I will be calling and writing to my Senators and Rep, I will write to my newspaper, and I will share on social media, thank you for this important conversation.
High school students in the mid 1950's who were paying attention understood the threats. During the Cuban missle crisis we almost literally held our breath. The nuclear winter story was widely understood when it was first developed and communicated.
The people in the government, their rhetoric towards Russia is so irresponsible. but listening to this guy speak, now I understand, because like he said, they either don't know or they don't have the memory. now I understand why the tough rhetoric, the hot breath.. which makes this even more scary.
Damn Nate! Another amazing episode! Love this! Thank you so much for sharing this, Mr. Watson. Terrifying but so very interesting. If people just understood the scale and nature of nuclear weapons, no one would ever use them, even if they had them, which maybe during our evolutionary adolescence here we feel we need to have them for a sense of security. Regardless, if anyone pushes that big beautiful button or there's just a malfunction somehow, it's bye bye birdie for the whole human experiment. Yikes.
Love all your stuff Nate. I study catastrophic risks as well. I was a USAF flight medic, Father a Commander at the Pentagon when I was a child and have seen behind the scenes on the nuke situation. Thought about this long and hard. But it seems our species is pushed by several vectors to terminate itself (and the biosphere) no matter what WE may attempt. I'd love to be convinced otherwise.
I think you are on the mark. I had a family member who worked on later versions of nuclear weapons at Los Alamos. I am not terribly far from the labs right now. These weapons, this conversation, MAD, all have an internal, logical consistency that has, as a premise that is utterly vicious, merciless, murderous, and insane and hold countless people, maybe ALL people hostage. This family member worked on an innocuous widget that had something to do with timing. I’ll never know what it was. His small part in this was so successfully compartmentalized that any cognitive dissonance he might have felt, did not seep into the more pedestrian aspects of his life. Except… the “Shadow” knows and gradually poisons a life. More than 2050 nuclear detonations in and on the Earth. These are the acts of a being that despises Gaia, that despises Life and ultimately, despises himself. Now we will enter into a war with a nuclear armed, near peer. To me, the pattern is crystal clear. Humanity may finally achieve it’s dark wish to not exist.
William Catton Jr's book "Overshoot" explains that Homo-colossus is collectively as dumb as yeast in a wine vat. We will consume until we soil and use up our biosphere.
@@TennesseeJed I'm hoping/would prefer if our tech/social complexity caused a collapse on itself well before that could take place. That's what my research has also shown.
The mere fact that we are totally capable of blowing the entire Earth into cosmic dust, yet we are incapable of educating our own citizenry is a tragically "telling" example of America's specious ideology.
I read articles that debate whether US foreign policy is or should be idealistic or realistic. This is deceptive. US foreign policy is best described as aggressive or imperialistic. Maybe even tyrannical.
Some of these details are so... My mind blanks out, and I have to repeat several times to hear the words. I don't FEEL upset, but obviously my mind is extremely upset and can't process
I am inspired and horrified that there might be other Vasili Arkhipov's out there that refuse orders but I don't think we should ever bring ourselves to that existential gamble. There is a great book I am reading about Eisenhower called "Ike's Bluff" by Evan Thomas. He considers Ike the first president to really grapple with the nuclear age and escalation dominance.
Yes, Eisenhower was ahead of the times; it's unfortunate that he was apparently one of a kind. Atomic Bombs are hardly taken seriously these days, in spite of everyone's fears. Thank you for educating us. No one has been insightful and wise enough to enlighten the public. It's as if we finally have Adults present, for a Show and Tell.
As long as nuclear weapons exist intact, AND, as long as nuclear power plants are in operation and their waste remains unsecured, we are on the precipice of death. In my view, we should look at the existence of nuclear weapons and energy as a terminal diagnosis. Our days are numbered. We are all in hospice. Don't know about you, but, just as I would if given a terminal health diagnosis, I'm going to live my life differently, given this dark knowledge.
