🎙️ Hello! Join us this week as we explore the intense geopolitical tensions of the Cold War era through the lens of military exercises and simulations. Today, we unravel the significance of "war games" during Ronald Reagan's presidency, including the pivotal Able Archer 83 exercise. Discover how a NATO simulation inadvertently escalated tensions with the Soviet Union, shedding light on the delicate balance of international security perceptions. We'll also talk about how close we were/are to total annihilation. Don't miss out on this intriguing journey through past events that continue to shape our world today. Listen now! #ColdWar #MilitaryHistory #Podcast 🚀🔥
🎙️ Hello! Join us this week as we explore the intense geopolitical tensions of the Cold War era through the lens of military exercises and simulations. Today, we unravel the significance of "war games" during Ronald Reagan's presidency, including the pivotal Able Archer 83 exercise. Discover how a NATO simulation inadvertently escalated tensions with the Soviet Union, shedding light on the delicate balance of international security perceptions.
We'll also talk about how close we were/are to total annihilation.
Don't miss out on this intriguing journey through past events that continue to shape our world today. Listen now!
Sources:
Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
[Music] in a matter of the people of State of California versus orthal James Simpson case number ba09 and so my fellow
Americans ask not what your country can do for you ask what you can do for your
country and we are here live on a beautiful Monday morning Taylor Hi how
are you good how are you it's Mother's Day did you call your mom I did I did and I ordered flowers and did all the
things what you what did you get from Mother's Day what did you do I got breakfast in bed it was McDonald's
breakfast which is delicious and oh I didn't things to show you but I got some
cute little cards and stuff from the kids and then I got a box of wine from my husband he knows
you he knows where you like he like you have everything you know and I'm like that's true I have everything and if I want something I'll buy it Taylor we you
and I single-handedly need to elevate box wine to the amazing thing it actually is that people who wear fancy
pants look down on well you know what I do when I have people over is I have some like really beautiful wine bottles
that I've saved that are like sometimes they're just beautiful you know you're like I can't believe this was like $7
and it was also filled with wine um so I will just get a box of wine and then like fill up like four four beautiful
bottles of wine and just have that on the table you know that's so smart so smart I mean I think it's saving me a
ton of money not like I'm buying really expensive wine in like any case but it looks really pretty and then I can you
know use a box of line I use a big like a big jug of whiskey bottle for water on the table when I have people over
they're pretty and they're nice and like I'm like I don't know like buying like a really nice bottle to pour something out
of it's expensive and I'm like this one came with whiskey I love that but I also am 100%
the judge of book by its cover guy because I only look at the bottle when I buy wine and if I like the cover then
but I take the but I but I take off I don't like pretend that it's something else I I take off the label I'm talking about like a beautiful bottle oh you
know hold on I'm going to can you introduce the show while I go do a visual for you while while we're waiting
on a visual this is doomed to fail we are a twice weekly podcast I'm fars
joined here by Taylor Taylor is on her way to go get a beautiful bottle to show me how also this is an audio medium so
yall are not going to see it but I'll describe the bottle okay so there are two two or three bottles they're
clear and three bottles yes like this one is clear but it's like it's really
pretty like it looks like diamondy fancy is that pretty it's from Trader Joe's and like this one's just like a
beautiful shape you know it's not like a regular bottle and this this one too look how beautiful it is it has all these like flowers on it and stuff so I
I was thinking I would just try and fo people by put leaving the label on no one would ever [ __ ] know anyway
people be like this cab great like no no one know but I don't do that but I understand why you would think that I
would do that because no one [ __ ] knows nobody knows nobody knows um sweet
well um well cool well uh how sorry how do we get on wine bottles again Mother's
Day fancy fancy thing right right right um no we're on the same page we're going
to bring back box wine box wine is just as good as any other kind of wine don't be stobby yeah like after your second
glass of wine like it even matters at all yeah we don't need to talk about like whether it's from the actual
Champagne region of France or not like it doesn't matter nobody cares nobody cares so TL Taylor I think today also
happy Mother's Day to you thank you there we go got got out of the way the park um so I think today is a Yugo first
day I do okay nail I'm ready and something tells me the research wrapped
very recently on this well listen I have done a lot of research for this let me tell you my
friend I have read several books I have this document in front of me that I printed out that is recently
Declassified and has parts of it redacted is this SP JFK no but it does involve a partially
Reda redacted thing here's the thing I want to tell you that in case I forget
this is an entire page of this document that is redacted the entire page redacted the whole page is blacked out
at the very bottom it says despite or perhaps because of its disturbing
message that is blocked out it tells you that this is disturbing but you don't get to know
what it is is a disturbing part in editors take who did read it or did
nobody read it no it's the actual it's in the actual report this report is from 1990 from the president's foreign
intelligence Advisory Board February 15th 1990 I can't I'm trying to guess what
this could be it's actually also a two-parter oh wow okay we're doing uh
Anthology well would Anthology whatever serial okay got it so hold on so the
event the event isn't from 1990 the uh report that the president commission is
from 1990 what what so it would have happened in like 88 889 the golf tonen
no that's way earlier specifically happened in 83 it happened in
83 I was it was it a shuttle explosion no I'll just tell you fine I don't know
when the sh when the Challenger exped it's um this is a two-part series on war
games and we'll start with the AEL Archer 83 NATO nuclear war game in 1983
and next week we'll talk about eligible receiver 97 which is the in the internet
digital war game that Al Gore commissioned in 1997 that was held at windows on the world in the World Trade
Center and by the people who worked at caner Fitzgerald who have a different fate that we'll talk about um are you
back in your the world is going to end mode have you if you have been near me in the past
two weeks I have been so jumpy fars okay we're in the car and Florence goes mom there's something in the sky and I'm not
a normal I'm not normal these past two weeks so instead of being like is it a bird is it a plane I was like where is
it tell me where it is after to pull over because in my head I'm like oh it's a nuclear missile today's the day why do
you stuff well because I've been reading I've read several books on this so far this past two weeks okay so I thought
the paranoia LED you to the research but the research LED you to the paranoia indeed got it okay so I'm here because
of Dan Carlin because when I saw him and since I saw him he did release an
