How Close We've Come to Nuclear War

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This is a video about some of the many times we have nearly blown up the world. Head over to
hensonshaving.com/veritasium and enter code 'Veritasium' for 100 free blades with the purchase of a razor. Make sure to add both the razor and the blades to your cart for the code to take effect.
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References:
List of Broken Arrows -- ve42.co/AtomicArchive ve42.co/BrokenArrowsReport
Declassified Goldsboro Report -- ve42.co/Goldsboro
Operation ChromeDome -- ve42.co/OperationChromeDome
CIA website -- ve42.co/CIA
Cataclysmic cargo: The hunt for four missing nuclear bombs after a B-52 crash -- ve42.co/WoPo
THE LAST FLIGHT OF HOBO 28 -- ve42.co/lastflight
The Voice of Larry Messinger is from this documentary -- ve42.co/Messinger
Even Without Detonation, 4 Hydrogen Bombs From ’66 Scar Spanish Village -- ve42.co/NYTPalomares
Decades Later, Sickness Among Airmen After a Hydrogen Bomb Accident -- ve42.co/NYTPalomares2
Picture of ReVelle -- ve42.co/JackReVelle1
Great NPR where the audio of ReVelle is from -- ve42.co/JackReVelle2
CIA Website -- ve42.co/CIA
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Special thanks to our Patreon supporters:
Anton Ragin, Balkrishna Heroor, Bernard McGee, Bill Linder, Burt Humburg, Dave Kircher, Diffbot, Evgeny Skvortsov, Gnare, Jesse Brandsoy, John H. Austin, Jr., john kiehl, Josh Hibschman, Juan Benet, KeyWestr, Lee Redden, Marinus Kuivenhoven, Mario Bottion, MaxPal, Meekay, meg noah, Michael Krugman, Orlando Bassotto, Paul Peijzel, Richard Sundvall, Sam Lutfi, Stephen Wilcox, Tj Steyn, TTST, Ubiquity Ventures
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Directed by Petr Lebedev
Written by Petr Lebedev and Derek Muller
Edited by Peter Nelson
Animated by Fabio Albertelli, Jakub Misiek, Ivy Tello and Mike Radjabov
Filmed by Derek Muller
Produced by Petr Lebedev, Han Evans, and Derek Muller
Additional video/photos supplied by Getty Images and Pond5
Music from Epidemic Sound

Опубликовано:

10 сен 2023

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Комментарии : 4,3 тыс.

@aleksandrvilkov6045 7 месяцев назад

Stanislav Petrov's case is still mind-blowing. Billions of people were saved because of the decision of a single man. If it had not happened, I would not have been born

@ahooogerhuis 7 месяцев назад

...and we Norwegians are seen as a peaceful folk, except when we almost got us all nuked. :p

@Michael-vf2mw 7 месяцев назад

"After this incident, Petrov took an early retirement, and later suffered a nervous breakdown." No f-ing kidding. I can't fathom what it must have been like to have made that kind of call.

@mikejackson2228 7 месяцев назад

This is a good acknowledgement that humans are dumb shits.

@kamilstenzel3929 7 месяцев назад

I like to think that the faulty system explanation was just a later excuse for his superiors and in the moment he thought "Screw it, let's have at least half the planet survive this"

@aurelia8028 7 месяцев назад

oh shut up

@Asnksin 7 месяцев назад

I'm from the small town of Fryazino, a place where Stanislav Petrov lived after the incident. It was great to see you mentioning him! I want to add to what you mentioned, that he had never received any reward for his actions in USSR or Russia, even though he was highly praised in Europe and USA. Quite the opposite, he was moved to another less important position and later had to leave the army, had a mental crisis, and lived a difficult life, being a person who may have singlehandedly saved the world.

@fffUUUUUU 7 месяцев назад

And he died in poverty, google for the pictures.

@dashvash5440 7 месяцев назад

That's really sad. Military leaders who operate with millions of lives in their hands should be able to make rational decisions like Petrov and Vasily. There's always something to be said for following operating procedures but, as we've seen, those can be incredibly otherworldly dangerous when dealing in nukes. Poor guy should have gotten promoted to a higher position of authority or as a diplomat. No clue who he was as a person but if he was anything but terrible he did an amazing thing and deserved better.

@darthnosam3313 7 месяцев назад

Likely because his valor arose through disobedience of a direct order. The soviets couldn’t stand embarrassment

@farmergiles1065 7 месяцев назад

May he rest in peace. His reward is in heaven, for God knows his service. May his memory be eternal! Isn't it interesting that in all these stories, from east and west, it is the subordinates, the lower-ranking, who notice the crucial things, and who stand up for rational behavior. If the decisions had been left to politicians and other powerful people, the penalties would have exceeded that of all other wars ever fought.

@noiJadisCailleach 7 месяцев назад

Face it. He will only be canonized as a hero when countries are treated like cities today. When there is a world government. Probably in 800 years. Give or take.

@paritoshgavali 7 месяцев назад

Hats off to Vasily Arkhipov and Stanislav Petrov for keeping Fallout just a game and not reality

@User-jr7vf 6 месяцев назад

On the other hand, if those were real missiles heading towards Russia, then they would have lost the chance of retaliating and destroying the US before their own destruction happens.

@demonfreeman3018 6 месяцев назад

@@User-jr7vf 5 missiles are not gonna take out Russia’s ability to retaliate.

@User-jr7vf 6 месяцев назад

@@demonfreeman3018 I think they could,if they were nuclear missiles

@hitub3 6 месяцев назад

@@User-jr7vfof course they wouldn’t be enough, have you any idea of the size of Russia? And even it they would land it flat, they would have enough time to fire back from one of the many nuclear subs that can be anywhere, maybe as close from US cost that they could be seen from the beach. There’s no nothing such a winner in a nuclear war.

@70mavgr 6 месяцев назад

@@User-jr7vf it takes less than a minute for the ICBM's to launch. The Russian missiles would be on their way to America anyway.

@bernier42 7 месяцев назад

I had heard of Stanislav Petrov's heroism many times, but this is the first time I heard the tiny little follow-up detail that after dismissing the initial one-off missile alert, his systems told him there were FOUR MORE MISSILES INBOUND and he dismissed those too. Absolutely unreal.

@User-jr7vf 6 месяцев назад

He could have easily being responsible for the complete destruction of his homeland, if those were real missiles heading towards Russia.

@yosefm170 Месяц назад

This must be the hardest decision a human ever had to make, just wow

@MrCheddahcheese 7 месяцев назад

The one man who died in the Rural Arkansas fuel leak issue actually saved many people. He went into an air duct vent, back into the fuel vapour-laden areas to use the computers and shut down as much as he could of the rocket to minimize damage. There was a documentary on it. Can't remember for the life of me the name of it now but worth reading/watching about.

@holycrapchris 7 месяцев назад

The man was David Lee Livingston. The documentary might have been _Command and Control_

@jonslg240 7 месяцев назад

^ The heroes we need 😉 Hope I remember to watch that next time I have a chance

@pashaveres4629 7 месяцев назад

@@holycrapchrisThat is a name, like the two Russians, that we should all know and celebrate.

