Why Nuclear Weapons Are The End of History

given the demographics of youtube i'm fairly confident in starting off this video with a terrifying statement all of you myself included have lived every single second of your lives under constant threat at every moment we are but minutes from all witnessing the end of human history today i want to talk to you about the end of the world for every second of the last 75 years all of us have been living under the shadow of a specter many of us have either forgotten about or outright ignore nuclear weapons and nuclear war of course nuclear armageddon hasn't taken place but make no mistake we are on a knife's edge all over the world there are literally many fingers trembling above many triggers just waiting to enact policies that if carried out would vaporize irradiate burn crush or choke enough of civilization that it would end we are on the brink so how did we get here and how do we pull back in 1945 some of the smartest people to ever live finished their designs for the most dangerous weapon to ever exist the atomic bomb this was a part of the now infamous manhattan project and should be noted that many geniuses involved like richard feynman deeply regretted being a part of this project for the rest of their lives the terrible fruits of their labor were first tasted on july 16 1945 during the trinity test the first detonation of an atomic device what these men working on the manhattan project had done was in effect find a new way to liberate energy from matter so in contra distinction to something like a conventional weapon that uses chemistry to break apart the chemical bonds in something like trinitrotoluene or tnt atomic weapons use physics to break the atomic bonds in something like plutonium liberating vastly more energy per kilogram for example if tnt had an energy value per kilogram of one plutonium would have a value of 20 million this obscene amount of potential energy went from disturbingly theoretical to terrifyingly practical when the first atomic bomb was dropped on the japanese city of hiroshima during world war ii in an effort to end the war with this obstinate nation between 60 and 80 000 people were killed instantly their shadows were etched into walls as bodies provided milliseconds of meaningless resistance to a fireball as hot as the surface of the sun the two bombs dropped on hiroshima and nagasaki during world war ii are thankfully still the only offensive instance of nuclear weapons but now pandora's box was open and other nations were peering inside in the ensuing 75 years the world stockpile of nuclear weapons has exploded forgive the pun to over 13 000 with 90 of those either being owned by the united states or russia and we can also assume that those countries have at least one warhead pointed at every major city in the other country with such amazing destructive capability nuclear nations have to be treated differently on the world stage that just makes sense and so now we find ourselves in this confusing stalemate of nuclear deterrence where the only protection against nuclear annihilation is to have nuclear weapons yourself and to make it very clear you will use them for what it's worth nuclear experts don't think an all-out nuclear war is very likely the policies of retaliatory and preemptive strikes don't make a whole lot of sense when the destruction is mutual and assured by sophisticated technology it's an insane game where we know no one will win in the end but we must posture as convincingly as possible that we still want to play what is likely though an expert estimation is an accidental nuclear war ending human history by mistake now i know that sounds even more ridiculous than the situation we are currently in but it is quite the opposite we have almost stumbled into annihilating ourselves a number of times there have been more so-called nuclear close calls than is psychologically healthy to think about but i want to highlight just one to show you the preposterousness and the precariousness of our current situation in 1962 it was the height of the cold war with the soviet union by october 22nd of 1962 the united states had entered as a part of this almost conflict def con 3. as a part of this defense condition the united states put out f-106 fighter jets all across the country and they were carrying air-to-air nuclear-tipped missiles ready to intercept russian bombers it should be noted that these missiles could destroy everything within a quarter mile one of these bases was volk field in wisconsin a very small air base at the time in 1962. it was so small in fact that it had to be hastily staffed and wired with alarms for security volk was also under the direction of a larger base in duluth minnesota 300 miles away tensions were high all across the country fighter pilots were ready to jump in their jets at a moment's notice and intercept russian bombers and on october 26 of 1962 their tensions were validated a perimeter guard in duluth minnesota was making his rounds when he saw a shadowy figure trying to scale the fence he took a few shots at the intruder and then ran to hit the sabotage alarm on the base the intruder ran off into the woods and the alarm rang out across the base and all connected bases including the one at volk but at the small air base in wisconsin the sabotage alarm didn't go off because of the hasty wiring job and getting the base up to code with security the alarm that went off was the one that nobody wanted to hear pilots sprang up from their beds ran into their jets and the only thing that kept them from taking off was a guy in a jeep flashing his lights and waving his hands telling them not to take off the alarm was a false one and the intruder trying to get into the base at duluth wasn't some russian spy it was a bear a bear that almost started world war iii this story is only one of a dozen declassified nuclear close calls there are probably many more that we'll never know about and many more that are likely much more recent i'm just trying to be very clear here the most dangerous weapon ever created is not also the safest weapon and we could easily end history by mistake but maybe that would be a fitting in to this colossally stupid situation that we find ourselves in i can feel it some part of your brain is saying kyle you must be exaggerating you must be being dramatic the situation the status quo can't be this dire but unfortunately i assure you that i'm being deadly serious you can look into the research let's take one example of a paper that looked into a single nuclear exchange of just a hundred nuclear warheads just a hundred between two countries likely to have an exchange by miscalculation or mistake like india and pakistan they launch these 100 nuclear weapons each and the resulting detonation