episode um with author Annie Jacobson who wrote a book called nuclear war a scenario and in the book she go go
through from talking to a ton of people in the government and reading all this like Declassified stuff what would
happen if nuclear war was launched and how quickly the world would end and she
goes like minute by minute in a scenario that like she creates that could very well happen you know like it's fiction but they could actually happen based on
like the real people that she's talked to um I also read the book 1983 rean
andof in the world of the brink by Taylor Downing and I read this Soviet
War SC Declassified doc from 1990 so and I also
have been to Hiroshima recently so like that also was a big part of it too I think because I saw a lot of like
pictures and stories of like nuclear um just like aftermath and what happened in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki is nothing compared to what we can do to each other now yeah I was watching um it was
probably an old episode I don't know how I ended up down this rapid hole on YouTube but it was like last night and I ended up down the John Oliver episode on
nuclear armaments and Weir that you're doing this now given that I just just did that but it was basically he was
talking about how we have so many of these things and we lose track of them
yep and they're all on outdated technology wait am I am I stepping on your episode no it's I'm G to mention
all of that but that's all true it's so scary and it's scary because it's out of control and in so I'll probably say this
later um well let me say this real well I'll say this later that basically a
nuclear war is not winnable a nuclear war doesn't end in weeks or days or weeks or months it ends in an hour you
know like there's no it's not World War III it's like an
hour and human civilization will never be the same well they do they there is
that saying that I don't know how we're going to fight World War II but we know that world War four will be f with
sticks and stones th% yep they say that in like all these books because that's exactly right like there's just there's
no way that we don't completely annihilate everyone on the planet in very terrible ways
um and we're thinking about that right now in like the 2020s but um in the 80s
it was also like really huge and like really looming over everything because it was the Cold War right so it's like
basically like someone tribes that is to Cowboys in a saloon with guns pointed at each other's head you know like that's
what we're looking at like we are everyone's going to die um this this
um paper that I read from the um the president's foreign intelligence Advisory board has a quote from Mel
gorbachov in 1986 and he says quote never perhaps in the post-war decades
has the situation in the world been as explosive and hence more difficult and unfavorable as in the first half of the
1980s so we were just like ch being babies but like we were very close to dying we didn't know we just chilling
being babies being babies and um the world was end that's the first page of this is him saying that so um I so some
things I learned about nuclear war specifically from Annie Jacobson's book about like the way that the US would respond to um being attacked so if the
president can't just like choose a first strike nuclear war he can't wake up and decide to do that you know know but the
reason the president has as we know like the ability to make that decision for a
um Counterattack nuclear war is simply because there is not enough [ __ ] time
to have a quorum there's not enough time there's six minutes basically and that
from launch to having to make a decision of what you want to do next to retaliate I don't understand why the
president can't launch an offensive um I think he can't just like do it by himself he has to like talk to
other people about it okay got it but I'm actually not sure but I'm pretty sure that's the way it goes but I know
that but I know the reason that he had that he's the only one who can do the counter attack is because of the time so
if you're doing like a first strike I don't know I was going to look that up but I missed it I'm going to look it up right
now sorry like I can't see a situation where
anybody would do that ever again given how things turned out but seems like a
thing that's here's here's that's a good question so here's the deal in a nuclear
from The Arms Control Association um the President should
have so the Congress has the ability to declare war not the President right
right so Congress can declare war and they can decide if it's going to be nuclear and then if the president really
wants to do a first strike he needs to have the unanimous consent of the vice president and the Secretary of Defense
in a in a um reactive strike you the
president gets advice from the Secretary of Defense and advice from the vice president and other people but
ultimately he's the person to make the decision because there isn't enough time to ask everybody sorry how much time is
there again about six minutes from Russia um yeah it doesn't get here in
six minutes but you have about six minutes to decide if you want to launch a counter a Counter Strike e see yeah it's insane and
so there are a few things about like the nuclear codes like there's not just like
one button but he has obviously like the codes that he needs to give to someone so that they know that it's real and
that they really are going to do this so he carries a little um card in his
pocket at all times that have nuclear codes in them and a secret service agent carries a thing called the football
which is like a briefcase um and he is with the president at all times and the football is a locked brief
briefcase inside of it is like a menu of options for nuclear war and so the
president opens up the menu looks through it with secret Secretary of Defense on the phone probably maybe the
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the phone and he has about six minutes to decide what to do next based on like
the menu of things that he has to do it's kind of badass it is crazy so in
the book that in the an Jacobson book she's pretty much like no president is prepared to do this you
know yeah like you're just not then like when you do you're like
you don't know if it's the right thing and you never will you know it's like such a crazy thing to even like wrap your brain around that you're supposed
to do this can we can we discuss that yeah yeah go
ahead why would it ever be the wrong thing if it's Counterattack here's what you're
deciding so in the scenario in jacobs's book or in scenario that someone
launches a missile from North Korea for example North Korea the missile is
coming towards the United States it had it takes like you know it's going to be
here in like 20 minutes so you have to decide if you're going to go and Counterattack if you Counterattack North
Korea the missiles have to go over Russia there isn't enough time or there
aren't missiles that that are like good enough to not have to go through Russia they have to go over Russia so if they
go over Russia and Russia gets freaked out because in the scenario that she poses Russia like gets freaked out and they start doing a strike as well they
want to be involved but what you're deciding is like or if Russia sends the nuclear bomb over here if you're like
okay in 20 minutes the United States is not no longer going to exist they're going to destroy five of our big cities
they're going to destroy our nuclear power plants um they also have the ability to do a nuclear detonation in
space that will knock out all all of our electricity forever and that would knock out cars that would knock out planes
that would knock out obviously like the internet regular electricity heating air conditioning everything that we do to survive that they would that could shut
