This is CBS. I'm the world. I'm John Batchelor. It is the fall of 1983. The Pentagon, the Reagan administration,

greatly concerned with the vulnerability of the U.S. to a Soviet nuclear weapon attack.

What is to be done, to study the matter?

I have, thanks to the generosity of Peter Husey, the president of geostrategic analysis,

as well as a fellow at the National Institute of Deterance Studies,

a document entitled Joint Net Assessment,

U.S. and Soviet Strategic Forces, Executive Version, labeled top secret in November of 1983.

Not for your eyes only. Straight up, top secret, don't give this to people who are not involved.

Typed on an IBM Selectic typewriter.

None of those digital affairs were yet in practice.

Peter, a very good evening to you.

Thank you for passing me this document.

This is history.

It's honored to be here, John.

This is history, but it's also the Cold War.

I read through the document and I see that the men and women involved in generating this information were deadly and earnest.

They lived in a world where nuclear war was possible tonight.

Here we are, more than 40 years later, and that is still credible to those of us who have

read the history of nuclear conflict, the possibility, countervalue, counterforce, all the

language. And yet, I do believe it is true that those born since the 1970s and 80s have not

been properly informed about how it is that you

array your nuclear weapons arsenal to make certain it doesn't happen.

...