The Phone Booth of Time yea, sitting there the whole time thinking wtf another test...until the cookie matches, there would have to be a killer self doubt moment there for those two people.
@@Halfstep2024 mhm, just thinking of the fact that you're essentially carrying out the orders to potentially begin a large scale world conflict that may end up with the extinction of the entire human race, alongside other missile command groups of course.
I would be willing to bet that none of the cookies match. All of the safety measures taken to prevent unauthorized launch, so why not implement a false safety measure to ensure that when it's time to launch the last person doesn't get cold feet. They're there to finalize 'pushing the button', not make the call.
@@user-gq1bs1kn1l nah see that wouldn't make sense because then they could have an accidental launch because of a tech glitch vs them actually being ordered to really do it.
I imagine the Titan Project was already de-classified by then and that 80s system is different enough for people not to know. And to reiterate, there is no such thing as full-proof security. You can't just declassify something like that and expect spies not to tamper with it. They could toy with the butterfly valve 6 times and create a 1960s version of a denial of service attack.
I heard a story (no idea how true it was) that the US military were deeply concerned about how accurate the start of the movie was and wanted to know just who was involved with the movie from the US military.
*enemy guy comes in with all the knowledge needed to launch the missile* *reads that he needs to fill out the form* “Ight y’all just gimme a sec I gotta fill out the form!”
"Await further orders..." has got to be one of the most haunting, sobering things on that otherwise mundane checklist. One moment it's 3AM and you are following through a checklist you studied over and over, making sure the launch went fine, and the last reassuring thing it tells you may never happen in your lifetime.
Await further orders, in the meantime do air samples. If no further orders when the air quality reaches this level __________ you'll need to both go to the safe and get a new codebook and follow the steps to get out.
Everyone apart of the Manhattan project should have been lined up against a wall and shot in the head. This Cold War era shit should have been left in the Cold War. Why should a handful of world leaders have keys to the continuity of a planet that isn’t fucking theirs. /rant over
@@aidanswiftofficial they should seriously do this for some demonstrations, do a fake reaction of a nuclear warhead actually being launched. The people there for the tour would definitely have shit in their pants if it was realistic enough
What this man is doing, taking history and presenting it to the public, is known academically in the field of public history as “interpreting.” He is one of the finest interpreters I’ve ever had the pleasure of watching in action, in person or online.
haven't noticed a forced update, turned off the antivirus with registry, don't give a shit about my os selling data cause at this point who isn't, can remove bloatware, 99% of people don't give a shit about registry and task scheduler, and if you can't run something from a previous os you're either doing something wrong or there's an alternative.
It feels like he stopped for people to clap, but everyone was legitimately too terrified to react thinking about what this equipment could have done, what it represented.
The heat produced by the missiles when launched melt down the silos to the point that in order to repair it , they would have to dig out the silo which is long as fuck so they'll have to dig for like a month and then take the whole silo apart and then rebuild the thing and then put it back in the soil and then again put all of the mud on it and then make sure it's solid. Basically you just spent twice the amount of money refitting the used silo for another use when you could've built a new one at half of the price of the repair . Soo why would they bother repairing it? Plus if the site is noticed , it's game over for it anyways, soo why would you repair a site that has been spotted already
I really like this guy. He is educating and describing the scariest and (for everyone else) the most dangerous job on the entire planet yet has the tone of an enthusiastic tour guide or that really funny and chill teacher from high school.
This whole process is basically... "Are you sure you want to perform this action?" "You cannot undo this, are you absolutely sure you want to perform this action?" "You will not be able to save your game after this point. If you have not saved now, save now." "Saving game (Autosave)..." "This is your final warning. All available quests and missions will be unavailable after starting the finale. Do you wish to proceed?" *_"You may potentially be immediately killed by this action. Proceed?"_* ...and the player just keeps clicking yes until shit hits the fan and he has to restart the game
Except no restart is availble, the world dies, and in three weeks (as haha by the audience), you have to choose between suffocation or death by radiation
@Erich Klein What Japan did to POWs was inexcusable, but they were military targets. Pearl Harbour was an attack on military assets. Are you aware that Korean labourers and American POWs were killed in Hiroshima? Also do you think killing labourers who are helping the war effort is excusable? Often during wartime helping the war effort becomes the only mass jobs available so people are forced into those positions, just as Japanese citizens would have been. Equating lower class Japanese citizens forced into roles of labour for wartime efforts to soldiers is disgusting. Again, im not saying what the Japanese did to POWs is excusable at all, in fact Japan is guilty of some of the most heinous war crimes the Earth has seen. Atomic weapons may have been a necessary evil to end the war but they take thousands of lives and leave cities uninhabitable for years. Its sad that countries are forced to have a nuclear arsenal purely as a deterrent now.
