September 17, 2015 • 54 mins
At the height of the Cold War, a group of concerned scientists promoted their findings on the horrific aftereffects of nuclear war and were accused of fearmongering. But were they right after all?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to you stuff. You should know front House stuff
Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there
somewhere off in the ether. But I don't think on either.
(00:21):
Just in the ether, trying not to breathe right now.
We have a tank. It either in here. It would
be a munch of different podcast. Josh and Chuck's either cats.
Do they put those things in tanks? Oh? I don't know,
surely right? No? Is it look like in the bottle
still like that? I don't know. I don't. Yeah, I
think you're just having a little butt milk bottle. You
(00:41):
put it in a rag, you put it in your face,
and then go to happy town. Yeah, exactly. If there's
any pharmacists out there that want to set us straight,
let us know how ether comes these days. It's probably
a gas. Yeah, I imagine it's not like hunter Wis Thompson.
I think we talked about it before in anesthesia. Probably
it's a ether asks what a weird start? Yeah, that
(01:03):
has nothing to do with what we're about to talk about.
And I was trying to relate it, But there really
is nothing. One of my favorite favorite topics of all
time nuclear holocaust from the Cold War? Yeah, what we did?
We did one in the Cold War, didn't we We've
done several h Yeah, we we batted around this thing,
but we've never done a full nuclear holocaust podcast, have we?
(01:28):
And nuclear holocaust is that's not quite right. That's not
the right way to put it, because what we're talking
about is actually the after effects from a nuclear holocaust.
Isn't that the holocaust? I mean, if you want to
be a purist, the nuclear holocaust is the immediate destruction
(01:48):
as a result of exploding nuclear bombs over like population
centers and suff Oh I didn't know that. I thought
it was the whole kitten cabboodle. I should say, if
you're a purist and you want to say it, from
my opinion, that's what a nuclear holiday. Okay, I think
we know what's going on here. Um. Yeah, Robert Lamb
wrote this, uh stuff to blow your mind. Yeah. I
(02:09):
have to say. I said, man, way to go on now,
And I was a good one told him that I did.
I actually uttered those words. What do you say? Thanks man?
That's nice. Uh. But the thing that gets me about
nuclear winner which we will talk about in depth. Um,
what fascinates me about it, just as much as the
nuclear winner itself, Chuck, is the controversy debate that that
(02:34):
arose from it throughout the eighties. There's a huge debate,
debate on the severity debate, Yeah, debate on whether it's
something to worry about or not. Yeah. Well, I looked
up because I was like, is does anyone think that
this is a myth? Out an outright myth? And from
what I saw in my research is that no, this
(02:54):
is fact. It's just a dispute. What's a dispute is
the scenario and the survey already of what would happen,
But no one says, like, no, there would be no
nuclear winter, there would be no problems after nuclear bombs.
So there used to be like back in in the
early eighties when this was a huge new thing, Um,
(03:14):
there was a group of scientists who were hawkish, very
much in favor of the U S building up it's
nuclear arsenal as much as possible and started a basically
a pr letter writing campaign to discredit the science behind
this and the like, these guys don't know what they're
talking about, so what they think that the bomb would
(03:36):
drop and then like the next day the birds would
be out. They they they said, initially, yeah, there was
kind of their position was just a poke holes in
this and that it wasn't wasn't a it wasn't legitimate science, right,
it doesn't sound like and then um they Ultimately the
whole point was that this came from an argument over
(03:56):
whether the U s should engage in the SDI, the
t Jeek Defense Initiative or star Wars, which is the
lasers that shoot nukes from space. Right, they shoot down
nukes from space? They did? That was another one, Um,
But that's what the whole thing was. It's the context
of it. It It was an argument over what over either
nuclear disarmament, which Carl Sagan and his friends were in
(04:19):
favor of, or um nuclear proliferation and the star wars
um program warmongers, the popiece versus the warm But the
weird thing is that this debate, Chuck, took place in
the pages of like academic journals, and it ended up
being a fight between science and science deniers. Yeah, it
(04:40):
sounds like the scientists that you mentioned might have been
had their coffers full from the US government, So potentially
or private industry or something like that. Um. And the
thing is is they used this old chestnut where um, So,
if you're a scientist, there's no certainty in anything you say.
(05:04):
It can always be disproven. Remember we talked about this
in the Scientific Method episode. All your stuff can be
disproven ultimately, which is why it's just a theory. So
no scientist is going to be like, this is certain. Well,
these other scientists who are poking holes in it would
point out these guys aren't even certain, which means that
there's there's disagreement over whether we'll have a nuclear winner
(05:28):
or not. So they were being very disingenuous in poking
holes in it by saying these scientists aren't even certain
in their findings. Well, no scientists is certain in their finals.
But to the public that you think, oh, well, these
scientists can't say that they're certain, so that they must
not know what they're talking about, that's dangerous. That's why
we're at the three minutes to midnight on the doomsday clock.
(05:50):
It's exactly right because some people might say, well, you're
not certain, so let's just not act fast enough. Yeah,
and I should say also check, we should prepare for
a lot of listener mail because this is a conservative
flash point. Nuclear winter is long standing one. Oh yeah, great,
(06:11):
sounds good. Let's talk about this all right. Well, Robert
starts where most people should start when talking about nuclear winter,
and that's in the atmosphere. Uh. It's a very finely
tuned system we have. I want to say it's like homeostasis,
but um, it's not. People, So I guess it's like
an ecostasis where the sun. Uh, just enough sun gets
(06:35):
through to make things, make the earth habitable and proliferate
with plants and water and humans and animals and all
kinds of great stuff. Uh. Too much sun, even by
a little bit, could be catastrophic, and too little sun,
but even by a little bit could be catastrophic. So we've,
(06:55):
thanks to humans, we've struck a great balance here with
the sun. A great deal may and you can shine
to unshine too much sun. Yeah, and it's working out awesome. Uh.
The idea of nuclear winter is that there would be
enough ash from and smoke. It's really not the fallout
from the nuclear bombs themselves, from what I understand, it's
(07:16):
more of the smoke from the resulting fires that would
cause the blacking out of the sky and the sun
not getting through it. Yeah, but everything I read across
the board said it's almost the smoke that goes on.
It's true. Yeah, I mean you you you shouldn't negate
(07:38):
the idea that like nuclear radiation poisoning is going to
kill a lot of people as a result. But the
blacking out of the skies is due to the smoke
from fire, exactly from the bomb that happened. Right. So
this whole thing, the context of it again comes from
the seventies, right, chuck uh Yeah. In eighties, the yeah
(08:00):
and and back. And I think that a group issued
a statement that said, you know, there probably wouldn't be
that big of a fallout from nuclear explosions. A few
years after that, another group, I think that the first
two groups, the National Academy of Scientists. Another group said,
you know what, we don't think that's exactly true. We
(08:22):
think that there probably is some sort of, um, there
will be something, but our models are too um primitive
to say for certain what the fallout would be a
few years after that, Carl Sagan and his crew get
together and said, um, no, there's going to be serious consequences.
And here's what they are billions of lives lost, billions
(08:45):
and billions, right. And one of the things they based
this on, this idea on that if you spew a
bunch of smoke or particulate matter into the atmosphere, that
it will have a negative um influence on the global climate.
Is past history from volcanic eruptions. Yes, uh, most noted. Well,
(09:07):
there are a few over the years, but one of
the notable ones in eighty three at the time then
the dust Dutch East Indies now Indonesia Krakatoa. That volcano
was massive to the tune of thirty six thousand deaths
just from the volcano. And this is in Krakatoa in
(09:27):
three Yeah, there's only people there somehow, It's not like
it was super populated. And two thirds of Krakatoa collapsed. Uh.
The smoke rose up and warmed the global temperature global
by two point two degrees fahrenheit. I think, No, it
lowered it, yeah, lowered. Sorry, it took five years uh
(09:51):
for temperatures to return to normal. And it affected this
was in Indonesia, and it actually they think increased the
rainfall in Los Angeles by more than double that next year.
That's in l A in southern California. So that was
the Krakatoa blast from eight three, right, yeah, and that
it literally changed the color of the sky for like
(10:13):
years afterwards. The sky was red um such that they think,
you know, the scream, the painting the screen. Yeah, yeah,
the red sky they think that's the way this guy
looked was because of this volcano. It's so neat that crazy.
That guy was like, that volcano was crazy. Let's what
the man is saying. And that's just one of them.
(10:33):
What was the other one in Mount Tambora. Yeah, Indonesia
once again. Yeah, Indonesia's got bad luck with the volcanoes
back in the nineteenth century. And this was actually earlier
in eighteen fifteen. Yeah, I remember learning about this when
I was a kid, because Ohio got it really bad
volcano and off in Indonesia in eighteen fifteen and the
following year much of the United States did not have
(10:55):
a summer. It was actually called the Year without a Summer.
In Ohio was affected so well yeah, well yeah, there
was like snow on the ground in the middle of July.
Do you learn that in state history class? I did?
I remember that? Uh yeah, Georgia State History. That that
was like a full course at our school. Half of
it was just sitting around with the teacher, like staring
(11:15):
off into the distance. I remember ours was just like
a lot of talk about Crawford Long and the Civil War. Yeah,
we've even talking about Crawford Long in ours because he
wasn't from Georgia. Anthony Wayne. Yeah, the Battle of Fallen Timbers. Yeah. Uh,
well that summer without a winter, year without a summer.
(11:37):
Im and then there's some like canals and locks that
donkeys used to pull barges on. Yeah. I just remember
Crawford Long and a lot of racism. Yeah basically, yeah,
uh that's right. So that was Mount Timboro, the year
without summer. Um. There have been other events like when, um,
(11:59):
the oil fields burned during the during the war in
the early nineties. Yeah, apparently Carl Sagan predicted basically a
nuclear winner from that. Yeah, that's pan out. Yeah, that's
where they take some flak. Was um, it was not
nearly as bad to fall out from nut smoke as
Sagan predicted. But what can you do but predict. You're
(12:23):
gonna be wrong. Yeah, occasionally, surely you're going to be wrong.
It doesn't mean you should be like, oh, well that
smoke didn't do much, so let's start building nuclear bombs again.
Well that's the whole thing, Chuck. I am so glad
you said that, because that's the whole mad thing to
this argument, because it's like, what are you arguing in
favor for If you're arguing against the idea of what
(12:46):
precisely are you arguing four? Yeah, like it won't be
that bad. We'll talk a little bit more about it,
like later on in the show what some people have
argued about. But it seems like what you say, ultimately
you're arguing in favor of more nuclear weapons that seems
wrongheaded by definition. Well not even just that, but using
(13:06):
them won't be as bad as you say, right, not
just have them, but well the fallout wouldn't be as
bad as they all predict, so use them. You almost
get the impression like they're just like, well, let's just
find out. Let's just shake a couple off and find
out what happens. Come on, you'll see him, right, And
then as they die from smoke inhalation, they say it
was wrong? What have I done? Oh goodness, let's take
(13:33):
a break, all right, let's do, and we'll come back
and we'll talk a little bit more about the nuclear winner.
