The making sense podcast sam Harris just a note to say that if you're hearing this you're not currently on our subscriber feed and will only be hearing the first part of this conversation in order to access full episodes of the making sense, podcast you'll need to subscribe at sam harris dot. Org. There you'll find our private rss feed to add to your favorite podcaster, along with other subscriber only content. We don't run ads on the podcast and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one the a Welcome to the essential sam harris This is making sense of existence. No threat a nuclear war, All of the series is to organise, compile and jackson.

pose conversations hosted by sam Harris indisposition big areas of interest. Is an ongoing effort to construct a coherent overview of sam's perspectives and arguments. The various explorations and approaches to the topic, the relevant agreements and disagreements and the push backs and evolving thoughts which his guests have advanced. The purpose of these compilations is not to provide a complete picture of any issue but to entice. To go deeper into these subjects along the way or point you too, episodes with each featured guest and other conclusion. Offer some reading listening and why king suggestions which range from fun and light to densely academic? One note to keep in mind for the series say. Has long argued for a unity of knowledge where the barriers between fields of study our views, largely unhelpful artifacts of unnecessarily partition. Thought that,

suit of wisdom and reason in one area of study, naturally bleeds into an greatly affects others here plenty of cross over into other topics as these dives into the archives unfold and you're. Thinking about a particular topic may share. as you realize, is contingent relationships with others in this topic. Here. The natural overlap with theories of ethics, violent and pacifism and more so get ready, let's make sense of existential threat and nuclear war In nineteen sixty one, the astronomer, Francis Drake jotted down a fairly simple back of the neck, in a formula to calculate just how many technologically advanced civilizations we should expect. Out there in the cosmos right now, it came to be known as the drake equation, the equator starts with an extremely large number. The estimate

the total number of stars in the universe. Then we, error that number down to how many of those stars have planets orbiting them. Then we narrowed down number down to how many of those in its are likely to be suitable for the evolution of life. Then we know back down to the number of those life suitable planets, but have actually had life emerge. Then we now oh that down to how many of those life forms are intelligent and then finally, we narrow that down to how many of those intelligent life forms advanced to the stage of a technological civilization. Even if we quite conservative, with our estimate at each step of the narrowing process. Maybe we asked that only one in every one hundred dollars and life suitable planets actually did achieve even basic microbial life or the only one in every one million forms of intelligent life became technologically advanced. Even if

apply these stringent factors, there resulted equation, and our remaining number suggested still ought to be between two thousand and a hunter. Million advanced civilizations, just Not you weigh way galaxy alone, and there are, of course, billions of galaxies just like ours. So even if the correct. Number is just in the hundreds and our milky way when you look out in the cosmos there. Be millions of civilizations out there. A physicist named enrico fermi, asked the simple question: if this, is true. Where is everybody, how come When we look out into the cosmos we don't see or hear obvious evidence of a plethora of advance, lifeforms the thing about in their ships. Cement trickly geo forming entire galaxies into power plants, or what have you, this quest and became known as fair means. Paradox.

There is no shortage of hypotheses to address vermes question, but just All of the responses can be categorized under three general answer types, one answer. Is that we're just early? Perhaps All of drakes math was right and everybody will show up, but we just how and to be amongst the first to the party Most itself may have just recently reached a state of habitability after the cat ass from the initial inflation and the big bang sent heat and debris flying about in every direction? Maybe just recently settled down and allowed life like ours to flourish, and we here and are just an early riser. Another answer is, that were very rare, maybe drakes numbers were not nearly conservative enough and life. such as ours is just an exceedingly unlikely cosmic event, perhaps There are only a small handful of civilizations out there and in the vastness of the cosmos. It's no surprise

we wouldn't have had any close neighbours who happened to be advanced enough to say hello, made Neighbourhood is just very quiet, or perhaps the most disturbing answer, the one word: going to be dealing with in this compilation. Is this one? Maybe there is a great filter. What if there is a certain unavoidable technological phase that every intelligent life's advancement must confront a technology cool phase that is just so hard to get through, that almost no civilization successfully crosses the threshold, and that explains why it appears that no one is out there. It may be that we humans are on a typical trajectory and are destined to be erased and soon, but even if there is a filter, and even if just the tiniest percentage of civilizations had been able to get through it and contain advancing without tripping over themselves. Pretty soon

