WS More or Less: Could North Korea Wipe out 90% of Americans?
More or Less: Behind the Stats
BBC
4.6 • 3.5K Ratings
🗓️ 10 April 2017
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A single nuclear weapon could destroy America’s entire electrical grid, claims a former head of the CIA. The explosion would send out an electromagnetic pulse – resulting in famine, societal collapse and what one newspaper has called a “Dark Apocalypse”.
But are hungry squirrels a greater threat to the electrical grid than North Korean weapons? We speak to senior security adviser Sharon Burke and Yoni Applebaum from The Atlantic.
Presenter: Charlotte McDonald Producer: Hannah Sander
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.6 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.4 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable |
| 0:14.3 | experts and genuinely engaging voices. What you may not know is that the BBC |
| 0:20.4 | makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.0 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:40.0 | Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service. |
| 0:43.4 | President Trump has ordered airstrikes in Syria |
| 0:46.3 | stating that he acted in America's vital national security interest. |
| 0:50.8 | But when it comes to national security, Syria is not the only country that the US government is thinking about. |
| 0:56.0 | President Xi of China has just made his first visit to the US since Trump took office, |
| 1:01.0 | and the question of North Korea's nuclear capabilities was high on the agenda. |
| 1:10.0 | Senior figures in the US Republican Party have long worried that North Korea might attack |
| 1:14.9 | their country with a nuclear weapon. |
| 1:17.0 | It's an enormous catastrophic threat. |
| 1:19.0 | It is the greatest threat that our nation and Western civilization faces. |
| 1:22.5 | Nine out of ten of us would be dead. |
| 1:25.7 | Wait, hang on. What? Nine out of ten? |
| 1:28.8 | We decided to find out exactly how worried American citizens should be about North Korean missiles. |
| 1:35.0 | It's not something I've stayed up late at night worrying about before this. |
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