(13:59):
I said nuclear ingest, but I know I heard the
break good stuff, all right. I just want to point
that out because some people might think it was serious,
and now that you said it was ingest, some people
are like, maybe that man was my hero. I posted
something on Facebook the other day that said, you're sciencing
wrong as a joke, and people called me out there. Look,
(14:22):
I thought the century you could use like everything is
a verb. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, people have gotten extremely serious,
extremely self serious, and I'm a not self serious person.
So I don't fit in in today's world. You're a
relic all dinosaur. It just a stupid, laughing dinosaur. Speaking
of dinosaurs, well, I guess we should talk about the
(14:45):
KT boundary extinction event, which was some people, some in
science if theorize that that's what happened to the dinosaurs.
Was there was an impact winter, not quite the same
as a nuclear winter, but the same effect as a
nuclear winter due to the impact of an asteroids, right,
(15:06):
and that would have happened at the border of the
Cretaceous in Tertiary periods. Again, when the dinosaurs all died
off still inexplicably. There's no there's no definitive answer. Again,
though we're talking science, No one found a journal diary today.
(15:27):
Something is streaking through the sky and it's making everyone nervous.
It's very hot now. But I noticed the dinosaurs are dying,
so that's good. Oh this is a dinosaur writing in
my opinion, so that's bad. Right, Uh okay, So let's
talk nuclear winner, right, you you you kind of said
(15:47):
it earlier. But the whole idea behind nuclear winner is
that if you shoot off nuclear bombs, especially a bunch
of them. And you have to understand, at the time
that um scientists were really starting to debate this, there
were like seventy thousand nuclear warheads, like many, many times
(16:08):
more nuclear warheads in existence in like the early eighties
than there were today. And when they started debating them,
they really took up this cause because the Reagan administration
was saying, we need the star Wars program because we
can we can prevent almost with you know, certainty, a
(16:32):
Soviet nuclear attack with laser guns exactly. And so the
scientists who were concerned scientists, basically anti nuke scientists, said
wait a minute, there's something that you guys aren't thinking
through here. If you do that, the Soviets are gonna say, well,
wait a minute, if this thing is effective, then we
need to build up our nuclear arsenal so that when
(16:54):
we shoot everything we got at them still that ten
percent will totally annihilate the United States. That the presence
of the star Wars program was going to to to
put the nuclear arms race into even higher gear than
it already was. So they very much took it upon
themselves to to tackle this with science, but also publicize
(17:16):
it and sell it to the public. And it's that
that's stuck in the craw of a lot of other scientists,
particularly scientists who were in favor of nuclear proliferation as
a matter of national defense. The point of it is,
when they tackled this, they said, Um, here's the big
problem with it. If you shoot off a bunch of
(17:37):
nuclear bombs, a lot, a lot, a lot of nuclear
bombs which could totally go off as far as the
nuclear war is concerned, Um, it's going to cause a
lot of smoke to enter the atmosphere. And that is
where this domino effect is going to create this global
catastrophe and the whole outcome of it is based on
(17:57):
the number of nukes that you shoot off, which is
basically what Carl Sagan and his buddy Richard Turco divided
the different types of nuclear winter into. That's right, Mr
Sagan and Mr Turko. Are they doctors? Let's just call
everyone a doctor. Well, yeah, he was. Carl Sagan was
a doctor of astro chemistry, I believe, and Richard Turco is, Um,
(18:19):
he's a veterinarian. I can't remember what he was. Uh.
They wrote a book called A Path Where No Man Thought,
A Path Where No Man Thought, and uh, that seemed
like there would be one more word there. Um. And
they have one to three, four or five six scenarios
(18:39):
for what a nuclear winter might look like, ranging from
minimal to extreme. Uh and minimal best case scenario, which
is just a little bit of a nuclear attack, not
many bombs going off, maybe like let's say Hiroshima or
not Kazaking. We'll talk about those were like, yeah, that
(19:03):
means that there would be minimal cloud cover, uh, not
much environmental impact globally, and um, the targeted areas would
be wiped out, of course, but the world itself would
not have big consequences, right, atmospherically, So if you are
talking nuclear war, especially a cold war nuclear war, that
(19:26):
was a fairly unlikely scenario. By the time this the
early nighties rolls around and people started talking about the
concept of a nuclear winner, those like Hiroshima Nagasaki level
nuclear bombs were like attached the average fighter jet. They
were considered like just tactical, like you just could shoot
(19:47):
them off on the battlefield if you needed to. So
the idea that it would just amount to that is unlikely.
It was, but that's the best case scenario they're trying
to cover. All. Yes, Number two was marginal all uh
And that's a few detonations uh again in the northern hemisphere,
(20:07):
and they said it would lower the temperature by a
few degrees and there would be some crops in some
agriculture that suffered, and probably some famine, but it would
not uh. Oh black rain, of course, but who wants
that did happen in Hiroshima? Uh? They drank it and
(20:27):
died from packing it to go. Yes, because it was
radioactive rain. Yeah, but they drank it because they were
thirsty because they had no water. It's devastating you and
everyone should have to go to the city of Hiroshima, Like,
it is amazing what they've done to to preserve what
happened there as like a teaching lesson for everyone. Yeah,
(20:49):
it's really moving. We should have one of those here.
We should Instead people are like, yeah, Japan forced the
US to drop the bomb. It's fact, which is not correct, right.
Uh so black rain would happen in that marginal scenario. Man,
this is a really political episode, isn't. I think anytime
you tackle nuclear war it's going to be divisive because
(21:10):
some people think it's awesome nuke the Wales got a
nuke something. Things below the equator in that scenario in
the southern hemisphere would be just fine. So here's something
that I found really interesting and wrong in this um
analysis of it. Sagan. I guess he was strictly talking
about atmospheric effects, but he mentions like famine and stuff
(21:34):
like that. The thing is that would have a global
effect for sure, Yeah, the rest of the world. It
depends in large part on North American wheat and corn.
So if there's a nuclear fallout in North America that
affects our crop yields dramatically and causes famin in the US,
it's gonna cause famine elsewhere to I think what he's
(21:55):
saying is as far as climatologically speaking, what he in
Turco or saying is, as long as you're not shooting
off nuclear bombs in the southern hemisphere, it's gonna climatologically speaking,
be unaffected or largely inaffective because the wind goes down
to the equator and then back up like the equator
separates the hemispheres. As far as the atmosphere is concerned, Yeah, totally,
(22:18):
there would still be global troubles, yes, Uh, but in
reading all these scenarios that made me really want to
move to Australia. Well that's another thing too. How many
people would be like, I need to get out of
the United States, so I'm moving down to Mexico, I'm
moving down to Brazil, or I'm moving down to Australia,
and then the infrastructure in those countries are just super
(22:39):
stressed because of the northern hemisphere that survived, and suddenly
moving down to the southern hemisphere with another widespread effect
Mexico would help you too much? Though, Well, what weren't
they like super helpful in uh Independence Day? Was the
Independence day or the morning or No, the day after tomorrow,
everybody starts having to move south because North America is
(22:59):
just frozen n ice sheet. Yeah, but I just mean
as far as you'd have to go pretty far south,
further south in Mexico if you want to escape the
atmospheric fallout. Oh, you're right, so Ecuador. Yeah, Like what
is it like half of Africa and South America and
the hemisphere half. Yeah, so the northern hemisphere would show
(23:21):
up at the southern Hemisphere's doorstep and be like Christmas
in July. We'll get used to it. That's right. Your
drain goes the other way when you release the water
from the tub needo, and I know Christmas doesn't fall
in July. It was a metaphorical statement everyone. Nominal nuclear
winners number three, uh, that is what they consider the
(23:43):
low end full scale nuclear war, but still full scale
six thousand to twelve thousand nuclear weapons. That's all just
six to twelve thousand nuclear bombs, and we're talking um
a megaton or more bombs and a good time was
um I think fifty Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs combined, So
(24:07):
twelve thousand times fifty of those for this kind of
nominal nuclear war. That's a lot of zeros. Uh. They
predicted noon sunlight would be about a third of what
it was. Global temperature drops of eighteen degrees. That's bad news,
my friend. Um, it would destroy a lot of the
(24:28):
ozone layer. Uh. And again the Southern hemisphere wouldn't experience
major climactic change. Just cut to the Southern hemisphere. They're
all at the beach. There's like topical music playing, but
they have no wheat, right, who needs wheat? When you
got wrong drinks? Dude, that's a tea shirt. Josh Clark
said that one uh number four substantial, that is full
(24:53):
scale nuclear war, UM, freezing temperatures, big time fallout. The
whole day would be like it's we cast um. Billions
of humans dead, billions, billions and billions species going extinct um.
And finally possible damage to the Southern hemisphere finally possibly uh.
(25:17):
And then the last two we can just bunch together.
I think severe and extreme um less than one percent
of the sunlight getting through for months and months on end,
global temperature dropping, no photosynthesis happening, every crop dying, all
(25:37):
life perishing. Let's just go ahead and wrap it up
right there. As Robert puts it um, most of the
planet's life would perish within the chili comfines of this
black atmospheric tomb. Yeah, he's got a little love craft
in him. Done this unnamable tomb. Um, chuckers. Let's take
another break and then we will come back and talk
(25:58):
about um the fallout from nuclear winner theory. So Um,
(26:24):
like we said, Carl Sagan and his friends got together
and basically took it upon themselves to educate the public
about the potential catastrophe that could happen as a result
of nuclear war. Everybody before was like, Yeah, that would
really suck to be in a city that a nuclear
(26:45):
bomb went off on, but maybe it wouldn't be my city.
I live in Schenectady, New York's going to bomb connected,
so I'm probably gonna be Okay. These guys said, Hey,
Western civilism nation, not just in the US but also
the USSR. That's not necessarily the case. You two will
(27:06):
be affected. There's gonna be big problems after this after
a nuclear war. So much so that let's make sure
that our leaders never do this right. Wake up basically
is what they were doing. And so Um Sagan and
his friends created a paper and it's now called the
t Taps paper after all of their names, right Ackerman, Okay.