They have the knowledge of how to do monumentally big engineering projects. If they so choose we. should see evidence of their continued existence right. so. Let's make sure where imagining this filter analogy correctly, maybe a single filter isn't quite right. Maybe we you'd be picturing, thicker and thicker filter layers stacked one on top of the other. Maybe there Would be a moment when you really do leave them behind that of permanent safety would be when a civilization achieves a kind of knowledge, so powerful that stands, how to survive and avoid its own self destruction perpetually and really does get. through all of those filters, but there does seem to be a kind of natural, sequential order of the types of knowledge that a civilization is likely to discover. It is The call to imagine discovering how to build flying machines before building wheelbarrows, but that is also not a guarantee

is our human order of scientific discovery typical or an outlier, its seems that harnessing energy is key to both creative and destructive power and that they must. go hand in hand. You could amount in the kind of knowledge it would take to pull off a huge engineering project like building a device that, safe and all of the energy from a black hole at the centre of a galaxy. For example- and you can, I recognise that this same knowledge would presumably also contain the power to destroy. civilization, which discovered it either maliciously or accidently, and the of avoiding that fate trend towards impossible over a short amount of time. No one makes it through. This is the great filter answer to enrico fermi, countless civilizations out there that blip out of existence almost as quickly as they achieve the technical prowess to harness even a small percentage of the potential energy available to them. Is this: what happens out there?

Does this answer fair me, how many filters arthur We humans are a relatively young species and all ready. We seem to be discovering a few technologies that have some fun. Potential. If we get through Current challenges are bound to just discover another, even more difficult technology to survive. Alongside is this tenable. This compilation is going to be a tour of sam's engagement with and a close look at the strong this weapon of war, we ve created so far a weapon that might be a candidate for the great filter, or at least it very difficult one. Nuclear war The complete, eraser and annihilation of civilization was attacked, once thought to be reserved only for the gods as a reminder of just how stark the moment was when we realized, we may have that power in our own hands, perhaps for the first time,

sensing that great filter on our horizon, it's worth playing hunting and now very famous audio clip which lay. is the realisation bear. Upon witnessing a successful test at nation of a nuclear bomb south of LOS Alamos, Robert Oppenheimer, the physicists, leading the manhattan project. Recalls the scene and his thoughts the world will not be the same, two people laughed too people cried. Most people were silent. I remember- From the hindu script the bottom and get the shell trying to persuade the prince. you should do his duty.

Impression takes multi armed form answers Now I am become death, the works. I suppose one way or another. Making sense of nuclear war and its existential threat is not the head. these two subjects and perhaps That's why most of us don't often look closely at the precariousness of the situation wherein weeks variants a kind of cognitive dissonance that can act as a psychological barrier when direct engagement with unknown threat is just too destabilizing and more importantly, when the threat seems to defy are readily available remedy. If there is a great filter out there, what good would it do to worry about it? Who would want to think about this stuff? same harris is one of those people who forces himself too.

though that wasn't always the case before we get to the ass in conversations that same as hosted on making sense, we should remind ourselves of the analogy that we're using to approach this subject. Affair through? Is not a wall? A filter known or how dense does permits things to get through. So even if the odds are stacked against us, only game in town appears to be trying to improve our chances of getting to the other side. Were to start with sam himself ass, he describes has re engagement with this threat. It's here attempt to shake us out of our collective moral slumber. Bus notice are circumstances when it comes to the nuclear question. He reads here a particular book which was instrumental to his paying close attention to this subject same Speaking in July of twenty twenty in the end doctrine of episode to ten were come

