This video is sponsored by an all new product that you have to see to believe!
Okay, I know what you’re thinking, who would ever use this? The answer to that is…
no one, since this video is actually sponsored by Raid: Shadow Legends!
We know you’re tired of every RPG being a cutesy game full of candy, unicorns,
and bright colors! It’s time to get real, dark, epic, and awesome with Raid Shadow Legends!
My favorite part of Raid are, well, the raids! I love building the perfect party
to take into dungeons like the Arcane Keep and the Fire Knight’s Castle where
you face off against epic bosses that require unique strategies to take down.
There’s a ton happening in RAID this month, with new Champions,
updates to Tag Arena, and a full schedule of special tournaments and events,
like the Deliana Chase event where you can get a brand-new Legendary Champion.
Deliana is one of the strongest support Champions in the entire game,
and can help your team get past RAID’s tougher challenges like those dungeon bosses.
All you have to do is log in and play RAID for 7 days between now and July 20,
and you’ll get Deliana for free - that’s it! This is the best time to get started in RAID,
and if you click my link in the description or scan my QR code here, you’ll get a free starter
pack worth almost $40, that includes 3 free Champions Misericord, Tigersoul,
Romero, 10 Magic, Force and Spirit XP Brews. All this treasure will be waiting for you here.
But the gifts keep coming! Once you’re in the game enter Promo Code MYDELIANA to get
your hands on everything, plus 50 XP Brews to instantly get Deliana to max level 50,
as well as a ton of silver! So download Raid now and I’ll see you in the game!
On April 14th, 2022, intelligence agents briefed the President of the United States that Russian
President Vladimir Putin was considering the use of tactical nuclear weapons in his invasion of
Ukraine. But what are tactical nukes, and why are they so much more dangerous than
conventional nukes? And how in the world was a nuclear weapon meant to be powered by chickens?
During World War II the doctrine of strategic bombing came into its own. This called for the
use of air power to deliver strategic strikes directly against an enemy's ability to wage war
by targeting their industry, logistics centers, transport networks, and financial sectors.
Military targets such as air fields, radar installations, shipyards and submarine pens
were also valid targets, but strategic bombing aimed to completely neutralize a nation's
ability to continue supporting its war effort by demolishing the very infrastructure that made it
possible to feed, arm, and transport troops. The problem was that bombing raids in World War II
weren't very accurate, and the enemy could easily disperse their manufacturing and industry over a
wide area to avoid being destroyed- much like the Japanese did towards the end of the war.
With the development of nuclear weapons though, it was now possible to deliver bombs so powerful
that accuracy was a distant second requirement to raw explosive power. With a single bomber
able to carry multiple bombs each, it was now possible to completely neutralize a nation's
ability to wage war from the air. The advent of intercontinental missiles only made this easier,
and ever increasing yields now made it possible to simply destroy entire cities,
literally annihilating the enemy in genocidal attacks.
Nuclear weapons were becoming so devastating so quickly that soon major powers like the United
States and the Soviet Union realized that using them would only ensure their immediate
destruction in a retaliatory attack- after all, neither side was likely to
simply accept the complete destruction of a city housing a million or more people.
Gripped by a certain Cold War nuclear madness, both the United States and the USSR turned to
the development of lower yield nuclear weapons, which they fantastically believed might pose a
smaller risk of all-out thermonuclear war. These weapons were not meant to destroy entire cities,
but rather to be used against military targets or transportation infrastructure, and often to
be deployed in very close proximity to friendly forces. Soon they came to be known as 'tactical'
nuclear weapons, and both sides had their reasons for developing them other than simple deterrent.
For the United States, an impetus to develop tactical nuclear weapons came
from the fact that it was completely outgunned in conventional firepower by the Soviet bloc.
Western European states fielded far more technologically advanced,
and better trained armies, but the Soviet bloc had numbers on its side. To make matters worse,
the NATO alliance relied heavily on the United States to make up the bulk of its firepower,
and it would take weeks to transfer most of America's firepower to a European theater of war.
This is where the United States turned to tactical nuclear weapons,
developing numerous low or variable yield weapons which were meant to be employed against massed
Warsaw Pact formations- especially in the very vulnerable Fulda gap where the first battle of
World War III would have been waged. These weapons were even assigned directly to frontline troops,
and meant to neutralize the advantage in numbers that the Soviets and their allies had over the
west. However, gradually these weapons were removed from frontline duty as NATO forces began
to achieve a level of parity in numbers against the Warsaw Pact, while greatly exceeding it in
technological capability. By 1988 new British and American tanks were exponentially more effective
than their Soviet counterparts, leading to a parity of power along central Europe.