(27:26):
And they wrote this paper and had it published in Science,
the pre eminent scientific journal in the United States. It
was a big deal that they also held a very
well publicized conference, and Carl Sagan, apparently without the the
group's knowledge or blessing, went off and also wrote a
(27:48):
piece of Parade magazine, Yeah, to make sure that every
dick and Jane in the US knew about this. It
was like a three page article about the nuclear winner,
which is a new term at the time, complete with
illustrations where like the earth was like the dead, lifeless,
what's called like a gray chalk billiard ball basically, um,
(28:10):
just really scary stuff. And then he also simultaneously wrote
another longer piece that was in Foreign Affairs. Um, that's
a little more wonky. So Sagan went off after writing
this this scientific paper and publicized it to policymakers and
to the American public. This is the early and yes,
(28:31):
and you this was before all the sciences and this
is from the first paper, before the first papers conference
was even held, right, And a lot of people, including
people who were on his side about this issue, were
really mad at him because it opened up the this
group and the whole idea of nuclear winner to allegations
(28:51):
that they were fearmongering and that they were basically trying
to sell the public on science, which is, you know,
that's not what science does. Yes, pure science is about
research and coming up with facts, and whether they're popular
or unpopular, it doesn't matter. Sciences science and fact is fact, right.
A good theory is a good theory. But these guys
(29:11):
again were concerned that something really, really bad could happen,
and they went to the trouble of taking it upon
themselves to advertise it to the public. But again second
going off and do this, it really opened them up
for a lot of allegations and debate that took place afterwards.
But some say that the uh, their work and the
te Taps report actually did help cool things down, uh
(29:34):
in the Cold War a little bit. Yeah, And I
mean it wasn't just these American scientists. They worked with
Soviet scienceists as well, and apparently, um, sometimes it went good,
sometimes it didn't go so well, But they're both sides
were working on this issue, and the fact that it
got so much publicity actually created a firestorm of back
and forth in the scientific community, and this issue ended
(29:57):
up getting really well studied. Yeah, it it and uh.
Seven years later they revised the report and uh it
had new, more modernized data and it um wasn't quite
as dire, which some critics are like, all right, that
this is a little more reasonable. Yes, they revised it
to call it the nuclear Autumn. Yeah, and everyone loves autumn. Yeah,
(30:22):
autumn all the time. They'd be wonderful. Oh man, that
would be wonderful Chuck's world. Uh, and they there are
disagreements over that still, and they basically there's um a
few four variables that are always the factors that are
the unknowns, and it's really they're all to me kind
of one four versions of the same variable, which is,
(30:45):
we don't know how much smoke there would be, Yes,
we just don't know, uh. And number one is how
much material is there to burn? So the idea is
you drop a bomb on a city, a nuclear bomb,
and everything catches on fire, and that creates tremendous amounts
of smoke. But since these are all theoretical and you
(31:07):
don't know what would happen if you drop something the
size on like let's say a major city like New York.
They like, what would be there to burn? Like, we
just don't know. Well, that's that's yeah. So if you
dropped it on a city, is it an old city
that's that isn't supermodern and therefore isn't built out of
like lots of plastic that can get into the atmosphere
and really mess things up. Yeah, like the really bad stuff. Yeah,
(31:28):
if it's an old city, maybe the burning wouldn't be
so bad even after a nuclear holocaust. Um. Or maybe
you're not shooting nuclear bombs to cities but to other
nuclear installations that are out in the middle of like
nowhere in Nebraska. Um, because we have I mean we've
there's been like two thousand nuclear bombs detonated, but they
(31:49):
only two on the city's exactly. Everything else has been
out of the ocean or out in the middle of
nowhere and there's been no fire. Right. Um. The assumption
is is that though if you shot a nuclear bomb
at an at a modern city, a lot of really
toxic smoke would be produced. That's probably the worst case scenario,
and both the immediate nuclear holocaust and the fallout the
(32:14):
nuclear winner as a result. Because of all the smoke
that would be created. I mean, look at the fallout
from nine eleven and that was two buildings. Uh. The
second variable is how much would remain in the atmosphere
and then how much goes back to the earth. Yeah,
no one really knows that at all. How much sunlight
would be deflected? Again, just theorizing, and you can go
(32:36):
back and plug in these numbers. The problem is, if
you're a detractor of nuclear winner theory, you would say,
where'd you get that number? You know? And you could
take every number and come up with a different model
for each one. They usually don't do that, but even still,
it's like which one is going to be the one?
(32:56):
And again it goes back to how much smoke would
there be to begin? And then finally when did it happen? Um,
if it was actually in winter, perhaps it's not so bad. Yeah,
nuclear winter and winter ironically is the best case scenario,
the best case scenario of the bad scenarios. So they
(33:16):
did initially back off of their findings. They said that
it was there could initially be like a thirty five
to forty degree drop in global temperatures. Um, it's celsius,
So we're talking like seventy degrees seventy two degrees fahrenheight
drop in temperature. So that's a full on nuclear war, yes. Um.
(33:37):
Later on, as they revised their findings and more again, more,
more and more scientists got involved and studied this issue.
They came upon what seemed to be a consensus that
you could probably count on something like a fifteen degree
celsius drop in um global temperatures, which would be substantial
and could still have widespread effects. Right, So this from
(34:01):
this debate, nuclear winner kind of got settled on. There
was a scientific consensus that came about, and there was
also consensus that not only would UM there'll be huge
problems inland, there would be ocean oceanic problems as well
because one of the things one of the great casualties
of detonating nuclear bombs is the ozone layer. UM. The
(34:23):
fireball from the blast burns up nitrogen converting into nitrogen oxide.
Nitrogen oxide just punches holes, basically chemically burns the ozone layer.
So then when all that smoke that's acting as like
an umbrella that's blocking out the sunlight falls back to Earth,
all that particular matter falls back to Earth and is radioactive.
(34:43):
By the way, now the sunlight that does come through
is way hotter and has way more UV light than
it had before the nuclear bombs went off. We had
our little delicate balance that's disrupted exactly. The problem with
that for the oceans is that that you V light
would likely be too intense for phytoplankton at the ocean surface. Well,
(35:06):
that is the keystone species for the ocean aquatic environments.
The ecosystems all start with phytoplankton. Zooplankton feed on phytoplankton,
Little fish feed on zooplankton, Larger fish feed on little fish,
and so on and so on until if so, if
you get rid of the phytoplankton, you're in big trouble.
So there would be huge ramifications, and science came to
(35:29):
a consensus on this, but again it was attacked very
early on by nuclear proliferation hawks as basically being against
the interests of United States national security, and then later
on it continued to be attacked. It became a customary
traditional flash point among conservatives as a great example of
(35:53):
the links that hippie h environmental scientists will go to
to to dupe the American public into being scared about
nuclear bombs and and just nuclear stuff in general. Like
Michael Crichton famously attacked it in a two three speech
and he his whole thing. He he was very famously
(36:14):
a climate denier. He was a climate skeptic until his
death as far as I know. Um, yeah, and and
he wrote some great books. But it's also like contrarian
by nature is what he said as well. But I
get the impression that he tended to land on the
more conservative, anti environmental side. And on this case, he
(36:35):
also attacked the Nuclear Winner as well. And what he
accused these guys of doing is is creating science by consensus, right,
That to me is that's just like a one two
sucker punch. So the initial scientists that that challenged, um
Nuclear Winner said, you guys can't even agree. There's no consensus,
(36:59):
like you can't be certain and what you're saying, so
therefore we don't need to take you seriously. So they said, okay,
you know what, We're gonna get all these scientists around
the world together to study this issue and we're gonna
come to a consensus. And when they did years later,
guys like Michael Crichton said, you guys are practicing science
by consensus and politicizing science. It's not real science. So
(37:19):
it's like they were very much damned if they did
and damned if they didn't, and ultimately you just have
to kind of decide is it worth the risk. Maybe
we can't say for certain, and at the time you
couldn't say for certain. What's cool is that some of
these same climate scientists are still at work and they
have come up with fairly recent models, using very sophisticated
(37:43):
climate models. Compared to the stuff they were using back
in the eighties and even the nineties, The stuff they're
using now says, actually, we think nuclear winner might be
worse than was initially predicted. Yeah, and even if it's
not a full scale nuclear war, I think the worry
there's not as much work these days for something like that. Uh,
what the worry is now is that some rogue nation
(38:07):
gets ahold of one or maybe even not a rogue nation,
just Indian Pakistan drop a couple of nuclear bombs. Well,
that's the model, and like that is entirely possible. I
think of one megaton detonation is what they did this
model on, and it was it had a substantial effect. Yeah,
they said ten years of smoke clouds in a three
year temperature drop of about two point to five degrees fahrenheit,
(38:29):
which doesn't sound like much. But if you go back
and you read that scientists study. His executive summary of
the study, he points out that that kind of drop
ultimately equals a shortened growing season by ten to twenty days,
and that last ten to twenty days makes or breaks
a crop Like that means you can either harvest it
or it dies before it matures and can be harvested.
(38:52):
And so even just a couple of degrees can lead
to widespread crop failure. Yeah, but this is just if
Indian Pakist then shoot fifty bombs at one another in
a regional war, it could have that effect around the world. Uh.
So we mentioned Hiroshima, Nagasaki. Um, those are the only
places we can look, But like we pointed out, the
(39:13):
bombs were so different back then, it's not the best comparison.
But as far as looking at what kind of fires
could happen, you can't tell a whole lot. Um In
Hiroshima there were more fires than in Nagasaki, just because
of the way the geography is in the two cities.
But um, in neither case did they see a ton
(39:35):
of uh secondary fires Like it wasn't blacking out the sky.
There was, there was black rain, but um apparently you know,
like a week later, uh, most of that stuff had
had cleared up. But again that is you can't even
really compare the two. Now it's a single kill a
ton bomb, yeah exactly, we're talking a fifty of the
(40:00):
going off in the same area. But that report that
you mentioned on just like if Indian Pakistan, Um, well
how much was it tin megatons? No, it was one megaton,
so fifty of the Hiroshima and um Nagasaki mombs, Well
it was enough to cause the Atomic Scientists Science and
(40:22):
Security Board to move the doomsday clock two minutes closer
to midnight. Uh. And the doomsday clock is uh. Some
people say it's good science, some people say they're fearmongering.
But what it is is it is uh. It's a
design that basically says, here's how close we are to
destroying ourselves as a civilization. And um, there are a
(40:47):
lot of factors that go into it, like biotechnology or
cyber technology, but the main two are obviously nuclear weapons
and climate change are the two main things that factor
into where the doomsday clock sits. And uh, I think
in the nineteen fifties they've only changed it. How many
(41:07):
times eighteen times since it was created nineteen forty seven
have they changed the hands on the clock? Uh? In
the nineteen fifties, it was at two minutes till midnight.