@ClipsCrazy__ 7 месяцев назад

@holycrapchris @johnslg240 @pashavres4629 @mrcheddahcheese Yea but the guy who dropped the tool should be remembered even more as the biggest idiot ever, who caused that hero’s death, only behind the safety manager of the location who didn’t think of tying safety harnesses to all tools used inside of the silos.

@_.dace._ 7 месяцев назад

considering non western safety standards are so much worse, and we see how badly the US screwed up, I call simulation shenanigans.@@ClipsCrazy__

@ishmaboy 7 месяцев назад

Damn. So basically we all owe our lives to Vasily Arkhipov. I imagine staying strong to your convictions under pressure like that was insanely difficult - especially when your boss is screaming in your face.

@ctrl-del630 7 месяцев назад

We are most likely lucky he was Russian. If it were an American... Oh dear.

@The_TruthisHere 7 месяцев назад

@@ctrl-del630What are you saying? 😂 We all are just as human as our neighbors. Also just wanted to say that everything lies in God's hands so we thank all our existence him.

@leo_the_beaver9966 7 месяцев назад

I’m American and this gave me a good chuckle! Your probably right tho! X|

@jumpander 7 месяцев назад

No, all our lives were almost ended by Vasily Arkhipov.

@badouplus1304 7 месяцев назад

@@jumpander You are kind of right, but as he did not have a "cowboy" mentality, in other words, a "shoot-first-then-ask-questions" mentality, he prevented a catastrophe.

@nickllama5296 7 месяцев назад

Mankind owes a debt to Vasili Arkhipov and Stanislav Petrov that can't even be put into words. May you both rest in peace, and THANK YOU.

@PrimeToolbox 7 месяцев назад

Who would imagine that a fallen socket from a ratchet wrench could potentially cause a 9 megaton explosion.

@cia6543 7 месяцев назад

Who would imagine that a fuel tank is built so weak that it gets punctured by a socket?

@silverbackhayabusa 7 месяцев назад

I'd recommend searching RU-vid for the words "Always Never Sandia". It's a 3-part series by Sandia National Labs on nuke weapon safety. The weapons are extremely safe when it comes to possible accidental detonation.

@sorlag110 7 месяцев назад

Who would imagine a 9 megaton explosion

@athaya2992 7 месяцев назад

idt that explosion was 9 mt, bc the nuclear core (?) didnt explode i think

@mrleenudler 7 месяцев назад

@@athaya2992 It didn't, hence "potential" 🙂

@craftedbyorre 7 месяцев назад

The nuclear bomb animations are ridiculously good. Props to the animators!

@SKETCHERBOY 7 месяцев назад

this stuffs better than nickelodeon ngl

@gonplays5478 7 месяцев назад

@@DontReadMyProfilePicture.104ok

@Litkeen 7 месяцев назад

My tears are saltier than Veritasium's tears.

@Amadioh 7 месяцев назад

YASS

@Litkeen 7 месяцев назад

95% of people in this world are idiots @@2bb-2

@Will-yy7cg 7 месяцев назад

The Cuban Missile Crisis came even closer than the video suggests. The only reason the Soviet submarine required three people's approval was because Arkhipov was the chief of staff of the brigade and he just happened to be on the right submarine.

@ironcito1101 7 месяцев назад

Just imagine if Arkhipov had the flu a week earlier or whatever, the world could've been destroyed. I'm always amazed by those "butterfly effect", "step on a prehistoric bug" moments. Change a tiny detail in the past and you get a totally different outcome.

@User-jr7vf 6 месяцев назад

Given the number of nuclear weapons in the world at that time, chances of the world being completely destroyed were pretty high.

@cz320 6 месяцев назад

@@ironcito1101I’m sure that alternative timeline exists and there’s no RU-vid nor this comment to discuss why it has happened.

@evanmarschand9930 6 месяцев назад

We came SO CLOSE to Nuclear Armageddon.

@kylehill 7 месяцев назад

STAY OFF MY LAWN DEREK

@JchenTheChen 7 месяцев назад

It's nuclear season baby

@DonVigaDeFierro 2 месяца назад

WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE!

@JashanDeepsingh3 10 дней назад

Haha, love your vids and radioactivity.

@LingHwoarang28 7 месяцев назад

I am from southeastern Spain, as a matter of fact, my town is less than 50km away from Palomares. It is always said around here that the hydrogen bomb was found by a local fisherman who lived in my town, he was named Francisco or Paco for short, and would forever be nicknamed "Paco el de la bomba". If those bombs were detonated a huge area would be uninhabitable, but instead now there is a summer electronic music festival in a nearby town called Dreambeach Villaricos, where some of the biggest names in the scene have come to perform. I wonder if they knew about the history and the possible radioactive material that was just 10km away.

@User-jr7vf 6 месяцев назад

In my opinion the US should give you Spaniards compensation for as long as the radioactive threat remains in your territory.

@alexber8838 3 месяца назад

The US should clean the place, as they said they would and never did. But being in colaboration with the Fascist dictator of the country, I could expect no less. I mean, which country has not suffered the US?

@p3t3mit 7 месяцев назад

I'm so grateful for those Stanislav Petro and Vasily Arkhipov. They are heroes. Even if the stories are inaccurate, the incredible pressure on any individual driving something holding nuclear weapons--come to think of it... the fate of the world was granted to so many people--and the fact that nobody pushed the big red button is incredible, especially in the cold-war when there was so much uncertainty.

@Dan1elAndrade 7 месяцев назад

Why are the stories inaccurate?

@p3t3mit 7 месяцев назад

@@Dan1elAndrade I have no idea if they were inaccurate. I know that any story involving a hero is sometimes stretched--so I try not to rest my hat on any account. I'm just saying that even the hint of truth is amazing. Objectively we know that that the world wasn't thrown into WWIII, so we know that there were individuals who were facing incredible pressures like Stanislav and Vasily and managed to keep the world alive.

@inaminayo5327 7 месяцев назад

@@p3t3mit It seems like you're waiting to hear the catch, so here it is (as I understand it): Unfortunately, these "heroic" men were not seen as such by the country they worked for. They were both court marshalled and tried for treason, and even after being cleared they still lost all of their security clearance.

@drizdoh 7 месяцев назад

They are as bigger war hero than any.

@iam6424 7 месяцев назад

@@inaminayo5327 if true , some filmmaker should definitely go for their biopics .😎🙏🏼

@Dr.Fluffles 7 месяцев назад

My favorite near miss is the one where someone mistook a bear scaling a fence for a person in Wisconsin, raised the alarm, the alarm turned out to be miswired and went directly to telling the airbase to scramble and launch, then one guy floored it to stop the jets from taking off because of a phone call, as once the jets took off they were to go radio silent.

@Martineski 7 месяцев назад

Sheeeesh, that's a crazy chain of events.