upon these seventy fifth anniversary of the atomic bomb in about a week ago, I sixteen is the seventy fifth anniversary of trinity, the explosion of the first atomic bomb at the time the test site and alamo gordo new mexico. whatever the merits or necessity of our building the bomb even using it to end the war with japan. I can certainly be debated, but what is absolutely clear to anyone who studies the ensuing seventy five years is there these were seventy five years of folly nearly suicidal folly, and this has been a chapter in human history of such reckless stupidity tat has been

a kind of moral oblivion and there's no end in sight. Rather, we have simply forgotten about it. We have forgotten about the city nation we are in every day of our lives, is really difficult to think about much less undressed. And the enormity of our error here is stupefying in some basic sense is like we were convinced. seventy five years ago to rig, all of our homes and buildings to explode then we just got distracted by other things. Right and most of us live each day,

a totally unaware that the status quo is as precarious as, in fact is so in the history of this period is written. Our descendants will surely ask what the hell were. They thinking- and we are the people, of whom that question will be asked. That is, if we don't annihilate ourselves in the meantime, what the hell are. We thinking What are our leaders thinking? We have been stuck for nearly three generations in a posture of defending civilization or imagining that we are by threatening to destroy it at any moment, and given our capacity to make mistakes, given the increasing threat of cyber attack, the status quo grows less tenable by the day. The first book

I read about the prospect of nuclear war was jonathan shells, the fate of the earth. originally came out in the new yorker in nineteen. Eighty two if you haven't read, it is a beautifully written and amazingly sustained exercise in thinking about the unthinkable and I'd like to read you a few passengers to give you a sense of it from the beginning, starting a few sentences in these bombs were built as well and for war, but their significance greatly transcends war and all its causes and outcomes. They grew out of history. Here they threatened to end history They were made by men, yet they and to annihilate man they're a pit into which the whole world can fall a nemesis of all human intentions, actions and hopes only life itself. which they threatened to swallow up can give the measure of their significance

in spite of the immeasurable importance of nuclear weapons, the world has declined on the whole, I think about them very much. We have thus far failed to fashion or even to discover within ourselves, an emotional, intellectual or political response to them. This peculiar failure of response, in which hundreds of millions of people acknowledge the presence of an amount the unremitting threat to their existence and the existence of the world they live in, but do nothing about it. A failure in which both self interest and fellow feeling seem to have died has itself been. So, a striking phenomenon that has to be regarded as an extremely important part of the nuclear predicament, as this has existed so far, end quote so there shall get sat the strangeness of the status quo aware

if the monster is in the room, and yet we have managed to divert our attention from it, and I love this point. He makes is a violation both of self interest and fellow feeling, our capacity to ignore this problem. Somehow seems psychologically impossible. It is inversion of really all of our priorities, both personal and with respect to our ethical commitment. two others a little bit later on. He talks about this state of mind, all the more because denial is a form of self protection, if only against anguish, in thoughts and feelings, and because it contains something useful and perhaps in its way necessary to life. Anyone who invite people to draw signed the veil and look at the peril face to face is at risk of trade

Passing on innovations that are part of our humanity, I hope in these reflections to proceed with the utmost possible respect for all forms. refusal to accept the unnatural and horrifying prospect of a nuclear holocaust, so their shells bean more tactful than I'm being here by admitting that this denial is on some level necessary to get on with life, but It is nonetheless crazy. We year after a year after year, we are running the risk of mishap here and whatever the risk you can't keep. Trust rolling. The dice seems time to ask. When is this going to end. To begin the exploration of clips, we're going to hear a philosopher and arthur, who spend a lot of time looking at existential risk, nick bostra.