In the early nineteen fifties. Um, the best I think
it's been in the early nineties was seventeen minutes till midnight. Yeah,
(41:27):
then they feel good. That's a lot of time. What
do we are right now? Right now, we are the
closest we've been since nineteen eighty three. Uh. And on
January twenty two of this year, it was changed to UM,
three minutes till midnight is where they sit. And they
have a big had a big press release. I'll just
read the opening and closing paragraphs. The opening paragraph in
(41:51):
Unchecked climate Change, Global nuclear weapon modernizations and outsize nuclear
weapons arsenals pose extraordinary and undeniable threats to the continued
to existence of humanity, and world leaders have failed to
act with the speed or on the scale required to
protect citizens from potential catastrophe. These failures of political leadership
and endanger every person on Earth. And then the final paragraph,
(42:12):
and there's lots of fun stuff in between, just like
fart jokes and stuff, and then they close with with
the clock hand move forward to three minutes to midnight.
The board feels compelled to add with a sense of
great urgency, the probability of global catastrophe is very high,
and the actions needed to reduce the risk of disaster
must be taken very soon. They'll mess around, uh And
(42:37):
even though that we've um we had been doing a
good job of reducing the amount of warheads between the
United States and Russia, but things have slowed to a
snails pace now. From two thousand nine to two thousand thirteen,
Obama cut only three nine warheads from the stockpile. And
they're basically saying, we're not doing this as fast as
(42:59):
we need you too, like we need to act now. Yeah. Well,
there's other people who are saying we need to rebuild
their nuclear arsenal because it's aging and rotting and will
be useless. By how are we going to drop nuclear
bombs on people in the future. It's it's weird, like
some people are trying to reignite the Cold War. Well,
(43:21):
I don't agree with it, but I know that most
of those people aren't saying, hey, so we can bomb people,
it's so we can keep each other in check, which
was the Cold War. We could also over again get
rid of nuclear bombs entirely. We could do that. Um.
And you know, Sagan's the whole thing I should say.
And it's funny that he's kind of like the villain
of this whole thing, of the whole nuclear winner debate,
(43:43):
because he's such a revered figure, such a great guy.
But he really, I purposefully made some serious missteps as
far as publicizing the results went before they were fully in.
But his whole thing was and if you read his
foreign policy thing, his article, it's really really good. Um,
it's not too of two so like it's kind of
(44:05):
fun to read. But it's called nuclear war and Climactic
Catastrophe colon some policy implications and he says like, we
don't know, you know, what the what the right answer is.
We don't know if it's entirely possible that nuclear winner.
Maybe our ideas are overblown or whatever. But he says,
I'm not willing to take the chance. Why should we
(44:30):
take the chances? It's like why risk it? Right? So
his solution is, how about this US and USS are,
how about you de escalate the arms race, de proliferate
until you get down to a threshold that science hasts said. Okay,
nuclear winner probably couldn't happen beyond this payload. Right, So
(44:53):
even if all the nuclear bombs in the world at
this lower number, we're set off, we still wouldn't go
into nuclear winter. Right. But you guys can take out
all of your major city centers and still fight your
nuclear war, but the rest of the world won't won't
be destroyed by it. Yeah, that was his solution, and
no one took him up on it. I've never understood.
(45:15):
I don't know, man, we'll we'll do one on climate
change at some point too. But I've never understood why
people and I get the economics play factor, but why
risking the future of mankind for your ancestors to follow
is worth it. A lot of it is fear, like
a lot of these people who have over the last decades,
(45:36):
you know, push for that kind of thing, like fear
that you know, the US will be caught with his
pants down, like genuinely feared the Soviet Union, and like
their heart was in it like that. But I mean,
if it's fascinating to me this whole like basically secret
publicity war that's been going that what went on throughout
the twentie and it's well into the twenty one centuries.
(45:57):
There's a book again, I think I mentioned it called
merch and some doubt everybody should read. Yeah, and you
know what, save your emails to me because you can
still think what you want to think. Yeah, I just
I just personally don't get it. I'm not gonna throw
stones at you and say you're wrong. I probably should,
but that won't because it's not nice to throw stones.
It isn't Chuck. Are you good? I'm great. If you
(46:21):
want to know more about Nuclear Winner, you can read
this fine article written by Robert Lamb by typing Nuclear
Winner in the search part how stuff works dot com.
Since I said search parts, time for listener mail. Oh no,
my friend, it's time for d all right. This is
(46:48):
the time that we all know one love. When Josh
and I read out and say thanks, we give thanks.
We should call this Thanksgiving and not administrative details. Okay, ready, no, no,
that's okay, uh, because administrative details is such a weird name.
This is long. It's meant to be. Uh So, this
is when we thank people for the for the very
kind gifts that they have sent us over the months.
(47:10):
And dude, I think this goes back all the way
to January for me. Oh man, I've got one for
Christmas cookies. The Mona collent Tine and Grandma colling Tine.
I think we always say her name wrong. By the way, No,
I think she corrected us in staid it was like Valentine.
So I think I'm saying it right. Man, It's gonna
be so mad at all. Right, is the administrative detailed
(47:32):
music playing? It sounds like it great, can't you hear that?
I'll get it started with. Richard sent us a guide
to the round things of the Solar System. Very fun,
very nice. I remember that. Yeah, Blair sent us a
plug in key holder. You come home, plug your key
chain in and you never forget it. It's pretty awesome. Actually,
you can get them on Amazon Electric socket unplugged chain holder.
(47:56):
Search for that. It will bring it up. That's right.
I got a postcard, very nice post carred from Jean
Pierre Bonasco and Stephanie Crick from Port Lockroy, Antarctica. Nice
and it's worth saying again thank you to Mona Colling
Tine and Grandma calling time for Christmas cookies. We look
forward to them again this year, yes, we certainly do.
Oh we've gotten Newgat, homemade Newgat from christin Ferguson. Okay,
(48:19):
it's so delicious. I am hooked on that stuff. It's great.
It is she you can find her at Solace Sweets. Man,
it is so good. Yeah. Kristen has been sending us
this homemade Newgat for years and I was always like,
I mean, nugat, I don't know about that, and then
I put up my mouth. It's amazing stuff. It's really
good enough. Uh. And then we also got some sweets
(48:39):
from Dude Sweet Chocolate out of Texas. I think they
might be out of Dallas. They made like they sent
us really great chocolate. But they also make these incredible
marshmallows too. They made a sweet potato marshmallow, and dudes
at Dude Sweet Chocolate, thank you for those. They were amazing.
Yumi was crazy for those marshmelloss like I am for
the Newgat. That was the bounty. I remember that as
(49:02):
always every Christmas. Our buddy Aaron Cooper in Kansas sends
us great pronounce of these great photoshops that he does
of us that he puts online and you can see
him on Internet round up. Yeah, we even got T
shirts this year of Shake Gavara, Josh and Chuck. So
Coop you're the best. Yeah, that is true, Coop Uh,
(49:22):
Mark Allen and the Trade Monkey team sent us some
beautiful jewelry made by female artisans in Southeast Asia and
traded fairly key are Buddy band Astrims in this book?
Which one? Which book? Well, he's always sending his stuff,
so honestly can't even remember which book, but we have
like boxes full of things that he sent. He sent
us a CD of The Shags Philosophy of the World,
(49:46):
you know, what's known as the worst album ever recorded.
Got it in my death here. The problem is my
computer doesn't have a CD drive any longer. Have you
noticed that's gone? Yeah, computers don't have those any longer.
Try to find it on my computer. I defy you.
I was like, what's that little slot and you're like,
that's where the tissues come out. It's a coffee cup holder.
(50:11):
Our buddies from Venice's Sinking Band sent us an LP
sand and lines and a c D. What we do
is secret and there are our friends from Athens, Georgia. Huge,
huge thanks to Hillary Lowsar, who has sent us a
lot of cheese over the last year, some of the
best cheese flathead like cheese in Montana, which like they
(50:32):
make a happy gooda that's to die for. It is
very good at flathead like cheese. And she sent us
some awesome T shirts that's a mouth feel on them. Yeah,
our bar episode. She's the best. She and her husband
Mike have been big time fans. They're very active on
our Facebook page and they like drove to Seattle for
our show for months from Montana. Yeah, she's a teacher. Yeah.
(50:55):
And they sent um you me and Emily earrings. So
thanks for that from all of us. Terry got nothing.
Uh Tommy Luke Rick, Uh, Tommy look Rich, Lucric lut Rich.
He said, it's a nice letter man. His last name
you say four times. Well, he's the guy. He's walking
from Seattle in New York City. And if you want
to follow this, I don't. He might be there by now. Uh.
(51:17):
Tommy Walks dot tumbler dot com. You can check that out. Okay, um, huge,
huge thanks from me personally to Loris No, who I
don't know if you remember when we did the Hot
Wheels episode, boy do I I said that the hot
Wheels I would love to have was this like uh
like station wagon camper. That's a good time camper on
(51:37):
I remember shemailed it to me. That's pretty remarkable. Yep,
So thank you very much, lauris No. That was very
nice of you. Yeah, if anyone's listening. Uh, my favorite
hot wheel was the one that had a thousand dollars
stuffed in the body of the car. Um Stephen, uh,
Stephen Brahm. He sent as some currency bank notes which
I've never collected money, but he sent a nineteen fifty
(51:59):
three dollar certificate in nineteen fifty seven series two dollar
bill in in eighteen seventy four fractional currency ten cent note. Yeah,
that was pretty neat. I think you got the ten
cent note, didn't you, because I spent it on candy. No,
what's this, it's incense, sir, It's a fraction of a note. Uh.
(52:20):
Meteor all Just Michael Herb, who also moons Moonlights as
a young adult murder mystery author, sent us a book
of one of his murder mysteries, Kevin McLeod in The
Seaside Storm. It's about a little weather detective. It's pretty cute.
Jeff Payton sent us a book Darwin's Black Box, and Uh,
(52:42):
Bethany at the Base Element d dot base dot element
at gmail dot com. If you want any of the
fleur to sell caramel, she sent us, we can highly
recommend them. And I got one more from both of us.
Chuck all right, Dan Kent name ring a bell? Uh
it does? He sent us the pints of Planning the Elder. Yes,
(53:04):
thank you. That your top notch human being. I think
we met him in San Francisco or show. Yes. Thanks
yea the famous world renowned Planning the Elder beer, which
I finally tried and that was delicious. It is dealist ship. Uh,
thank you very much, everybody. We have more. If you
didn't hear your name, hang tight, We've got probably a
(53:25):
couple more episodes worth of administrative details or Thanksgiving is
what we're calling it now. And uh, in the meantime,
you can get in touch with us if you want
to tweet to us. It's s Y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com. It's Facebook
dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know, send us an
email to Stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com,
(53:45):
and as always, join us at at home on the web.
Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff Works
dot com
Welcome to you stuff. You should know front House stuff
Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there
somewhere off in the ether. But I don't think on either.
(00:21):
Just in the ether, trying not to breathe right now.
We have a tank. It either in here. It would
be a munch of different podcast. Josh and Chuck's either cats.
Do they put those things in tanks? Oh? I don't know,
surely right? No? Is it look like in the bottle
still like that? I don't know. I don't. Yeah, I
think you're just having a little butt milk bottle. You
(00:41):
put it in a rag, you put it in your face,
and then go to happy town. Yeah, exactly. If there's
any pharmacists out there that want to set us straight,
let us know how ether comes these days. It's probably
a gas. Yeah, I imagine it's not like hunter Wis Thompson.
I think we talked about it before in anesthesia. Probably
it's a ether asks what a weird start? Yeah, that
(01:03):
has nothing to do with what we're about to talk about.
And I was trying to relate it, But there really
is nothing. One of my favorite favorite topics of all
time nuclear holocaust from the Cold War? Yeah, what we did?
We did one in the Cold War, didn't we We've
done several h Yeah, we we batted around this thing,
but we've never done a full nuclear holocaust podcast, have we?
(01:28):
And nuclear holocaust is that's not quite right. That's not
the right way to put it, because what we're talking
about is actually the after effects from a nuclear holocaust.
Isn't that the holocaust? I mean, if you want to
be a purist, the nuclear holocaust is the immediate destruction
(01:48):
as a result of exploding nuclear bombs over like population
centers and suff Oh I didn't know that. I thought
it was the whole kitten cabboodle. I should say, if
you're a purist and you want to say it, from
my opinion, that's what a nuclear holiday. Okay, I think
we know what's going on here. Um. Yeah, Robert Lamb
wrote this, uh stuff to blow your mind. Yeah. I
(02:09):
have to say. I said, man, way to go on now,
And I was a good one told him that I did.
I actually uttered those words. What do you say? Thanks man?
That's nice. Uh. But the thing that gets me about
nuclear winner which we will talk about in depth. Um,
what fascinates me about it, just as much as the
nuclear winner itself, Chuck, is the controversy debate that that
(02:34):
arose from it throughout the eighties. There's a huge debate,
debate on the severity debate, Yeah, debate on whether it's
something to worry about or not. Yeah. Well, I looked
up because I was like, is does anyone think that
this is a myth? Out an outright myth? And from
what I saw in my research is that no, this
(02:54):
is fact. It's just a dispute. What's a dispute is
the scenario and the survey already of what would happen,
But no one says, like, no, there would be no
nuclear winter, there would be no problems after nuclear bombs.
So there used to be like back in in the
early eighties when this was a huge new thing, Um,
(03:14):
there was a group of scientists who were hawkish, very
much in favor of the U S building up it's
nuclear arsenal as much as possible and started a basically
a pr letter writing campaign to discredit the science behind
this and the like, these guys don't know what they're
talking about, so what they think that the bomb would
(03:36):
drop and then like the next day the birds would
be out. They they they said, initially, yeah, there was
kind of their position was just a poke holes in
this and that it wasn't wasn't a it wasn't legitimate science, right,
it doesn't sound like and then um they Ultimately the
whole point was that this came from an argument over
(03:56):
whether the U s should engage in the SDI, the
t Jeek Defense Initiative or star Wars, which is the
lasers that shoot nukes from space. Right, they shoot down
nukes from space? They did? That was another one, Um,
But that's what the whole thing was. It's the context
of it. It It was an argument over what over either
nuclear disarmament, which Carl Sagan and his friends were in
(04:19):
favor of, or um nuclear proliferation and the star wars
um program warmongers, the popiece versus the warm But the
weird thing is that this debate, Chuck, took place in
the pages of like academic journals, and it ended up
being a fight between science and science deniers. Yeah, it
(04:40):
sounds like the scientists that you mentioned might have been
had their coffers full from the US government, So potentially
or private industry or something like that. Um. And the
thing is is they used this old chestnut where um, So,
if you're a scientist, there's no certainty in anything you say.
(05:04):
It can always be disproven. Remember we talked about this
in the Scientific Method episode. All your stuff can be
disproven ultimately, which is why it's just a theory. So
no scientist is going to be like, this is certain. Well,
these other scientists who are poking holes in it would
point out these guys aren't even certain, which means that
there's there's disagreement over whether we'll have a nuclear winner
(05:28):
or not. So they were being very disingenuous in poking
holes in it by saying these scientists aren't even certain
in their findings. Well, no scientists is certain in their finals.
But to the public that you think, oh, well, these
scientists can't say that they're certain, so that they must
not know what they're talking about, that's dangerous. That's why
we're at the three minutes to midnight on the doomsday clock.
(05:50):
It's exactly right because some people might say, well, you're
not certain, so let's just not act fast enough. Yeah,
and I should say also check, we should prepare for
a lot of listener mail because this is a conservative
flash point. Nuclear winter is long standing one. Oh yeah, great,
(06:11):
sounds good. Let's talk about this all right. Well, Robert
starts where most people should start when talking about nuclear winter,
and that's in the atmosphere. Uh. It's a very finely
tuned system we have. I want to say it's like homeostasis,
but um, it's not. People, So I guess it's like
an ecostasis where the sun. Uh, just enough sun gets
(06:35):
through to make things, make the earth habitable and proliferate
with plants and water and humans and animals and all
kinds of great stuff. Uh. Too much sun, even by
a little bit, could be catastrophic, and too little sun,
but even by a little bit could be catastrophic. So we've,
(06:55):
thanks to humans, we've struck a great balance here with
the sun. A great deal may and you can shine
to unshine too much sun. Yeah, and it's working out awesome. Uh.
The idea of nuclear winter is that there would be
enough ash from and smoke. It's really not the fallout
from the nuclear bombs themselves, from what I understand, it's
(07:16):
more of the smoke from the resulting fires that would
cause the blacking out of the sky and the sun
not getting through it. Yeah, but everything I read across
the board said it's almost the smoke that goes on.
It's true. Yeah, I mean you you you shouldn't negate
(07:38):
the idea that like nuclear radiation poisoning is going to
kill a lot of people as a result. But the
blacking out of the skies is due to the smoke
from fire, exactly from the bomb that happened. Right. So
this whole thing, the context of it again comes from
the seventies, right, chuck uh Yeah. In eighties, the yeah
(08:00):
and and back. And I think that a group issued
a statement that said, you know, there probably wouldn't be
that big of a fallout from nuclear explosions. A few
years after that, another group, I think that the first
two groups, the National Academy of Scientists. Another group said,
you know what, we don't think that's exactly true. We
(08:22):
think that there probably is some sort of, um, there
will be something, but our models are too um primitive
to say for certain what the fallout would be a
few years after that, Carl Sagan and his crew get
together and said, um, no, there's going to be serious consequences.
And here's what they are billions of lives lost, billions
(08:45):
and billions, right. And one of the things they based
this on, this idea on that if you spew a
bunch of smoke or particulate matter into the atmosphere, that
it will have a negative um influence on the global climate.
Is past history from volcanic eruptions. Yes, uh, most noted. Well,
(09:07):
there are a few over the years, but one of
the notable ones in eighty three at the time then
the dust Dutch East Indies now Indonesia Krakatoa. That volcano
was massive to the tune of thirty six thousand deaths
just from the volcano. And this is in Krakatoa in
(09:27):
three Yeah, there's only people there somehow, It's not like
it was super populated. And two thirds of Krakatoa collapsed. Uh.
The smoke rose up and warmed the global temperature global
by two point two degrees fahrenheit. I think, No, it
lowered it, yeah, lowered. Sorry, it took five years uh
(09:51):
for temperatures to return to normal. And it affected this
was in Indonesia, and it actually they think increased the
rainfall in Los Angeles by more than double that next year.
That's in l A in southern California. So that was
the Krakatoa blast from eight three, right, yeah, and that
it literally changed the color of the sky for like
(10:13):
years afterwards. The sky was red um such that they think,
you know, the scream, the painting the screen. Yeah, yeah,
the red sky they think that's the way this guy
looked was because of this volcano. It's so neat that crazy.
That guy was like, that volcano was crazy. Let's what
the man is saying. And that's just one of them.
(10:33):
What was the other one in Mount Tambora. Yeah, Indonesia
once again. Yeah, Indonesia's got bad luck with the volcanoes
back in the nineteenth century. And this was actually earlier
in eighteen fifteen. Yeah, I remember learning about this when
I was a kid, because Ohio got it really bad
volcano and off in Indonesia in eighteen fifteen and the
following year much of the United States did not have
(10:55):
a summer. It was actually called the Year without a Summer.
In Ohio was affected so well yeah, well yeah, there
was like snow on the ground in the middle of July.
Do you learn that in state history class? I did?
I remember that? Uh yeah, Georgia State History. That that
was like a full course at our school. Half of
it was just sitting around with the teacher, like staring
(11:15):
off into the distance. I remember ours was just like
a lot of talk about Crawford Long and the Civil War. Yeah,
we've even talking about Crawford Long in ours because he
wasn't from Georgia. Anthony Wayne. Yeah, the Battle of Fallen Timbers. Yeah. Uh,
well that summer without a winter, year without a summer.
(11:37):
Im and then there's some like canals and locks that
donkeys used to pull barges on. Yeah. I just remember
Crawford Long and a lot of racism. Yeah basically, yeah,
uh that's right. So that was Mount Timboro, the year
without summer. Um. There have been other events like when, um,
(11:59):
the oil fields burned during the during the war in
the early nineties. Yeah, apparently Carl Sagan predicted basically a
nuclear winner from that. Yeah, that's pan out. Yeah, that's
where they take some flak. Was um, it was not
nearly as bad to fall out from nut smoke as
Sagan predicted. But what can you do but predict. You're
(12:23):
gonna be wrong. Yeah, occasionally, surely you're going to be wrong.
It doesn't mean you should be like, oh, well that
smoke didn't do much, so let's start building nuclear bombs again.
Well that's the whole thing, Chuck. I am so glad
you said that, because that's the whole mad thing to
this argument, because it's like, what are you arguing in
favor for If you're arguing against the idea of what
(12:46):
precisely are you arguing four? Yeah, like it won't be
that bad. We'll talk a little bit more about it,
like later on in the show what some people have
argued about. But it seems like what you say, ultimately
you're arguing in favor of more nuclear weapons that seems
wrongheaded by definition. Well not even just that, but using
(13:06):
them won't be as bad as you say, right, not
just have them, but well the fallout wouldn't be as
bad as they all predict, so use them. You almost
get the impression like they're just like, well, let's just
find out. Let's just shake a couple off and find
out what happens. Come on, you'll see him, right, And
then as they die from smoke inhalation, they say it
was wrong? What have I done? Oh goodness, let's take
(13:33):
a break, all right, let's do, and we'll come back
and we'll talk a little bit more about the nuclear winner.