@Imthefake 7 месяцев назад

can't they still receive messages once they go radio silent?

@adriendebosse6941 7 месяцев назад

I looked a couple weeks ago at all the near misses in the french wikipedia. There's a similar event in the french nuclear forces in the 60ies, where a false alarm triggered a mirage F4 (nuclear supersonic bomber) to strike the USSR. When he got radioed to come back, nothing happened, as the procedure was to shut off radio. The pilot came back for one specific reason, the refueler plane was absent at the refueling point, which promped him to come back.

@MGZetta 7 месяцев назад

Is there a reason jets go radio silent? Or it's just something to spice up your story?

@MGZetta 7 месяцев назад

@@adriendebosse6941 What is the reason for radio silence? That seems way too reckless to me. All you got is 5 minutes of take off time and if you can't call it off within that time world is ending. Lol.

@TasosKtd 7 месяцев назад

Derek, you are making a change. With every video, in a different domain, contributing to making the world a better place in your own special way. I extend my most sincere congratulations!

@lancepeterson7997 7 месяцев назад

My great-grandfather was the first man put in charge of the US nuclear arms. I haven’t watched the entire video yet if you might mention it, but late in his career a live nuclear weapon was lost near Japan, and he was sent undercover to locate the bomb and determine whether or not it had been found by the Japanese or not. It was eventually found 80 miles offshore in deep mud and was not recovered. (To my knowledge)

@HerbertTowers 7 месяцев назад

GREAT GRANDFATHER? How quickly does your family reproduce?

@Bartekwis 7 месяцев назад

So in theory somewhere near Japan there is buried live nuclear bomb? *Horrifying*

@yuvrajmishra1873 7 месяцев назад

casually dropping classified information.

@ernestkhalimov9368 7 месяцев назад

@@yuvrajmishra1873it's all declassified now. you can check US national archive online or offline if you go there. people call it the golden treasury for thrill seekers in books.

@user-yq6cm5ku4n 6 месяцев назад

Now we're waiting for the CIA to break into our home.

@KougaJ7 7 месяцев назад

More than 1 "broken arrow" per year between 1950 and 1980? That's just incredibly insane!

@KougaJ7 7 месяцев назад

Besides, what if a terrorist group gets their hands on one of these missing nuclear bombs?

@kristoffer3000 7 месяцев назад

@@KougaJ7 wdym, the US has nukes and is the biggest exporter of terrorism globally by a gigantic margin

@AlexH4774 7 месяцев назад

I assume most of them lie deep in the Pacific

@Dr.Fluffles 7 месяцев назад

Many of the bombs have only a couple of decades of potential use before they degrade beyond risk from their own radiation. Iirc we are passed the point for the missing ones, but I'd have too look into it again.@@KougaJ7

@alwaysdisputin9930 7 месяцев назад

Homer Simpson had a sign "Days since the last nuclear accident .... 3 days"

@Kishan18 7 месяцев назад

You know your life is going good when Veritasium uploads four videos in the span of less than 2 months

@gepvpr 7 месяцев назад

Same

@ukleth 7 месяцев назад

2 of them talk about Nuke

@gabyfeza 7 месяцев назад

You know it's good when your body has not been vaporized by a nuclear explosion 😅

@AndrewBrowner 7 месяцев назад

this is a pretty sad comment.. how it got so many upvotes is beyond me.. its good content but go outside my guy.

@gepvpr 7 месяцев назад

@@AndrewBrowner you talking like you know what this guy does in his day to day 😂 what the

@Tgolden069 7 месяцев назад

Probably the best educational content on YT. Have been for years now. Still getting better.

@gargoyl46 7 месяцев назад

Love your channel and this video! Just a quick feedback - The border referenced a few times (1:42, 10:54), is not that the border of Soviet Union. Back then that was Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was neither part of Soviet Union nor Warsaw pact. Warsaw pact borders were relatively close, but Soviet Union border was not that close as mentioned in the video.

@mr0big 7 месяцев назад

this mistake pissed me up as well :)

@tinyawka 6 месяцев назад

For an American person, everything beyond NATO countries was Soviet Union

@BenDRobinson 4 месяца назад

Yeah I noticed the discrepancy between the narration and what was being shown on the map - well short of Soviet territory.

@YourD3estinY 4 месяца назад

@@tinyawka You just called every American ignorant. 😁

@jeffspaulding9834 3 месяца назад

@@YourD3estinY In a way, he/she is right. It's not like we were taught much about things on the other side of the iron curtain in school. This was quite intentional - it's one thing to fight against an enemy, but communism is an idea and it's hard to fight ideas once they catch hold. Today the idea of people rising up and throwing off our capitalist overlords seems unrealistic at best, but it was a genuine concern back in the day. So most of us who grew up in that era basically learned about western Europe but everything east of West Germany was basically "the Soviet Union." I mean, sure there were different countries there, but it was the USSR calling the shots so it didn't really matter. It's come to bite us in the ass in the end though. The word "socialism" has such a bad connotation here that we can't even get decent health care.

@Erik_The_Viking 7 месяцев назад

The scary part is these are the incidents that we know about. Edit: Glad you brought up Vasily Arkhipov - he literally saved the world. The PBS special "Secrets of the Dead" about him was especially good.

@eduardonegrao8364 7 месяцев назад

Arguably I would say he was the most important man in the XX century

@aleeph4919 7 месяцев назад

@@eduardonegrao8364 And the US and Russian governments are the least important in the XX century for creating the scenario? Vasily Arkhipov, isn't a hero. We have 2* parties who are the ones who are to blame for the constant near death of millions.

@Goreuncle 7 месяцев назад

@@maskettaman1488 You're mistaking Arkhipov with Petrov. Arkhipov was a submarine flotilla commander, he definitely had the authority to launch that T5 torpedo they had onboard. What Derek and most people around here don't seem to realize is that a T5 torpedo was just a torpedo with a nuclear warhead, it wasn't made to attack cities and kill thousands... it was meant to sink large warships and other submarines, like any other torpedo... it was not a first strike weapon by any stretch of the imagination.

@Nah_I_Would_Plummet 7 месяцев назад

@@aleeph4919 Yes, he's a hero unless you deny history.

@cosmiclightning4723 7 месяцев назад

Seen a bunch of these near miss stories before. This should be part of every high schooler's education. Understanding nuclear weapons is a civic duty.

@warrenarnold 7 месяцев назад

Problem is We are letting mad people run this world

@commentfreely5443 7 месяцев назад

with democrats they will never be happy till they nuke themselves

@Gakulon 7 месяцев назад

@@nytro8027 ?

@Mystery-pd6jc 7 месяцев назад

@@nytro8027 it...went...well...?

@nickxenix 7 месяцев назад

@@nytro8027 everyone would explode. 😂

@CaseyW491 7 месяцев назад

Veritasium is so well executed in every way. Most importantly to me is when it comes to clarity, context and accuracy of information. There's nothing left for the viewer to be unsure about or any ambiguity that's confusing. It's a dying art. Some would argue a dead art.

