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Speaker 1

00:00

The United States has 1,770 nuclear weapons deployed, meaning those weapons could launch in as little as 60 seconds and up to a couple minutes. Some of them on the bombers might take an hour or so. Russia has 1,674 deployed nuclear weapons. Same scenario.

Speaker 1

00:25

Their weapon systems are on par with ours. That's not to mention the 12,500 nuclear weapons amongst the 9 nuclear-armed nations. The sucking up into the nuclear stem, 300 mile-an-hour winds, you're talking about people miles out getting sucked up into that stem. When you see the mushroom cloud, Lex, that would be people.

Speaker 1

00:48

30, 40 mile wide mushroom cloud blocking out the sun. And that speaks nothing of the radiation poisoning that follows. In addition to the launch on warning concept, There's this other insane concept called sole presidential authority. And you might think in a democracy that's impossible, right?

Speaker 1

01:09

You can't just start a war. Well, you can just start a nuclear war if you're the commander in chief, the president of the United States. In fact, you're the only 1 who can do that. We are 1 misunderstanding, 1 miscalculation away from nuclear Armageddon.

Speaker 1

01:28

No matter how nuclear war starts, it ends with everyone dead.

Speaker 2

01:36

The following is a conversation with Annie Jacobson, an investigative journalist, Pulitzer Prize finalist, and author of several amazing books on war, weapons, government secrecy, and national security, including the books titled Area 51, Operation Paperclip, The Pentagon's Brain, Phenomena, Surprise Kill Vanish, and her new book, nuclear war. This is a Lex Friedman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.

Speaker 2

02:08

And now, dear friends, here's Annie Jacobson. Let's start with an immensely dark topic, nuclear war. How many people would a nuclear war between the United States and Russia kill?

Speaker 1

02:24

So I'm coming back at you with a very dark answer and a very big number, and that number is 5000000000 people.

Speaker 2

02:37

You go second by second minute by minute hour by hour what would happen if the nuclear war started. So there's a lot of angles from which I would love to talk to you about this. At first, how would the deaths happen in the short term and the long term?

Speaker 1

02:59

So To start off, the reason I wrote the book is so that readers like you could see in appalling detail just how horrific nuclear war would be. And as you said, second by second, minute by minute, The book covers nuclear launch to nuclear winter. I purposely don't get into the politics that lead up to that or the national security maneuvers or the posturing or any of that.

Speaker 1

03:30

I just want people to know nuclear war is insane. And every source I interviewed for this book, from Secretary of Defense, all retired, nuclear sub force commander, STRATCOM commander, FEMA director, on and on and on, nuclear weapons engineers, they all shared with me the common denominator that nuclear war is insane. You know, first millions, then tens of millions, then hundreds of millions of people will die in the first 72 minutes of a nuclear war. And then comes nuclear winter where the billions happen from starvation.

Speaker 1

04:13

And so The shock power of all of this is meant for each and every 1 of us to say, wait, what? This actually exists behind the veil of national security. And I don't know, you know, most people do not think about nuclear war on a daily basis and yet hundreds of thousands of people in the nuclear command and control are at the ready in the event it happens.

Speaker 2

04:43

But it doesn't take too many people to start 1.

Speaker 1

04:47

In the words of Richard Garwin who was the nuclear weapons engineer who drew the plans for the Ivy Mike thermonuclear bomb, the first thermonuclear bomb ever exploded in 1952. Garwin shared with me his opinion that all it takes is 1 nihilistic madman with a nuclear arsenal to start a nuclear war. And that's how I begin the scenario.

Speaker 2

05:16

What are the different ways it could start? Like literally who presses a button and what does it take to press a button?

Speaker 1

05:24

So the way it starts is in space. Meaning the US Defense Department has a early warning system. And the system in space is called CIBRS.

Speaker 1

05:37

It's a constellation of satellites that is keeping an eye on all of America's enemies so that the moment an ICBM launches, the satellite in space, and I'm talking about one-tenth of the way to the moon, that's how powerful these satellites are in geosync, they see the hot rocket exhaust on the ICBM in a fraction of a second after it launches. A fraction of a second. And so there begins this horrifying policy called launch on warning, right? And that's the US counterattack.