The Soviet Union faced its own problems which fueled its desire for tactical nuclear weapons.
Its problems were not so much on the ground, but rather in the air. While the Soviets developed
many highly capable fighters, NATO fighters were consistently ahead of the USSR's own
thanks to better avionics, weapons, and sensors. This made gaining control of the
skies over an Eastern Europe battlefield difficult for the Soviet Union, and as
World War II had proven- if you don't control the skies in Europe, victory is impossible.
To counter NATO's superior air forces, the Soviet Union developed numerous tactical nuclear weapons
which could be used to penetrate deep behind enemy lines and destroy entire air fields at
once. Conventional attacks could also achieve the same result, but NATO repair crews trained
tirelessly to quickly repair the damage from cratering munitions, knowing that air superiority
was their key to victory. Within 48 hours at most, a thoroughly cratered air field could be at least
partially operational again. Tactical nuclear weapons ensured that this would not be the case
however, and made it easier for the Soviet Union to permanently neutralize NATO's all important
forward air fields. Without these, the Soviet Union would rule the skies and no matter how
advanced NATO tanks and other equipment was, subsequently own the ground as well.
Both sides would end up fielding a lot of the same weapons for a lot of the same reasons,
and much like strategic nuclear weapons had grown in number for the simple act of deterrence,
soon the tactical arms race took off with both sides building increasing numbers of
tactical nuclear weapons also for deterrence. If the enemy knew you
had plenty of your own tactical nukes, they might not use theirs after all.
Tactical nuclear weapons were almost immediately controversial,
as it was at least thought that by limiting their yield and hitting only military targets,
they might be acceptable to use in case of war. This was likely extremely foolish thinking,
as the widespread use of tactical nuclear weapons would inevitably lead to the military collapse of
one side. On the verge of an overwhelming defeat, the loser would inevitably turn to
strategic nuclear weapons, encouraged not only by the desire to avoid catastrophic defeat,
but also by the fact that the nuclear threshold had already been so severely lowered.
But perhaps the biggest danger from strategic nuclear weapons was that
they could spark a global nuclear war with very little provocation.
As mentioned earlier, strategic nuclear weapons were often supplied directly to
frontline troops- and on multiple occasions across both NATO and the Soviet Union's history,
their use was left up to the discretion of local commanders. Normally the use of
a strategic nuclear weapon requires authorization from the very top of their respective governments-
in the United States only the President could authorize the release of nuclear weapons,
and in the Soviet Union only the General Secretary could do the same. This builds
in a long line of accountability and fail safes meant to prevent accidental nuclear exchange,
or from an overanxious general ordering nuclear Armageddon.
Tactical nuclear weapons however often don't have the same level of oversight.
Because they would need to be used quickly in response to sudden enemy aggression,
they not only had to be stationed close to the front lines, but their authority to fire was
down to local commanders. This put the decision to potentially start a full-scale nuclear exchange in
the hands of a single individual, sometimes as low ranking as a Colonel, a dangerous
circumstance for both sides of the Cold War. However, if you think that threat is a relic
of the past, think again, because now as India and Pakistan stare down the barrel of yet another war
against each other, it's once more feared that Pakistan will leave authority to use nuclear
weapons to its battlefield commanders. With Indian forces vastly superior to those of Pakistan,
and with a doctrine of fighting a 'deep penetration' opening assault to push as
deep as possible into Pakistan, it's feared that panicking Pakistani commanders will authorize the
use of nuclear weapons to stop Indian assaults- even if they're nuking their own territory.
Now though the specter of tactical nuclear weapons has returned to Europe,
as US intelligence- which has so far completely nailed every move and decision Russia has made
in its invasion of Ukraine- warns that Russian President Putin is so frustrated by the botched
invasion of its neighbor, that he may use low yield tactical nuclear weapons soon. With Vladimir
Putin fearing that the lack of military success coupled with extreme casualties suffered so far
will cause him to rapidly lose domestic support, the pressure is on to deliver the Russian people
a victory in Ukraine. As his conventional forces struggle to defeat Ukraine's much smaller forces,
the only way to rapidly secure a decisive victory is to use weapons of mass destruction,
and Vladimir Putin may be gambling that the use of low-yield tactical nuclear weapons
will allow him to achieve his objectives without prompting a retaliatory response from the west.