@robertgregory1770 7 месяцев назад

Generally agree. One small quibble: at 4:45 I'm sure there weren't 29 US Army ships involved in the search. Pretty sure they were US Navy 😅

@12SA472012 6 месяцев назад

My god! Heard a lot about your channel. You did so much of detailed research and such superb animations. Hats off to you. Your channel is mind-blowing.

@dotfortun 7 месяцев назад

The story of how the missing bomb off of Spain was found is incredibly cool. The naval scientist John P Craven worked on finding both that bomb and the USS Thresher using Bayesian search theory, one of the techniques used while searching for the remains of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. edit: I got Berenstain Beared, and for some reason thought that MH370 was found. It was not.

@H3X4G0N 7 месяцев назад

Dang, I gotta read more of that stuff, cool!

@LibertyDankmeme 7 месяцев назад

they never found flight 370 tho ...

@clorox1676 7 месяцев назад

Another cool fact is that at that time Spain was researching to develop its own nuclear weapons (with the support of France) but the project was stuck, when the leading scientist had access to the H bomb in Palomares he gather enough information about the detonation mechanism to continue to develop the project. The US pressured the Spanish goverment to give up and gave them blueprints for a high powered conventional bomb in exchange of abandoning the project.

@H3X4G0N 7 месяцев назад

@@thehen101 yo geez, chill my guy

@michaelhowell2326 7 месяцев назад

When did they find 370?

@MichaelEMJAYARE 7 месяцев назад

Not only is it insane that we’ve lost these things, its nuts that we just had these bombs flying around fuggin’ EVERYWHERE.

@J_F_G 7 месяцев назад

Politicians, dude. Those damn politicians.

@Stierenkloot 7 месяцев назад

These things are still everywhere on hidden submarines

@paritoshgavali 7 месяцев назад

@@Stierenkloot if some accident happens in a sub it might be in ocean middle of nowhere.. but image 4 H-bombs flying on head, that can land anywhere ☠

@michalmaixner3318 7 месяцев назад

@@J_F_G AFAIK it was physicists and mathematicians who were working on these policies. von Newmann in particular is pretty famous for his role in this.

@luvshak3095 7 месяцев назад

Yeah. It's called MAD or "Mutually Assured Destruction." I know some people like to paint Communists as "for the people" egalitarians but trust me, as someone who lived during the last half of the Cold War, they are pure evil. I know. I know. It's the entitled younger generations who have lived as the US being the sole superpower who think America is evil but that's the viewpoint of the entitled and weak.

@markcampanelli 7 месяцев назад

Thank you so much for using your popular channel to cover this important topic that has been covered up (at worst) or swept under the rug (at best) for so many decades.

@ZZ-sn7li 7 месяцев назад

This channel is a true gem in my subscriptions list!

@joshuacornelius25 7 месяцев назад

Now we need a Veritasium episode on the best methods for reducing anxiety.😨

@NocturnalCoder 7 месяцев назад

did you mean to say "introducing anxiety"?

@joshuacornelius25 7 месяцев назад

@@NocturnalCoder lol.... That's what this episode's alternate title should be

@widodoakrom3938 7 месяцев назад

Agreed

@JG-mp5nb 7 месяцев назад

Shaving can reduce anxiety.

@jdogsful 7 месяцев назад

you just need to realize that you have been manipulated by fear, nuke videos are propaganda and just regular explosives, nukes dont exist and the only reason nuclear war has not occurred is simply because they dont exist. russia, north korea, iran are not a threat to the US military. now you can sleep easy like the rest of us that know the truth.

@magnusbjarnisk 7 месяцев назад

Not only was Vasili Arkhipov a man who prevented nuclear Armageddon, he wasnt even part of the crew. Any other mission, he wouldn't have been there. Any other mission, it would have only needed 2 men to turn the key. But because he was an executive officer, the captain and political officer needed his approval as well. He was incredibly courageous in that single moment. A moment between life and annihilation. I doubt most people would be able to say no in that situation. Stanislav Petrov is another incredibly brave man.

@littlefrank90 7 месяцев назад

I mean the case was basically "we may be about to be hit by nuclear bombs, should we respond by firing nuclear bombs?" and the guy said "no". What if they were indeed about to be hit by nuclear bombs and the guy did say "no"? Don't know how to express this, but I feel like launching nuclear weapons, with or without the excuse of responding to an attack is always a loss for everyone involved, even for the attacker. I'm way oversimplifying this, but saying "no" to a nuclear bomb launch would seem pretty straight forward.

@thetangaledbug7670 7 месяцев назад

There's just simply no wrapping your head around that 😅

@Gakulon 7 месяцев назад

@@littlefrank90 I agree. Even when faced with a nuclear strike, I can see exactly zero reason why you would retaliate except to be a monster and kill as many innocent lives as possible before you die. No different than a serial murderer in that case

@TejusKusur 5 месяцев назад

@@Gakulon the entire reason for operation Chrome Dome was to retaliate almost immediately. So there was a lot of incentive even for Petrov to act just like how the Americans would in the exact same situation. It's not that he would be a monster if he had said yes, but the entire setup from both the US and USSR which had called for it

@sibusisomazibuko9936 7 месяцев назад

Ive learnt so much in the few weeks discovering this channel than i have in recent months..very telling. Good job

@varunnikam 6 месяцев назад

I got tears in my eyes at the end of the video. it was wonderful and makes us greatful for the contributions of Vasili Arkhipov and Stanislav Petrov that can't even be put into words.

@ZlejChleba 7 месяцев назад

Stanislav Petrov should have a statue with the full story in the capitol of every country that has a nuclear arsenal. Heck, in every capitol city, because there probably hasn't been a person in the history whose actions saved the world from ending.

@seandeshields6759 7 месяцев назад

Been sayin this for years

@seandeshields6759 7 месяцев назад

Vasili arkopov too

@ZlejChleba 7 месяцев назад

@@seandeshields6759 absolutely!

@jasper4849 7 месяцев назад

Petrov did an excellent job during the incident. But the Soviet Union would not have launched a retaliatory strike on warning from a satellite, even if it was believed to be true.

@rashionalism 7 месяцев назад

The Palomares incident is something my dad told me about when I was a kid. He must've been about six or so and every summer he went to a town about 30 kms away. According to him, the nuke was found thanks to a local fisherman and, apparently, the boats had to follow the fisherman, who couldn't give them any indications, since he sailed by feel, so what he did was he just sailed the way he had on the day he saw the bomb fall at the same speed. Followed by a couple American ships, according to legend, in a little fishing boat

@BiStupidOfficial 7 месяцев назад

This is one of the most valuable video on RU-vid and Internet. This deserves to billion views.

@psychoprosthetic 7 месяцев назад

Thank you for saying this. For the sake of our sanity we forget most of the time, but it is an horrific issue.

@nathananvain8879 7 месяцев назад

How SEAMLESSLY you finished talking about atomic bombs and how we could all die any moment and then GLEEFULLY started talking about shaving. A real rollercoaster of emotions, Derek.