Exactly, now that we know we're going to die we should eat, screw and build and travel and do whatever the fuck we want until it all explodes! Wait a minute, isn't that what we've BEEN doing?
Chuck posits the US to be an indispensable nation. Is this the neolibs way of saying “American exceptionalism” that neocons love to employ. I appreciate very much Chuck’s analysis of the Ukrainian situation by dispelling the notion that Putin is the next Hitler. In any case, fun and necessary interview.
Just to be clear, I don't subscribe to either the neoliberal or neoconservative viewpoints or their position that the US is the "indispensable" nation in the sense we should be trying to run things and tell others what to do. I do think that due to our vast technological, economic, and military power, it is indispensable that we lead by example and have a rational, humane foreign policy that is centered around stability. We clearly don't do that, and neither viewpoint (neolib or neocon) is really geared to do that (and in fact both try to use instability to further national objectives, something that is playing with nuclear fire ...).
@@chuckwatson774 Thanks for the clarification. At the end of your excellent dialogue with Nate I think you made some good points about Russia feeling cornered by NATO expansion.
Some of Chuck’s statements are a bit exaggerated. I was living in Munich in 1986 when it rained heavily for three days and a lot of radiation from Chernobyl came down over Munich and Bavaria. For a year after that, every milk carton had the becquerel numbers printed on it. After a year, they stopped printing the becquerel labels strangely enough, as though everything was okay again. A few years ago, I asked a German geologist what happened to those hotspots and he replied: since then the cesium has been spread fairly evenly by wind and rain, all over Europe. So, Chuck’s hotspots are a thing of the past. 43:41 (Chuck’s misinformation).
In order to stabilize and reduce the possibility of nuclear weapons use, any amount of which would be catastrophic to world food production for years due to the resulting Nuclear Winter, people should write their representatives and demand: 1. A strict and stated No First Use policy; 2. Eliminate deployment of "variable yield" nuclear warheads; 3. Remove all USA "small tactical" nuclear weapons from Europe.
Thank you Nate. One question; Does a nuclear bomb has a finite shelf life? Like how oftnen do they have to dismantle it, and refurbish the electronics or the core... Thanks
At the very most basic level, if you put enough rats in a barrel, eventually they will start eating one another. Make it humans and they come out with some amazing ways to kill all concerned, even themselves...
13:34 - NO, that was not a legitimate thought held by anyone in power. If his point is simply that the argument was persuasive to 'one of those soldiers waiting to invade Japan' then that's irrelevant. The bomb was not necessary to end the war and the U.S. knew it. They would not have had to invade Japan. See the work of Gar Alperovitz and many others by now on this subject. This false narrative should end.
"Little Boy" was also a Ground burst bomb. ""Fat Man" was an Air Burst bomb. More important than materials. Did the atom scientists and security state want to know the difference? Tnx
We’ll I’m not scared off your channel, but wow this just reinforced my belief that we have evolved way too fast during this carbon bloom, at so many levels it connects what’s happening with a sense we are coming up on so many things we aren’t ready for, no way to step back now so full steam ahead
1. FWIW: The US does have some conventional missiles on Subs. USN coverted at least 4 ohio class subs to launch conventional missiles. As far as land launched, Tomahawk cruise missile can carry both nuclear & conventional warheads. Russia Hypersonic missiles are also dual warhead capable. 2. Chuck didn't discuss the nuclear doomsday devices that every nuclear power nation has: Nuclear power plants. In a Nuclear war, an Nuclear EMP will take out the grid and the end result will be reactor meltdowns as well as the spent fuel pools catching fire. Chernobyl was bad, its nothing compaired to a spent fuel pool fire. After the spent fuel fires all of North America will unsurvivable for 10s of thousand of years. Consider a typical nuclear warhead will contain a few kilograms of fissile material and perhaps a 200 kilograms of U-238 as a tamper, A 1 GWe Nuclear reactor contains about 100 tons of fissile\fertial material and the spent fuel pools make contain over 500 tons of spend fuel rods. The bombs are nothing comparied to nuclear power plants.