Speaker 1

06:18

Meaning, the reason that the United States is so ferociously watching for a nuclear launch somewhere around the globe is so that the nuclear command and control system in the U.S. Can move into action to immediately make a counter-strike. Because we have that policy launch on warning, which is exactly like it says. It means The United States will not wait to absorb a nuclear attack.

Speaker 1

06:50

It will launch nuclear weapons in response before the bomb actually hits.

Speaker 2

06:57

So the president, as part of the launch on warning policy, has 6 minutes. I guess can't launch for 6 minutes, but at 6 minute mark from that first warning, the president can launch.

Speaker 1

07:15

And that was 1 of the most remarkable details to really nail down for this book when I was reporting this book and talking to Secretary of Defense's for example, who are the people who advise the President on this matter. Right? You say to yourself, Wait a minute, how could that possibly be?

Speaker 1

07:32

And so let's unpack that, right? So in addition to the launch on warning concept, there's this other insane concept called sole presidential authority. And you might think in a democracy that's impossible, right? You can't just start a war.

Speaker 1

07:49

Well, you can just start a nuclear war if you're the commander-in-chief, the president of the United States. In fact, you're the only 1 who can do that. And we can get into later why that exists. I was able to get the origin story of that concept from Los Alamos.

Speaker 1

08:04

They declassified it for the book. But the idea behind that is that nuclear war will unfold so fast only 1 person can be in charge, the president. He asked permission of no 1, not the Secretary of Defense, not the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, not the U.S. Congress.

Speaker 1

08:28

So built into that is this extraordinary speed you talk about, the six-minute window. And some people say, oh, that's ridiculous. How do we know that 6 minute window? Well, here's the best sort of, you know, hitting the nail on the head statement I can give you, which is in President Reagan's memoirs he refers to the 6 minute window.

Speaker 1

08:49

And he says, he calls it irrational, which it is. He says, how can anyone make a decision to launch nuclear weapons based on a blip on a radar scope? His words, to unleash Armageddon. And yet that is the reality behind nuclear war.

Speaker 2

09:08

Just imagine sitting there, 1 person, because the president is a human being. Sitting there, just got the warning that Russia launched. You have 6 minutes.

Speaker 2

09:23

You know, I meditate on my mortality every day and here you would be sitting and meditating, contemplating not just your own mortality, but the mortality of all the people you know, loved ones. Just imagining, what would be going through my head is all the people I know and love, like personally, and knowing that there'll be no more most likely. And if they somehow survive, they will be suffering and will eventually die. I guess the question that kept coming up is, how do we stop this?

Speaker 2

10:00

Is it inevitable that it's going to be escalated to a full-on nuclear war that destroys everything and it seems like it it will be. It's inevitable. In the position of the president it's almost inevitable that they have to respond.

Speaker 1

10:16

I mean 1 of the things I found shocking was how little apparently most presidents know about the responsibility that literally lays at their feet right so you may think through this six-minute window I may think through this six-minute window but what I learned like for example former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta was really helpful in explaining this to me because before he was SecDef, he served as the director of the CIA. And before that he was the White House chief of staff. And so he has seen these different roles that have been so close to the president.

Speaker 1

10:58

But he explained to me that when he was the White House Chief of Staff for President Clinton, he noticed how President Clinton didn't want to ever really deal with the nuclear issue because he had so many other issues to deal with. And that only when Panetta became Secretary of Defense, he told me, did he really realize the weight of all of this? Because he knew he would be the person that the president would turn to were he to be notified of a nuclear attack. And by the way, it's the launch on warning.

Speaker 1

11:38

It's the ballistic missile seen from outer space by the satellite. And then there also must be a second confirmation

Speaker 2

11:49

from a

Speaker 1

11:49

ground radar system. But in that process, which is just a couple minutes, everyone is getting ready to notify the president. And 1 of the first people that gets notified by NORAD or by STRATCOM or by NRO, these different parties that all see the early warning data.

Speaker 1

12:10

1 of the first people that's notified is the Secretary of Defense as well as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff because those 2 together are going to brief the president about, you know, sir, you have 6 minutes to decide. And that's where you realize the immediacy of all of this is so counter to imagining the scenario. And again, all the presidents come into office, I have learned, understanding the idea of deterrence, this idea that we have these massive arsenals of nuclear weapons pointed at 1 another ready to launch so that we never have nuclear war. But what we're talking about now is what if we did?