@Ys_Guy 7 месяцев назад

close shave😉

@aleeph4919 7 месяцев назад

As Capitalistic as it get. Even the dooms day info video has a commercial. Buy before you die

@emreyurtseven23 7 месяцев назад

@@aleeph4919 these videos don't make themselves though...

@infinitemonkey917 7 месяцев назад

Would you prefer it if the sponsor offered doomsday / prepper supplies to his audience?

@alshahriar6230 7 месяцев назад

@@aleeph4919alrighty than give me your money , I ain't giving you anything

@nahommerk9493 7 месяцев назад

There should be statues commemorating the Russian officers who kept their calm and thought critically in literally THE most stressful situation anyone can be in!! They are not just national heroes, they are global heroes! 👏👏

@bozhijak 7 месяцев назад

True. But their own governments threw them under the bus for not starting armageddon.

@cheesebusiness 7 месяцев назад

What you know is just the tip of the iceberg

@overtimeseed 7 месяцев назад

@@cheesebusinessEnlighten us

@cheesebusiness 7 месяцев назад

@@overtimeseed do I look like a person who knows the whole iceberg?

@overtimeseed 7 месяцев назад

@@cheesebusiness Certainly not much to look at I'll give you that much

@troybaxter 7 месяцев назад

On thay Goldsboro incident, the accidental exposion was much closer than you made it seem. Both bombs had 3 of their 4 switches armed, and they were starting to conduct the arming sequence. The scarier part in this incident is that the switch esin the bombs that didn't activate were different between the two. So for two entirely separate reasons, both bombs didn't detonate.

@june5877 6 месяцев назад

I love that you phrased these incidents as what they all were - lucky. The biggest mistake we could ever make is seeing this as proof that we can handle these weapons rather than proof they should never have existed to begin with.

@dalleth 7 месяцев назад

Not to discount your premise - which I agree with. But you did gloss over a couple of points. Admirable points, if you ask me. The teams that developed these weapons not only did amazing work to make them go boom, but added redundancy after redundancy to make sure they didn't go off. The fact that dozen of mishaps have happened and on both sides, none went to full detonation should be a solid gold star for the engineers and scientists that tried their very best to rein in the madness that they were tasked with. And not to mention the people that stand between overwhelming death, and the full use of it, like Vasily Arkhipov. Countless analysts and technicians that are quite literally the salvation of a technology that just wants to do harm.

@Maxjoker98 7 месяцев назад

I'd like to mention that for example the "unsymmetrical explosion safety" isn't all that effective, and could still lead to a fizzle(nuclear reaction with less than expected yield) - still a nuclear explosion, just not *as* large as a "full" one. All explosives can only be made so safe - At some point, you *have* to have a small amount of energy trigger a large one. And most of the dangers discussed in the video originate from the people - Even a perfectly accident-safe bomb should explode when commanded, and we unfortunately can't engineer better humans to eliminate this failure mode.

@Bill_Woo 7 месяцев назад

Correct. And that Petrov "saved millions of lives" is simply incorrect. He did not have launch authority. The agency above him that he did not inform of a strike detection - did not have launch authority. THEIR superiors did not have launch authority. There were numerous levels above him that would be required. And protocol, one of which was believed to be *proof of detonation* before M.A.D. Obviously there never was proof nor implication of detonation. Petrov was great. He did what great men do. Which was simply be rational, with a new-ish relatively untested detection system. To say that he saved the world by not being irrational, AND due to the layer above him to not be irrational, AND due to the layer above that, AND due to the layer above that, is story telling, irresponsibly paraded as "history".

@fritzwalter1112 7 месяцев назад

Airplanes are also built to incredible safety standards with layers and layers of redundancy and checks. Yet there are still planes falling from the sky from time to time.

@SlipperyTeeth 7 месяцев назад

Maybe you know more than me, but the incidents mentioned in the video seem to have the laws of physics responsible for not going nuclear. It is (fortunately) very hard to create a nuclear explosion. The fact that they didn't go off doesn't seem like intentional design - just that it's hard enough to get them to go off in ideal circumstances. Still we may be unlucky.

@Maxjoker98 7 месяцев назад

@@SlipperyTeeth See also Operation Plumbbob, where the goal was to test safety(among a lot of other things). The Pascal-A test for example was an asymmetrical explosion with an expected yield

@goodisgoog 7 месяцев назад

It's always interesting when you look into the declining numbers of nuclear weapons in the world. The old tech is decommissioned because those 5 nukes can now be achieved with a single, smaller one. So while we do technically have less nuclear weapons, it's partly because the newer, more powerful weapons made the old ones obsolete.

@swfsql 7 месяцев назад

Yeah, their aggregated potential for doomsday probably still increased manifold.

@ismaeljuhoor6743 7 месяцев назад

My thought exactly

@micha-ix1iy 7 месяцев назад

Yes, i'm also curious. There real metric should be "nuclear firepower" (in kT TNT or sth). Not "count of missiles"

@Spencergolde 7 месяцев назад

Older weapons are also primarily decommissioned because the tritium in the fusion warhead has a relatively short half-life of 12.3 years. They intentionally add a huge excess of tritium during production, but after several decades, the amount decays to a low enough concentration to risk a misfire in the core, so the whole thing has to be taken apart.

@jesusramirezromo2037 7 месяцев назад

Not really, newer nukes have less fallout, and smaller precise blasts They are less powerful per say

@Fres-no 7 месяцев назад

This is the Video of the year! Thank you...seriously!

@PaulrHobson 7 месяцев назад

I'm so glad you took this firm stance, Derek. Thanks for more great content. Veritasium is the best educational channel around, youtube or not.

@anno_nym 7 месяцев назад

"Humanity invented the nuclear bomb. No mouse in the world would think of building a mousetrap." - Albert Einstein

@robertwilloughby8050 7 месяцев назад

"I have made nuclear weapons possible and an acoustic fridge. I am far more proud of the acoustic fridge." - Also Albert Einstein.

@flrn84791 7 месяцев назад

This definitely blew my mind, I had no idea there had been so many accidents over the time of the cold war... This is so incredibly difficult to believe that people actually authorized all that.

@oXogon80 7 месяцев назад

Hopefully with the new cold war we can have many more such situations.

@theOG2109 7 месяцев назад

Americans... and they 'smart' ideas

@User-jr7vf 6 месяцев назад

@@oXogon80why would you want that?

@marcoperin2135 6 месяцев назад

Pun intended?

@flrn84791 6 месяцев назад

@@marcoperin2135 Definitely not, just realized 😂

@MyNameIsCalledLikeMe 7 месяцев назад

thank you for all your educational videos, Veritasium!

@Davy_Great 5 дней назад

This is such a cool story. My grandfather was stationed in Spain and went out in the search party looking for it. Awesome video

@Lizlodude 7 месяцев назад

On the one hand, it's awesome that Petrov and Arkhipov both almost single-handedly prevented the destruction of at least 2 continents. On the other hand, can we _please_ stop putting ourselves in situations where the destruction of 2 continents is even an option? Please?