Ostrom has a talent for painting. Colorful analogies to prime are thinking about these difficult topics. One of his analogies. That brings the great, filter hypothesis into vivid clarity goes like this. Imagine a giant earn filled with marbles, which are mostly white and color, but range and shades of gray. Each of these more Both represents a kind of knowledge that we can plucked from nature and apply technologically. Picture reaching in and pulling out the knowledge of how to make a hare drier, or the mobile or a toaster, oven or even something more abstract like the now of how to alter the genome tissues, eye color or some other aesthetic purpose. Reaching into this earth rummaging around and pulling out a marble is the act of scientific exploration and achievement now white, marble represent the kinds of knowledge that carry with them very little existential threat may

pulling a marble like this would be gaining knowledge of how to manufacture glass, that's horrible that we pulled out of the earth around thirty five hundred bc, ie and Egypt, that list bit of knowledge, mostly improves life on earth for humans and has all kinds of lovely applications for food preservation his dick expression window the facts, eyesight correction and much more likely carries with it some kind of minor threat as well, though its differ to imagine how that specific advancement would inherently threaten the existence of the species, You can imagine thousands of white marbles that feel as benign positive and generally harmless as this one, but Ostrom asks us to consider A black marble would be is theirs. Kind of knowledge that, when plucked out of nature, is just so powerful that every civilization is eradicated shortly after pulling it from the earth. Are there several of these black marbles, hiding in the urn somewhere

bound to grab one eventually sample now that it has generally been the attitude of science to just pull out as many marbles as fast as we possibly can everyone know about. At the moment you have a good grip and we operate as if the lack marbles, aren't in the earth as if they so we don't exist. What native grey was the marble that represented the moment. We obtain the knowledge of how to split the new Yes, a uranium to thirty five adam and trigger and tar Its vision chain reaction in a warhead was that of black marble That will be a question we consider throughout this episode, as well as this specific political entanglements which relate to this problem, and the alliances and personalities which affected it in the recent past. So, let's start out with nick Bostra and sam engaging on the topic of existential threat in general, as we move the nuclear question here, you'll, hear

bastone, lay out his vulnerable world hypothesis and drawing the metaphor that we introduced. This is from. beside one fifty one will we destroy the future, let's start with the vulnerable world hypothesis, what he mean by that france will. They have offices is roughly speaking, that there is some level of technological development at which the world gets destroyed by default, as it were done. What does it mean to get destroyed by default? I define something I called some mean anarchic default condition, which is a condition in which there is a wide range of different actors with a wide range of different human recognizable motives, but then, more importantly, to conditions One is that there is no very reliable way of resolving global coordination problems and the other is that we don't have a very

dreamily the reliable way of preventing individuals from committing actions that they're extremely strongly disapproved of by a great majority of other people met. Maybe it's better to come at it through a metaphor near the earn the earth metaphor tsar. What if, in this area, there is a black fall in there somewhere like some? Is there some? possible technology that could be such that, whichever civil station discovers it environment gets destroyed and down

but if there is such a black while in the end I mean we can ask about how likely that is to be the case, we can also look at what what is our current strategy with respect to this possibility, and it seems to me that country our strategy, a widely spect, to the possibility that the urban my contained a black all this is simply to hope that it doesn't this away, keep extracting balls as fast as we can. We have become quite good at that, but we have no ability to put balls back into the earth we cannot on invent. Our inventions saw the first part of this paper tries to identify what are the types of ways in which the world could be vulnerable.

the types of ways in which there could be some possible blackball technology that by might invent, and at the first and most obvious type of way the world can be vulnerable, is if there is some technology that a greatly empowers individuals to cause sufficiently large quantities of destruction, motivate this with a or illustrated by means of a historical counterfactual. The we in the last century discovered how to split the item and release the energy that is contained within some of the energy nuts contained within the the nucleus, and it turned out that the disease is quite difficult to If you need special materials, you need plutonium or highly enriched uranium. So really only states can do this kind of stuff to produce nuclear weapons, but what if it had turned out that there had been an easier way to release the energy of the atom? What if you could have made a nuclear bomb by not baking sand in the mic?