that all off in the United States so that's coming do I make the decision to kill millions of Russians who did not
make that decision do I do that or do I let them win so my my argument is of
course you would do that well the the thing is the thing is you would do that because you would want to level the
playing field for whatever comes next right if you don't do that and then that
was all the setup to an actual ground Invasion then they are way better
situated than you would be to counter ground Invasion that's my logic well
they're not going to come on the ground after that because it's going to be covered we're going to be covered in nuclear nuclear fallout they're not
going to walk into the United States they're going to leave it to kill each other and die
but but you're right no one's going to not do that but that's the mutually assure Destruction part of it is like
we're all going to die no one's going to be the one to be like you know what let's let the North Koreans just have it it's over hey didn't that just happen
like two months ago where like I remember like the news broke and there was like an emergency meeting of like the National Security Council on like
and nobody knew what happened but they were like yeah they think that they literally put a nuke in space that's like just ready to go yeah and there's a
lot of them up there that's actually not the scary that the nukes in space don't scare me as much as hold on let me
get here they scary as much as the nuclear
submarines there are about 720 Warheads
that the United States has nuclear warheads um on their Ohio class submarines which are the the um the
nuclear submarines that the United States has but it is harder to see a nuclear
submarine in the Ocean than it is to see like a grapefruit in space they cannot see them so these there are nuclear subs
parked all around the world and we don't know where they are and they don't know where ours are so if North Korea or
Russia wants to launch a nuclear um attack from a submarine they could just
pop up in like [ __ ] San Francisco Bay we would never know they were on their way they could pop up launch their
missile and disappear and that'd be it I'm sure you're gonna that's way scarier
to me than the ones in space but the ones in space Also we can't shoot those down we think
we can but we can't I have a ton of thoughts but but I'm stepping out your story so do talk
and then we'll we'll discuss we can talk more about that but so just that that's one thing that I know is like the
president having the nuclear codes and the football the last time the football was open was on 911 like just in case
there was something bigger coming we had we like had options um there's also a thing called the Doomsday plane that is
a plane that is not so older planes would be okay in the case of like the
nuclear detonation above um above the United States to gets rid of all of the
electronic communication older planes would be okay because they're not based on electronics as much as current planes
are right which is one thing that makes us feel safe about planes the computers run them but if if electricity goes away then like you're [ __ ] if you're on a
plane during that hour but you're [ __ ] anyway so it doesn't matter um but um
older planes would be okay so there's an older plane there a doomsday plane that can Circle America for like a day and
give orders to whoever's still left to take orders so that exists as well if we
if it did come to that um so this is also the only time that I
feel sympathy towards Ronald Reagan because usually I'm like [ __ ] that guy
you know because of the economy and that stuff but Ronald Reagan he remember when
he launched the Star Wars program you don't remember I mean you weren't like you were a baby but you know what that is no so Ronald Reagan saw some GPS
right it was GPS he did he did launch GPS I'll tell you why in a little bit but the Star Wars program was
essentially a program to be able to shoot down nuclear weapons from space so they would put something in space Like
Satellites and there are satellites up there that they can see if a nuclear bomb is launched within a fraction of a
second they cannot see the bomb itself they only see the um the tail like the
fire coming out of it and then once that cools off when it's in like the second half or like it's second half of its
launch they can't see it anymore they C they can only see it when it's like actively on fire but once it's like once
that part is done and it's just like kind of coasting to its destination they can no longer see it which is why our
air defense um missiles have like a 20% success rate like there's a very small
chance that they're able to actually shoot down a nuclear missile Ronald Reagan saw a plan for something that
they ended up calling Star Wars because it sounds very futuristic where you could have essentially a base in space
that could shoot down any missile that was coming like across the world um or potentially have like a barrier across
the United States so like you couldn't bom the US don't know this actually was able to happen but he announced it like really um prematurely on on the news and
people were pissed and it made Russia really anxious um but he saw stuff like they put him in like the situation room
and they locked the door and they did like a exercise where they were like this is the Russia sending all of their
nukes over to the United States and he saw that map that like we see in movies where it shows United States and it's
like one red dot one Red Dot and then it's over like the United States is just gone and so that's what he's like having
to live with is like I need to make some decisions and this is a very very real threat happening right now you know yeah
it's got to be rough yeah um and um especially if you're a dope like rald
Reagan you don't like ready for this he was very funny I will give Reagan humor
humor points you know he's not he's not this is this is a big deal um
so it's in the 1980s it's the Cold War we have these weapons that are
impossible to stop and once one p one country uses it the other ones will and
everyone will die um the United States and the USSR have um the Soviet Union
have um nuclear missiles North Korea does NATO does um the United States all
across the Midwest of the United States there are nuclear silos with like ready to launch at any moment like they exist
all over we we we are ready to have them go Taylor real quick I don't I don't buy
the whole we can't shoot them down thing I mean we built the technology for the Iron Dome in Israel and they just
knocked out 120 Iranian missiles like there's way we didn't do it for
ourselves we just probably don't know about it no I don't know I don't know CU I I believe this investigative reporter
who wrote this book this year about it about how not great our system
is yeah but I hope you're right I hope I hope there's I'm going logically I'm just
thinking about it from a logical perspective like why on Earth would we build it for well obviously build for
Israel because they're going to be attacked constantly but like but I think different our no but I
think it's different if it's like small bombs versus like a nuclear
bomb coming from across the world because you can't see it in a different way yeah you know because I imagine that
like a bomb coming from relatively close you're able to see the entire time but a
bomb that has to like go into the stratosphere and like cross the world in 30 minutes it's going to be going so
high and so fast that it's going to be it's like a bullet shooting a bullet you know right like nearly
impossible yeah I hope I hope I'm wrong I'd love to have be proven wrong but um
this it's very scary um so if the submarines shoot their
missiles everyone shoots their missiles um if you don't die immediately um and