But the types of weapons available, and the
forms they have taken throughout history may just surprise you.
During the Cold War both sides did everything they could to try and track each other's
ballistic missile submarine fleet. This silent fleet of ballistic missile subs carried enough
nuclear firepower to level every major city in Europe and the United States,
and neutralizing them quickly and efficiently in case of war was of the utmost priority.
The US had a huge advantage in tracking Soviet submarines. Their SOSUS underwater tracking system
spanned around the world and used acoustic features of the ocean that the Soviet Union
was largely unaware of to effectively track even the quietest Soviet subs. It was said that for the
majority of the Cold War, there was rarely ever a Soviet submarine that didn't have a US tail
on it the moment it left its home port. However, the effectiveness of the SOSUS network and other
tracking technologies gradually diminished due to advances in Soviet submarine design
and the leaking of classified intelligence on these tracking systems to the Soviet Union.
But tracking an enemy submarine is different from targeting it, and conventional explosives required
a direct or near-direct hit to effectively cripple an enemy submarine. In 1982 the US Navy decided,
screw it- if we can't guarantee a hit, let's just blow up the entire ocean. To that end
they tasked Boeing with developing a nuclear anti-submarine warfare torpedo named the Sea Lance
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUM-125_Sea_Lance#/media/File:Uum-125a.jpg).
The Sea Lance was housed inside a watertight capsule which was
launched from a torpedo tube either on board a submarine or a surface vessel.
The capsule then floated to the surface and a rocket would ignite as its fins deployed.
An inertial guidance system directed the missile to the general area of the enemy
target, after which the payload separated, deployed a parachute to slow its fall down,
and then sink to a predetermined depth. Then a W89 thermonuclear bomb would explode,
destroying any submarine in a 6.2 mile (10 km) radius. The program was eventually canceled thanks
to the fall of the Soviet Union, and sea life everywhere breathed a collective sigh of relief.
The “kill everything and let god sort them out” attitude to defense had begun
long in advance to the age of the Sea Lance though, with the advent of the Nike Hercules
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MIM-14_Nike-Hercules_02.jpg) air defense missile in 1958. The
Nike Hercules was an upgrade to the MIM-3 Nike Ajax, and followed the same line of thinking- if
you could kill everything in the sky then accuracy didn't much matter. The weapon was designed
primarily for destroying entire formations of supersonic jet aircraft, but could also
be used for missile defense thanks to the massive nuclear explosion it generated upon detonation.
It could also be used in a surface-to-surface mode, allowing it to strike land targets as well.
The Nike Hercules would be the last American nuclear-armed surface-to-air missile,
and was replaced with the Patriot missile defense system which
featured such increased accuracy that the nuclear warhead was no longer necessary.
Interceptor planes would get their own nuclear air-to-air missiles as
well though. In 1957 the US Air Force developed the AIR-2A Genie
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIR-2_Genie#/media/File:Convair_F-106A_Delta_Dart_1.jpg) nuclear
air-to-air rocket out of fear of mass formations of Soviet bombers penetrating into the American
heartland. In 1947 the Soviet Union had successfully reverse engineered a copy
of the B-29 Superfortress after seizing one during the war, and now they had a
plane capable of reaching the United States in a one-way suicidal attack against American cities.
Guns and cannons were not sufficient to fend off large formations of enemy jet bombers,
and air-to-air missiles were still relatively crude and unreliable. Thus the US Air Force
turned to the tried-and-true method of simply blowing everything up.
The Genie was meant to be launched from an intercepting aircraft into the heart of a
Soviet formation, annihilating multiple aircraft at once. The advantage of the weapon was that
it was detonated so high up in the atmosphere that it was considered safe for use even over populated
areas. To prove the point, five US air force officers volunteered to stand unprotected directly
under the only live fire of a Genie weapon in the Yucca Flats test range. The weapon exploded some
18,500 to 20,000 feet (5,600 to 6,100 m) over their heads, and the five men received very
negligible doses of radiation. Only air crews assigned to fly directly through
the blast cloud ten minutes after detonation received any significant dose of radiation.
