
happens so frequently. There's a name for it. Thank you,
Mr Whaley. Sure you can go to your trailer. Now,
so that's a I mean, that's a broken arrow. And
like there's a if you've seen that movie Broken Arrow,
it's um about Christians later foiling John Travolta, um after
(03:47):
he steals a nuclear bomb. That's actually technically not a
broken arrow from what we know. That's called an empty quiver,
which works with the broken arrow. But I thought it
had to do with a stolen nuclear bomb, which led
me to think, like, hey man, we've basically already done
this one. We did how easy is it to steal
a nuclear bomb? Remember that? Okay, this is really very
(04:09):
much different. This is basically when a US military personnel
screws up big time as far as a nuclear bomb
is concerned, or there's some terrible accident with a nuclear bomb.
But um, it's not something that's going to lead to war, right,
It's not like an accidental launch of a nuclear weapon
(04:31):
against the Soviet Union back in the Cold War. It's
dropping a nuclear bomb on your toe. That's a broken arrow, basically. Yeah,
And I've always thought broken arrow. I was wrong. I
thought it kind of only meant that you lose a
nuclear warhead somehow. Well, that's what Travolta's lies. He's the
father of lies. That's what he teaches us. Yeah, we've
(04:53):
been misled by Travolta. Yeah, have you seen him? He's
he's gone bald. Now have you seen him? Good for
a man? Has he? Yeah? He finally just just ripped
off the old rug said this is me, and he's
got a great being. He looks fantastic. Oh, I'm sure
I'm happy for him. That's good because he's been hiding
that for decades. So, uh, we should talk about a
(05:16):
few other points of terminology that might pop up. There's
something called a pinnacle level incident, and that basically means
that any kind of incident where it's so big that
it really goes up all the way up the military
chain to the very top. Yeah, it's a big deal.
In other words, it's a big deal as travel towards. Uh.
(05:37):
And there's a few more incident codes that I think
are pretty interesting. Um, there's one called a nuke flash,
and that means an accident or incident that could be
the precursor to the trigger of nuclear war. That's a
big one. That's the Yeah, that's the one where there's
like somebody accidentally sets off an intercontinental ballistic missile toward Russia.
(05:58):
That is like one that can lead to you nuclear war.
And did you read that as new flash? I read
it as nut flash. That's funny. Uh. What about front burner? Yeah,
front Marina is triggered by any hostile It is pinnacle
level and it is triggered by any hostile attack against
(06:21):
US forces. Uh. And it's not necessarily a nuclear incident. No,
but um, it can be. It can lead to a
nuclear war. So it's kind of considered part of that
whole family of nuclear jargon. Yeah. And also, don't think
I said it's a hostile attack by someone that we're
not already at war with. That is a big caveat,
(06:42):
because I guess if you're if you're already at war's
front burner, front burner, there's another front burner. Yes, that's
that's a good point to make, dude. Um there's also
empty Quiver, which is that's the name that should have
been given to the travolt A Slater movie. Um, that's
where the nuclear weapons stolen. Um. And I gotta say,
(07:06):
I don't know what's scarier than a nuclear weapon can
be stolen, or that it happens often enough that there's
a name for it. Uh, do we go over bent
spear yet? No, not to be confused with burning spear. No,
a bent spear is an incident, nuclear incident that's a
big deal, but it's not pinnacle level. And this is
like if someone violated a regulation or a procedure or
(07:30):
something when you're storing or transporting a nuclear weapon. Like
it's like a three Stooges level type of nuclear accident
um where nothing, nothing, really bad results from it. Uh,
it's just somebody screwed up. And Ed gave this example.
I had not heard of this one, but apparently in
two thousand seven there was a burning spear. I'm sorry
(07:52):
that was genuine. There was a bent spear incident um
where six armed nuclear warheads were loaded on a B
fifty two and they walked away slapping the dust off
of their hands and turned in for a good night's
rest and did not leave a guard. These six armed
nuclear warheads were left aboard a B fifty two that
(08:13):
was unguarded overnight and the next morning they flew him
across the country as scheduled. Okay, so nothing happened. No,
it's like one of those ones where you find that
you've bitten down to your cuticles because you're just so
mortified at the idea of how bad things could have gone.
But they just just we just narrowly averted crisis. All right,
(08:33):
Are there any of these other terms that matter to you? No? Okay,
all right, well we'll talk about We'll go over some
broken arrows later and some actual incidences. Um, but we
should talk a little bit just about nuclear weapons. Uh.
They are very much classified as to where they are,
(08:55):
and the Upper Brass basically has an exception to that
where if there is an incident and it presents a
hazard to the public, like boy, we need to get
people out of there, and we actually need to cop
to this thing. Uh, then that is an exception where
you can reveal that they're like surprised you're living near
(09:17):
some nuclear warheads. He didn't realize it. But over there
in that silo, it is it is not wheat I get.