we're not talking nuclear bombs anymore we're talking hydrogen bombs which are like a thousand times the bombs that hit
Hiroshima and Nagasaki um in in a case where like it is a bomb where the
nuclear bomb that hit Hiroshima is the Detonator for a bigger bomb you know
it's like bomb huge um if you don't die immediately um and if you do you're
lucky if you don't die immediately you're going to die in the fire because there's going to be raging fires all
over you're going to die from the radiation you're going to die from the nuclear winter that's going to lower the
temperature on Earth by like 40° because of the smoke and everything's on fire because of the smoke and the and the um
the radiation in the air um and we're pretty much blown going to be blown back to nothing like you were saying um in
the book it's 57 minutes and it's over um she actually ends her book I think you I mean I definitely recommend it but
also I'm spoiling it but she ends it talking about go black go Becky temp Tey
go blackly teppy in h in Turkey you know the underground city oh yeah yeah because she's like that's what we would
have to do for thousands of years Taylor live in underground city what if that's what we
did I know I think that's also what she's saying what if that's what we did what if we've already done this
before the only the only part of it is like the reason why it doesn't scare me
at at at all is I'm like somebody would have to start it and
like who would start it like the only person on Earth I can think of would be like
Kim Jong-un because he doesn't know that there's a world outside of his it has to
be something like that like I I don't see she calls him a Mad King in her book but yeah exactly like someone who really
doesn't understand or is so like in this space you know where you
think that there's no other chance choice but this or you don't care or I
don't know that's the only thing that's the that's the only thing that's the mutually assured destruction that's how
people are agreeing that they'll they that this will never happen because no one would do that to the entire
human civilization yeah know we we talk about in the context of like Russia but like I mean I get it Putin's like not a
good guy but like even him like he's got to be like Spartan cunning enough to know not to do like you know what I mean
like totally totally totally totally um but yeah okay that's a good question because that gets us into what's
happening in the as well so Reagan is spending a lot of money on these space programs on um War programs he's buying
ships he's buying things obviously there's two ton of spies back and forth telling each other things so the USSR
sees the United States bulking up their arsenals like we're doing that for sure
you know so they have this really really intense like paranoia that the United
States is going to do that and that's like the mindset that they have is that the un States is [ __ ] crazy enough to
do this so that's what people that's what the Russian government is thinking and I'll tell you why
so oh another thing that I learned is the term Mega Death refers to nuclear
weapons and Dave mustain who is the leader of the band Mega Death was in
like a real depressive State and he heard Senator Alan Cranston say quote the Arsenal of Mega Death can't be rid
rid of no matter what the peace treaties come to in regards to to nuclear weapons and that's where he got the named for
the band that's cool that's cool origin story yeah um So Reagan Ronald Reagan is
President blah blah blah blah he was the president of sag he was governor of California um and then he was shot so
after he was shot and and obviously lived um he there was a lot more thought
about like you know that line of succession and like who else has the codes and things like that so the United
States is thinking about these things and they're doing these scenarios like they're called war games they're just like if this happened then this happens
and everybody goes through and acting like it's happening and you do like what you would do so it's like a super
intense like work Summit for like 3 days where you actually have to pretend that the world is under in nuclear war you
know well it's not just it's not just like they're actually moving Marines around and stuff right
they're okay correct they're doing everything except actually doing it you know but you're acting like it's real
right um so in Russia in it's like 83 there's a new leader Yuri andov and I
Googled him to see what he looked like and it's impossible because there's also a an NHL player named Nick andropov and
he comes up first which is hilarious but andera is old so the USSR has gone from like older leader to older leader and he
will die in the cold war and he'll be replaced by gorbachov um everybody seems to be at least on the US side pretty
excited by gorbachov cuz he was like the young guy which is so funny cuz I just like don't think of him as like the
young spritely guy but he was compared to the prior leaders so I me he was probably our age back
then probably was but like but but but I remember being old because I was a baby um and
so in um so he's new and him and ran will have a couple talks we'll have one
famous One in rovic where they do bring down the number of nuclear weapons but it's still always going to be a little
bit tense like I mean obviously it's always going to be tense between us um so it's but everybody's getting prepped
for like what might what might happen so in 1982 the US did a war game called The
Ivy Leagues 82 and these names are just like random military names so AEL Archer 883 is just Able Archer just like words
that they use to name things um and that was when Reagan saw the map and got really really stressed out so he was
like you know seeing a map of the United States being destroyed like in a matter of minut like everybody the whole thing
um the USSR did a war game called operation Ryan Ryan and Ryan r y an like
the name but in Russian it means like nuclear war whatever that's an acronym and um we learned about operation Ryan
from ol gordi and did you talk about goreski when you talked about Robert Hansen I don't think so because Robert
Hansen was up in this too he's pretty much like the USSR is Robert Hansen like okay makes sense the the big spy on the
other side who who came over here um and he tells the United States
that the Soviets think all the time about an imminent nuclear war they're
always thinking about it um they are always worried about this happening
and they're like really really really really paranoid and also like you you watched Chernobyl the show right I saw
one episode so in that I think they do a really good job of showing that like the culture in Soviet Russia at and not
that saying that that isn't the culture here in America in our government or even like anywhere is like you want to
please your boss no matter what so you cannot tell them that like you don't have the information you cannot tell
them that you don't that you like didn't do the thing so you just make [ __ ] up and so like in Chernobyl they're like
they like do not solve the problem everything is terrible but they're like
everything's fine and then everybody stand up and like around a board like a boardroom table and claps for each other
and they're like great job comrades you know but like nothing actually happened but they like need to tell their bosses
that something did happen otherwise they're all going to get like killed or sent to a goog you know like it's not good so there's things that like the
USSR wants to wants proof that the United States is mobilizing for something so they're doing things like
asking their spies in DC to spy on like the US war department buildings and be
