Hi, buddy. Welcome to Dan Snow's history hit. I'm still in the weddle sea in Antarctica,

but I talked on a slightly dodgy zoom line to Dr. Jeremy Gallic, the Associate Professor

of International Relations and China Studies at the University of Economics Prague. He is

an international, he is a man who spends a lot of time thinking about Cold War, about

Game Theory, about nuclear strategy, about mutually assured destruction. The reason I want

to talk to Jeremy is because, obviously, Ukraine is fighting to defend itself from Russian

forces. The war is not going well for Russia. And Putin has responded, A, on the ground,

by moving to a kind of assault and battery mode, trying to destroy the built environment

of Ukraine, crush them around, the willingness of Ukrainians to keep on resisting him, but

he has also issued a nuclear warning to the West. The other day, I'm sure you and I

were both filled with terror. Putin used some very incendiary language, he looked unstable.

He said, whoever tries to interfere with us should know that Russia's response will

be immediate and will lead you to such consequences as you have never experienced in your history.

And you remind everyone that Russia is one of the world's most powerful nuclear states.

On the 27th of February, he announced that Russian nuclear forces were being put on a special

regime of combat duty alert. Is this bluff? Is this a sign of weakness? Is this a sign

that as his conventional options run out? He's breaking the glass and pulling the emergency

lever? Possibly. Anyway, either way, I wanted to get Jeremy on the podcast, talk a little

bit about nuclear strategy. It's worth remembering that Russia has around 6,000 nuclear warheads,

they're typically more than 10 times more powerful than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima

and Nagasaki in 1945. A nuclear war between the Russians and the American let alone would

lead to the near extinction of human life on this planet. So, you know, that's pretty

...