I get the impression. Also, where you know, seven hundred
and fifty soldiers suddenly converge on a farm field where
a plane went down, Um, it's it's usually kind of
already old news to the locals that there's a nuclear
(09:37):
bomb somewhere in play, especially if this happens to take
place during the fifties or the sixties, which were the
the worst decades in American history for near miss nuclear accidents. Yeah,
and it's interesting. I never really uh, I kind of
just thought like, oh, it's because technology, and that's sort
of true, and that uh, in the fifties and sixties,
(09:59):
if you wanted to drop a nuclear bomb, that's why
they say drop a nuclear bomb, because you were literally
doing that. It was not attached to some missile on
some base. It was in the belly of a plane
and you flew over a site and opened doors and
dropped a bomb. Yes, the right, that's how you delivered
(10:20):
a nuclear bomb. And so because planes were so intimately
connected with delivering a nuclear bomb. Early on in the
Cold War, there was a guy who took over Strategic
Air Command and I think ninety seven, and he was
an old bomber pilot and he said, look, man, here's
our new strategy. We're going to keep bombers loaded with
(10:41):
nuclear bombs in the air at all times. There will
always be multiple B fifty twos flying around with loaded
nuclear weapons all the time, ready within striking distance of Russia.
And so this thing was called Operation Chrome Dome, where
pairs of B fifty twos would take off for twenty
four hour missions. They would refuel in the air. There
(11:04):
would be multiple pilots aboard so that they could trade
off shifts because they would stay aloft for twenty four hours,
and then before they came back to base the land
at the end of twenty four hours, another pair would
have taken off. And from what I saw, UM, at
the minimum of Operation Chrome Dome, there were always at
least four B fifty twos in the air flying these
routes like near Russia. UM, usually there was twelve in
(11:28):
the air. And then during the Cuban Missile Crisis, at
the height of Operation Chrome Dome, there were seventy five
B fifty twos in the air with nuclear weapons ready
to strike at any given time. And because there were
so many planes taking off and landing constantly with nuclear bombs,
the chances of an accident with one of these nuclear
(11:49):
bombs escalated tremendously. And that was these decades, the decades
that Operation Chrome Dome lasted, UM when these nuclear weapon problems,
what we call broken arrows, really kind of stepped up. Yeah,
and I mean that's if you've seen Doctor Strangelove, that's
what that uh, you know, there's kind of three parts
to the story. In one part is up in the
(12:11):
air in one of these bomber planes. And that's what
Slim Pickens and James Earl Jones are doing up there.
They are just manning a flight that is flying close
to the Soviet border and uh, hoping that they just
land and take off again the next day and fly
and it's boring and they land again, and like I said,
the ideas, you do this over and over and over
(12:32):
and nothing ever happens. Um. But of course in Strangelove
things go wrong. Um. But that yeah, that's what they
were doing up there. Yep. So that's operation Chrome Dome
and UM. Eventually the we developed innercontinental ballistic missiles, those
ones that you talked about, like in in the ground
in a base. They were capable of striking Moscow from Kansas.
(12:53):
When we developed those in the sixties, we said, okay,
we don't need this Chrome Dome strategy any longer. But
also because there were so many accidents, and because the
accidents were so costly bad and yet still just near
misses from a nuclear explosion. UM, the idea of this
chrome dome strategy was like, we we can't do this anymore.
(13:13):
This it's just too too risky. Basically, should we take
a break? I believe so, Charles, all right, we're gonna
take a break and we'll talk a little bit about
the nuts and bolts of how a nuclear bomb works
right after this. All right, Chuck. So if you're I
(13:51):
think we should do a nuclear um bomb episode someday,
where do we go over? This? Was it during the
meltdowns episode? Yeah? It must have been like a fission reaction, yeah,
because it does seem pretty pretty familiar, it doesn't it. Yeah,
because you know what a nuclear bomb is is is
detonating and instigating or causing always starting stuff a fission reaction. Um.
(14:18):
Well that was the early ones, right yeah. Yeah, So
how this works as a nuclear reaction is plutonium and
uranium UM being compressed and smashing into other plutonium and
uranium to get a nuclear fission reaction going right. Uh?
And the early uh, I guess h bombs is what
(14:40):
they call them initially, right, hydrogen bombs? Well, atomic bombs,
I think initially yeah, atomic bombs who were very rudimentary,
rudimentary Wow, Yeah, tried to dress them up by adding
an extra syllable, but they were still rudimentary. They were rudimentary. Uh.