we have often or something like that, so so that then that might well have been the end of of human civilization. In that you, it is hard to see how you can have cities that to say if If anybody who wanted to could destroy, millions of people saw some If we were, just luck did not now. We know, of course, that that is physically impossible to create an atomic that donation by baking and in the micro on. But before you actually did the relevant nuclear physics. How could you possibly have known how it would turn out? But what? Let's just spell out that, because I want to conserve every intuitions as we go on there Harrowing ride. To do your terminus here, because they punch line of this paper is fairly startling when you get to what the that the remedies are. So why it that civilization could not endure the prospect of what you call easy, nukes if it were that easy create a

hiroshima level blast or beyond. Why is it just a foregone conclusion That would mean the end of cities and perhaps the end of most things. We recognise the attic foregone conclusion and a little too strong It depends a little bit on the exact parameters we plug in and the intuition is that in in a large enough population of people like amongst every population with millions of people, I will always be a few people who, for whatever reason, would like to kill. Million people are more. If I cut whether they are just crazy are are evil, or they have some weird ideological doctrine or they are trying to extort other people are threatened. Other people That it has just humans are very diverse and, in a large enough said, the people level for foreign practically any desire.

Can specify that will be somebody in there that has that, sir. If each of those destructively inclined people would be able to cause a sufficient amount of destruction, then everything would get destroyed now, if one, if, I might add, is actually playing out and his We then to tell whether all of civilization really would get destroyed, or some horrible catastrophe short of that would happen instead would depend on various things like just what kind of nuclear weapon would would it be like a small kind of hiroshima type of thing or from when you ve, a bum How easy would it be? Could literally anybody do it like in five minutes are? Would it take

some engineer working for half a year and depending on exactly the what what values who pick for those in some other environmental said you might get like sinners, ranging from from very bad to kind of existential catastrophe. But that's not. The point is just illustrates that there, their historical, have been these technological transitions where we have been lucky in the summer district. If the capability we discovered were hard to two wheeled and maybe a possible way in which this kind of very highly destructive capability, could become easier to wield in the future would be through developments in biotechnology that made the makes it easy to create designer viruses and so forth. Learn that doesn't dont require high. I'm months of energy are special

difficult materials and so forth. I know you might have an even stronger case, like so with a nuclear weapon like one you come up and can only destroy one city right where the virus assist of potentially can spread. so. You're always wishes to remind people that were wherein environment. Now, where people talk with some degree of flippancy about the prospect, of every household one day, having something like a desktop printer that can print dna sequences right that every When becomes thereon, the spoke molecular biologist and you too, you can just french, your own medicine at home or your engine genetic intervene at home, and this stuff really is you know the recipe in under those conditions, the recipe to weaponize the the nineteen eighteen flu could just be sent to you like a pdf. It's not without beyond the bounds of

plausible sigh five that we could be in a condition where it really would be within the power of one in nihilistic or otherwise ideological and to destroy the lives of millions and even billions in the wrong case yeah or as send us a pdf where you can just download it from the internet started at full. Genomes of the number of highly virulent organisms are in the public domain and and spread it to download sa yeah. As I mean, we could talk more about that, as I think that I would rather see a future where dna synthesis was a service provided by a few places in the world by would be able, if, if, if the need arose, to exert some control so screening around with something that every lab needs to have

It's own separate little machine yeah. So that's that these. These are examples of type one vulnerability like where the problem really arises from a individuals becoming too empowered in their ability to create massive amounts of harm. Now that there are other ways in which the world could be vulnerable, that a slightly more subtle, but I think also worth bearing in mind some of these have to do more about the way that tech and the logical developments could change the incentives different actors face weaken again return to the nuclear history case. For an illustration of this, and actually this is maybe the closest to blackball we ve gotten so far with thermonuclear weapons and the big arms race during the cold war. Let's do something like seventy thousand warheads being on hair trigger alert

saw. It looks loud I like with with when we can see some of the archives of this history that have recently open up that there were a number of close calls. The world actually came quite close to the brink on on several occasions, and we might have been quite lucky to get through. It might not have been that we were in such a stables, duration rather might have been like this was a kind of slightly black polish technology, and we just had enough I can get through it, but you could imagine it could have been worse. You could imagine properties of this technology that would have created stronger incentives, say for a first strike so that you would have crisis instability if it had been easier. Let us say in a first strike to take out all the adversaries nuclear weapons done. It might not have taken a lot in in a crisis situation to just have enough fear that he would have to strike first