The Japanese ability to wage war would be impossible without civilian labor. Civvies grow the food, make the weapons, bullets and airplanes. That makes them fair game in war.
You ever hear the motto of the Russian equivalent to the SAC? Because that’ll give that saying a run for its money. It translates as “After us, silence.”
Fun Fact: Mao Zedong believed population expansion was the only way he could win a nuclear war because he though the US and Russia would obliterate each other
Yes, it's excellent, I did it in 2017. They had a tiny keyhole and camera near the missile head to monitor the actual warhead. Standing in at the bottom of the silo is amazing. I turned the key as well and I'm sure the presenter here was a guide.
In the Air Force we maintained a communication system call SACCS. It was at every SAC command post, base, and launch facility (part of it can be seen in this video). My system was at a SAC bomber base. After the alert bombers are in the air, the base has completed its mission. We then await the command to start emergency destruction. We had a board dedicated for that with axes, sledge hammers, and such. We practiced breaking/burning up critical pieces/documents of our equipment (ironically what we worked hard to keep active) and scatter the pieces. After that we were on our own... grab a girl and go out with a bang... we were on the Soviet's first strike list. There was that one time I set the whole base to DEFCON 1. I was in the squadron job control where we dispatch communication crews 24/7. It was 3 AM (03 : 00) and I was checking out the board that had switches and lights for the DEFCON settings. I was told they turn on lights in the commanders office. Being 3 AM and in charge of quarters when the commander or a senior officer is not present, I started to turn the knobs just to see how they worked. Less than a minute later the phone lines lit up. It was the command post, the tower, and combat crew facilities calling to confirm if we really are at DEFCON 1. I can hear the base klaxon and alarms on the phone. I said, stand down, we are having trouble with the alert board, I wiggled the knobs back and forth a bit and put them back at DEFCON 4 (we were not at 5 at the time). I said how's that... relieved, they canceled the alert. Nobody told me it turned on lights in ALL of the commanders offices on base! Lucky for me they didn't get to the point to fire up the bombers.
@@dishonoured Yeah, my colleague that was in our squadron Job Control called us "Scrotum Maintenance", every time I had to call him, he would say, "OK, Romsky... Scrotum Maintenance"... he was just razzing me, it was all in good fun.
@@christopherleubner6633 Yes indeed! It's a fire and forget system. The worst part is, after launch, hanging around for weeks with no word from headquarters as your food runs out, then popping out the emergency exit to see what is left of the earth. On a bomber base we practiced our doomsday post bomber sorties regularly.... after the bombers launched, we were to destroy all of our equipment and classified documents... and await further instructions as radiation sickness ate us alive. We did it so often we didn't think about what we were practicing. We were strictly professional... no funnin' around was allowed during those drills.
I found his performance to be very entertaining. I felt like the last few lines were very important and that the necessary weight wasn't understood. "Nobody wins in a nuclear war. There are only degrees of losers."
The enemy can win if the nucleur bomb is not launched but delivered to the location they want to destroy. There would be no way for us to know who detonated it.
@@danielorourke2542 Unfortunately, there is a good chance that this would result in a nuclear war regardless of not knowing who threw the first punch, so to speak. Successfully smuggling a nuclear weapon into the country and into the target location is also a somewhat implausible method for carrying out a first strike. What if the target country's intelligence services found out who the aggressor was? It would surely retaliate by launching its own nukes, and the result would yet again be nuclear war. The only plausible way to "win" at nuclear war is to launch a successful "decapitation strike", taking out the enemy government leadership (which would only delay retaliation, not prevent it), as well as every single one of their of their missile launch sites and SSBNs (which, given the reality of modern submarine warfare, is virtually impossible). Even then, you would likely still have to contend with incoming enemy aircraft carrying nuclear weapons. In the future, the most important game changer for nuclear warfare will be missile defense systems. Current day missile-based defense systems are not capable of defeating anywhere near 100% of incoming nuclear weapons, particularly when faced with MIRV-equipped warheads. High powered lasers have the potential to be used as ground and air based installations, or even as Orbital defense platforms, and could eventually provide a much more efficient and capable defense against incoming nuclear missiles and warheads.