And in fact, the UH, the very first bombs that
(15:02):
were dropped on Hiroshima actually fired a gun type mechanism
to set off this reaction. Right, It was like, yeah,
they would shoot uranium at uranium and that that would
set off the fission reaction, and like, you can produce
a pretty substantial um explosion like they did over her
(15:23):
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Right, And but compared to the other
way that they later quickly figured out, I believe in
the fifties they moved over I think those were the
hydrogen bombs thermonuclear bombs where they used fusion, where it
was an implosion that pressed the material, the plutonium or
or the uranium together to create this nuclear reaction. That's
(15:46):
when you got something in the yield of mega tons,
millions and millions of tons worth of TNT explosive power,
where the one in Hiroshima was like fifteen kilo tons,
like fifteen thousand tons of t n T. Yeah, and
thank god they hadn't figured that out at that point. Yeah,
because those earliest broken arrow ones were like, dude, if like,
(16:09):
if this had been like a fusion bomb, who knows
what would have happened, although I can't tell if if
one was safer than the other. And Ed rightly points
out the reason all these were near mrs was because
along the way, scientists thought, we need to include some
fail safes here so that if something does go wrong, um,
a cascading string of multiple failures have to happen in
(16:32):
a certain order for this thing to actually go off,
or you have to make it so it's purposefully happens
in this order to actually go off, and that if
one thing doesn't happen in this this cascade, then the
thing won't actually have a nuclear detonation. And the the
fact that the scientists worked in these safety mechanisms, that's
what kept like South Carolina and North Carolina from having
(16:56):
entire town's level the nuclear explosions accidentally. That's because what
happens now with this implosion that it is this nuclear
material is packed and surrounded by high explosives, just regular
conventional explosives, and this is you know, these things go
off and they create a big boom in and of
themselves that is very dangerous. But like you said, there
(17:18):
are so many safety features built in and unless you
have that um, that exact implosion pattern that you need,
it might be scary. But uh, these high explosive going
off don't necessarily mean that there will be that fusion reaction.
And if it gets shot, like let's say somebody, you know,
somebody bombs your bomb, that doesn't doesn't necessarily mean and
(17:42):
probably means it won't happen. It will it will again
be a big boom, and but it will break apart
that nuclear material and just scatter it around. It's not
going to compress it. And the way you need to
create that fission reaction. No, And that's that's what a
dirty bomb is. It's where you're you're not creating a
nuclear explosion, but you're explo osian is spreading radioactive material
(18:02):
that contaminates an area, which is bad enough, but it's
not nearly as bad as an actual sustain nuclear explosion.
And because the the nuclear bombs were made in such
a way, like you said, that explosive pattern has to
happen exactly just so you're probably not going to get
that same pattern if that those explosives go off from
(18:23):
hitting the ground after being dropped fifteen thousand feet or
in a burning in a jet fuel fire from a
crash jet. They will still explode, like you were saying,
but it's not going to create that nuclear explosion. It
still will make you bite your finger nois cuticle though, Yeah,
it'll it'll go up that pinnacle chain, right. Um. I'm
also not sure about how bombs are now, but I
(18:45):
know that for a while and maybe that's still still
the case. They're just physically distanced, like those explosives are
are not right next to the nuclear capsule, and that
distance can actually help event those nuclear explosions. Yeah. Or
there's like um an electra, an electronic circuit that has
(19:06):
to be completed for the detonator to go off, and
so if even if it's exposed to flames or impact,
it's still not going to go off because it's detonated electronically.
There's like more safety systems that they worked in. But
initially one of the earliest ones they had with those
imploding h bombs was that they just simply wouldn't put
the core of the nuclear material that was to be
(19:28):
imploded in the bomb. It really just be like a
five thousand or you know, twenty thousand ton bomb of
high high yield explosives, of high explosives, but the nuclear
core wasn't plugged into the center, so it might be
on the same plane, but it wasn't plugged in. And
(19:50):
at least some cases in other cases in the the
military used that the the core wasn't inserted into the
bomb at the time excuse very frequently to basically say
there was really no chance of this becoming a nuclear explosion.
But there's a lot of debate about just how true
that is in some of these instances where some of
(20:12):
these were fully armed nuclear bombs that just so happened.
We lucked out that the the um the pattern of
explosion with the high explosives didn't follow the right the
right pattern to set off that that nuclear reaction. Yeah,
and again, um, these protocols came about in the sixties
and seventies, which is why most of these, I almost
(20:33):
all these broken arrow incidences were in the fifties and sixties. Uh.