is astonishing and devastating tens of millions of people die almost instantly and then everything gets worse the resulting firestorms launch terra grams of dust and debris into the air into the upper atmosphere where it hangs out for years blocking sunlight as it does so it drastically drops average global temperatures in just a few years local temperatures around the world could drop by as much as 20 or 30 degrees below what they were during the last ice age crop failure famine unprecedented social upheaval and human migration research shows that just a hundred nuclear weapons going off could lead to the death of one out of every three humans billions and remember this is just from less than one percent of the current nuclear stockpile and it gets worse research shows that just a single nuclear bomb going off in a large city would lead to the biggest disaster in human history consider another scenario put forth by the bulletin of the atomic scientists where they imagine just a single nuclear bomb falling into terrorists hands with the help of rogue scientists and engineers working with a nuclear nation these terrorists successfully detonate a single bomb in the heart of a major american city tens of thousands of people are vaporized instantly and tens of thousands more are doomed by radioactive fallout there are no doctors no hospitals just fire projections of this horror suggest that just one bomb in one city just one would be enough to trigger a global recession a reduction in global gdp of 2 percent and 30 million people pushed immediately into poverty the total estimated economic damage from 9 11 where 2 977 people lost their lives is around one trillion dollars a single bomb going off in a major city wouldn't even be in the same category u.s nuclear policy is animated by the idea that another nuclear power may strike at any time and so the united states needs to be prepared to either retaliate or even make a preemptive strike on one of these powers now because of this framing there are policies in the united states called first use where it retains the right to make a first strike and fire on warning which guarantees nuclear retaliation even if the nation's fate is sealed by thousands of missiles headed for every city in the country the execution of these policies falls to one person the president of the united states i've asked you to imagine a number of terrible scenarios today and i want you to imagine just one more it's middle of the night washington dc 3am the president's asleep the phone rings they're slow to get up they're groggy flick on the lights try to find slippers rub the eyes what could it be sir it's the russians thousands of missiles are headed towards the united states the rocker propelled and they will be here in less than 10 minutes the president now has under 600 seconds to decide whether or not they want to follow through on a policy that would guarantee the vaporization of tens of millions of russian civilians what was all that deterrence for right and there's no time to check whether or not this is a real threat or just a false alarm or just a damn bear in the wisconsin woods we sit right in the middle of this lunacy a situation like i just described has happened and i didn't even tell you about it we spend every second of our lives like this remember how do we get out of this situation well thankfully for the first time in this video i do have some good news i was compelled to make this piece of content after listening to a conversation between sam harris and former defense secretary of the united states william j perry perry now has an organization that is dedicated towards bringing us back from the brink and he notes that there are many things we could start advocating for and doing tomorrow that would help mitigate this existential risk the first step is education you need to educate yourself on this topic and what we face and i'm hopefully doing that a little bit with this video but the next step is taking political action we need to support politicians and policies that address our nuclear problems we could start dismantling some of our icbms that we don't need tomorrow we could unilaterally advocate for reducing our nuclear stockpile we could fight against policies of fire on warning and first use and sole authority of the president and at the end of the day the civilians could elect a president that understands this information this situation or at least elect a president that understands anything finally you could seek out and support organizations that want to take these steps organizations like the william j perry project and the bulletin of the atomic scientists no one is going to pull back from the brink unless we make it very clear to people in power that we do not want to be a part of this current situation it is completely untenable and trust me i don't want to be talking about this stuff all the time i want to be talking about black holes and basilisks but i need to make sure that i'm doing at least my own little part in ensuring that human history continues and i hope you can do the same until next time thank you so much to the vera nerdy staff at the facility for their direct and substantial support in the creation of this video if you want to join the facility staff if you want to join the over 1200 nerds that are talking with me 24 7 on discord giving me episode ideas not getting freaked out about nuclear war all the time showing me pictures of their pets starting their own dnd games together getting episodes a day early professors only live streams all that you can go to patreon.com kyle hill and get on the staff today and if you support the facility just enough get your name on aria here each and every week and as you can see there's literally hundreds of you so i don't know how to pass the well that was pretty heavy huh it's a heavy topic i mean i could lighten the mood but i need you to think about this for a little while because it's it's quite important like i said every single second every single day of your entire life you've been under this threat and this needs to be at the forefront of people's attention at least more than it is now yes i could lighten the mood by saying you know if you farted hard enough in space you would propel yourself in microgravity but i'm not going to say something like that because nuclear war is very important i wouldn't say something like that thanks for watching

Channel: Kyle Hill

Views: 973,151

Keywords: because science, engineering, kyle hill, learning, math, physics, science, stem, the facility, nukes, nuclear war, nuclear weapons, fission, fusion, manhattan project, kyle hill channel, nuclear bomb, nuclear explosion

Id: CxkvsrSUyOU

Length: 14min 33sec (873 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 14 2020