Further the adversary, otherwise we do the same to you near remind people that, in the aftermath of the cuban missile crisis, the people who are closest to the action felt that Yawns of an exchange had been something like a coin, tossed him something like thirty to fifty percent. and what you're envisioning as a situation. Where would you describe as safe first strike, which is the vicious? No, reasonable fear that you're not gonna be able to annihilate your enemy it, provided you strike first. That would be a far less stable situation and also it is also forgotten that if the status quo of mutually assured destruction was actually a step towards stability, I mean there was before the russians had, or the soviets had their own arsenals. There was a greater in the game. Theoretical

During that we would be more tempted to use ours, because nuclear deterrence wasn't a thing yet yeah. So some degree of stabilizing influence of the Allah of course may be at the expense of the outcome being even worse. If near all sites are destroyed, then a safe first strike might just be one side being destroyed right, yeah sorry if it had been possible, say we want new clare warhead to wipe out enemies, nuclear warheads in a wider radius than is actually the case or if they had been easier to detect nuclear submarines, so that it could be more confident that you had actually in a pin able to target all of the other side's nuclear capability than that that could have resulted in a more unstable arms race, one that would, with a sort of higher degree

certainty, result in the weapons being used, and you can consider other possible future ways in which say the world might find itself locked into arms race dynamic. But it's not that anybody wants to destroy the world, but it might just be very hard to come to an agreement that avoids the arms being built up and then used in a crisis that nuclear weapon reduction, treaties and other concerns about verification. But in principle you can kind of how did you come up as are quite big and they use very special materials? I might be other military technologies where, even if both sides agree that they wanted to dust ban, this military technology, not just in the nature of the technology, might such that it would be very difficult or impossible to enforce. In that exchange, you heard strong mention how lucky we may have gotten in. it turns out nuclear

They are not very easy to create, so even This technology turns out to be a nearly black long and perhaps the d, it is one we ve pulled out of the earth can examine our treatment of them as a dress rehearsal with incredibly high stakes. Ostrom also mentioned something in passing, that's worth keeping in mind as we look closer at the nuclear weapon question. What he referred. Two, as global coordination problems this is a concept sometimes used in economics and game theory, and it described The situation that would be best solved by everyone simultaneously moving in the same direction, but, of course, people can't be sure. What's in any one else, his mind and human. our famously difficult to coordinate and synchronize in any case. So Often these types of problems entrench themselves and worsen, even if most people greed that they are incredibly harmful. Another relevant feature of a coordination problem

that there is usually a strong disincentive for first movers. This can be applied to climate change, pull I revolutions or even something like great number of people secretly desiring to quit social media, but wanting to lose connections or marketing opportunities, laying the globe coordination problem framework onto disarmament of nuclear weapons is an easy fit the fur. First mover, who dismantles their bombs, may be at a huge disadvantage, either If everyone privately agrees that we all ought to disarm. In fact, as you saw heard Bostra point out and thinking about nuclear war strategy. The fur strike is often aimed at decapitated the opponents ability to strike back. Of course, if your opponent already willingly disarmed say and accord with the mutual treaty. While you for danger weapons and only pretended to disarm. The effect is just as devastating so the coordination problem tends to persist.

Now that we ve laid some of the foundation to think about existential risk and general. Let's move to a conversation sam had with a guest who looks very closely at the prospect of nuclear war, the guest, is fred kaplan and when sir I spoke with him. Kaplan had has published a book called the bomb, but When we get to kaplan, let's first listen to some of sam's introduction to the conversation, and him. Do the work of trying to drag our attention to the unnerving reality of the situation? Again, he's going to be his back to nineteen eighty three animal meant when the only thing standing between us and nuclear armageddon may have in a single persons intuition, but doomsday I was just advanced closer to midnight than it has been at any point in the last seventy five years it now It's one hundred seconds to midnight. Now whether you put much significance in that warning,