In the nineteen nineties, I think in nineteen ninety there
was a technical report on the safety of our arsenal
conducted by independently by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and they
vary and this is great for for you know, the
general public. In dumb dums like us. They just gave
(20:55):
it like a school rating, like A through F basically
on all the all the weapons that we've used from
nineteen fifty to seventy six and or no, I guess
up until the nineties. But every weapon from fifty to
seventy six received a D except for one, and that
that one was the minute Man two and it got
(21:16):
a C plus C plus C plus, which is pretty
nice especially among these. But everything else got a D
for twenty six years. Right, that just got it just
goes to show you, like just how poorly these things
were um safety mechanized, I guess. But even still, even
(21:39):
despite you know that, like they still went to some
extent to make them safer, but they just hadn't gone
far enough. And yet despite that, we still didn't manage
to accidentally blow ourselves up with the nuclear bomb. Despite
all the broken arrows that we have gone through, which
will now go through, should we take a break and
then go through some of these are sure? Do some
(22:00):
I can break that little word playing no, no, Well,
we'll take a break, all right, take a break, right, yeah,
We'll be right back with broken arrows. Okay, Chuck, So
(22:34):
we um we As far as we know, the military
will cop to thirty two broken arrows in the history
of the Atomic Age as far as the United States goes, um,
other countries have their own, and apparently the Soviet Union
had at least as many, if not more, than we did,
which if you've seen Chernobyl you know that they were
(22:56):
probably like hundreds more. Yeah, yeah, and and possibly the
same for us. It makes a really good point that,
you know, the once the intercontinental ballistic missiles came along
and we didn't need Operation Chrome Dome anymore, broken arrows
all but vanished. But it's also possible that the military
just decided, like, we're just not going to publicly announce
(23:17):
these things any longer, which is entirely possible. Who knows.
But as as far as it goes officially, there have
been thirty two broken arrow pinnacle incidents that have happened
in the nation's history, and some of them are just
absolute doozies. Yeah, so we'll go over some of these. Um.
I guess we can start with the first one, just
for nostalgia's sake. This was February a B thirty six
(23:42):
B Peacemaker bomber uh set flight from Alaska, and this
is just a training mission where they want to simulate
a nuclear strike against Russia. But they did have a
big bomb on board. It was a five thousand pound
bomb with just a conventional explosives that wasn't uh UM
or at least a Department of Defense in the Air
Force say, and we're gonna be caveating all these because
(24:06):
you know we we can only say what they told us.
But they said that there was no plutonium core on
the plane. Um. But this is one of the planes
that took off had engine trouble. The crew bailed out
and set off the bomb in the air and then
bailed out of the plane and the bomb luckily went
off over the ocean, right. And this this kind of
(24:27):
strikes at the core of a lot of these accidents.
Like whenever you hear about um like or whenever you
think about, why haven't we've been obliterated by a meteor
or something, it seems like the world is just full
of people, but there is way more empty land and
water still then there are massive amounts of people. So
the fact that we haven't been hit by the big asteroid,
(24:50):
or that a lot of these bombs go off in
places where there are no people. It is lucky, but
the stats are also in our favor. Yeah, it's either
that or we're live being in a computer simulation one
of the two exactly, or in the matrix. So um
that was the first one that was in nineteen fifty
and the fact that the government says there was there
(25:11):
was only like a um A uh what what did
you call it? Uh? Like what was the kind of
UM flight it was on? Just like a training mission? Training? Yes,
so there was a training plug inside of the thing.
It was it's made of lead rather than plutonium. And
that actually probably holds up to scrutiny because in the
(25:31):
early fifties they that's the kind that they were using.
There were small enough that you could send one of
the pilots or one of the co pilots or somebody
to the back to actually arm the nuclear weapon with
the plug, and if they were on a training mission,
there really wouldn't be much used for that. So that
probably was a non nuclear bomb that went off. But
by the the late fifties, the the government had moved
(25:55):
on to much bigger bombs and because they decided that
they needed to be hair trigger ready. They were armed,
despite what the government says. They're These type of bombs
that they moved to are called sealed pit weapons, where
that core was inserted and then the bomb was sealed
and then it was loaded onto the plane. So the
plane was flying around with a fully active, ready to
(26:17):
go nuclear bomb. So anything starting in the late fifties
onward is suspicious. If the government saying that it wasn't
an active nuclear bomb, that's right, very true. Here's another one,
and we're just kind of picking through these. I think
gave us like seventeen or eighteen to choose from, but
I thought like all thirty two were on here. No, No,
(26:39):
it just seemed that way. Uh, this one in March,
and this represents sort of one that's happened a few times,
which is where a plane and the bomb in the
plane will just vanish, never to be heard from again.
And that happened on March tenth, the B forty seven
strato Jet. It was most to refuel in mid air
(27:01):
over the Mediterranean Sea, but the plane never showed up
for that dinner date. And uh, they never found the plane,
and it had two nuclear capsules and they were never
found either. And Um, that was I think nineteen fifty six.