like how late are the lights on at night you know if the lights on past 1:00 a.m. it means that they're working really really late and they're probably
planning a nuclear war but also like it's probably just a [ __ ] janitor taking out the trash you know they
didn't think about things like that but they report back on that and then they'd get like great job great job comrad Firs thank you for letting us know that they
were open till 1: a.m. you know I think um to our credit Taylor our generation is
breaking that whole thing of like just confirmation bias I mean I I don't know
all the time I know I tell my team that all the time I'm like if you don't know the answer whatever say you don't know
we'll figure it out later you know like don't lie about it that's crazy but yeah no they're definitely doing that in in
the USSR and in their Spy game um and they were
like um so they're really really heightened everyone's really nervous at the end of operation Ryan they have like
the USSR leaders like pressed the button to send the nukes and they even paused and they were like are you sure this is
fake you know like just want to make sure like I don't want to touch a fake button that says nuclear war you know
like they're like I just want to make sure that like I'm not actually doing this so tensions are high in the United
States but they're like 10 times higher in Russia because all this other [ __ ] going on because they're like in the middle of their communist stuff right
and everyone stressed out and starving you know um so then a couple things
happen that like really really really make things worse so have you heard of
the time that the USSR shot down the Korean Airlines flight 007 no so it's
September 1st 1983 there's a Korean Airline passenger flight that from uh
JFK in New York to Soul Korea it has to make a stop at Anchorage Alaska to
refuel so the flight is and this is just like every plane crash we've talked
about there's a Swiss Cheese model of like what is going on you know like if the if the holes line up then something
disastrous happens and so flight kalal 007 had a
extraordinarily competent flight crew they FL flown for hundreds of hours um
they were just like the one we learned of in the past like some of the best of the best of the Korean airline pilots
they there was um there were 22 children on board there were some United States Congress people on board they were going
to a thing in in Soul um and there was another kalal flight that was about 15
minutes behind them um which is Kal 015 so another plane was right behind them
going on the same route and the way that it worked in 1983 is that someone would
manually put in the codes of where they needed to go and they would put in like several codes um along the route to show
to prove where they were so they had check-in points that like weren't like actual places they're like okay we're
here we're over this area over this area and we know based on the coordinates that we put in at the beginning that
we're in these places and something happened where the person who did it did it incorrectly probably that's probably
what happened but we'll never actually know what happened but because of the coordinates being put in incorrectly in
the beginning when they left Anchorage they were off course right away so they
should have been flying this like straight shot that went from Anchorage over Japan to Korea and never all over
international waters until they were in Japanese and then Korean South Korean Waters never going over the USSR and
Soviet air but they started to slowly move um off
course so by the end they were hundreds of miles off course and they didn't know there was no like Landmark there was
over the ocean you know so no one was paying any attention the like no one was like worried who's on the flight
everyone's asleep it's the middle of the night and they're for some reason they
only ever heard from the co-pilot so the pilot was probably like walking around first class and talking to people
like it was such a regular flight that like no one was really worried about anything so the co-pilot would be like
yeah we're here we're checking in everything's fine the flight behind them was like where where we're supposed to be and they were where they were
supposed to be but 007 was getting further and further north over Soviet territory
so there was no communication with them no back and forth no you're in the wrong spot because they didn't they thought
they were in the right spot so no one ever like told them they were going in the wrong direction that they were
moving the wrong way so the captains of the Korean Airlines like just didn't know so then the Russians they see it
coming in and they cannot tell what kind of plane it is so they're like it might be a um a like a it could be a bomber it
could be a us reconnaissance plane it could be anything it could be a passenger plane we don't know so they
send a jet up to see what kind of plane it is and that's where things get like
murky because the pilot was like they didn't have their lights on so I couldn't really tell I couldn't get close enough to like read it and see
what kind of plane it was um in one of the Like official things afterwards they got the pilot to say that he confirmed
that it was not a passenger jet and they got him to record himself saying that to
ground control and someone held an an electric razor next to him so it sounded
like he was still on the plane and they put that into evidence cuz they wanted to be like we didn't do this on purpose but but like we'll never really know
what happened but either way the Russian um I know I'm saying Russian it was USSR
all things but you know what I mean um the uh H got underneath the Korean Airline flight and shot it from below he
shot the tail off so we do they did have a little bit of recording from the cockpit saying that like we're
descending unbelievably quickly you know and like the um they knew that like the
air pressure had gone down so some people obviously got sucked out the back other people would have frozen to death
instantly um and then it spiraled as it fell and it broke apart in midair and then two pieces slam to the ocean
obviously everyone died there were 22 children on board um some body parts were found shoes were used to identify
people but it was horrible and it was so obviously the
Soviet Union shooting down down a passenger jet isn't that crazy yeah
that's awful like unbelievable that's what that's what I think happened I mean I mean it could have happened
with the Malaysian Airline but like but then I also maybe I'm making this up but I remember hearing that there was a
plane that crashed like a passenger plane that crashed in Iran taken off from Iran and they confirmed it or they
suspected that it was actually like the military shot it down because there was this one author or writer that was on the
plane this might happen more than we think yeah I think that's exactly right
honestly yeah I think it might haveen more than we think um but this one was obviously a huge deal um because you
know a lot of innocent people you know were killed and um and you know it
brings that to mind like this is a small scale attack on you know a perceived
threat but if one person is confused so like maybe the person who put in the
coordinates on the Korean Air flight was a person who was confused maybe it was a co-pilot because the pilot wasn't there to help him him which is something that
my friend Ben told me about when he was my friend Ben who's a pilot he was telling me that like there's something
recently like a recent laish law that like you can override the captain like
you can be like listen Captain like you're wrong because for a while you weren't allowed to do that really and if
you weren't allowed to do that then like there were plane crashes you know right like so there's like you know when one