Well I mean if somebody launched enough nukes at once and completely destroyed the other target before they could retaliate we could theoretically win.
Absolutely. Once American ICBM launches, Russian defense satellites will detect these launches and then "Perimeter" will be automatically activated with a short countdown that can either be interrupted by Moscow, or they can immediately order a counterattack. Perimeter is a dead man switch system to ensure that the US are destroyed regardless whatever else happens. When Perimeter is triggered a number of special radio transponder equipped missiles will launch and fly over the entire Russian Federation broadcasting attack orders. There are other ways the launch orders will be distributed but the missiles are there as a safeguard should the enemy disrupt these other ways. RVSN, the Russian strategic missile force, they will be in their silos, authenticating their launch orders, entering their launch codes and then turning their keys and nowadays fifteen minutes and less Washington will be reduced to a radioactive fireball brighter than a thousand suns. Now that the new generation of Sarmat-2 "Satan-2" missiles are entering service with RVSN, these hypersonic warheads are unstoppable. There is a good reason that the service motto of RVSN is "Posle nas, tishina". After us, silence.
@@georgeheld1901 Then you're also going to appreciate the RVSN song. The video ends on a frame with an indicator panel. The red light is "pusk nachals'ya", launch has begun. Edit forgot the link: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE--U5NVILTviQ.html
@@seaharrierfrs1 and you as well. It's rather strange, some would speculate, you are stalking me. You leave me no choice but to update my stalker list. I will be forwarding this list to the respectful authority. I will see you in court sir. I bid you farewell now.
What struck me was how banally the world can end with its codes and button pushing, but fantastic explanation of how the process operated from the tour guide.
@@TheRogueX dont underestimate audio heads .. You could design a bass shaker (basically a speaker with a weight instead of a cone, bolted to the floor ) to shake that floor pretty violently
Thats pretty valid. I thought of numerous ways to defeat the key sync and hold, before he stopped talking about it. Now, a smartphone and $20 of junk from Amazon will handle.
@@springbloom5940 Sure, its really easy to defeat if you have the know how, even back in the day, but limiting who knows and having specially trained personal is the main security mechanism.
I'd never really put much thought into silo operators. I've always wondered how much it weighed on presidents, having possession of the ability to end the world, but I never took the time to think about how the people who turn the key... manage to do it. Imagine taking this job during complete peacetime, thinking it's easy because you'll never *ever* have to actually turn that key, and then one day the speaker lights up and starts talking in numbers.
It's an interesting thing. Like yeah maybe the president and whoever is secondncan authorise it but would you launch the nukes if it came down to it. Could you really turn a key that ends the world
I mean, they did have surprise drills for missile crews that went exactly like that. There's a video on RU-vid you can easily find that's a clip from a really good documentary (Missile) that shows a launch training drill at Vandenberg AFB for a Minuteman missile crew. If the Titan creeped you out, the Minuteman will scare the hell out of you since the crew controls an entire flight of ICBMs launching within seconds of each other. What makes it more real is the Minuteman is still active. There are still US Air Force officers (missileers) sitting in silos running these drills just on the slight chance that one day the order is real.
@@pilot1721 There were two well known false alarm incidents in Russia, one at a missile base and one aboard a nuclear submarine, where the end of the world was prevented solely by individuals who hesitated because they knew that something wasn't quite right about the situation.
In the Star Wars comics, the guy that pulled the lever to fire the Death Star laser on Alderaan ended up killing himself from the grief of destroying billions
"We think we could probably survive down here for, eh, three to four weeks before we would start slowly suffocating to death. We've never ran that experiment so I don't know that for sure..." *extremely nervous laughter*
This dude is an amazing character. Who knew such a scary and somber subject could be made to be so fun and exciting. Very interesting, this guy needs a raise
It didn’t really hit home for me until that last klaxon went off announcing the launch. Idk why, but that was the moment that really drove the gravity of the situation home. “It’s over now. You can’t stop this anymore.”
But yeah, that is fucking scary. "As soon as you turn that key might as say hello World War 3 because there is no going back" "Nobody wins in a nuclear war." The guy is completely right but damn how he managed to live knowing that and knowing that people are going to go through the same situation takes some real gut
The US has an airborne command network that is supposed to take over and issue orders. Besides that the radiation from nuclear weapons reaches safeish levels after two days and is considered all clear after 2 weeks.