It's psychiatric failure... the first one who wanted to build such a nucleair monster, belonged in a safe haven with good psychiatric treatment. But now, the lunatics have taken over the asylum...
Humans will never stop creating, trying whatever hasn’t been tried, experimenting. We’re quite good at adaptation, however; how many times should anything be improved upon? Our ability to create changes, far out weighs the knowledge we have, for knowing when to stop creating.
The Ukraine conflict is something more and more people need to discuss. Many Americans are (obviously) OBLIVIOUS to the reality of what Russia is facing. Russia has been staring at NATO (America) right over its borders for 80+ years. The psychology of Russians vs. what a typical American has experienced being thousands of miles away from ANY sight, sniff, clue about a foreign adversary constantly encroaching…
"The psychology of Russians vs. what a typical American has experienced being thousands of miles away from ANY sight, sniff, clue about a foreign adversary constantly encroaching..." Wow, are you a child? I remember 9/11. We've been at war since those 3000 Americans died, commie.
All of human history, atleast at the human civilization level over the last ten thousand years, we have had a nonstop arms race that highlights our insanity..People/countries are bombing each other all over the planet right now, but the part we are not allowed to acknowledge or say out loud, is that the American empires finger prints are involved/responsible for all of these wars/actions and could stop all of them with a phone call, but stopping this violence is the opposite of the empires goals..Just the matter of fact way this topic is discussed is extremely disturbing...And once again highlights our utter insanity..And don't forget, intellectuals and the professional/managerial class has always provided legitimacy for these violent/destructive criminal governments, allowing for the very worst atrocities..
@@ankeunruh7364 Considering the 300,000 years we have been on Earth, that was like yesterday..We used those weapons as soon as we developed them, while every US general was against the idea, as Japan was defeated, and we only killed all of those hundreds of thousands of people as a warning to the Soviet Union..And those will not be the last nuclear weapons used, not by a long shot..Not exactly rocket science, but yet it is..
@@realeyesrealizereallies6828 Nobody knows. Every day not using it can be seen as one more - very very small - step out. Most changes start this way. I cannot ask the people (or whatever they call themselves) in some hundred or thousand years...
@@ankeunruh7364 I mean humanity has always been associated with an arms race..We have invented thousands of weapons, all of which we should have never used on each other, but that has never stopped us..Sometimes we make different rules for war, but we always break those rules..We have not really matured as a species, we do the exact same things we did 5 thousand years ago..In some ways we got better and some ways we got far worse..Like pushing buttons that kill people miles away, who frequently are not part of the battle..We have not matured past rewarding and celebrating greed, ego and violence, which are the root problems in my view, and will lead us down the same path as every other civilization to ever exist, which is collapse..And we recreated the conditions of the worst mass extinction events in the planets history..The odds of escaping these realities, probably don't exist..
The guest seems to limit himself around the technically of nuke bomb ... By the way it would have been nice to know the name of the officer on duty who took the great risk and saved humanity . ( at 50 minutes) i would at least express my gratitude for saving billions of life on earth. ( was it the Russian officer on duty ? )
There were several instances where that happened, most sadly wrapped in security. But for the public cases on the Russian side, Petrov is one, and Vasily Arkhipov is another who are publicly known. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov
Great interview: Respectfully I want to mention a guest is executive a thread of thought and listener is keenly following and you interrupt ( by talking over them or halting them ) you are not adding value, you are subtracting value. This is a pattern so I mention. Understood interviewing is an art, let the guest complete the thread of thought, a basic rule.
Boring guest, sorry. Meanwhile, a Russian child prodigy RU-vidr going by the name _Sofa Legion Strategist_ _(Стратег Диванного Легиона)_ has the guts and the clarity to call Putin a Western spy for wasting the Russian missile arsenal on irrelevant targets in the Ukraine > thus weakening the Russian nuclear capability > thus tempting the American side to launch a disarming nuclear strike against a weakened Russia. The _Pax Atomica_ has its rules. - Adûnâi