person is confused then everyone's confused if they think they're going One Direction and they're not like they
don't know then like anything can happen because they were so close to being out of Soviet airspace but they just like
didn't make it you know and it was just and they didn't and they didn't know like they didn't know what they what
they did wrong you know to be shot down yeah so that so that happens in early
1983 three weeks later um there's this huge the huge one that I think we've all
also heard about is the day when stanislav pet saved the world have you heard this yep yep so y Petro was on
duty at the OKO nuclear warning system Command Center in the USSR on September 26th um so kalal was shot down on
September 1st September 26 the system saw five missiles coming toward the
USSR and this is also something that was in the Anie Jacobson book the nuclear
war a scenario is that which is true is that our like reconnaissance and technology
available to see what's incoming is like pretty good but the Russians even today
is not that great and they can see five missiles when there are zero they could
see a thousand missiles when there are 10,000 you know like it's just like not great what they can see it's look harder
than it seem than it sounds to be able to see what's coming towards you and in this case Petra's systems were telling
him that there were five nuclear missiles coming toward the USSR from the United States and he just felt like
that feels weird you know like we've had no warning we've had no um even though
this Kal thing just happened he like we've had no warning there's nothing on the ground telling me that this was going to happen and also five is a very
very small number so if the US attacks Russia he was always told that it would be like balls to the wall everything you
know so he just in his in his heart he felt that it was wrong he did not tell his
boss he waited and it was wrong it was a sun glare of a cloud so if he would have told someone they would have
counterattacked wild and we'd all be dead yeah so he end yeah he ended up being um like given a different job but
never really like given any praise or retaliation for what he did but he saved
he saved the world in in one way or another um there's also things happening
like um there's some terrorism in Beirut the US is taking Granada there's all sorts of things going on in the world um
the Russians are looking for the US to be aggressive especially after these last couple things that have happened um
and they're also obsessed with like 1983 is another 1941 we're at the brink of
War so they're thinking that and that's what this um this Declassified thing
that I read was the basic conclusion is that like after this all happened like after in retrospect in the 80s and and
in the ' 80s they were like it wasn't that big of a deal like everyone was doing war games no big deal but what
this paper says is that the Soviets were like legitimately afraid and legitimately
believed that at any moment the US would do this and so that puts them at like a
just an unbelievably paranoid state so which brings this to well can I ask
something yes please please do we do we know if the
Soviets thought that like Ronald Reagan was a rational actor or not you know
because I think that like when you look at like um okay if like just not even
being political I think anybody would if you were looking between Trump and Biden You' like yeah Trump would launch before
Biden would yeah like there's some personalities that are just a lot more obvious like why you have that
perception of them did they assume Reagan had like a death wish or like do
we know I don't know I'm sure someone knows
um I'm not sure but they they do see Reagan investing a lot of money in the
military you know so I think that they see that as like like they're we are
building the Ohio class nuclear submarines at this time you know so like they know that we're doing that so I
think that that is enough to make them nervous you know yeah yeah makes sense
yeah I don't know if that means that like they think the person can could physically press the button or not but
they do see us like we're not like opening the gates and you know making borest we're like right buying guns
right you know right yeah so that brings us to the war game Abel Archer 83 um
which is a NATO war game um which is like the NATO allies versus the countries in the Warsaw Pact and it
involves a a lot of people all over the world kind of coming together and like you said like doing the um you know
they're moving things around they are in bunkers they are doing a simulation of
what it would happen in this attack so it's a November 1983 it's a 5-day game
played in Brussels at the Supreme headquarters allied powers of Europe shape headquarters in Casto Belgium
Margaret Thatcher probably participated Ronald Reagan did not um the like the
Secretary of Defense and other higher up in the US were like let's just not
involve the president in this one you know like in some cases they did involve him but they're like we don't need to involve him in every single one because we really only need him at the end you
know right so someone like played him so the scenario that they had um
was supposing that it's 1983 and in February so this is fake this is the
scenario that they had in February there was a dramatic change in leadership in the USSR they sent Aid to Iran the US
Navy incre ined um their um like their
stance around the world the number of of ships that they had but June things start to escalate in Europe and Eastern
Europe in August there's protests in Yugoslavia they leave the Soviet block the Warsaw pack people get together they
invade Yugoslavia Finland Norway attack NATO attack Greece attack West Germany
um so that's what they're you know supposing has happened up to this then Able Archer 23 is in real time so it's
November in a year where all of this has happened and um the NATO stations follow a script they're talking to each other
and Reporting on the crisis there real people there's real paper they're in these rooms that have like a map of
Europe and there's pins all over the map and they're like you know the Soviets are coming here they're coming down through you know through the um like
through Norway they're coming up through Greece like they're they're starting to attack Europe um on day two they suppose
that the Warsaw packed um uh countries like the USSR start using chemical weapons so NATO did as
well within 24 hours they like retaliated back um some of the members
of the Air Force who were in Germany like physically had to move to West
Germany get into bunkers and wear gas masks for like a day like pretending that like you know they were under
chemical attack um so it's supposed to be like super uncomfortable you know
because in that case if I say to you like Forest imagine that we're being attacked by a chemical weapon you'd be
like okay I'm imagining it but I'm like fars you have to go into your bathroom close the doors put on a gas mask and
sit there in the dark for 12 hours like you're going to feel different after that you know right right and that's
what they're testing too like the human reaction like it's one thing to say it but you have to like really feel that
and even though you know it's just a game like you're still going to be like this [ __ ] sucks I am hyped you know
so um people keep adapting trying to figure out like what to do um and
they're also obviously talking to each other on like the radio every time they before they say
something they say exercise exercise and then the thing that they're going to say so that if it is intercepted which they
know that it will be by the real life Soviets they will know that this is a war game so they're they say that but