Speaker 1

12:56

What if we did? And what you've raised is like this really spooky, eerie subtext of the world right now because many of the nuclear armed nations are in direct conflict with other nations. And for the first time in decades, nuclear threats are actually coming out of the mouths of leaders. This is shocking.

Speaker 2

13:24

So deterrence, the polite implied assumption is that nobody will launch, and if they did, we would launch back and everybody would be dead. But that assumption falls apart completely. The whole philosophy of it falls apart once the first launch happens.

Speaker 2

13:46

Then you have 6 minutes to decide, wait a minute, are we going to hit back and kill everybody on earth? Or do we turn the other cheek in the most horrific way possible?

Speaker 1

13:57

Well, when nuclear war starts, there's no like battle for New York or battle for Moscow. It's just literally, you know, it was called in the Cold War push-button warfare, but in essence that is what it is. Let's get some numbers on the table if you don't mind, right?

Speaker 1

14:13

Because when you're saying like, wait a minute, we're just hoping that it holds, right? Let's just talk about Russia and the U.S., the arsenals that are literally pointed at 1 another right now, right? So the United States has 1,770 nuclear weapons deployed, meaning those weapons could launch in as little as 60 seconds and up to a couple minutes. Some of them on the bombers might take an hour or so.

Speaker 1

14:47

Russia has 1,674 deployed nuclear weapons. Same scenario, their weapon systems are on par with ours. That's not to mention the 12,500 nuclear weapons amongst the 9 nuclear armed nations. But when you think about those kind of arsenals of just between the United States and Russia, you realize everything can be launched in seconds and minutes.

Speaker 1

15:15

Then you realize the madness of Matt, that this idea that no 1 would launch because it would assure everyone's destruction. Yes, but what if someone did? And in my interviews with scores of top-tier national security advisors, people who advise the president, people who are responsible for these decisions if they had to be made. Every single 1 of them said it could happen.

Speaker 1

15:44

They didn't say this would never happen. And so the idea is worth thinking about because I believe that it pulls back the veil on a fundamental security that if someone were to use a tactical nuclear weapon, oh well it's just an escalation. It's far more than that.

Speaker 2

16:10

So to you the use of a tactical nuclear weapon, maybe you can draw the line between a tactical and a strategic nuclear weapon that could be a catalyst. Like that's a very difficult thing to walk back from.

Speaker 1

16:23

Oh my God, almost certainly. And again, every person in the national security environment tells, we'll agree with that, right? Certainly on the American side.

Speaker 1

16:34

Strategic weapons, those are like big weapons systems. America has a nuclear triad. We have our ICBMs which are the silo-based missiles that have a nuclear warhead in the nose cone and they can get from 1 continent to the other in roughly 30 minutes. Then we have our bombers B-52s and B-2s that are nuclear capable.

Speaker 1

17:01

Those take travel time to get to another continent. Those can also be recalled. The ICBMs cannot be recalled or redirected once launched.

Speaker 2

17:09

That 1 is a particularly terrifying 1. So land launched missiles, rockets with a warhead can't be recalled.

Speaker 1

17:19

Cannot be recalled or redirected. And speaking of how little the president generally know as we were talking a moment ago, President Reagan in 1983 gave a press conference where he misstated that submarine-launched ballistic missiles could be recalled. They cannot be recalled.

Speaker 1

17:38

So that gives you – here's the guy in charge of the arsenal if it has to get let loose and he doesn't even know that they cannot be recalled. So this is the kind of misinformation and disinformation. And, you know, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres recently said, when he was talking about the conflicts rising around the world, he said, we are 1 misunderstanding, 1 miscalculation away from nuclear Armageddon.

Speaker 2

18:11

So just to sort of linger on the previous point of tactical nukes, so you're describing strategic nukes, land launched, bombers, submarine launched, What are tactical nukes?

Speaker 1

18:23

So that's the triad, right? We have the triad and Russia has the triad. Tactical nuclear weapons are smaller warheads that were designed to be used in battle.

Speaker 1

18:36

And that is what Russia is sort of threatening to use right now. That is this idea that you would, You know, make a decision on the battlefield in an operational environment to use a tactical nuclear weapon. You're just sort of upping the ante. But the problem is that all treaties are based on this idea of no nuclear use, right?

Speaker 1

19:01

You cannot cross that line. And so the what would happen if the line is crossed is so devastating to even consider. I think that the conversation is well worth having among everyone that is in a power of position. How, as you know, the UN Secretary General said, this is madness, right?

