How To Start a Nuclear War

Summary

Podcast Summary
Are We Doomed? – “How To Start a Nuclear War”
NPR Network – April 28, 2026
Host: Ben Bradford

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Overview

The premiere episode of "Are We Doomed?" unpacks the looming threat of nuclear war: how it could plausibly be triggered, why its logic is both chillingly simple and absurd, and what we can do to avoid this most embarrassing of world-ending scenarios. Host Ben Bradford takes listeners from hair-raising near-misses in history to academic dissections of existential risk, interviewing experts like Seth Baum (Global Catastrophic Risk Institute) and Sharon Weiner (American University, nuclear policy specialist), asking not just “How doomed are we?” but “Can we make it out alive?”

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Embarrassingly Simple Logic of Nuclear Doom

• Historical Close Calls

  • [00:16] The episode opens with the dramatic story of a 1962 Soviet submarine during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Miscommunication and panic nearly led to the firing of a nuclear torpedo, only to be halted by the sober-minded decision of a second officer.
  • Quote:

    “What actually saved us from nuclear Armageddon was one guy, one guy who had to do split second, oxygen deprived mind parkour.” — Ben Bradford [02:34]

• Defining Existential Risks

  • [05:32] Seth Baum outlines the “big four” existential threats: climate change, pandemics, nuclear weapons, and AI.
  • “Grey goo”—a self-replicating nanotech apocalypse—is debunked as not a serious risk today.
  • Quote:

    “I am proud to say that since my colleague and I co founded the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute, there have been zero civilization ending global catastrophes.” — Seth Baum [05:40]

2. Two Ways to Start a Nuclear War: Oopsie and Screw-It

• [09:49] All plausible paths to nuclear war, says Baum, fall into two categories:

  • The OOPSIE: Mistaken belief that nuclear war has started (false alarms, accidental launches, misinterpretation).

    • Examples:
      • 1995 Norwegian scientific weather rocket sets off Russian nuclear alarms; President Yeltsin, fortunately sober, chooses not to respond. [11:22]
      • More trivial incidents have included “a flock of geese” and computer glitches. [12:02]
    • Quote:

      “All these have at some point triggered countries’ early warning systems signaling an attack was imminent ... If they'd fired back, it would have started nuclear war by oopsie.” — Ben Bradford [12:02]

  • The SCREW IT: Deliberate, desperate launch by a leader under existential threat (“what do I have to lose?” scenario).

    • Example: A losing Russia in Ukraine, Putin fires a nuke to stay in power. [13:16]
    • Quote:

      “That really is a roll of the dice because once the first nuclear weapon has launched, then you have to wait and see what happens next.” — Seth Baum [13:29]

3. Escalation: The Real Doomsday Mechanism

• [18:25] Nuclear war scenarios, as modeled by experts, unfold in escalating tit-for-tat exchanges, not single detonations.
• Controlling Escalation (“escalate to de-escalate”):
  • Russia, losing a conventional war, fires a “warning shot” nuke at NATO. NATO fires back. Russia doubles down. Within hours, hundreds of nukes are exchanged.
  • Quote:

    “Within three hours, Russia's used 300 tactical nuclear weapons in Europe, and NATO has responded with 180.” — Sharon Weiner [19:19]

• [21:33] Fallout includes “100 million casualties in five hours,” with further deaths from nuclear winter.
• The most chilling insight: escalation is built into strategy—and once it starts, psychology suggests leaders will double down, not pull back.
  • Quote:

    “Decision making theories suggest that people ... actually double down and engage in riskier behavior.” — Sharon Weiner [20:37]

4. The Human Flaws in Nuclear Decision-Making

• [25:30] Sharon Weiner’s VR research simulating a “presidential” nuclear crisis: even those morally opposed to nuclear use often launch upon seeing ambiguous threats, and forget the “wait and see” option.

  • Quote:

    “Almost everybody launched nuclear weapons. Even people going in who said they thought nuclear weapons were immoral ... you can ride out. And most people completely forget that.” — Sharon Weiner [27:39]

• The design of the decision process—the menu of options, the time pressure, the isolation of leaders—biases toward rash, catastrophic choices.

5. Fixing the System: Are We Doomed? Solves Nuclear War

Weiner offers three proposed fixes:

1. Visually Include the “No Action” Option: Always present a “hold fire/wait” card along with strike options [29:03].
2. Add More Decision-Makers: Not just the president; require multiple approvals [29:29].
3. Make the Consequences Personal and Immediate: (Dramatic, hypothetical)—to order launch, you would first have to kill a person holding the codes, emphasizing the grave responsibility [29:46].
4. Real Fix #3: Rethink deterrence itself—question the assumption that the threat of instant retaliation keeps us safe.

• Challenging Deterrence Dogma

  • Is deterrence truly the reason nuclear war hasn’t happened, or is it just luck?