just take a moment to consider that the people who focus on this problem I worried now as they ve ever been, but do you think about this, and if I were to ask, how long it's been, since you worry that you might have some serious illness or that your kids might or how long has it been since you ve heard about being a victim of crime you're, worried about dying in a plane crash, it problem he hasn't been that one might have happened last week. Even But I would wager that very few people listening to this podcast have spent any, significant time feeling locations of what is manifestly true All of us are living under a system of self annihilation? That is so diet, while likely unstable, though we might

stumble into a nuclear war based solely on false information. In fact, this is almost happened. on more than one occasion dinner name, stanislav petrol,. he should be one of the most famous people in human history, and yet he is basically unknown. He was a lieutenant colonel in the soviet air defence forces. who is widely believed to be altered? entirely responsible for the fact that we didn't have world wars three, you may year, nineteen eighty three, this was at the height of the cold war and the soviet union had just mistaken a korean passenger jet flight, seven for a biplane and shot down after strayed into siberian airspace, and the u s: and our allies were outraged over this. And on high alert both for you.

ass in the soviet union had performed multiple nuclear tests that month and so on. In this context in which soviet radar reported that the? U s had launched five icy c b at targets within the soviet union, and the data were checked and reject, and there was apparently no sign that they were an error and stanislav petrov stood at the house now he didn't have the authority to launch retaliatory strike himself. His responsibility was to pass the information up the chain of command, but given the protocols and plays its widely believed that had he passed, that information along a mass retaliatory strike against the united states would have been more. Was guaranteed and, of course, Upon seeing those incoming missiles of which they would like, we ve been hundreds, if not thousands, we would have launched day. Retaliatory

I of our own and then would have been game over hundreds of millions of people would have died more or less immediately. Now, happily, petra declined to pass informational. and his decision boil down to mere intuition right. The protocol demanded that he pass information long because it showed every sign of being a real attack, but petra reasoned that if the united These were really going to launch a nuclear for a strike they would do with more than five missiles, five missiles doesn't make a lot of sense, but I also believe that any of the other people who could have been on duty that night instead of petrol would have surely passed this information up the chain of command and and killing a few hundred million people

thereby wiping out the united states and russia as you'll, soon hear our retaliatory strike protocol entailed wiping out eastern europe and china for good measure, this could well ended human civilization. So when you think about human fallibility, an error of judgement and realise that this ability to destroy the species, at all times, every minute of the day. in the hands of utterly imperfect people and, in certain cases, abjectly imperfect people. It should make the hair stand up on the back of your neck and the infrastructure that is meant meaning all of these systems on hair trigger alert is aging and Many cases run on computers, so all that any self respecting business would be embarrassed to own them

For some reason, almost no one is thinking about this problem at the end of this compilation will offer some recommended reading in viewing, including documentary, which focuses on that perilous moment with petrov same goes on in the introduction to outline a few more absurd instances of close calls involving accidental war game codes being loaded into computers or misinformed radar signals which nearly sent the bombs flying so now let's hear more from that episode, we're going to hear happen, and sam discuss captains writing about the cuban missile crisis of nineteen sixty two. Arguably the first with. humanity, god of the genuine prospect of nuclear war. If you need, History refresher on the events of nineteen sixty two. I recommend documentary and the outflow of this compilation and, of course, kaplan's book as well.