Speaker 1

19:25

This is madness. We must come back from the brink. We are at the brink.

Speaker 2

19:32

Can we talk about some other numbers? So you mentioned the number of warheads. So land launched, how long does it take to travel across the ocean from the United States to Russia, from Russia to the United States, from China to the United States, approximately how long?

Speaker 1

19:52

When I was writing an earlier book on DARPA, the Pentagon Science Agency, I went to a library down in San Diego called the Giesel Library to look at Herb York's papers. Herb York was the first chief scientist for the Pentagon for DARPA, then called ARPA. And I had been trying to get the number from the various agencies that be to answer, like, what is the exact number and how do we know it?

Speaker 1

20:23

And like, does it change? And you know, as technology advances, does that number reduce? All these kinds of questions. And no 1 will answer that question on an official level.

Speaker 1

20:32

And so, much to my surprise, I found the answer in Herb York's dusty archive of papers. And this is information that was jealously guarded. I mean, it didn't – it was not – it's not necessarily classified, but it certainly wasn't out there. And I felt like, wow, Herb York left these behind for someone like me to find, right?

Speaker 1

20:57

And what the process – he wanted to know the answer to your question. And as the guy in charge of it all. So he hired this group of scientists who then and still are in many ways like the supermen scientists of the Pentagon and they're called the Jason scientists. Many conspiracies about them abound.

Speaker 1

21:18

I interviewed their founder and have interviewed many of them. But they whittled the number down to seconds, okay? Specifically for Herb York. And it goes like this.

Speaker 1

21:29

Because this is where my jaw dropped and I went, wow. Okay. So 26 minutes and 40 seconds from a launch pad in the Soviet Union to the East Coast. And it happens in 3 phases.

Speaker 1

21:44

Very simple and interesting to remember because then suddenly all of this makes more sense. Boost phase, mid-course phase, and then terminal phase, okay? Boost phase, 5 minutes. That's when the rocket launches.

Speaker 1

22:00

So you just imagine a rocket going off the launch pad and the fire beneath it. Again, that's why the satellites can see it, okay? Now it's becoming visual. Now it makes sense to me, right?

Speaker 1

22:11

5 minutes, and that's where the rocket can be tracked. And then imagine learning, wait a minute, after 5 minutes, the rocket can no longer be seen from space. The satellite can only see the hot rocket exhaust. Then the missile enters its mid-course phase, 20 minutes.

Speaker 1

22:29

And that's the ballistic part of it, where it's kind of flying up at between 500 and 700 miles above the Earth and moving very fast and with the Earth until it gets very close to its target and the last 100 seconds are terminal phase. It's where the warhead re-enters the atmosphere and detonates. 26 minutes and 40 seconds. Now, in my scenario, I open with North Korea launching a 1 megaton nuclear warhead at Washington, D.C.

Speaker 1

23:08

That's the nihilistic madman maneuver. That's the bolt out of the blue attack that everyone in Washington will tell you they're afraid of. And North Korea has a little bit different geography and so I had MIT professor emeritus Ted Postel do the math. 33 minutes from a launch pad in Pyongyang to the east coast of the United States.

Speaker 1

23:34

You get the idea. It's about 30 minutes. But hopefully now that allows readers to suddenly see all this as a real – you almost see it as poetry, as terrible as that may sound. You can visualize it and suddenly it makes sense.

Speaker 1

23:52

And I think the sense making part of it is really what I'm after in this book because I want people to understand on The 1 hand it's incredibly simple, it's just the people that have made it so complicated.

Speaker 2

24:05

But it's 1 of those things that can change all of world history in a matter of minutes. We just don't as a human civilization have experience with that. But it doesn't mean it'll never happen.

Speaker 2

24:21

It can happen just like that.

Speaker 1

24:23

I mean, I think what you're after, and I couldn't agree more with, is like Why is this fundamentally annihilating system, a system of mass genocide as John Rubell in the book refers to it, why does it still exist? We've had 75 years since there have been 2 superpowers with the nuclear bomb. So that threat has been there for 75 years and we have managed to stay alive.