@Ducktility 7 месяцев назад

I have noted your complaint. I'll pass on the word to the president.

@crf80fdarkdays 7 месяцев назад

я принял к сведению вашу жалобу. Я передам слово президенту.

@thatprogramer 7 месяцев назад

@craftedbyorre 7 месяцев назад

I’m not sure if I should be shocked and surprised of the haphazard handling of nuclear weapons, or just expect it.

@Kitt_the_Katt 7 месяцев назад

If you're not sure which one to be, that kind of tells you what your answer should be

@JCWren 7 месяцев назад

I disagree with the word "haphazard". There are processes in place for all the contingencies that they've imagined. That's not to say they've imagined every conceivable event, however. It looks "haphazard" because we're on the outside and we can make those armchair assessments on topics we know little about. Given the cost of aircraft and the weapons themselves, no one just says "Ah, yeah, we just dunked a B-52 with a load of multi-megaton warheads. Oh well, screw it, we'll worry about it later". And honestly, I'm more concerned about whackos like Kim Jong Un and his cohorts than I am about the Russians starting world war 3. The Russians are smart enough to know the consequences of their actions. KJU is a wildcard and may well press the button out of spite. I'm pretty confident that every nuclear nation is more worried about his ilk than anything else.

@EnkiduShamesh 7 месяцев назад

@@JCWren KJU isn't a wacko, he's an authoritarian dictator. His actions are completely rational from his position. No nuclear armed nation has ever been invaded, which makes nukes desirable to any country fearful of regime change imposed from without. He's a monster, but he isn't crazy. All of the saber rattling they do is deliberate (and often motivated by food shortages with the aim of coercing international aid). It reminds me of the "madman" strategy during the cold war, where the US deliberately fostered the perception that the US was reckless and willing to blow up the world. Nukes aren't any good as a deterrent if no one believes that you will use them.

@weegaz22 7 месяцев назад

@@JCWren I think Kim likes his rich cushy life too much and will throw a whole load of bluster around with some sabre rattling thrown in as an attempt to look strong to his own people. But right now I bet he's looking at big strong Russia coming begging for ancient stocks of unserviced scrap lying in North Korean armouries since the 60's cos Big Vladdy the baddie is now into day 565 of his 3 day war ...and I bet he's thinking that hanging out with Denis Rodmans probably more fun than kicking s*** off and sitting in a bunker for a couple of years at the end of a huge long table talking to your own generals that are probably plotting your inevitably close death. But then we seem to be heading towards lots of nations having what can only be described as cartoonish dictators popping up similar to what was around with WW2....creating a perfect stoichiometric mix for a really big bang to kick off WW3

@kristoffer3000 7 месяцев назад

@@EnkiduShamesh You're quite right about a lot of things but KJU is far from a crazy dictator, that's just the ludicrous propaganda we're fed here in the West, he's not even the head of state in the DPRK lol Also the US nearly nuked Korea and Vietnam so they are actually that reckless madman.

@danielabetts 7 месяцев назад

Thank you for making this video.

@eliasabihaidar3050 4 месяца назад

Always a great channel thank you for existing

@synonys 7 месяцев назад

13:40 AKA was interrogated(tortured) mercilessly and made to step down or risk the death of himself and his family.

@Joshehh 7 месяцев назад

what a day to post this video 💀💀💀

@travisthree11 7 месяцев назад

For real, this guy

@MoMo-ul6uk 7 месяцев назад

Minor, 9/11 is insignificant to the rest of the world.

@Calstar_ 7 месяцев назад

why’s that

@Joshehh 7 месяцев назад

@@Calstar_sept 11

@KonstantinTrufanov 7 месяцев назад

Thank you for your awesome work, love your vids!

@acanuck1679 7 месяцев назад

Thank you for this timely and chilling reminder about humanity's vulnerability to an accidental nuclear war.

@Kedai610 7 месяцев назад

I love how the first story, describing bombs falling from a plane after taking off from North Carolina that had a fuel mishap, was a DIFFERENT near miss than the Goldsboro incident I was expecting!

@MattH-wg7ou 7 месяцев назад

Currently living in GBoro...what were you expecting? Genuinely curious.

@rockradstone 7 месяцев назад

@@MattH-wg7ou When NC was mentioned I thought it would be the GBoro story. Learned something! 😏 There are so many of these incidents. Madness.

@ntl5983 7 месяцев назад

@@MattH-wg7ouThis... 5:27

@MattH-wg7ou 7 месяцев назад

@@ntl5983 oh yea, thats crazy that TWO B52 Broken Arrows have taken off from Goldsboro!

@Stoney_Snark 7 месяцев назад

I was surprised you didn’t mention the close call during exercise Able Archer in 1983. I was a part of Able Archer and worked in the HQ of the 59th Ordnance Brigade. This exercise was suspected by Russia to be a cover for a nuclear attack by the US. There are a few videos about this, and even a German television series based on Able Archer, “Deutchland ‘83”.

@artyb27 7 месяцев назад

Perhaps the reason he didn't mention it was because it's already been adequately covered elsewhere. It wouldn't have been as interesting a video if it was just a listicle of the most famous close calls.

@jesusramirezromo2037 7 месяцев назад

Honestly, Deutschland 83 is really underated, Same with 86 and 89

@Stoney_Snark 7 месяцев назад

@@jesusramirezromo2037 , agree about ‘86, I still need to watch ‘89. I was there ‘82-‘84 and worked on the Pershing II deployment.

@Stoney_Snark 7 месяцев назад

@@artyb27 , the title of the video is “All The Times……….”

@turtle2720 7 месяцев назад

1983 was an interesting year. Soviets shot down a passenger jet, Stanislav Petrov's call to not launch, and then Able Archer.

@chenqin415 7 месяцев назад

One can expect a performer to walk a tightrope for 30 minutes in reasonable safety. But it is insanity to expect the performer to walk the tightrope continuously for years. We had been extremely lucky.

@charlesmeyers6693 7 месяцев назад

15:05 That segue into the ad was brilliant 🤣🏆

@SirTomFoolery 7 месяцев назад

My grandpa walked uphill both ways with nuclear bombs dropping left and right just to get to school.

@michaelhowell2326 7 месяцев назад

You're Japanese?

@johnwilson4120 7 месяцев назад

In 1959 I joined the Canadian Airforce Reserve and was trained as a Fighter Control radar Operator (Fighter COP) watching for Russian bombers coming over the Arctic. I was a teenager having a whale of a time . Only looking back did I realize how many time we came within a whisker of blowing each other up. Then in 1962 along came the Cuban missile crisis and with the help of Commander Arkipov we thought we had dodged the bullet ... again. The assumption was that the Russian missiles in Cuba were not yet operational. With the collapse of the Soviet Union the world got access to formerly classified Soviet documents ... that clearly indicated there were operational missiles in Cuba. Had the Russian sub fired that missile heaven only knows how much of the east coast of the US would have been reduced to radioactive glass let alone how much of the world we know would still be here.