During most of the Cold War the greatest threat to the US Army was the vast hordes of Soviet tanks
waiting for them in Eastern Europe. To neutralize the numbers advantage,
the US developed the Davey Crockett recoilless rifle. Beginning production in 1958, a grand
total of 2100 were made and delivered to the US Army. The weapon could not only be carried
by front line troops, but an air-deployable version was even made for airborne infantry,
allowing them to drop behind enemy lines carrying tactical nuclear weapons.
Perhaps most surprising thing about the weapon was that it didn't kill by blast,
but rather by radiation. Troops within 520 feet (160 m) would die almost instantly from
the neutron radiation produced by the weapon, with troops further away dying in hours, days,
or within two weeks depending on distance and shielding. The weapon would actually
do little damage to enemy vehicles unless they were directly at the detonation point,
allowing those vehicles to later be recovered, decontaminated, and pressed back into service.
The weapon was eventually removed from service in the late 1960s due to it being
a danger to its own troops and the fact that despite assurances to its accuracy,
the weapon proved to be wildly inaccurate- even for the delivery of nuclear weapons which
tend to not care too much about accuracy. Despite these shortcomings, West German
defense minister Franz Josef Strauss begged the United States for large amounts of the weapon,
claiming that one single weapon could replace 40-50 salvos of an entire unit of divisional
artillery in defense of Germany from Soviet attack. The United States declined to provide
the weapons though as it would have left West Germany incapable of defense without resorting
to the use of nuclear weapons, immediately escalating any conflict into a nuclear exchange.
During the late 1940s and all throughout the 1950s, the United States and the Soviet Union
both had nuclear fever, and sought to develop nuclear variants of any
weapon conceivable. The US created the atomic cannon, or the Atomic Annie as it was known.
Atomic Annie was basically just a scaled up howitzer shell in the 280 mm range that was
fired out of a howitzer inspired by the German K5 railroad gun. The gun itself was transported by
two specially designed tractors, and could be set up and ready to fire in just 12 minutes. On May
25th, 1953 at 8:30 AM, the first and only nuclear shell to ever be fired from a cannon resulted in
the successful detonation of a 15 kiloton warhead. After the successful test, an order was placed for
20 cannons, with their immediate deployment to South Korea and Europe. However, by the time
of its deployment it was already obsolete as by then tactical nuclear missiles were already
being provided to US forces. Nevertheless, the weapon was kept around until 1963.
In 1957 Britain joined the crazy train with the acquisition of the Blue Peacock weapon system,
a nuclear land mine. The weapon weighed a whopping 7.2 tons and was meant to be buried
on the North German Plain and left completely unattended. The bomb would then be remotely
detonated via a connecting wire that ran for miles, or simply be set to an eight day timer.
The purpose of the mine wasn't to immediately stop enemy troops,
but rather to allow them to move over an area and even fortify it- only to have the nuclear
land mines explode from below. If detected, each landmine had anti-tamper devices which would arm
the mine and detonate it within a minute. To detect tampering, the casing was pressurized,
with any loss of pressure immediately arming the weapon. Tilt sensors and flooding sensors
would also arm the weapon if they detected water or that the weapon was being moved.
The weapon would have been devastating as it would have irradiated large swathes
of enemy-held territory, making holding it impossible. However,
a glaring flaw was soon discovered, and the fix was... chickens?
If buried underground during winter, the components could get very cold causing the
electronics to no longer work. The British investigated ways of keeping the components
warm such as wrapping the bombs in insulating blankets- but an alternative was soon suggested.
Live chickens could be sealed inside the casing with sufficient food, water,
and breathable air for about a week or so. Their combined body
warmth would keep the electronics warm and the weapon active. After a week,
it's supposed that the weapon would simply be dug up and the chickens would be replaced.
It was believed upon discovery of the declassified Blue Peacock file on April 1st
2004 that this had been an April fool's joke, to which the head of education and interpretation of
the National Archives, Tom O'Leary, replied that “The Civil Service does not do jokes.”
In an alternate earth, chicken powered nuclear land mines helped stop a Soviet invasion,
but in our timeline the weapon was very quickly decommissioned when it
was realized that purposefully preparing to detonate a friendly ally's territory
with nuclear booby traps was not a viable political position to hold.
Since it's now more likely to happen than ever, go check out What If
There Was A Nuclear War Between the US And Russia, or click this other video instead!