Speaker 1

25:00

1 of the reasons why so many of the sources in the book agreed to talk to me, people who had not previously gone on the record about all of this, was because they are now approaching the end of their lives. They spent their lives dedicated to preventing nuclear World War III. And they'll be the first people to tell you we're closer to this as a reality than ever before. And so on the bright, the only bright side of any of this Is that like the answer lies most definitely in communication?

Speaker 2

25:35

So there's a million other questions here. I think the details are fascinating and important to understand. So 1, you also say nuclear submarines.

Speaker 2

25:47

You mentioned about 30 minutes, 26, 33 minutes, but with nuclear submarines, that number can be much, much lower. So how long does it take for a warhead to, a missile to reach the East Coast of the United States from a submarine.

Speaker 1

26:04

Just when you thought it was really bad?

Speaker 2

26:05

Yeah.

Speaker 1

26:06

And then you kind of realize about the submarines. I mean, the submarines are what are called second strike capacity, right? And you know, it was described, submarines were described to me this way.

Speaker 1

26:16

They are as dangerous to civilization, and let me say a nuclear-armed, nuclear-powered submarine is as dangerous to civilization as an asteroid, okay? They are unstoppable. They are unlocatable. The former chief of the nuclear submarine forces, Admiral Michael Connor, told me it's easier to find a grapefruit-sized object in space than a submarine under the sea.

Speaker 1

26:46

Okay? So these things are like hell machines. And they're moving around throughout the oceans. Ours, Russia's, China's, maybe North Korea's, constantly.

Speaker 1

26:59

And we now know they're sneaking up to the east and west coasts of the United States within a couple hundred miles. How do we know that? Why do we know that? Well, I found a document inside of a budget that the Defense Department was going to Congress for more money recently and showed maps of precisely where these submarines, how close they were getting to the eastern seaboard.

Speaker 2

27:22

So wait, wait, wait, so nuclear subs are getting within 200 miles?

Speaker 1

27:27

A couple hundred miles, yes. They weren't precise on the number but when you look at the map, yep. And that's when you're talking about under 10 minutes from launch to strike.

Speaker 2

27:37

Undetectable. And

Speaker 1

27:38

they're undetectable. The map making is done after the fact because of a lot of underwater surveillance systems that we have. But in real time, you cannot find a nuclear submarine.

Speaker 1

27:51

And just the way a submarine launches goes 150 feet below the surface to launch its ballistic missile. I mean, It comes out of the missile tube and with enough thrust that the thrusters, they ignite outside the water and then they move into boost. And so the technology involved is just stunning and shocking and again, trillions of dollars spent so that we never have a nuclear war. But my God, what if we did?

Speaker 2

28:25

As you write, they're called the handmaidens of the apocalypse. What a terrifying label. I mean, 1 of the things you also write about, so for the land launched ones, they're presumably underground.

Speaker 2

28:44

So the silos, How long does it take to go from like pressing the button to them emerging from underground for launch? Is that part detectable or it's only the heat?

Speaker 1

28:55

So what's interesting about the silos, America has 400 silos, right? We've had more, But we have 400 and they're underground. And they're called minute men, right?

Speaker 1

29:06

After the Revolutionary War heroes. But the sort of joke in Washington is they're not called minute men for nothing because they can launch in 1 minute. Right? So the president orders the launch of the ICBMs.

Speaker 1

29:20

ICBM stands for Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. He orders the launch and they launch 60 seconds later. And then they take 30 some odd minutes to get to where they're going. The submarines take about 14 or 15 minutes from the presidential, from the launch command to actually launching.

Speaker 1

29:42

And that has to do, I surmise, with the location of the submarine, its depth. Some of these things are so highly classified. And others, other details are shockingly available if you look deep enough or if you ask enough questions and you can go from 1 document to the next to the next and really find these answers.

Speaker 2

30:03

Not to ask top secret questions, but to what degree do you think the Russians know the locations of the silos in the US and vice versa?

Speaker 1

30:12

Lex, you and I can find the location of every silo right now. They're all there. And before they were there on, you know, Google, they were there in maps because we're a democracy and we make these things known, okay?

Speaker 1

30:24

Now, what's tricky is that Russia and North Korea rely upon what are called road mobile launchers, right? So, Russia has a lot of underground silos. You know, all of the scenario takes you through these different facilities that really do exist.