@riflebird4842 7 месяцев назад

Thanks veritasium, this is eye opening

@ljk20001 2 месяца назад

What's even more entertaining abt this video is that it reminds of some past memorable Hollywood flicks.

@PsychoSavager289 7 месяцев назад

The story of Vasily Arkhipov gives me shivers every time I hear it. If a different man had been on the submarine - or if Arkhipov had cowed to his fellow commanders - none of us would be here.

@wurfyy 7 месяцев назад

Most of us would be here. At no point has humanity ever had enough nukes to kill every human. Even if they were launched in a coordinated manner with the sole purpose of killing as many people as possible - and that wouldn't be the case. Most of them would be aimed at other nukes. A huge number of nukes would be destroyed without ever getting used. A relatively small fraction would be aimed at high value military targets and a few would be aimed at the biggest population centers. Lots of people would die, for sure. There would be a lot of fallout and it probably would strongly affect weather patterns. But most of humanity wouldn't see a single nuclear explosion and many would hardly even feel affected. In the long term, most likely the superpowers that be would be less super afterwards but I'm not even convinced they'd cease to be superpowers altogether. Nuclear bombs are overhyped - as are the dangers of anything else nuclear, like nuclear power generation. It's obviously great that we never had a nuclear war, and if we'd had one, the world would be a drastically different place today - but most of us would still be here.

@pokejinwwi 7 месяцев назад

@@wurfyywhat about hydrogen bombs

@Cube_Box 7 месяцев назад

@@wurfyy well what you mean to say is that humanity would not go extinct BUT it's true, none of us would be here as history would change too much and different people would've been born instead of us. I believe that's what he meant

@wurfyy 7 месяцев назад

@@pokejinwwi Doesn't affect the equation in any way.

@wurfyy 7 месяцев назад

@@Cube_Box That's a ridiculous argument to make. By that logic we should all be grateful for both world wars because without them other people would have been born instead of us.

@jgal-km1ds 7 месяцев назад

My basic training instructor was walking a security perimeter around the silo in Arkansas when it blew up. He spent 6 months in the military hospital and changed jobs after that.

@Amadeus_Flyfishing 7 месяцев назад

I did not know any of this, thank you for educating us. We humans seem to like to simply look away from such enormous problems.

@narutokunn 7 месяцев назад

Thankyou Vasily Arkhipov. From millions and billions 🙏

@narutokunn 7 месяцев назад

And thankyou Stanislav Petrov. Again, from millions and billions 🙏

@Thetarget1 7 месяцев назад

The problem with relying on luck, is that we need to be lucky every time... We can only be unlucky once.

@Kwauhn. 7 месяцев назад

4:37 They just don't do journalism like they used to these days 😂

@Doomed667 7 месяцев назад

Great content as always

@joshuapatrick682 5 месяцев назад

Thank you Vasili Arhkipov!

@urieaaron 7 месяцев назад

I have found no record of it on the internet but in1974 or early 1975 in the middle of the night, while I was stationed in Minot ND, the officers in control of the missiles were ordered to complete their preparations to launch and the B-52s began to roll out to the flightline. We were literally one more turn of a switch from the end of the world. From what we were told, the Russians had tested two of their missiles at the same time and our computers interpreted that as a first strike, not a test. I assume they changed the code after that. Rumor had it that some of the officers had what we now call PTSD because of this incident.

@peelysl 7 месяцев назад

Either you are making this up, or you are releasing classified information online

@urieaaron 7 месяцев назад

@@peelysl It has been 50 years and no one told us we had to keep this secret. Are you some kind of expert on the subject or a math teacher?

@Disorder2312 7 месяцев назад

Wasn't it always called PTSD?

@KaitouKaiju 7 месяцев назад

@@Disorder2312PTSD has gone by many names from shell shock to battle fatigue

@urieaaron 7 месяцев назад

@@Disorder2312 I didn't know so I asked Bard. The term "posttraumatic stress disorder" (PTSD) was first used in the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III) published by the American Psychiatric Association in 1980. However, the symptoms of PTSD have been recognized for centuries, and it has been known by many different names over time. In the First World War, it was called "shell shock" because it was thought to be caused by the concussive force of exploding shells. In the Second World War, it was called "battle fatigue" or "operational exhaustion." And in the Vietnam War, it was called "post-Vietnam syndrome."

@MasterHigure 7 месяцев назад

7:50 This operation is also the origin of the term "Glomar response", which refers to a "neither confirm nor deny" response to a request for information (in particular FOIA requests in the US). When asked for details of this operation and whether it was connected to the submarine by journalist , the response was "We can neither confirm nor deny the existence of the information requested but, hypothetically, if such data were to exist, the subject matter would be classified, and could not be disclosed."

@ericsaulnier7044 7 месяцев назад

Kudos to those safety Engineers making those triggers so robust.

@simoncederqvist Месяц назад

For the first time in my life I actually bought a product based on a youtuber recommendation and I've been using the Henson razor for about half a year now. It does cause more skin irritation than a normal 4 or 5 blade quality razor. It is also incredibly expensive, but that's a one-time cost. It's the only razor I'll ever need and the blades are cheap so I think it was well worth it and I'm sticking to it. So yes, I'll give it five stars but I'm not sure it's so different from any other old razors out there.

@-Chickenwingfreak- 7 месяцев назад

Love how a video can go in 1 sec from blowing up the world to shaving

@gaaraofddarkness 7 месяцев назад

Capitalism yo..

@dipling.pitzler7650 7 месяцев назад

The connecting link was that both were a close shave! LOL

@babilon6097 7 месяцев назад

Saving/shaving... so easy to confuse.

@sabawoonhewaddoost8889 7 месяцев назад

To avoid nuclear disaster, you have to just shave 🪒 your face. 😉

@alwaysdisputin9930 7 месяцев назад

The connecting link is that your facial hairs are fucked either way

@naomi-g 7 месяцев назад

A great book about this is "Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety" by Eric Schlosser. Great audiobook too!

@Samir12357 7 месяцев назад

Sounds great I would love to read or listen it.. Is this available for free?? May be on RU-vid or livrobox.... ( I am broke that too in economical poor country)

@rakeshchowdhury202 7 месяцев назад

@@Samir12357Check 1lib or Google Podcast

@rakeshchowdhury202 7 месяцев назад

Ok there's a ton of great content. Thanks for the title. Podcasts are epic

@jamesmisener3006 6 месяцев назад

The Bearded One selling Razors didn't click in until the end. Which means your a mean pitchman as well! The topic is so deep i cant comment without going on and on. Cheers 🇨🇦

@duggydo 7 месяцев назад

Probably your best video ever. The truth is too often hidden from us.

