Should We Prepare for Nuclear War? (Annie Jacobsen)

The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer

Dialogue, Science, Reason, Michaelshermer, Natural Sciences, Skeptic

4.4 • 921 Ratings

🗓️ 20 April 2024

⏱️ 76 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen investigated this ticking-clock scenario, based on dozens of exclusive new interviews with military and civilian experts who have built the weapons, been privy to the response plans, and are responsible for those decisions should they need to be made.

Shermer and Jacobsen discuss: surviving a nuclear explosion • what happens in a nuclear bomb explosion • consequences of a nuclear exchange • Getting to Nuclear Zero • North Korea, China/Taiwan • increasing budgets for more weapons • types and quantities of nuclear weapons • why humans engage in aggression, violence, and war

Annie Jacobsen is an investigative journalist, Pulitzer Prize finalist, and New York Times bestselling author. Her new book is Nuclear War: A Scenario. Her other books include: Area 51, Operation Paperclip, and The Pentagon’s Brain.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the Michael Sherman Show A 1 megaton thermonuclear weapon detonation begins with a flash of light and heat so tremendous
0:31.4	it is impossible for the human mind to comprehend.
0:34.0	180 million degrees Fahrenheit is four or five times hotter than the temperature that
0:40.5	occurs at the center of the Earth's sun.
0:44.0	Where did you get that?
0:45.0	I've never seen that number.
0:47.0	And to pick it up, pick up the story there, what happens?
0:50.0	How do you know?
0:51.0	Well, like everything in the book, you should be able to go to the back and answer that question, where did you get that?
0:58.0	That particular number, the temperature comes from Ted Postel, who is a professor emeritus at MIT, but when he was younger,
1:08.0	he advised the chief of naval operations at the Pentagon.
1:12.0	He's kind of one of the world's leading experts in
1:14.3	missile technology and nuclear weapons effects. He's one of the first people that
1:20.8	wrote about what mega fires would do to people to landscapes to things
1:28.7	after a nuclear bomb explodes. Right, interesting.
1:35.0	Yeah.
1:36.0	I mean, so much of what I've read is just secondary.
1:39.0	And so when you undertook to write this book,
1:42.0	one of your things is you actually go out in the
1:43.6	field and and talk to the real people which is you know really makes it so much
1:48.1	more interesting and important. How did you decide when you set up to write this book like, well, this has already been done,
1:54.4	that's already been done, what can I do that's original, and what is new?
	...

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