Speaker 2

30:41

And

Speaker 1

30:41

they're all sourced with how many weapons they have and their launch procedures and whatnot. But in addition to having underground silos, they have road mobile launchers. And that means you could just have 1 of these giant ICBMs on a 22 axle truck that can move stealthily around the country so that it can't be targeted by the US Defense Department.

Speaker 1

31:08

We don't have those in America, because presumably, the average American isn't going to go for the ICBM road mobile launcher driving down the street in your town or city. Which is why the Defense Department will justify we need the second strike capacity capability, the submarines, right? Because, you know, I mean, the wonky stuff that is worth looking into as a, if you really dig the book and are like, wait a minute, it's all footnoted where you can learn more about how these systems have changed over time. And why, more than anything, it's very difficult to get out of this Catch-22 conundrum that, you know, we need nuclear weapons to keep us safe.

Speaker 1

31:56

That is the real enigma. Because the other guys have them, right? And the other guys have sort of more sinister ways of using them, or at least that's what the nomenclature out of the Pentagon will always be, when anyone tries to say we just need to really think about full disarmament. Disarmament.

Speaker 2

32:16

You've written about intelligence agencies. How good are the intelligence agencies on this? How much does CIA know about the Russian launch sites and capabilities and command and control procedures and all of this and vice versa.

Speaker 1

32:33

I mean, all of this, because it's decades old, is really well known. If you go to the Federation of American Scientists, they have a team led by a guy called Hans Christensen, who runs what's called the Nuclear Notebook. And he and his team every year are keeping track of this number of warheads on these number of weapon systems.

Speaker 1

32:54

And because of the treaties, the different signatories to the treaty all report these numbers. And of course, the different intelligence community people are keeping track of what's being revealed honestly and reported with transparency and what is being hidden. The real issue is the new systems that Russia is working on right now. And that will lead us, you know, we are kind of moving into an era whereby the threat of actually having new weapons systems that are nuclear capable is very real because of the escalating tensions around the world.

Speaker 1

33:35

And that's where the CIA, I would guess, is doing most of its work right now.

Speaker 2

33:38

So most of your research is kind of looking at the older versions of the system. And presumably there's potentially secret development of new ones, hopefully.

Speaker 1

33:50

Which violates treaties. So yes, that is where the intelligence agencies, but you know, at a point it's overkill, literally and figuratively, right? People are up in arms about these hypersonic weapons.

Speaker 1

34:03

Well, we have a hypersonic weapons program, you know, Falcon, Google Blackswift, right? This is Lockheed's doing, you know, we're, DARPA exists to create the vast weapon systems of the future. That is its job. It has been doing that since its creation in 1957.

Speaker 1

34:23

I would never believe that we aren't ahead of everyone. Call me over-informed or naive, 1 or the other. That would be my position. Because DARPA works from the chicken or the egg scenario, you know.

Speaker 1

34:37

That once you learn about something, once you learn Russia's created this typhoon submarine which may or may not be viable, it's too late if you don't already have 1.

Speaker 2

34:50

We'll probably talk about DARPA a little bit. 1 of the things that makes me sad about Lockheed, many things make me sad about Lockheed, but 1 of the things is because it's very top secret, you can't show off all the incredible engineering going on there. The other thing that's more philosophical, DARPA also, is that war seems to stimulate most of our, not most, but a large percent of our exciting innovation in engineering.

Speaker 2

35:20

And so, but that's also the pragmatic fact of life on Earth, is that the risk of annihilation is a great motivator for innovation, for engineering and so on. But yes, I would not discount the United States in its ability to build the weapons of the future, nuclear included, again, terrifying. Can you tell me about the nuclear football as it's called?

Speaker 1

35:50

I think Americans are familiar with the football, at least anyone who sort of you know follows national security concepts because it's a satchel, it's a leather satchel that is always with a military aid in secret service nomenclature, that's the mill aid. And he's trailing around the president 24, 7, 365 days a year, and also the vice president by the way, with the ability to launch nuclear war in that 6 minute window all the time. Okay?

Speaker 1

36:23

That is also called the football. And it's always with the president. To report this part of the book I interviewed a lot of people in the Secret Service that are with the President and talk about this. And the director of the Secret Service, a guy called Lou Merletti, told me a story that I just really found fascinating.

Speaker 1

36:45

He was also in charge of the president's detail, President Clinton this was, before he was director of the Secret Service. And he told me the story about how, he said, the football is with the president at all times period, okay? They were traveling to Syria and Clinton was meeting with President Assad. And they got into an elevator, Clinton and the Secret Service team, and 1 of Assad's guys was like, no, you know, like about the mail aid.