like Soviets are like well wouldn't they just say that wouldn't they just pretend it's a war
game and have it be real and then you're like well [ __ ] like everyone's [ __ ] if that's what is going to happen you know what I mean like if some someone's like
don't mind us we're doing this scenario and they're like oh sure you are but also it could probably be real then
like what what are you supposed to do you know yeah especially during this time when you're on pins and needles
anyways you're always it's like they're they're doing the confirmation bias thing of yes here's why it's not what
they say it is exactly and it is so much of that so they also can see like you
said like there are ships moving in the seas and like things physically happening that are really happening but
they're happening in response to something that is not real as an exercise so the KGB is seeing that and
they start panicking um they remember operation Ryan they remember all the paranoia they remember how they think
that the us is going to strike first and um there are spies everywhere you know
making [ __ ] up saying what their bosses want to say maybe they heard bad Intel in the first place there's like so much
of it as rumor anyway um and so they're like confirming like yeah things are
happening like we don't know what's going on um and so on the next day of Abel Archer they um the KGB in real life
tells its PE tells everyone in the military to expect a surprise attack um
so everything was up to Defcon 2 on our on our side so people were acting like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan um
and you know making decisions but in real life Ronald Reagan is leaving DC to go to Japan for a summit so the Russians
also see this and they're like is he getting the hell out of Dodge you know like is he leaving the United States
because he knows that they're about to launch a nuclear attack on on Russia and so they start thinking that things are
real and then at towards the end of AEL Archer they changed the codes that they
were using like the NATO side did I don't really know why but because they
changed the code the Soviets were like this is proof that it's real like this is really happening and so they were
like they started mobilizing and getting things together together to try to
preemptively attack the United States before we could actually do the thing that they thought that we were doing so
it was like on the brink of them responding to something that like didn't exist so that's that's the answer to the
question of why would anybody launch first got it yeah exactly because you're like confused and it's weird and like
once one person does it it's kind of over you know right um so also during
this time andropov the leader of of the USSR is very very sick he is in a home and um like a a nursing home essentially
um but they're not telling people that he's there and but they are like kind of relying on him but he's still like very very sick and he will die he'll die
early in 84 um but one person who
um on on the day that the NATO war game Able Archer is almost over um the USSR
is approved to launch they're like ready to go and um so there were a couple
people in in Russia who were able to kind of have some rational decisions there was um one man who had a like a
calculator that was like thinking that was working on like different um like ideas and presumptions and he was
like the US wouldn't do this you know he was like know using a lot of data and Intel and being like this doesn't make
sense like why this would happen um he like decoded some num some numbers and he was like I don't think this is real
and like trying to like you know say that out loud there was a spy at NATO and he was like everything's fine here
you know he was like I would let you know if like something weird was happening but like nothing weird is happening you know like no one in like
the regular offices were freaking out or anything um and then another person was
like we shouldn't retaliate like by getting ready because then they're going to see us getting ready and everyone's
going to be scared so he was like we should just like take a breath so a couple rational people kind of calmed down the leadership in the USSR and they
ended up not retaliating and then able arra ended and then they realized that it was just a game but they were very
very close to that first strike which is crazy it's terrifying
yeah it's terrifying and then so um
so they do it like pretty much every year um and um
they do these these war games all the time and I think that like the big thing that is that could you know Doom
everyone is really if someone misinterprets something and then there's also like I get that you also might be
like well wouldn't you hide real Attack behind a war game and you're like yeah
probably you know so they're just like everyone's just going to be holding that gun to each other's head forever I don't
know why because if you initiate the attack it's over anyway I
know no I know there are no winners in a nuclear war I'm saying I'm saying why
even why would anybody even put on the opes of I'm doing this like in a fake way when they're going to know when
something is inbound to their country that it's real but but they might but also
like will they because they've scen where like people think it's real and it isn't you know I guess like there's just
a bunch of like it's not as like it's not as easy as it as it seems like I think I thought before doing all this
reading that it would be easy to be like oh there's a bomb coming at us and it's like harder than than it looks and
subject to a lot of mistakes you know there's a lot more people involved in this than than machines which is like
terrifying because people make mistakes but also machines make mistake mistakes and also just like will we just all die in a robot war with like the nukes nuke
each other and then and then add on the lexity of like AI yeah exact trying to
interpret what another AI model is doing and then what data was that fed off was
that fed the data of this exercise or it wasn't and then maybe that that wasn't no and yep and then that'll be it and
it'll be like up to that to that like those computers to decide like the level
of threat and like be like okay well I did all my modeling seems right and then launch you
know yeah it's very scary and it was very close to to being real because no
one was talking to each other and everyone was scared and everyone was like trying to you know show their might
and do all their things but um yeah it's a very um you know big responsibility
for for the presidents and everyone in the world to make sure that it doesn't [ __ ] happen which is what the um the
the conclusion in the Hiroshima Peace Museum wasn't like I thought it would be more like World War II related really
but the conclusion was like never do this again like never do this again like
a a nuclear bomb kills everyone and everything indiscriminately and if we do
it again we will destroy the world you know yeah so they are very rightly
committed to Total nuclear disarmament which is now my life's cause because after reading all this I'm like oh my
God like if we have one we have you know a thousand and we are and we lose them and they're you know puttering around
the ocean and like remember there was that Russian nuclear sub that like everyone on it died it got like lost in
the ocean a couple years ago I think it was K yeah yeah yeah people are just out
there it's just out there you know that you know that that's how the Titanic was discovered right by nuclear sub no it
was it was Bob Ballard was hired by the US government to find this submarine
there was a nuclear submarine that sank forever ago and they could never figure it out and they're like you can do it
