Duck and cover because we’re about to drop some bombs! We’re going nuclear on today’s
Nutty History! That’s right we’re talking nuclear warfare, nuclear bombs, nuclear nations, basically
all things nuclear weaponry. And by the end, I think we’ll all agree that no nuke is good nukes.
If you want access to our nuclear codes, give this video a like, click the notification bell
and subscribe to the channel so you never miss any nutty nuclear news. We’re Nutty History so we’ll
definitely cover a bit of the bomb’s backstory, but more importantly, we’ll talk about it’s
present and try to answer a few very important nuclear questions. With everything going on right
now; a worldwide epidemic with no end in site, social unrest, attacks on our civil liberties,
unprecedented authoritarianism from our leaders, wealth inequality, the eradication of workers
rights, late-stage capitalism, widespread racism, homophobia, sexism, civil protections
being rolled back, access to healthcare.... IN ADDITION TO ALL OF THAT... Should we also worry
about getting nuked? Most of what people know about nuclear weapons comes from the movies and,
huge shocker here, the movies get a lot of it wrong. Your skin’s not going to fly off leaving
a perfectly preserved skeleton like Sarah Connor in Terminator 2. There’s probably not a cowboy
riding on the bomb like in Dr. Strangelove. And the dreaded suitcase nuke isn’t actually that
big of a threat....like in about eleventy billion movies. Truth is, there’s not really such a thing
as a suitcase nuke. At least not in the way we think of them. Some dude is not going to
be able to walk in a building with a suitcase and nuke the block with it. The closest we've
come is an American bomb that’s basically a large backpack called Mk-54 SADM, that takes two people
to detonate. It’s a little more conspicuous than a suitcase. You need plutonium to power a nuclear
weapon and that is hard to come by. You can’t just buy it from some crazy scientist in a mall parking
lot. Ask the Libyans. Without plutonium you’d need enriched uranium and lots of it. Too much
to fit in a small, portable device. If a terrorist organization or a crazy bomber were improvising a
nuke, it would more than likely be the size of a heavy duty pickup truck. But plutonium is so
hard to come by and the process of enriching uranium is so intensive that it is extremely
unlikely that a rogue group would cause a nuclear strike. If they did, they would almost certainly
be state sponsored. Nuclear warfare is still, even in this day and age of vanishing borders, a state
sponsored activity. So who’s got nuclear weapons? The United States, Russia, the United Kingdom,
France, China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea for sure... and maybe Israel. And the US shares
some of its nukes, keeping them stored and ready to deploy in other NATO nations, Belgium, Germany,
Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey. It’s an elite club where everyone tries their hardest to keep
other countries out, but once they develop a bomb everyone has to welcome them in and take them
seriously. Between all of those countries, there’s 15,000 nuclear warheads. 90% of those belong to
the US and Russia. Oh and there’s also about 44 unaccounted for nukes. Ones that are just lost
and no one can find. Those are called Broken Arrows, like the crappy John Travolta movie.
So I guess someone could technically bomb us with one of those, but they’d need a launching device,
an aircraft or a submarine to do it. A little scarier is the 454 instances of smuggled, sold,
or illegally possessed nuclear or radioactive material. Those couldn’t make a proper nuke,
but adding radioactive material to a standard bomb isn’t pleasant. This all goes back to
breakthroughs in nuclear fission in the 1930s that led to the US and Great Britain collaborating on
The Manhattan project to build an atomic bomb. The US dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in World War
2 causing massive death and devastation in what was the only use of nuclear weapons in combat. The
USSR developed their bomb shortly after. Then the US and the Soviets both developed larger,
more powerful hydrogen bombs. Britain and France built their own nuclear systems in the 50s. From
the 50s onward the US and Russia were involved in The Cold War. No that’s not when you take a bunch
of Mucinex and go to battle with a head cold. The two countries were basically at war with
each other, but not officially. They would go to proxy wars backing warring factions in countries
where communism fought democracy and capitalism like Korea and Vietnam. They would back uprisings
against each other's hand picked leaders of places like in Cuba and Afghanistan. And they
would stockpile all of the nukes and aim them at each other. Kids growing up in this era regularly
had drop and cover drills in school, you know because hiding under your desk prevents nuclear
fallout. The US and the Soviet Union got into a nuclear arms race that lasted until the Soviets
basically ran out of money and the Soviet Union collapsed. We kept building and building weapons,
making sure one side didn’t have more than the other, but never using them because of mutually
assured destruction. Mutually assured destruction is a doctrine of military strategy and national
security policy in which a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by two or more opposing sides
would cause the complete annihilation of both the attacker and the attackee. It basically
means the threat of using nukes against the enemy prevents the enemy's using their nukes. So once
two opposing nations are armed, neither side has any incentive to initiate a conflict or to disarm.