Speaker 1

37:16

And Lew said it was like a standoff because there was no way they were not going to have the president with his football in an elevator. And it kind of sums up, For me anyways, you realize what goes into every single 1 of these decisions. You realize the massive system of systems behind every item you might just see in passing and glancing on the news as you see the mill aid carrying that satchel. Well, what's in that satchel?

Speaker 1

37:51

I really dug into that to report this book.

Speaker 2

37:55

What is in that satchel?

Speaker 1

37:56

Okay, so, well, okay, first of all, that is, you know, people always say, it's incredibly classified. I mean, people talk about UFOs. It's incredibly, I mean, come on, guys.

Speaker 1

38:07

That is nothing burger, right? You want to know what's really classified? What's in that football, right? What's in that satchel?

Speaker 1

38:13

But the PEDE, Presidential Emergency Action Directives, right, Those have never been leaked. No 1 knows what they are. What we do know from 1 of the mill aides who spoke on the record, a guy called Buzz Patterson, he describes the president's orders, right? So if a nuclear war has begun, if the president has been told there are nuclear missiles, 1 or more, coming at the United States, you have to launch in a counterattack, right?

Speaker 1

38:41

The red clock is ticking, you have to get the blue impact clock ticking. He needs to look at this list to decide what targets to strike and what weapon systems to use. And that is what is on, according to Buzz Patterson, a piece of like sort of laminated plastic. He described it like a Denny's menu.

Speaker 2

39:04

And

Speaker 1

39:05

from that menu, the president chooses targets and chooses weapon systems.

Speaker 2

39:14

It's probably super old school, like all top secret systems are, because they have to be tested over and over and over and over and over.

Speaker 1

39:23

Yes, and it's non-digital.

Speaker 2

39:24

Non-digital, it might literally be a Denny's menu from hell.

Speaker 1

39:29

Right, and there's a, Meanwhile, I learned this only in reporting the book. There is an identical black book inside the Stratcom bunker in Nebraska. So 3 command bunkers are involved when nuclear war begins.

Speaker 1

39:47

There's the bunker beneath the Pentagon which is called the National Military Command Center, okay? Then there is the bunker beneath Cheyenne Mountain which everyone has, you know, many people have heard of because it's been made famous in movies, right? That is a very real bunker. And then there is a third bunker which people are not so familiar with, which is the bunker beneath Strategic Command in Nebraska.

Speaker 1

40:13

And so it's described to me this way. The Pentagon bunker is the beating heart. The Cheyenne mountain bunker is the brains. And the STRATCOM bunker is the muscle.

Speaker 1

40:28

The STRATCOM commander will receive word from the president, launch orders, and then directs the 150,000 people beneath him what to do, okay, from the bunker beneath STRATCOM. That's before he gets the orders. Then he has to run out of the building and jump onto what's called the doomsday plane. We'll get into that in a minute.

Speaker 1

40:54

Let me just finish the... I mean, but again, these are the details. This is like, these are the systematic, sequential details that happen in seconds and minutes. And reporting them, I never cease to be amazed by what a system it is.

Speaker 1

41:15

You know, A follows B, you know, it's just numerical, right?

Speaker 2

41:19

Yeah, but as we discuss this procedure, each individual person that follows that procedure might lose the big picture of the whole thing. I mean, Especially when you realize what is happening, that almost out of fear, you just follow the steps.

Speaker 1

41:38

Yeah, or okay, so imagine this, imagine being the president, you got that 6 minute win. You have to, you're looking at your list of strike options. You're being briefed by your chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and your SACDF.

Speaker 1

41:52

And this other really spooky detail. In the STRATCOM bunker, In addition to the nuclear strike advisor who can answer very specific questions, if the president's like, wait a minute, why are we striking that and not that? There's also a weather officer. And this is the kind of human detail that kept me up at night.

Speaker 1

42:15

Because that weather officer is in charge of explaining to the president really fast how many people are going to die and how many people are going to die in minutes, weeks, months, and years from radiation fallout.

Speaker 2

42:38

Because a lot of that has to do with the weather system.

Speaker 1

42:41

Yes. Yes, and so these kinds of, the humanness, balanced out with the mechanization of it all, is, it's just really grotesque.