(13:59):
I said nuclear ingest, but I know I heard the
break good stuff, all right. I just want to point
that out because some people might think it was serious,
and now that you said it was ingest, some people
are like, maybe that man was my hero. I posted
something on Facebook the other day that said, you're sciencing
wrong as a joke, and people called me out there. Look,
(14:22):
I thought the century you could use like everything is
a verb. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, people have gotten extremely serious,
extremely self serious, and I'm a not self serious person.
So I don't fit in in today's world. You're a
relic all dinosaur. It just a stupid, laughing dinosaur. Speaking
of dinosaurs, well, I guess we should talk about the
(14:45):
KT boundary extinction event, which was some people, some in
science if theorize that that's what happened to the dinosaurs.
Was there was an impact winter, not quite the same
as a nuclear winter, but the same effect as a
nuclear winter due to the impact of an asteroids, right,
(15:06):
and that would have happened at the border of the
Cretaceous in Tertiary periods. Again, when the dinosaurs all died
off still inexplicably. There's no there's no definitive answer. Again,
though we're talking science, No one found a journal diary today.
(15:27):
Something is streaking through the sky and it's making everyone nervous.
It's very hot now. But I noticed the dinosaurs are dying,
so that's good. Oh this is a dinosaur writing in
my opinion, so that's bad. Right, Uh okay, So let's
talk nuclear winner, right, you you you kind of said
(15:47):
it earlier. But the whole idea behind nuclear winner is
that if you shoot off nuclear bombs, especially a bunch
of them. And you have to understand, at the time
that um scientists were really starting to debate this, there
were like seventy thousand nuclear warheads, like many, many times
(16:08):
more nuclear warheads in existence in like the early eighties
than there were today. And when they started debating them,
they really took up this cause because the Reagan administration
was saying, we need the star Wars program because we
can we can prevent almost with you know, certainty, a
(16:32):
Soviet nuclear attack with laser guns exactly. And so the
scientists who were concerned scientists, basically anti nuke scientists, said
wait a minute, there's something that you guys aren't thinking
through here. If you do that, the Soviets are gonna say, well,
wait a minute, if this thing is effective, then we
need to build up our nuclear arsenal so that when
(16:54):
we shoot everything we got at them still that ten
percent will totally annihilate the United States. That the presence
of the star Wars program was going to to to
put the nuclear arms race into even higher gear than
it already was. So they very much took it upon
themselves to to tackle this with science, but also publicize
(17:16):
it and sell it to the public. And it's that
that's stuck in the craw of a lot of other scientists,
particularly scientists who were in favor of nuclear proliferation as
a matter of national defense. The point of it is,
when they tackled this, they said, Um, here's the big
problem with it. If you shoot off a bunch of
(17:37):
nuclear bombs, a lot, a lot, a lot of nuclear
bombs which could totally go off as far as the
nuclear war is concerned, Um, it's going to cause a
lot of smoke to enter the atmosphere. And that is
where this domino effect is going to create this global
catastrophe and the whole outcome of it is based on
(17:57):
the number of nukes that you shoot off, which is
basically what Carl Sagan and his buddy Richard Turco divided
the different types of nuclear winter into. That's right, Mr
Sagan and Mr Turko. Are they doctors? Let's just call
everyone a doctor. Well, yeah, he was. Carl Sagan was
a doctor of astro chemistry, I believe, and Richard Turco is, Um,
(18:19):
he's a veterinarian. I can't remember what he was. Uh.
They wrote a book called A Path Where No Man Thought,
A Path Where No Man Thought, and uh, that seemed
like there would be one more word there. Um. And
they have one to three, four or five six scenarios
(18:39):
for what a nuclear winter might look like, ranging from
minimal to extreme. Uh and minimal best case scenario, which
is just a little bit of a nuclear attack, not
many bombs going off, maybe like let's say Hiroshima or
not Kazaking. We'll talk about those were like, yeah, that
(19:03):
means that there would be minimal cloud cover, uh, not
much environmental impact globally, and um, the targeted areas would
be wiped out, of course, but the world itself would
not have big consequences, right, atmospherically, So if you are
talking nuclear war, especially a cold war nuclear war, that
(19:26):
was a fairly unlikely scenario. By the time this the
early nighties rolls around and people started talking about the
concept of a nuclear winner, those like Hiroshima Nagasaki level
nuclear bombs were like attached the average fighter jet. They
were considered like just tactical, like you just could shoot
(19:47):
them off on the battlefield if you needed to. So
the idea that it would just amount to that is unlikely.
It was, but that's the best case scenario they're trying
to cover. All. Yes, Number two was marginal all uh
And that's a few detonations uh again in the northern hemisphere,
(20:07):
and they said it would lower the temperature by a
few degrees and there would be some crops in some
agriculture that suffered, and probably some famine, but it would
not uh. Oh black rain, of course, but who wants
that did happen in Hiroshima? Uh? They drank it and
(20:27):
died from packing it to go. Yes, because it was
radioactive rain. Yeah, but they drank it because they were
thirsty because they had no water. It's devastating you and
everyone should have to go to the city of Hiroshima, Like,
it is amazing what they've done to to preserve what
happened there as like a teaching lesson for everyone. Yeah,
(20:49):
it's really moving. We should have one of those here.
We should Instead people are like, yeah, Japan forced the
US to drop the bomb. It's fact, which is not correct, right.
Uh so black rain would happen in that marginal scenario. Man,
this is a really political episode, isn't. I think anytime
you tackle nuclear war it's going to be divisive because
(21:10):
some people think it's awesome nuke the Wales got a
nuke something. Things below the equator in that scenario in
the southern hemisphere would be just fine. So here's something
that I found really interesting and wrong in this um
analysis of it. Sagan. I guess he was strictly talking
about atmospheric effects, but he mentions like famine and stuff
(21:34):
like that. The thing is that would have a global
effect for sure, Yeah, the rest of the world. It
depends in large part on North American wheat and corn.
So if there's a nuclear fallout in North America that
affects our crop yields dramatically and causes famin in the US,
it's gonna cause famine elsewhere to I think what he's
(21:55):
saying is as far as climatologically speaking, what he in
Turco or saying is, as long as you're not shooting
off nuclear bombs in the southern hemisphere, it's gonna climatologically speaking,
be unaffected or largely inaffective because the wind goes down
to the equator and then back up like the equator
separates the hemispheres. As far as the atmosphere is concerned, Yeah, totally,
(22:18):
there would still be global troubles, yes, Uh, but in
reading all these scenarios that made me really want to
move to Australia. Well that's another thing too. How many
people would be like, I need to get out of
the United States, so I'm moving down to Mexico, I'm
moving down to Brazil, or I'm moving down to Australia,
and then the infrastructure in those countries are just super
(22:39):
stressed because of the northern hemisphere that survived, and suddenly
moving down to the southern hemisphere with another widespread effect
Mexico would help you too much? Though, Well, what weren't
they like super helpful in uh Independence Day? Was the
Independence day or the morning or No, the day after tomorrow,
everybody starts having to move south because North America is
(22:59):
just frozen n ice sheet. Yeah, but I just mean
as far as you'd have to go pretty far south,
further south in Mexico if you want to escape the
atmospheric fallout. Oh, you're right, so Ecuador. Yeah, Like what
is it like half of Africa and South America and
the hemisphere half. Yeah, so the northern hemisphere would show
(23:21):
up at the southern Hemisphere's doorstep and be like Christmas
in July. We'll get used to it. That's right. Your
drain goes the other way when you release the water
from the tub needo, and I know Christmas doesn't fall
in July. It was a metaphorical statement everyone. Nominal nuclear
winners number three, uh, that is what they consider the
(23:43):
low end full scale nuclear war, but still full scale
six thousand to twelve thousand nuclear weapons. That's all just
six to twelve thousand nuclear bombs, and we're talking um
a megaton or more bombs and a good time was
um I think fifty Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs combined, So
(24:07):
twelve thousand times fifty of those for this kind of
nominal nuclear war. That's a lot of zeros. Uh. They
predicted noon sunlight would be about a third of what
it was. Global temperature drops of eighteen degrees. That's bad news,
my friend. Um, it would destroy a lot of the
(24:28):
ozone layer. Uh. And again the Southern hemisphere wouldn't experience
major climactic change. Just cut to the Southern hemisphere. They're
all at the beach. There's like topical music playing, but
they have no wheat, right, who needs wheat? When you
got wrong drinks? Dude, that's a tea shirt. Josh Clark
said that one uh number four substantial, that is full
(24:53):
scale nuclear war, UM, freezing temperatures, big time fallout. The
whole day would be like it's we cast um. Billions
of humans dead, billions, billions and billions species going extinct um.
And finally possible damage to the Southern hemisphere finally possibly uh.
(25:17):
And then the last two we can just bunch together.
I think severe and extreme um less than one percent
of the sunlight getting through for months and months on end,
global temperature dropping, no photosynthesis happening, every crop dying, all
(25:37):
life perishing. Let's just go ahead and wrap it up
right there. As Robert puts it um, most of the
planet's life would perish within the chili comfines of this
black atmospheric tomb. Yeah, he's got a little love craft
in him. Done this unnamable tomb. Um, chuckers. Let's take
another break and then we will come back and talk
(25:58):
about um the fallout from nuclear winner theory. So Um,
(26:24):
like we said, Carl Sagan and his friends got together
and basically took it upon themselves to educate the public
about the potential catastrophe that could happen as a result
of nuclear war. Everybody before was like, Yeah, that would
really suck to be in a city that a nuclear
(26:45):
bomb went off on, but maybe it wouldn't be my city.
I live in Schenectady, New York's going to bomb connected,
so I'm probably gonna be Okay. These guys said, Hey,
Western civilism nation, not just in the US but also
the USSR. That's not necessarily the case. You two will
(27:06):
be affected. There's gonna be big problems after this after
a nuclear war. So much so that let's make sure
that our leaders never do this right. Wake up basically
is what they were doing. And so Um Sagan and
his friends created a paper and it's now called the
t Taps paper after all of their names, right Ackerman, Okay.