You said, if you fast forward a little bit to
nineteen fifty eight, that was a really really bad year
(27:24):
for broken arrow incidents. I mean, if you're a fan
of broken arrow incidents, it's a great year. But for
the rest of us, it was a bad year. Um.
From January thirty one to March eleven, there were three
So in less than six weeks there were three broken
arrow incidents, two of which were among the most famous
broken arrow incidents ever to take place. The first one
(27:44):
produced what's known as the Tybee bomb. You've heard of
the Tybee bomb. Okay, So, Um, there was a B
forty seven that was on a training flight and stance,
this is nineteen fifty eight. It's entirely possible that it
was a fully active nuclear weapon that it was flying
around with the government says no. Other people say absolutely was.
But Um, the on the training mission, the B fifty
(28:06):
two or I'm sorry, the B forty seven was, um,
became in contact with a fighter jet it was also
training and pretending to attack it, and they accidentally knocked
itself out and knocked the B forty seven out the
the B forty seven crew ejected the jettison the bomb,
and four weeks afterward they looked around Tybee Island to
find this bomb and they still to this day haven't
(28:28):
found it Tybee Island, which is off the coast of Savannah, Georgia. Uh.
And he said that the Fight six was pretending to attack.
It was a just like a training thing. Yeah. Yeah,
and it got too close and I think took its
own wing off and crippled the B forty seven. I
think peo peo peo the whole time. Yeah, basically, And
(28:51):
it was a it was a Mark thirty six bomb too.
This is really important. It was a four ton hydrogen
bomb that may have been fully active. And it's just
somewhere off, like right off of the coast of Tybee Island, somewhere.
If you've ever been to Tybee Island, this explains quite
a bit about Tybee Island that there's a four ton
(29:11):
hydrogen bomb just sitting right off the coat. Now, what
does that mean? Are you knocking Tybee? No? I think
j yeah. Jerry loves Tybee. It's a great place. It's
its own place, and I love it for that. But
also super duper weird. Well, what I can't figure out
is why they can't find this thing. That just seems
it just seems impossible to me that you can't find
(29:32):
this given that Tybee is not the hugest place. Uh No,
I agree. I think it's just one of those needle
in the haystack things. By now, it's probably been covered
with so much like silt and sediment, they may never
find it. But I read this really interesting article, and
there's been a lot of articles written about the search.
There's a guy who I think is a former Air Force,
uh commander. I can't remember what he did in the
(29:54):
Air Force or the military, but he Um, he got
interested in the idea of chasing down these lost oaken arrows,
and um, he searched for the Tybee bomb and he
claimed to have found it at one point. Um, But
I'm not sure what happened with that. But this article
called the Saga of the Tybee Bomb. It was by
Roger Pinckney and Gardening Gun Magazine, and oh, he really
(30:18):
played up the southern thing that he in his writing.
Oh my god, but it was good. It was a
good article. But he interviewed a shrimp boat captain or no.
He interviewed the nephew of a friend of a shrimp
boat captain who on his deathbed says that he found
the bomb and said exactly where he trawled it too,
and then cut it loose when he realized it was
a bomb and never told anybody, or he did try
(30:41):
to tell somebody and they ignored him. But um, he
kind of left this legacy of potentially where the bomb
is and he said it was right off of the
dock of the Coastguard post on Tybee Island. Well, maybe
they never found it because it was after his long
list of shrimp recipes. It's possible, shimp Newberg. That was
a great, great movie, was it? Was it not? I
(31:06):
don't I don't think so. I don't think Forrest compass Aged? Well,
oh really, I'll have to go see it then again. Yeah,
that was a sweet movie. Yeah all right, well, okay, okay,
we'll take that up later. All right, Well, let's go
with another one, another very famous one. On March eleventh,
when the United States Air Force it was a B
(31:26):
fifty seven I'm sorry, by going to Britain and it
had an issue with the locking pin on the bombaye doors,
there's a story supposedly that one of the co pilots
went to fix it movie style by hitting the fault
light with the butt of his gun. It's like right
out of a movie the Planes Captain just like And
(31:50):
this may have been a big inspiration for Dr Strange
Love because if you remember in that movie Slim Pickens,
there's an issue with the bombay doors and he basically
rides the bomb and very famously at the ending wearing
his cowboy hat right out of the bombay door. But
the planes Captain uh climbed into that bombay to go
check things out and accidentally pulled the emergency release lever
(32:15):
or pushed a button that he shouldn't have pushed, uh,
depending on who you're asking. The bomb dropped. These doors
were closed. Remember, but this is a four ton bombs
who had just smashed right through those doors, fell fifteen
thousand feet and blew up a farm in South Carolina. Yeah, like,
they bombed South Carolina with a nuclear bomb, and just
(32:35):
by the grace of the nature goddess, there was no
nuclear explosion, that's right, I mean, but a big boom, yes,
a huge boom, and it actually ruined the farm of
the greg family. The Walter Gregg family, and he was
he lived bitterly the rest of his life because he
finally sued and got like thirty six grand or something
(32:58):
like that, which even at the time him wasn't enough
for him to rebuild his house and his farm. And
no one died that it was just miraculous, but um,
several members of his family were injured and had to
go to the hospital. Um, but it was a big deal.