Speaker 2

42:57

So the doomsday plane from Stratcom, what's that? Where is it going? What's on it?

Speaker 1

43:04

It's on it. Okay, ready? It's gonna fly in circles.

Speaker 1

43:08

That's where it's going. It's flying in circles around the United States of America so that nuclear weapons can be launched from the air after the ground systems are taken out by the incoming ICBMs or the incoming submarine-launched ballistic missiles. This has been in play since the 50s. This is, these are the contingency plans for when nuclear war happens.

Speaker 1

43:39

So, again, going back to this absurd paradox, nuclear war will never happen. You know, mutual assured destruction, that is why deterrence will hold. Well, I found a talk that the deputy director of STRATCOM gave to a very close-knit group where he said, yes, deterrence will hold, but if it fails, everything unravels. And think about that word unravels, right?

Speaker 1

44:06

And the unraveling is, you know, the doomsday plane launches. The STRATCOM commander jumps in. He's in that plane. He's flying around the United States.

Speaker 1

44:15

And he's making decisions because the Pentagon's been taken out. At 9-11, by the way, Bush was in the doomsday plane.

Speaker 2

44:25

And Bush had to make decisions quickly, but not so quickly, not as quickly as he would have needed have done if there's a nuclear launch.

Speaker 1

44:35

I mean-

Speaker 2

44:35

6 minutes.

Speaker 1

44:37

It basically happens in 3 acts. There's the first 24 minutes, the next 24 minutes, and the last 24 minutes. And that is the reality of nuclear weapons.

Speaker 2

44:54

What is the interceptor capabilities of the United States? How many nuclear missiles can be stopped?

Speaker 1

45:02

I was at a dinner party with a very informed person, right? Like somebody who really, you know, should have known this. And I, this is when I was considering writing and reporting this book and he said to me, oh Annie, that would never happen because of our powerful interceptor system.

Speaker 1

45:24

Okay. Well, he's wrong. Let me tell you about our powerful interceptor system. First of all, we have 44 interceptor missiles, total period, full stop.

Speaker 1

45:34

Let me repeat, 44, okay? Earlier we were talking about Russia's 1,670 deployed nuclear weapons. How are those 44 interceptor missiles going to work, right? And they also have a success rate of around 50%.

Speaker 1

45:55

So they work 50% of the time. There are 40 of them in Alaska, and there are 4 of them at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara, okay? And they are responsible at about 9 minutes into the scenario, right, after the ICBM has finished that five-minute boost phase we talked about. Now it's in mid-course phase.

Speaker 1

46:19

And the ground radar systems have identified, yes, this is an incoming ICBM.

Speaker 2

46:28

And

Speaker 1

46:28

now the interceptor missiles have to launch, right? It's essentially shooting a missile with a missile. Inside the interceptor, which is just a big giant rocket, in its nose cone it has what's called the aptly named exo-atmospheric kill vehicle, okay?

Speaker 1

46:47

There's no explosives in that thing. It's literally just going to take out the warhead, ideally, with force. So 1 of them is going like, you know, Mach 20. I mean, the speeds at which these 2 moving objects hurtling through space are going is astonishing.

Speaker 1

47:08

And the fact that interception is even possible is really remarkable, but it's only possible 50% of the time.

Speaker 2

47:16

Is it possible that we only know about 44, but there could be a lot more?

Speaker 1

47:20

No, impossible. That I would be willing to bet.

Speaker 2

47:24

And how well tested are these interceptors?

Speaker 1

47:26

Well, that's where we get the success rate that's around 50% because of the tests, right? And actually the interceptor program is, are you ready for this? It's on strategic pause, right now.

Speaker 1

47:37

Meaning, the interceptor missiles are there, but developing them and making them more effective is on strategic pause because they can't be made more effective. People have these fantasies that we have a system like the Iron Dome, and they see this in current events, and they're like, oh, our interceptors would do that. It's just simply not true.

Speaker 2

47:59

Why can't an iron dome-like system be constructed for nuclear warheads?

Speaker 1

48:03

We have systems I write about called the THAAD system, which is ground-based, and then the Aegis system, which is on, you know, vessels. And these are great at shooting down some, you know, some rockets, but they can only shoot them sort of 1 at a time. You cannot shoot the mother load as it's coming in.