@@Cousin-Eddy I heard somewhere that it depends on if it detonates when it hits the ground or if it detonates in the air before it hits the ground. I believe it was air detonation that was what made the radiation go away quickly, an example used was how Nagasaki and Hiroshima are habitable today unlike Chernobyl (which wasnt nuked but might as well have been seeing as how nuclear reactors exploded) which wont habitable for around 20,000 years (I looked that number up not my own info) and I believe that the nuclear reactors exploding was the equivalent of a ground detonated bomb.
@@declan3443 Barely. Switzerland is mostly Mountain, therefore their entire nation is safe from any type of major radiation exposure thanks to the mountains being high enough to block the spread of the fallout. Same goes to Tibet, Nepal, Mountainous regions in Russia, the Appalachians, and any other mountainous regions across the globe.
Erick Picard fun fact that corrodes the metal fingers inside the cartridge and pushes Debree further into it, what really solve the problem was re-inserting the cartridge and having friction do it’s job on the oxidization 😊
As you can see folks, there are a number of security flaws in the process. In any case that's all I have for you today, if you have any questions or comments I'll see you in hell.
No you dont. You want to drill this procedure into thier heads eceryday till they dont even think about it till the day its real and then they can think about it while russia goes buh bye
I think that's a lie. I saw a declassified document about radio controlled explosives in the fuel tanks. There's also an "abort" switch right on the panel...
It's possible they say that, and even tell the people that, while everyone involved knows it's not technically true, just because you don't want them getting that far thinking they can just back out. Maybe they have something that aborts it but they don't even know if it actually aborts.
I kinda like the dude’s charisma, especially considering the implications of the work he does. 5:00 “Commander, if that happened while your crew was on duty... you have not enhanced your military career.”
i mean, even though his job in the military is "launch an extinction missile that, on the turn of 2 keys, assures the death of all of humanity", the chances of him actually fulfilling that duty are really damn low
@@gabrielpacheco8450 why are you ignoring the fact that it’s a museum about a nuclear launch facility? You understand that the entirety of life on earth could be wiped out by those, right? I guess not, since you think it’s “just a museum” and not something that actually exists in real life and is as much or more of a threat than almost every natural disaster (or unnatural disaster) that ever could be or ever has been. Carl Sagan (someone I doubt you’ve heard of), among many others, said that nuclear weapons are the single greatest threat facing humanity: not an asteroid from space, not a volcano, or earthquake, not global flooding, or climate change. Our complete and utter annihilation lies in these facilities and all it takes is ONE person to decide to launch and 2 to follow the order, then everything you’ve ever known or would have known is gone. So, that’s hilarious that you think these don’t exist anymore despite most of the first world nations having VAST nuclear arsenals ready to launch within seconds of being given the command. Some folks are just stupid and uneducated like that, I guess. 🤷🏻♂️
@@zebdawson3687 I just want to say, wtf did I just read... I was talking about you implying that he actually works with the real thing instead of being a tour guide of a museum. "Considering the implications of the work he does" Get a grip lmao.
The thing I like the most is that tiny little led that shows the launch has been started and can't be stopped. Its such a mundane thing with the biggest implications in human history.
I did the same thing with the Pershing missile system back in the 70s and 80s. Same procedures... We didn't have a butterfly valve code, but we had a PAL (Permissive Action Link) that did pretty much the same thing. WIth P1A (my system) you pushed two buttons; with PII (1984 onward) they used two keys, like this. And yes... you had to memorize all this stuff, by rote and in all combinations) before you were allowed to stand watch.
and that dude is James May, who, in an earlier Top Gear episode, tried to light a nuclear missile that was on display from the thruster end, one that still had a loaded warhead, with a fuckin zippo lighter.
I just imagine that those guys must have run drills constantly. So many times that every step is basically automatic. Alarm goes off. Crap, another drill. Ok fine, you are relaxed and confident, almost bored, you are breezing through the steps as you have hundreds of times before...and then the code on the cookie matches. To go from autopilot to absolute pants shitting terror in a fraction of a second. Kinda glad i just fixed radios when I was in, because F every single part of that cursed job.
when i was a kid.. my old man was one of these guys.. early 80s.. it was Easter and we had an Easter Egg hunt on top of the missile silo.. one of the officers dressed up as the Easter bunny..