They just sit there with nukes aimed at each other, knowing if one disintegrated New York,
then another one would already automatically be on it’s way to wipe out Moscow, so another would
be headed to LA, while one is going to St. Petersburg and another is shooting straight
to D.C. until both countries are just smoldering holes in the ground. What do these bombs do? When
the US attacked Hiroshima and Nagasaki with two atomic bomb strikes in 1945, it combined to kill
and injure 200,000 people. Hundreds of thousands died from related cancers in the following years.
Let’s say one modern bomb is dropped on New York City. 264,000 people would die instantly. 512,000
people would be hurt with injuries ranging from blindness from looking at the blast, to radiation
sickness which causes nausea and vomiting, spontaneous bleeding, diarrhea, sometimes bloody,
and severely burnt skin that may peel off. If it hit Manhattan, that part would be gone, vaporized,
and the parts of Queens and Brooklyn would have all their windows shattered. This is all in the
instant. There’d be years of cancer and radiation to follow. And this is just one city. If this was
a war and multiple cities are being bombed, it would produce radioactive smoke. The smoke
would make it into the stratosphere, above the weather, where it would stay for years because
there’s no rain to wash it out. That smoke would expand around the world as it heats up,
blocking out sunlight over much of Earth. The earth would plunge into a permanent nuclear winter
and all life on the planet would die. Bummer. But like we learned in the Cold War, these nukes
aren’t there to get dropped on people. They’re billion dollar, radioactive waste producing,
bargaining chips. Nuclear weapons are used as a negotiation tactic more than as a weapon.
Only a psychopath would genuinely consider using them. Which is why we may be closer to having a
nuclear detonation now than at any other point in history. All thanks to treaties, North Korea, and
a few other things. Another way that nukes aren’t like the movies is that the President can’t just
say ‘launch them’ and they get launched. It has to go down a chain of command. Which is good because
if that wasn’t the case we’d be in a nuclear war right now. Both Trump and North Korean president
Kim Jong-un have talked about and requested that the other country be nuked and had to be talked
out of it by their staff. In the cold war, the US and the USSR had missiles pointed at each other
but were also in constant communication. We do not talk to North Korea right now. At all. Kim Jong-un
has shown disregard for the people of North Korea and their well being putting his family’s prestige
and self image at the forefront. Mutually assured destruction may not be a deterrent for a country
already ravaged by war, cruelty, and famine. Adding to the volatility, North Korea’s closest
ally is China, another country with nuclear weapons, and a country with a large enough army to
challenge the United States in a traditional war. If the US and North Korea traded nuclear shots,
China would have North Korea’s back. Russia’s public policy is that it would never commit to
a nuclear strike unless it was attacked first, but as they’re allies with China, they could be
drawn into a conflict, bringing their huge nuclear arsenal. And if Russia shows up, their ally Iran,
itself on the cusp of nuclear power, would probably follow. But all of this is just
theoretical. We have nothing to worry about. Just stay off twitter. If you want more good nukes in
your life, like this video, hit the bell to get notifications and subscribe. Thanks for watching!