(27:26):
And they wrote this paper and had it published in Science,
the pre eminent scientific journal in the United States. It
was a big deal that they also held a very
well publicized conference, and Carl Sagan, apparently without the the
group's knowledge or blessing, went off and also wrote a
(27:48):
piece of Parade magazine, Yeah, to make sure that every
dick and Jane in the US knew about this. It
was like a three page article about the nuclear winner,
which is a new term at the time, complete with
illustrations where like the earth was like the dead, lifeless,
what's called like a gray chalk billiard ball basically, um,
(28:10):
just really scary stuff. And then he also simultaneously wrote
another longer piece that was in Foreign Affairs. Um, that's
a little more wonky. So Sagan went off after writing
this this scientific paper and publicized it to policymakers and
to the American public. This is the early and yes,
(28:31):
and you this was before all the sciences and this
is from the first paper, before the first papers conference
was even held, right, And a lot of people, including
people who were on his side about this issue, were
really mad at him because it opened up the this
group and the whole idea of nuclear winner to allegations
(28:51):
that they were fearmongering and that they were basically trying
to sell the public on science, which is, you know,
that's not what science does. Yes, pure science is about
research and coming up with facts, and whether they're popular
or unpopular, it doesn't matter. Sciences science and fact is fact, right.
A good theory is a good theory. But these guys
(29:11):
again were concerned that something really, really bad could happen,
and they went to the trouble of taking it upon
themselves to advertise it to the public. But again second
going off and do this, it really opened them up
for a lot of allegations and debate that took place afterwards.
But some say that the uh, their work and the
te Taps report actually did help cool things down, uh
(29:34):
in the Cold War a little bit. Yeah, And I
mean it wasn't just these American scientists. They worked with
Soviet scienceists as well, and apparently, um, sometimes it went good,
sometimes it didn't go so well, But they're both sides
were working on this issue, and the fact that it
got so much publicity actually created a firestorm of back
and forth in the scientific community, and this issue ended
(29:57):
up getting really well studied. Yeah, it it and uh.
Seven years later they revised the report and uh it
had new, more modernized data and it um wasn't quite
as dire, which some critics are like, all right, that
this is a little more reasonable. Yes, they revised it
to call it the nuclear Autumn. Yeah, and everyone loves autumn. Yeah,
(30:22):
autumn all the time. They'd be wonderful. Oh man, that
would be wonderful Chuck's world. Uh, and they there are
disagreements over that still, and they basically there's um a
few four variables that are always the factors that are
the unknowns, and it's really they're all to me kind
of one four versions of the same variable, which is,
(30:45):
we don't know how much smoke there would be, Yes,
we just don't know, uh. And number one is how
much material is there to burn? So the idea is
you drop a bomb on a city, a nuclear bomb,
and everything catches on fire, and that creates tremendous amounts
of smoke. But since these are all theoretical and you
(31:07):
don't know what would happen if you drop something the
size on like let's say a major city like New York.
They like, what would be there to burn? Like, we
just don't know. Well, that's that's yeah. So if you
dropped it on a city, is it an old city
that's that isn't supermodern and therefore isn't built out of
like lots of plastic that can get into the atmosphere
and really mess things up. Yeah, like the really bad stuff. Yeah,
(31:28):
if it's an old city, maybe the burning wouldn't be
so bad even after a nuclear holocaust. Um. Or maybe
you're not shooting nuclear bombs to cities but to other
nuclear installations that are out in the middle of like
nowhere in Nebraska. Um, because we have I mean we've
there's been like two thousand nuclear bombs detonated, but they
(31:49):
only two on the city's exactly. Everything else has been
out of the ocean or out in the middle of
nowhere and there's been no fire. Right. Um. The assumption
is is that though if you shot a nuclear bomb
at an at a modern city, a lot of really
toxic smoke would be produced. That's probably the worst case scenario,
and both the immediate nuclear holocaust and the fallout the
(32:14):
nuclear winner as a result. Because of all the smoke
that would be created. I mean, look at the fallout
from nine eleven and that was two buildings. Uh. The
second variable is how much would remain in the atmosphere
and then how much goes back to the earth. Yeah,
no one really knows that at all. How much sunlight
would be deflected? Again, just theorizing, and you can go
(32:36):
back and plug in these numbers. The problem is, if
you're a detractor of nuclear winner theory, you would say,
where'd you get that number? You know? And you could
take every number and come up with a different model
for each one. They usually don't do that, but even still,
it's like which one is going to be the one?
(32:56):
And again it goes back to how much smoke would
there be to begin? And then finally when did it happen? Um,
if it was actually in winter, perhaps it's not so bad. Yeah,
nuclear winter and winter ironically is the best case scenario,
the best case scenario of the bad scenarios. So they
(33:16):
did initially back off of their findings. They said that
it was there could initially be like a thirty five
to forty degree drop in global temperatures. Um, it's celsius,
So we're talking like seventy degrees seventy two degrees fahrenheight
drop in temperature. So that's a full on nuclear war, yes. Um.
(33:37):
Later on, as they revised their findings and more again, more,
more and more scientists got involved and studied this issue.
They came upon what seemed to be a consensus that
you could probably count on something like a fifteen degree
celsius drop in um global temperatures, which would be substantial
and could still have widespread effects. Right, So this from
(34:01):
this debate, nuclear winner kind of got settled on. There
was a scientific consensus that came about, and there was
also consensus that not only would UM there'll be huge
problems inland, there would be ocean oceanic problems as well
because one of the things one of the great casualties
of detonating nuclear bombs is the ozone layer. UM. The
(34:23):
fireball from the blast burns up nitrogen converting into nitrogen oxide.
Nitrogen oxide just punches holes, basically chemically burns the ozone layer.
So then when all that smoke that's acting as like
an umbrella that's blocking out the sunlight falls back to Earth,
all that particular matter falls back to Earth and is radioactive.
(34:43):
By the way, now the sunlight that does come through
is way hotter and has way more UV light than
it had before the nuclear bombs went off. We had
our little delicate balance that's disrupted exactly. The problem with
that for the oceans is that that you V light
would likely be too intense for phytoplankton at the ocean surface. Well,
(35:06):
that is the keystone species for the ocean aquatic environments.
The ecosystems all start with phytoplankton. Zooplankton feed on phytoplankton,
Little fish feed on zooplankton, Larger fish feed on little fish,
and so on and so on until if so, if
you get rid of the phytoplankton, you're in big trouble.
So there would be huge ramifications, and science came to
(35:29):
a consensus on this, but again it was attacked very
early on by nuclear proliferation hawks as basically being against
the interests of United States national security, and then later
on it continued to be attacked. It became a customary
traditional flash point among conservatives as a great example of
(35:53):
the links that hippie h environmental scientists will go to
to to dupe the American public into being scared about
nuclear bombs and and just nuclear stuff in general. Like
Michael Crichton famously attacked it in a two three speech
and he his whole thing. He he was very famously
(36:14):
a climate denier. He was a climate skeptic until his
death as far as I know. Um, yeah, and and
he wrote some great books. But it's also like contrarian
by nature is what he said as well. But I
get the impression that he tended to land on the
more conservative, anti environmental side. And on this case, he
(36:35):
also attacked the Nuclear Winner as well. And what he
accused these guys of doing is is creating science by consensus, right,
That to me is that's just like a one two
sucker punch. So the initial scientists that that challenged, um
Nuclear Winner said, you guys can't even agree. There's no consensus,
(36:59):
like you can't be certain and what you're saying, so
therefore we don't need to take you seriously. So they said, okay,
you know what, We're gonna get all these scientists around
the world together to study this issue and we're gonna
come to a consensus. And when they did years later,
guys like Michael Crichton said, you guys are practicing science
by consensus and politicizing science. It's not real science. So
(37:19):
it's like they were very much damned if they did
and damned if they didn't, and ultimately you just have
to kind of decide is it worth the risk. Maybe
we can't say for certain, and at the time you
couldn't say for certain. What's cool is that some of
these same climate scientists are still at work and they
have come up with fairly recent models, using very sophisticated
(37:43):
climate models. Compared to the stuff they were using back
in the eighties and even the nineties, The stuff they're
using now says, actually, we think nuclear winner might be
worse than was initially predicted. Yeah, and even if it's
not a full scale nuclear war, I think the worry
there's not as much work these days for something like that. Uh,
what the worry is now is that some rogue nation
(38:07):
gets ahold of one or maybe even not a rogue nation,
just Indian Pakistan drop a couple of nuclear bombs. Well,
that's the model, and like that is entirely possible. I
think of one megaton detonation is what they did this
model on, and it was it had a substantial effect. Yeah,
they said ten years of smoke clouds in a three
year temperature drop of about two point to five degrees fahrenheit,
(38:29):
which doesn't sound like much. But if you go back
and you read that scientists study. His executive summary of
the study, he points out that that kind of drop
ultimately equals a shortened growing season by ten to twenty days,
and that last ten to twenty days makes or breaks
a crop Like that means you can either harvest it
or it dies before it matures and can be harvested.
(38:52):
And so even just a couple of degrees can lead
to widespread crop failure. Yeah, but this is just if
Indian Pakist then shoot fifty bombs at one another in
a regional war, it could have that effect around the world. Uh.
So we mentioned Hiroshima, Nagasaki. Um, those are the only
places we can look, But like we pointed out, the
(39:13):
bombs were so different back then, it's not the best comparison.
But as far as looking at what kind of fires
could happen, you can't tell a whole lot. Um In
Hiroshima there were more fires than in Nagasaki, just because
of the way the geography is in the two cities.
But um, in neither case did they see a ton
(39:35):
of uh secondary fires Like it wasn't blacking out the sky.
There was, there was black rain, but um apparently you know,
like a week later, uh, most of that stuff had
had cleared up. But again that is you can't even
really compare the two. Now it's a single kill a
ton bomb, yeah exactly, we're talking a fifty of the
(40:00):
going off in the same area. But that report that
you mentioned on just like if Indian Pakistan, Um, well
how much was it tin megatons? No, it was one megaton,
so fifty of the Hiroshima and um Nagasaki mombs, Well
it was enough to cause the Atomic Scientists Science and
(40:22):
Security Board to move the doomsday clock two minutes closer
to midnight. Uh. And the doomsday clock is uh. Some
people say it's good science, some people say they're fearmongering.
But what it is is it is uh. It's a
design that basically says, here's how close we are to
destroying ourselves as a civilization. And um, there are a
(40:47):
lot of factors that go into it, like biotechnology or
cyber technology, but the main two are obviously nuclear weapons
and climate change are the two main things that factor
into where the doomsday clock sits. And uh, I think
in the nineteen fifties they've only changed it. How many
(41:07):
times eighteen times since it was created nineteen forty seven
have they changed the hands on the clock? Uh? In
the nineteen fifties, it was at two minutes till midnight.