Some of the old underground NIKE missile silos are actually for sale as private homes now. They go for relatively cheap too... about $500,000. Not much more expensive than an upscale house in a nice city.
Listen to Mr. Reynholm here, he knows what he's talking about. And there better not be anyone here that's stressed out about it. You know how much he hates stress in the workplace.
After the keys were turned, the docent mentioned that it took exactly 28 seconds for the batteries to charge. If you count from the moment the keys are turned until the APS light comes on, it is indeed exactly 28 seconds.
I wonder what chemistry the battery cells use, to be able to instantly be activated by dumping a liquid electrolyte in. Must be HIGHLY shelf stable and the metals inside must not corrode easily under regular conditions... This is quite curious information.
I was automatically forwarded from the scene in "TURN THE KEY, SIR" scene WarGames. Thematically appropriate yes, but this charming gentleman's tone was something of an 180.
@@endokrin7897 yeah, because when he was Growing up. that room could be what ended his and his parents life. imagine how Grateful you are that you are standing there now and that room has become a tourist attraction? i know i would.
Warfare has evolved to the point that 2 grandma's in a bunker can wreak more destruction then all the armys of Napoleon, Achilles, and Stalin combined... What crazy timeline we live in.
1 nuclear bomb doesent mean the end of the world, hundreds have already been detonated, unless you mean something like a domino effect where countries just start firing them back and fourth
@@baldie1977 yeah so let's say hypothetically the U.S. fires a missile at the U.S.S.R. Then the U.S.S.R.'s allies will fire at the U.S. allies firing at Russia and the U.S.S.R. and their allies. Its Mutually Assured Destruction (M.A.D.) And that had to have been 8th grade history at the earliest.
@UC5Dc-uRDIEin1ZgalXwXsRg lmao, he's literally a tour guide, stfu with your fakedeep drivel, I'm glad you took a semester of psych but nobody cares about your shitty takes
Funny how there is the same control room in Soviet Nuclear missile lauch site museum in Nikolaev, Ukraine, with the same retired officer who said the same reply "Nobody wins in a nuclear war".
This won't get you on their "watchlist" any more than visiting the Titan Missile Museum in Sahuarita, Arizona. Cause that's where this tour was filmed. It's a national heritage location now.
The most scary or sobering part of this tour is that it was crystal clear that the humans manning that site would have launched, I had a female giving this presentation - she had commanded this site in the early 1980’s and was chillingly cold about this procedure.
The system’s no good if the people manning it aren’t willing to use it as intended. They drilled this very scenario constantly just to ensure there would be no accidents, and if the silos WERE needed they would all be fired as fast as possible without hesitation.
depends on the silo type. but some silos fling their doors completely off to get them open faster. these are part of the MM-2/3 silo systems that are grouped up in the mid west. one silo controller controls between 6 to 12 silos
Atlas C missiles laid on their side. A cantilevered roof opened, the missile raised upright and then launched. Atlas D missiles were vertical in a silo, but raised out of it, before launching. Titan II launched from inside the silo. My father, a USAF Officer worked on building all of those types in the sixties.
@@TheDemocrab I mean I can joke calling you a crab and saying you touched by butt and its still stupid and pointless? This falls under the new internet logical fallacy rules of the "haha I am not actually retarded I was just pretending meme" the sort of ' I need to win an internet fight so I larp I don't care and the other person does' "intellectual checkmate" crapshoot. Good thing I am a pro and not reading messages or reading and immediately forgetting I would tell you to stay in your lane but I own this road, it's a private road, kindly see yourself out and don't come back.
This is the Titan Museum in Green Valley, Arizona, a launch control center with a Titan III C missile next door. The same guy was our guide when I visited ten years ago. I got to turn the key!
I was wondering if somehow everyone but one person was wiped out in the facility and was ordered to launch the missile and how that one person would turn the two keys at once
"Are you prepared to turn the key?" The interesting thing is in crew studies where they simulated WW3 and tricked them with a "genuine" launch order a significant number would refuse to commit to launch.
Turning that key was as good as turning a gun to your own head, especially if the Soviet missiles were programmed to target known American missile sites. Of course, even if that didn't happen, you'd probably blow your own brains out a week or so later, unable to cope with the fact that you brought about the end of the world.