and then like you can do your Titanic thing but first you got to find this one we'll fund the whole thing but find this first and that's how that's what
happened so that's fun yeah because they're impossible to find you can find the Titanic before you can find them
because they're moving Titanic is not moving anymore well no that thing that thing sunk the the I think it was I
think it was th oh it was sunk yeah on the but it's on the ocean floor just like hanging out ready to kill someone
yeah well so well when you say nuclear submarine it means like two two things one is like
they're nuclear powered versus like they actually possess nuclear AR armaments
absolutely yes yes that's a good distinction yeah and so in that case I know that it was it was nuclear powered so what they were trying to get a sense
of was like is the reactor leeching into the ocean is it still secure and frankly
it probably doesn't even matter if it's leing into the ocean when it's like 3 miles down but I think it's more like a
a like are these things safe enough at that depth it probably matters in the
long run you know I don't know yeah yeah I'm you know
also just like to your point like the your question about like you know who would who would launch this first
like I think that the conclusion from this report that I read and and from
like rigan's Memoirs and talking about the time is like after this was over the United States was genuinely surprised at
how paranoid the Russians were like yeah we didn't realize that they were on a
hair trigger because we weren't you know like we weren't as like worried as they
were and their you know culture of telling people what they want to hear and like being like very very you know
like just like always like really really hyped up and like ready to go you know like made people kind of just like agree
that this supposed to be happening I don't know if that makes sense they were like ring each other up so that and think that can be a problem too when you
have a lot of people who are making these decisions who are all in the same you
know head space well head yeah I do I do I don't I don't I'm trying not to follow
the news because I'm trying not to live a weird and paranoid life but I do kind of get the sense that like we're edging
closer to the world being on a hair trigger yeah with things I mean it just feels like there's a lot of moving
pieces right now yeah it's very very scary and then
like I there was a movie called on the beach I think there's two of them there's a um a there's one in the that
was made in 1959 um and there's one later oh in 2000
um but essentially for both of them and oh guess made out of a novel um is that
the world goes into nuclear war and everyone dies and the last people alive are in Australia and everyone is like
dying of cancer because everything on the Earth has been destroyed from the nuclear radiation and all the things and
you know the nuclear winter and the last they're like the last scenes are like in Australia and they're like getting these
pills from the government to to die by suicide because everyone's just like dying of cancer and it's so terrible and
then like that's it the human race is over yeah yeah I think I think in any of
those situations it is always better to be as close to the thing yeah you know
yeah and then there was also a TV movie um in the 80s um about a post um nuclear
attack that was that actually uh aired on ABC on November 20th 1983 so a few
weeks after AEL Archer 83 ended and it was called the day after I'm not going to watch it because it sounds terrible
but John lith Go's in it um Steve gutenberg's in in it but it is about what happens after it's saying that like
uh Kansas is in this case like hit by a nuclear bomb and then it has like the the what happens afterwards and that
show really affected Reagan as well and that led to him having more talks with gorbachov because he was like we can't
do this you know like seeing it and then I have a book that I read in I read in elementary school for no reason and I
bought it to have because it had profound effect on me called after the bomb and it's a book that was written in
the 60s about Los Angeles accidentally being nuked by the um and what people do kind of after and
during it and it is horrifying and I don't know why they gave that to children but I my
children yeah I literally have it here at my house to get have my kids read it but it's scary as [ __ ] and like you know
if you imagine like all of our infrastructure just going down you know like at one thing I remember from the after the bomb book is like the kid is
like the kids happen to be playing in a bomb shelter when it goes off so like they're okay but like their parents are not okay and he like brings his mom to a
hospital and the Nur he's like Need A Doctor need a doctor and the nurse looks at him and she goes doctors died too
like there are no doctors like that's the and that's thing that happened in Hiroshima too that were like doctors
would work until they were dead because there were no other doctors couldn't do anything anyway you know that's why I'm
like just be as close to it as possible yeah because you there's something you just don't want to survive and it feels
like that's probably one of those that's one of them you don't want to be in it it sounds it will be it will be
absolutely terrible and then we'll have to go underground and then in the future archaeologists will dig us up and be like wonder what
that was about and then we'll do it again I do I do like the idea of like
being at a Scholastic Book Fair and you you hand a kid like a Curious George and then also this like nuclear Holocaust
book I know in hear you a little Timmy I know it's pretty intense and
then and then you said this is a series so we're going to do another one next week yes next week we're going to talk about the 1997 game eligible receiver 97
it was a war game that Al Gore commissioned um people at caner Fitzgerald the accounting firm to do um
with people in the government to say what would happen if there was a Cyber attack on the United States um and we'll
talk a little bit about that and then um what happened a couple years after that
in the same building that they did not expect as well which was 911 it was 911
like c f Jerald most people there died wow wow couple years before that
they were like worried about this threat and they you know there was another threat like looming which is a kind of a big deal so talk about that next week
and then after that I'm gonna talk about like puppies yeah let's
change I'm not okay I will never complain or puppy content um that's
awesome well thanks for thanks for that was fun that was really interesting it it was also weird that I literally just watched the the nuclear thing last night
and I know it's like in the like guys yeah yeah but um do we have any uh anything you want to read off before we
wrap um oh a lot of people gave me [ __ ] about how I was wrong about the unexamined life of Socrates so I get it
now me and your husband were the ones um that's all and um also our friend Morgan
said that if you look up business fail and spell it correctly on overcast we are 17th in life oh nice nice okay
that's exciting oh and also I made a website but I can't get the DNS to work we have to talk about it like the DNS
didn't it failed like twice and then I put in a txt record and now I'm waiting for that but I don't know that's going to work so we'll talk about it later but
I made a website very exciting very exciting once we have a UR to share we will in the meantime you can still write
to us at Doom toell pod gmail.com follow us on the social at Doom toell pod and
we'll join you in a few days with another story thanks thanks Taylor than
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