@TerenceClark 7 месяцев назад

The Titan II silo story really hits close to home for me. My dad was a mechanic in just that type of silo during the Vietnam War era. His was just outside of Tucson, AZ, fairly close to the Titan Missile Museum (but not that specific silo). To my knowledge he never had any tool mishaps, and certainly nothing of the magnitude of the incident in the video. But I've thought a lot about how intense of a job that must have been, turning a wrench just a few feet from a rocket the size of a small building, tipped with one of the most destructive weapons ever devised. And the guys he ate lunch with would be the ones to turn keys and push buttons in the first salvos of WWIII, had everything gone terribly sideways. I never found out if he was one of the two people needed to open up the safe with the launch keys.

@paradox9551 7 месяцев назад

saluton!

@Adamborries 7 месяцев назад

"Hey, do you not have enough to be anxious about in the world? Watch this." Seriously, my mouth was hanging open for this entire video. Holy crap.

@Seba5453 2 месяца назад

7:27 I've been told storys about this since i was a little kid, my grandfather was one of the first people on sight when that happened He was working an ordinary shift sunday, January 21, 1968. He was driving out to check up on a generator near J site at the base, when he was about 2 miles from J site he said that everything around him became lit up, and it was almost like day for a couple of seconds. First he thought a steam boiler which was next to "Hangar 2" had exploded and maybe also exploded the 25.000 gallons diesel oil that was next to the steam boiler. So he turned around as fast as he could, but after only what he describes as minutes, the radio called and said that a B-52 had crash-landed, and everyone on shift had to go there asap to see what happened and look for survivors. And as the story in the video also says, 6 out of 7 crewmembers survived, but the one that did not, died because of his parachute set on fire, as he jumped out of the plane. My grandfather is still alive and somewhat well, so if you have any questions feel free to ask them, i will try to answer them, when i go to visit him next time

@nanyingjia1747 22 дня назад

Nicely done!

@jacobstory8895 7 месяцев назад

"It's on arm." The scariest three words imaginable when dealing with a damaged hydrogen bomb.

@mattpresto5574 7 месяцев назад

My Grandpa was a Major in the Airforce, he flew B52s in operation Chrome Dome. He unfortunately died the year I was born and never really talked about his 200+ missions he flew. My Grandmother says she still remembers how scary those times where, the worst was when Kennedy was assassinated, my Grandpa was actually in the air on mission at the time so she had no contact with him, she had 3 children at the time and thought we where in WW3!

@flexinclouds 7 месяцев назад

Damn. What a time to be alive. That must've been a humbling job doing those nonstop flights.

@warrenarnold 7 месяцев назад

@@flexincloudsthey chose old men as they never used to sleep

@user-wb4yq2hb2o 7 месяцев назад

Most likely the dumbest thing I've heard today - ugh @@warrenarnold

@Jezee213 6 месяцев назад

Omg, well he's a hero in my books.

@user-wb4yq2hb2o 6 месяцев назад

@@Jezee213 people have to sleep - duh

@mrbfros454 7 месяцев назад

Excellent video, thank you!

@user-ro2ln4qq4i 17 дней назад

Lately I've been leaning towards the philosophy in life that bad things can/will happen and life is short so I should do what I want. I think this just pushed me over the edge.

@alasad3136 7 месяцев назад

The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist-deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five. CARL SAGAN

@Shurikvav 7 месяцев назад

How is it possible to keep creating such exceptional content for so many years!? Thank you making RU-vid useful!

@vagkalosynakis 7 месяцев назад

While I do agree Veritasium content is great, this topic has been covered on other channels extensively. Most notably, Lemmino did an amazing job at it a few years ago and I feel like the production value of Lemmino is even greater than that of Veritasium.

@JeeGM 7 месяцев назад

Thank you very much for this video

@EvgenBychkovHappyPapa 7 месяцев назад

This needs to be seen by many more people. Like!

@overcomersolving 7 месяцев назад

6:52 My man just told us where a hydrogen bomb is, and how to get to it.

@kalebbruwer 7 месяцев назад

Petrov suffering a nervous breakdown is... extremely forgivable. I don't think any man can handle the fate of the entire world having rested in their hands

@freshrockpapa-e7799 7 месяцев назад

What is there to forgive? Having a nervous breakdown doesn't make you a bad person, such a dumb thing to say.

@koenth2359 7 месяцев назад

I can imagin the nervous breakdown might have to do with him, rather than being made a global hero, being sent on retirement as if he had done something wrong. It's the military, you know.

@keenanradyk7238 Месяц назад

Great video. Hey sobering thought. Just watched Threads 1984 so this hit extra hard

@eli.h 5 месяцев назад

Great video. Everyone needs to see this.

@anthonycannet1305 7 месяцев назад

I jokingly thought to myself: “the first order of business with a time machine is to recover all of these broken arrows at the exact time they go missing. Right after they get lost but before they can’t be recovered” And then I realized if time travel ever became real, and someone had that idea, it might be the actual reason we can’t recover them… creating a paradox. The only reason they’re gone is because they were taken, and the only reason they were taken is because they’re gone.

@sooyster4033 7 месяцев назад

If you write a novel I'll buy it

@SikGamer70 7 месяцев назад

If time travel was discovered, eventually someone would decide to go back in time to when time travel was discovered and un-discover it. Time travel is fundamentally a paradox.

@JeRMRellum 7 месяцев назад

@@SikGamer70Only within a deterministic, single universe; if each time you time travel you create a new branch then it's fine. Watch Primer too, practically the most realistic time travel movie; time travel's really restrictive in that you travel backwards in time at the same pace as forwards and you can only tunnel through time once and only to the beginning of when you started the machine.

@user-wb4yq2hb2o 7 месяцев назад

I'll burn it @@sooyster4033

@agalah408 7 месяцев назад

This is heavy. Can a Delorian still do 88 mph with a nuke in the trunk?

@MFreeman9110 7 месяцев назад

We always use the amount of bombs to visualize the dismantlement of bombs in the world, but it would be nice to see the MT of TNT equivalent. Just to see what power was really decommissioned.

@Soken50 7 месяцев назад

None of the yield has been decommissioned, the thousands of kiloton yield gravity bombs have been replaced by hundreds of megaton or gigaton yield hypersonic guided missiles with active jamming, decoys, flares and all the bells and whistles to make it to the target and maximise damage. the number decreased but the yields increased by orders of magnitudes.

@flexinclouds 7 месяцев назад

@@Soken50Thats what he's saying. Like if they just told us how many megatons were decommissioned, so we could try and compare to the yield of current or any new icbm's replacing them

@the_ALchannel 7 месяцев назад

If you google "total megatons of all nuclear weapons over the years" its literally the first picture that comes up. This yield has also decreased significantly with the decrease in the number of missiles

@Soken50 7 месяцев назад

@@the_ALchannel As if countries would willingly give up the actual numbers, it's the known stock that is decreasing. Yield isn't going down, it's being replaced by bigger ones we don't know about

@the_ALchannel 7 месяцев назад

@@Soken50 if the whole point of having a large nuclear weapons arsenal is intimidation, wouldn't it be counterproductive for countries to *hide* the actual numbers rather then publish them? Especially if they're large