It left a crater that's still there. It's in mars Bluff,
South Carolina, which is not too far from Florence, but
it was something like five miles from Florence something like that.
(33:20):
And had this thing gone off, it would have um
wiped Florence right off of the map. Yeah, it would
have been a really big deal. And this was just
in a nuclear accident where somebody accidentally dropped a bomb
on a farm in in South Carolina. Uh. This other
one in night and you were right, there were a
lot in but this one in November was pretty bad.
(33:42):
It was a B forty seven crashed. It just seems
like there were nuclear planes crashing all over the place
because there were so many nuclear flights taking off in landing.
Every single day. Yeah, and they were moving the bombs
like from one place to another constantly to Well, this
one crashed in Texas and it was carrying a nuclear
(34:03):
weapon and the Air Force kept this one classified for
a long time. Um, but it had enriched uranium, so
they figure it was a sealed pit weapon that was
armed and the high explosive did detonate, but there was
no nuclear explosion again um, hopefully because of these fail safes.
But the kicker here is, uh, there was an environmental
(34:25):
clean up. This was the Air Force said, you know what,
we should go in there and clean this stuff up
because it's two thousand eleven, right, That's how long they
waited to clean the side up. Yeah, and apparently they
grew grain and fed cattle that grain on this land
that was a nuclear disaster site because again, like the bomb,
(34:47):
the nuclear bomb might not actually go off, but those
high explosives are blowing the nuclear material all over the
place and just totally contaminating the area. And they didn't
do anything about it for for what uh three years,
while they were feeding cattle grown on the land there.
That's crazy. What else you got? So there were two
(35:08):
incidents that kind of brought um, the operation Chrome Dome
era to the to an end. Um. Remember we said
the intercontinental ballistic missile development really put an end to it.
But also the idea like this is just too risky,
and they knew it going into it. They were like,
you know, we're gonna be flying around with armed nuclear weapons.
(35:30):
It's far riskier, but it's a great strategy in case
the the USSR strikes us, we'll be able to strike back. Um.
So it's worth the trade off. They knew going into it,
But after all of these accidents, they finally were like, Okay,
it's not worth the trade off anymore. Um. And the
last two that really did it in were in January
(35:50):
of nineteen sixty eight, I believe, And those the last
two that really did Chrome Dome in both happened in January,
but two years apart, January sixty six and January. And
I think one of the reasons that really hastened the
end of Chrome Dome is because they happened on foreign
soil where we had air force bases. But we're guests
of the country and the country that this happened in
(36:12):
the countries that happened, and we're not very happy with
us for for allowing these nuclear accidents to take place. Yeah,
there was one in January. Uh it was a mid
air another mid air collision during refueling, which if you've
ever seen those mid air refuelings, it's a tricky thing.
So you can see how that would happen. And that's,
of course how strange Love opens over the opening credits
(36:35):
very famously with the refueling scene. Um shot into very
sexual nature right on purpose, of course, because it was
Stanley Kubrick. But this one was near uh palamattas Spain.
Nice is that right? Um? Yeah, I think that's good enough,
all right, Um? And that was, like I said, the
(36:55):
two planes crashed into each other, and four bombs were
on board. Four. One fell into the ocean, one fell
on land, and the other two fell on land and
detonated the high explosives. One went to market And you say, so, yeah,
one of them one went off I think, uh and
(37:17):
blew up, you said, out of the four, that's actually
pretty lucky. No, no, no, one of the three that
fell on land to actually detonated the high explosives. Okay, gotcha, gotcha.
And then one the one that went in the ocean,
like they looked for that for weeks and they finally
managed to find it, which based on these broken arrow
um reports, is really rare that to actually find the bomb.
(37:39):
But they found this one in Spain, and then they
actually cleaned up the site because this was in Spain,
it wasn't just in Texas. So they went to the
trouble of cleaning up the site and they removed four
hundred tons of contaminated soil from the crash site where
this radioactive material had been scattered by the explosion. Amazing.
(38:00):
So that was that was two years before Chrome Dome.
And the last one, the one that really brought about
the end of Chrome Dome, was in Greenland, the incident
at tu Lea Air Force Base in Greenland in January
of nineteen sixty eight. This one happened and literally from
what I read, the next day, operation Chrome Dome was ended.