In the early nineteen fifties. Um, the best I think
it's been in the early nineties was seventeen minutes till midnight. Yeah,
(41:27):
then they feel good. That's a lot of time. What
do we are right now? Right now, we are the
closest we've been since nineteen eighty three. Uh. And on
January twenty two of this year, it was changed to UM,
three minutes till midnight is where they sit. And they
have a big had a big press release. I'll just
read the opening and closing paragraphs. The opening paragraph in
(41:51):
Unchecked climate Change, Global nuclear weapon modernizations and outsize nuclear
weapons arsenals pose extraordinary and undeniable threats to the continued
to existence of humanity, and world leaders have failed to
act with the speed or on the scale required to
protect citizens from potential catastrophe. These failures of political leadership
and endanger every person on Earth. And then the final paragraph,
(42:12):
and there's lots of fun stuff in between, just like
fart jokes and stuff, and then they close with with
the clock hand move forward to three minutes to midnight.
The board feels compelled to add with a sense of
great urgency, the probability of global catastrophe is very high,
and the actions needed to reduce the risk of disaster
must be taken very soon. They'll mess around, uh And
(42:37):
even though that we've um we had been doing a
good job of reducing the amount of warheads between the
United States and Russia, but things have slowed to a
snails pace now. From two thousand nine to two thousand thirteen,
Obama cut only three nine warheads from the stockpile. And
they're basically saying, we're not doing this as fast as
(42:59):
we need you too, like we need to act now. Yeah. Well,
there's other people who are saying we need to rebuild
their nuclear arsenal because it's aging and rotting and will
be useless. By how are we going to drop nuclear
bombs on people in the future. It's it's weird, like
some people are trying to reignite the Cold War. Well,
(43:21):
I don't agree with it, but I know that most
of those people aren't saying, hey, so we can bomb people,
it's so we can keep each other in check, which
was the Cold War. We could also over again get
rid of nuclear bombs entirely. We could do that. Um.
And you know, Sagan's the whole thing I should say.
And it's funny that he's kind of like the villain
of this whole thing, of the whole nuclear winner debate,
(43:43):
because he's such a revered figure, such a great guy.
But he really, I purposefully made some serious missteps as
far as publicizing the results went before they were fully in.
But his whole thing was and if you read his
foreign policy thing, his article, it's really really good. Um,
it's not too of two so like it's kind of
(44:05):
fun to read. But it's called nuclear war and Climactic
Catastrophe colon some policy implications and he says like, we
don't know, you know, what the what the right answer is.
We don't know if it's entirely possible that nuclear winner.
Maybe our ideas are overblown or whatever. But he says,
I'm not willing to take the chance. Why should we
(44:30):
take the chances? It's like why risk it? Right? So
his solution is, how about this US and USS are,
how about you de escalate the arms race, de proliferate
until you get down to a threshold that science hasts said. Okay,
nuclear winner probably couldn't happen beyond this payload. Right, So
(44:53):
even if all the nuclear bombs in the world at
this lower number, we're set off, we still wouldn't go
into nuclear winter. Right. But you guys can take out
all of your major city centers and still fight your
nuclear war, but the rest of the world won't won't
be destroyed by it. Yeah, that was his solution, and
no one took him up on it. I've never understood.
(45:15):
I don't know, man, we'll we'll do one on climate
change at some point too. But I've never understood why
people and I get the economics play factor, but why
risking the future of mankind for your ancestors to follow
is worth it. A lot of it is fear, like
a lot of these people who have over the last decades,
(45:36):
you know, push for that kind of thing, like fear
that you know, the US will be caught with his
pants down, like genuinely feared the Soviet Union, and like
their heart was in it like that. But I mean,
if it's fascinating to me this whole like basically secret
publicity war that's been going that what went on throughout
the twentie and it's well into the twenty one centuries.
(45:57):
There's a book again, I think I mentioned it called
merch and some doubt everybody should read. Yeah, and you
know what, save your emails to me because you can
still think what you want to think. Yeah, I just
I just personally don't get it. I'm not gonna throw
stones at you and say you're wrong. I probably should,
but that won't because it's not nice to throw stones.
It isn't Chuck. Are you good? I'm great. If you
(46:21):
want to know more about Nuclear Winner, you can read
this fine article written by Robert Lamb by typing Nuclear
Winner in the search part how stuff works dot com.
Since I said search parts, time for listener mail. Oh no,
my friend, it's time for d all right. This is
(46:48):
the time that we all know one love. When Josh
and I read out and say thanks, we give thanks.
We should call this Thanksgiving and not administrative details. Okay, ready, no, no,
that's okay, uh, because administrative details is such a weird name.
This is long. It's meant to be. Uh So, this
is when we thank people for the for the very
kind gifts that they have sent us over the months.
(47:10):
And dude, I think this goes back all the way
to January for me. Oh man, I've got one for
Christmas cookies. The Mona collent Tine and Grandma colling Tine.
I think we always say her name wrong. By the way, No,
I think she corrected us in staid it was like Valentine.
So I think I'm saying it right. Man, It's gonna
be so mad at all. Right, is the administrative detailed
(47:32):
music playing? It sounds like it great, can't you hear that?
I'll get it started with. Richard sent us a guide
to the round things of the Solar System. Very fun,
very nice. I remember that. Yeah, Blair sent us a
plug in key holder. You come home, plug your key
chain in and you never forget it. It's pretty awesome. Actually,
you can get them on Amazon Electric socket unplugged chain holder.
(47:56):
Search for that. It will bring it up. That's right.
I got a postcard, very nice post carred from Jean
Pierre Bonasco and Stephanie Crick from Port Lockroy, Antarctica. Nice
and it's worth saying again thank you to Mona Colling
Tine and Grandma calling time for Christmas cookies. We look
forward to them again this year, yes, we certainly do.
Oh we've gotten Newgat, homemade Newgat from christin Ferguson. Okay,
(48:19):
it's so delicious. I am hooked on that stuff. It's great.
It is she you can find her at Solace Sweets. Man,
it is so good. Yeah. Kristen has been sending us
this homemade Newgat for years and I was always like,
I mean, nugat, I don't know about that, and then
I put up my mouth. It's amazing stuff. It's really
good enough. Uh. And then we also got some sweets
(48:39):
from Dude Sweet Chocolate out of Texas. I think they
might be out of Dallas. They made like they sent
us really great chocolate. But they also make these incredible
marshmallows too. They made a sweet potato marshmallow, and dudes
at Dude Sweet Chocolate, thank you for those. They were amazing.
Yumi was crazy for those marshmelloss like I am for
the Newgat. That was the bounty. I remember that as
(49:02):
always every Christmas. Our buddy Aaron Cooper in Kansas sends
us great pronounce of these great photoshops that he does
of us that he puts online and you can see
him on Internet round up. Yeah, we even got T
shirts this year of Shake Gavara, Josh and Chuck. So
Coop you're the best. Yeah, that is true, Coop Uh,
(49:22):
Mark Allen and the Trade Monkey team sent us some
beautiful jewelry made by female artisans in Southeast Asia and
traded fairly key are Buddy band Astrims in this book?
Which one? Which book? Well, he's always sending his stuff,
so honestly can't even remember which book, but we have
like boxes full of things that he sent. He sent
us a CD of The Shags Philosophy of the World,
(49:46):
you know, what's known as the worst album ever recorded.
Got it in my death here. The problem is my
computer doesn't have a CD drive any longer. Have you
noticed that's gone? Yeah, computers don't have those any longer.
Try to find it on my computer. I defy you.
I was like, what's that little slot and you're like,
that's where the tissues come out. It's a coffee cup holder.
(50:11):
Our buddies from Venice's Sinking Band sent us an LP
sand and lines and a c D. What we do
is secret and there are our friends from Athens, Georgia. Huge,
huge thanks to Hillary Lowsar, who has sent us a
lot of cheese over the last year, some of the
best cheese flathead like cheese in Montana, which like they
(50:32):
make a happy gooda that's to die for. It is
very good at flathead like cheese. And she sent us
some awesome T shirts that's a mouth feel on them. Yeah,
our bar episode. She's the best. She and her husband
Mike have been big time fans. They're very active on
our Facebook page and they like drove to Seattle for
our show for months from Montana. Yeah, she's a teacher. Yeah.
(50:55):
And they sent um you me and Emily earrings. So
thanks for that from all of us. Terry got nothing.
Uh Tommy Luke Rick, Uh, Tommy look Rich, Lucric lut Rich.
He said, it's a nice letter man. His last name
you say four times. Well, he's the guy. He's walking
from Seattle in New York City. And if you want
to follow this, I don't. He might be there by now. Uh.
(51:17):
Tommy Walks dot tumbler dot com. You can check that out. Okay, um, huge,
huge thanks from me personally to Loris No, who I
don't know if you remember when we did the Hot
Wheels episode, boy do I I said that the hot
Wheels I would love to have was this like uh
like station wagon camper. That's a good time camper on
(51:37):
I remember shemailed it to me. That's pretty remarkable. Yep,
So thank you very much, lauris No. That was very
nice of you. Yeah, if anyone's listening. Uh, my favorite
hot wheel was the one that had a thousand dollars
stuffed in the body of the car. Um Stephen, uh,
Stephen Brahm. He sent as some currency bank notes which
I've never collected money, but he sent a nineteen fifty
(51:59):
three dollar certificate in nineteen fifty seven series two dollar
bill in in eighteen seventy four fractional currency ten cent note. Yeah,
that was pretty neat. I think you got the ten
cent note, didn't you, because I spent it on candy. No,
what's this, it's incense, sir, It's a fraction of a note. Uh.
(52:20):
Meteor all Just Michael Herb, who also moons Moonlights as
a young adult murder mystery author, sent us a book
of one of his murder mysteries, Kevin McLeod in The
Seaside Storm. It's about a little weather detective. It's pretty cute.
Jeff Payton sent us a book Darwin's Black Box, and Uh,
(52:42):
Bethany at the Base Element d dot base dot element
at gmail dot com. If you want any of the
fleur to sell caramel, she sent us, we can highly
recommend them. And I got one more from both of us.
Chuck all right, Dan Kent name ring a bell? Uh
it does? He sent us the pints of Planning the Elder. Yes,
(53:04):
thank you. That your top notch human being. I think
we met him in San Francisco or show. Yes. Thanks
yea the famous world renowned Planning the Elder beer, which
I finally tried and that was delicious. It is dealist ship. Uh,
thank you very much, everybody. We have more. If you
didn't hear your name, hang tight, We've got probably a
(53:25):
couple more episodes worth of administrative details or Thanksgiving is
what we're calling it now. And uh, in the meantime,
you can get in touch with us if you want
to tweet to us. It's s Y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com. It's Facebook
dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know, send us an
email to Stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com,
(53:45):
and as always, join us at at home on the web.
Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff Works
dot com
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