For this clip. You just need to recall that at the tenses moment, other stand off. There were hunt of soviet nuclear warheads pointed at the. U. As on launch pads stationed in Fidel castro's cuba, ninety miles off of the united states coast and the united states had far greater number of missiles fixed on soviet targets, Secret negotiations were under way by the leaders of all three nations involved to try to avert world were three and save face in front of their own populations. So here is sam with fred kaplan from episode one eighty, six, an episode Simply titled the bomb, your book, your report, facts about the cuban missed, crisis that were not widely known and were actually systematically concealed to some effect? Where perhaps going every second biggest gave. I sense that the laughing on them

Think of nuclear war was a successful strategy because people thought that that's what had happened. He just basically stared khrushchev down and you know, khrushchev blinked, but that's not quite what happened it's not going to have what most of us do know now, because it was revealed twenty years after the fact that, in fact, on the final day of the crisis, khrushchev proposed a deal a secret deal. I will take out my missiles from cuba a view The united states take out your very similar missiles from turkey and Kennedy took the deal. What isn't generally known, and I don't know why it isn't known, because you can listen to this whole exchange on tapes that were declassified twenty years ago by the EU. Were read about in maybe two or three other books If that many, but Kennedy reads, there the proposal- and he says- and this is each secretly tape recorded ominous- he goes well. This seems like a pretty fair deal and

everybody around the table all of his advisers, not just the generals, but the civilians to Bobby Kennedy robert mcnamara mcgeorge Bundy. All these paragons of good sense and reason feverishly oppose this deal I will be destroyed. The turks will be humiliated our credibility will be lost forever and I Kennedy, let them talk, and then you know, said well you're, this was on a saturday following Monday, they were the united states. Military was scheduled to start in the attack you're gonna be five hundred air sorties a day against the missile silos missile sites in in cuba for about four days later by an invasion and Kennedy took the secret deal. He only told six people about this, though, and in fact he put out the myth that there was no deal, because this was the height of the cold war. It would look like appeasement, one of the six people that he did not

hell- was his vice president Lyndon Johnson, who therefore went into the vietnam war, convinced by the lesson of cuba, the false lesson of cuba that you dont negotiate you you stare them down, but here What you ve been scarier we later learned. This was not known at the time that some of them missiles already had nuclear warheads loaded on them. So could have been launched on warning another we didn't know until much later is that the soviet had secretly deployed forty thousand Groups on the island of cuba, some of them armed with technical nuclear weapons to stave off anticipated american invasion. Therefore, anybody else around around that accept John Kennedy had been president or if he had seen, Yeah you're right: this is a bad deal. Let's proceed with the plan, then there would have in war with the soviet union, without an in question. Here is

mason, and so in your book you he report on it on the details of these encounters between each- u s administered vision and the war planners, which are generally the the air force, the navy and each incoming president Whether we are talking about you know, Kennedy and his team with mcnamara or Nixon and kissinger or Clinton then obama and their teams each president comes to these meetings and for the first time is told what our first strike and second strike policies are and each one. It sounds like comes away. Absolutely appalled by but the doctrine actually is and committed from that day to changing it, and yet each has found him self more or less unable to change it and in ways that fundamentally her them game theory. Logic here. I'm air and these discussions are like really out

of doktor strange love, the most preposterous seems in doktor strange low. Are no more comedic than some of these exchanges, because these are plans that call or the annihilation of hundreds of millions of people on both sides and ever since Kennedy we ve been passed. The point where a first strike prevented. possibility of retaliatory strike from the soviet union. So we're talking about protocols that are synonymous with killing in fifty two hundred million people on their side and losing that many on our side and for the longest time the protocol was too nylon: china and eastern europe, or whether they were even part of the initial skirmish with the soviet union right the EU s policy throughout the nineteen fifties and into some of the sixties. The policy in this wasn't just the strategic

commander was signed off on by president eisenhower and the joint chiefs of staff. It was that the soviet union attacked, where germany or Iraq took over west berlin and you this was at a time and in the late fifties, early sixties, when we really didn't have any conventional armies in europe. But the plan was that at the outset of the conflict, to unleash our entire nuclear arsenal.

at every target in the soviet union, the satellite nations of eastern europe and, as you point out china, even if china wasn't involved in the war and it was required how many people kill the if you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at sam Harris network once you do, you'll get access to all full length. Episodes of the making sense podcast, along with other subscriber, only content, including bonus episodes and a amaze, and the conversations I've been having on the waking up app. The making sense podcast is ad free and relies entirely on listener support, and you can subscribe now at sam harris dot, org the.