So this was a B fifty two crash crashed onto
(38:22):
sea ice and apparently they had to get rid of
two hundred and thirty seven thousand cubic meters of snow, ice,
water and plane junk. Yeah, they removed it to the
United States because it was contaminated with radioactivity. So the
fact that happened in Greenland was was bad enough, but
(38:42):
the Greenland was a territory of Denmark at the time.
In Denmark had a no nuke policy, so they were
really unhappy with this. But what's cool is Denmark forced
the US to conduct an environmental estimate and study this
stuff to make sure that there were no prolonged effects.
And I found that there weren't. That's that's what the
(39:02):
study turned up. But yeah, but this is back in
the sixties and they're doing this kind of thing, So
way to go, Denmark. I think we should talk about
the one over North Carolina too, even though it jumps
back in time. Is that all right? Yeah, I'm fine
with jumping back in time. Janu A B fifty two
(39:22):
got a fuel leak, starts getting out of control, and
it's trying to get back to its base. The crew ejects.
The plane breaks apart and crashes near Goldsboro, North Carolina,
and there were two nuclear bombs on board here uh
that's separated from the plane and fell to the ground.
One of them was fully armed hydrogen bomb, had nuclear material.
(39:47):
Everything was there for a three point eight megaton explosion,
and it crashed to the ground at high speed and
disintegrated without either the high explosive or the nuclear explosion,
going off into sort of a swamp. And what happened
to the other one, Uh, it actually fell gently to earth.
It's parachute deployed and it just went got stuck in
a tree and they got it out. Hydrogen bomb stuck
(40:12):
in a tree with tons of high explosives attached to it,
just hanging out. But they managed to get that one back.
It's amazing when he reads through some of these, it's
looks like and I know it's not in the case,
of course, our military does a great job, but it
looks at times like it's a three Stooges episode. Yeah, Like,
there was one plane that was pushed off an aircraft
(40:32):
carrier that had a nuclear bomb, just sort of pushed
off the side of the carrier off the coast of Japan,
and it's still down there from what they from what
we understand, here's something horrific, Chuck. The pilot was in
the plane at the time. Really, they've never recovered the plane,
the pilot, the bomb. It's just down there in like
twelve thou feet of water, I believe. Yeah, imagine you
sink pretty fast. Oh god man, No, that's just terrible.
(40:56):
There was one where ah, this was missiles word ready
and armed at an Air Force base in New Jersey
when a helium tank burst. I guess they were blown
up birthday party balloons, right, And this did not have
a high explosive detonation, but the missile's fuel tank ruptured,
and um, there was a big fire. A bunch of these.
(41:19):
There were fires, like big fires where they thought, you know,
is it gonna happen or is it not? And luckily
it did not. No, and I'm sure that was a
consideration every single time, like is this thing going to
blow up into a nuclear explosion? I mean some of
these are are just we just would have been massive.
The one in um Goldsboro, North Carolina we were talking about,
(41:42):
had they gone off, it would have been two hundred
and fifty three times larger than the Hiroshima blasts. Yeah,
they would have been in normous. I mean, look what
that one fifteen kiloton bomb did to Hiroshima. Imagine two
hundred and fifty three times worse over North Carolina. I'm sure.
Mean it's just that would have been Georgia, would have
(42:02):
been South Carolina. It would have been massive and enormous
and and and the fact that we didn't ever for
every single one of these, not once did a nuclear
explosion go off. It's really a testament to the scientists
who designed this thing to be as safe as as
humanly possible. And yeah, I mean there's some others like, um,
(42:25):
the USS Scorpion nuclear sub went down. It had a
nuclear reactor aboard and a couple of nuclear torpedoes. Um, Like,
if you go through this list, there's a substantial number
of nuclear bombs like out there in in the Sea
of the Philippines, off the azores Um off of Tybee Island,
just hanging out waiting around, hopefully indefinitely or forever and
(42:49):
never you know, going off. But I remember that was
like one of the big concerns among the people living
on Tybee is like, you know this this high explosives
are aging. You know, what's gonna happened when they reach
a certain age? Are they going to become are they
just gonna blow up? And is somebody's boat going to
be over the area at the time, Like what what
are we doing here? And the official thing is like
(43:10):
it's it's just gone and it's safer to just leave
it wherever it is and try to move it at
this point. Yeah, The other I think funny thing ed
included here towards the end was uh. He says. There
are hundreds of other incidentss that would be classified as
bent spears. Uh, Like you know, dropping fully armed nukes
onto the concrete, he said, more so many times I
lost count, or just like dropping off the wing of
(43:33):
an aircraft onto the ground when they were doing something.
It's um, isn't that a movie? Wasn't that in a movie?
I don't know that happened in a movie. And it's like, oh,
it's just so cringe e. It's like a top secret
or something. Maybe I can only think of the Zucker brothers.
I went and watched a loaded weapon? Is that good?
(43:56):
It is? It's good for what it is for sure? Yes? Now,
was that the Zucker? Yeah? I believe it was one
of the Zuckers, if not both of them. But Emilia
west of As he's great. You're a big fan of him.
I love it. He's he's a good actor. Don't you
always champion the the sanitation Worker movie Men at Work Work.
(44:17):
It's such a good movie. I still haven't seen that one.
You gotta see that one. It's got a real plot
to it and everything. Yeah, and I mean it's Amilia
west of As and Charlie Sheen. When else are you
going to see those two together? Agreed? Thanksgiving? Maybe? Yeah,
that's right. Maybe maybe Easter depending Maybe they're brothers. They're brothers,
(44:40):
I know they are. That's why you'd see him together.
That's right. Are you telling me that or we're telling
me the listeners that. Oh I don't know. I'm just
talking to the ether. Okay, good, Um, Well, since we
started talking about Emilia west of Az and Charlie Sheen,
I think it's time for a listener man and Charles, Uh,
this episode MS out It so happens on the thirty one.
(45:04):
I believe that's New Year's Eve. That's right. I was
trying to get you to say it did so. A
couple of things. Uh. We want to wish everyone a
happy New Year, first of course, um, and also I
want to wish a happy birthday to my dear sweet
wife you me, Happy birthday MS. Thanks man. So happy
new Year everybody. We hope that it is a spectacular
(45:27):
for you. It's the future now, that's right. So let's
all kind of shape up and act right for it.
Let's do okay, So happy New Year everyone, Uh, and
now it's time for a listener Matt. Yeah, we're gonna
share a dream here. We don't usually do this because,
let's face it, listening to someone's dreams is the worst.
But this was kind of funny. Is from Cassie. She
(45:48):
wrote it at five thirty am, right off the bat
after having this dream. Uh. She said, the dream was
a run I won some random drawing and the prize
was to sit down on the recording of a podcast
while you were my area. So you guys come to
my cabin, which I don't have in real life. You
explain that you want to record the podcast in bed,
and uh. So there we are, all three in bed
(46:09):
together wearing button up jammies that no one really wears
in real life. And you guys are you have your
microphones and everything, and you're doing your stuff. You should
know thing, and I'm just sitting there watching and laughing
and learning. Uh. When you decide that you're done and
it's time to go to sleep, So we go to
sleep in the same bed that you recorded from. Josh
is in the middle and Chuck and I are on
(46:30):
opposite ends. I was extremely self aware that I roll
around in my sleep and there's no way your guys
are gonna be able to sleep. And sure enough, after
a while, Joshua is up and says, I'm gonna go
watch TV. I can't sleep, So I was mortified that
I kept him up. And then Chuck rolls over and
wraps his arm around me and spoons me. And I said,
what the heck are you doing? And Chuck says, oh, no, no, no,
(46:52):
this isn't a sexual thing. I'm happily married, as you know.
But Emily knows that I have to hold on to
someone in order to fall asleep, so it's okay, so uh,
and he says, normally it's Josh when we do these overnighters,
but you know, so I usually spoon you. Apparently, yeah,
well sure everybody knows that. So now there's no way
(47:13):
I'm falling asleep. I told Chuck I was gonna go
watch TV with Josh and Chuck says I can't sleep either,
and ask for pepto bismol and winks at me like
it's code for something. So Chuck starts laughing and says, no,
don't worry about the pepto bismol. So then there we
are all three watching TV on the couch and you
guys are asking for snacks. I opened my fridge and
(47:35):
I have tons of expired snacks and I'm embarrassed and
realized that the snacks are expired and I never even
fed you dinner. You guys are pretty embarrassing. You guys
awkwardly pretend to be okay not eating while we're sitting
on the couch, and your stomachs are literally rumbling extremely loud,
and finally we all fall asleep on the couch. Uh.
(47:56):
The next day, you were doing a live show and
apparently are great friends with my armacist and my pharmacists
posted selfies with Josh lifting weights at the gym before
you guys went to do your live show. Are they crazy?
Where these dreams go? They go all over the place, man,
all over the place. I don't know how they knew
that your pre show routine was lifting weights? All right?
(48:19):
You like to buff up before the show. Sure. Anyway,
I'm still laughing now and I'm definitely gonna have a
great day because of this dream. Thank you, I'm sorry,
and you're welcome. That is from Cassie. Thanks a lot, Cassie,
much appreciated. Um. Yeah, we'll just move on from that one.
That's right. Uh. If you want to get in touch
(48:41):
with this, like Cassie did, you can go onto stuff
you Should Know dot com. You can check out our
social links there and you can send us an email
send it off to stuff podcast and I heart radio
dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a product and
of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for
(49:02):
my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H
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Josh Clark
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