    • Quote:

      “There's a temptation to say, well look, there hasn't been a nuclear war, so it's worked properly. ... But also, you're discounting the role of luck ... Lee Butler, former head of Strategic Command, said deterrence didn’t work. It was God that saved us from this.” — Sharon Weiner [33:08]

  • Weiner’s radical but clear position:

    “What do you think is the right number of nuclear weapons for the United States? ... That’s easy. That’s none, none, zero.” [33:48]

  • She argues U.S. conventional military power and the devastation any nuclear attack would cause (“crashed the global economy, your leadership is gone…”) should suffice to deter nuclear attacks [34:16]. Giving up nukes is risky, she admits, but a better gamble than perpetual mutual suicide.

6. Where Does This Leave Us?

• [36:53] Final thoughts from Seth Baum: “Not necessarily optimistic, but also not fatalistic ... bad things might happen, but not necessarily. We're not doomed, but we're also not guaranteed to make it out of this.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “What actually saved us from nuclear Armageddon was one guy ... What if he’d been sick that day?” — Ben Bradford [02:34]
• “Global catastrophic risk ... there have been zero civilization ending global catastrophes.” — Seth Baum [05:40]
• “Grey goo, yes. Nanotechnology that eats the world … No, I don’t worry a lot about grey goo, that’s for sure.” — Seth Baum [06:41, 07:21]
• “There are only two ways to start a nuclear war ... The Oopsie. Or the screw it.” — Ben Bradford [09:49]
• “We’re threatening to destroy your way of life in the name of saving it.” — Sharon Weiner [14:40]
• “Decision making theories suggest ... people ... actually double down and engage in riskier behavior.” — Sharon Weiner [20:37]
• “You forget what you know. You’re running from the aliens as a rabbit.” — Ben Bradford, referencing Sharon’s VR experiment [28:07]
• “So let's present in addition to attack options, let’s present the option: Here's a reminder. You don't have to do anything.” — Sharon Weiner [29:03]
• “If you're not willing to [kill a person for the codes], then you shouldn’t be using nuclear weapons.” — Sharon Weiner [30:02]
• “The right number of nuclear weapons for the United States? That’s none, none, zero.” — Sharon Weiner [33:48]
• “[Deterrence] is a bad bet for your security. Let’s try and make another gamble.” — Sharon Weiner [34:16]
• “We’re not doomed, but we’re also not guaranteed to make it out of this.” — Seth Baum [36:53]

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Important Timestamps

• 00:16 — The 1962 submarine near-miss
• 05:32 — Seth Baum defines existential threats
• 09:49 — The two ways to start nuclear war: Oopsie vs. Screw-It
• 11:22 — The 1995 Norway rocket incident
• 18:25 — Sharon Weiner details escalation in a nuclear scenario
• 25:30 — Presidential VR simulation and flawed crisis decision-making
• 29:03 — Three proposed fixes to nuclear command process
• 33:08 — Debating deterrence; “it was God that saved us”
• 33:48 — “What’s the right number of nukes? None.”
• 36:53 — Seth Baum: “We’re not doomed, but...”

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Tone & Style

With nervy wit and a narrative edge, Ben Bradford and guests combine dark humor, sobering facts, and unflinching candor. Guests freely mix technical insight with personal anecdotes, even as they flirt with the absurdity of “doomsday by bureaucratic blunder.” The tone is anxious but hopeful, valuing curiosity, skepticism, and actionable optimism.

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Conclusion
The episode leaves listeners with a paradox: nuclear Armageddon is both chillingly plausible and, in some sense, almost comically embarrassing (“oopsie or screw it”). Yet despite all the risk—and the failures in our systems—there are concrete changes that could make catastrophe less likely. The true bottom line: we aren’t doomed, but neither are we safe by default.

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For More
To vote on which doomsday to explore next or support the show, visit doompod.com/support.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Quick story about a time the world almost ended. 1962. A submarine, Soviet slid through the deep waters of the Caribbean. It sped toward a US blockade of ships surrounding Cuba. This was the peak of the Cuba Cuban missile crisis. Fingers hovered over nuclear buttons. The sub's crew sought to evade the US blockade, make contact with Cuba. But then a ping on the radar of an American jet. It had spotted them. The US Navy scrambled. As many as a dozen ships crisscrossed over the sub's location. Down below in the depths of the ocean, the Soviets were panicking. Their vessel, built for cold northern waters, was overheating. Oxygen was running out. Sailors were passing out and they were too far down for radio contact, either home or with the Americans. At this point, they just needed to surface. Then. Explosions. The Navy decided to make contact anyway by hurling down depth charges. Practice rounds not intended to harm. Thinking that, it warned the sub to come up. Brilliant idea. The Soviet commander didn't know the difference. Outside radio contact devoid of news, explosions on all sides of his boat. He thought clearly World War three has started. And there was something the US didn't know about the sub they were casually bombarding. It had a nuclear weapon. The Soviet commander ordered his crew to load it into its firing tube. He was going to take out the US ships and his own boat and almost certainly start the nuclear war he thought was already underway. Why are we alive? Somehow, amid the heat, the explosions, the oxygen deprivation, a second officer managed to calculate if it were World War three, the US wouldn't spare a dozen ships against just us. He rushed to the commander convinced him instead of sending out a nuclear torpedo, the submarine released a sonar ping equivalent to hi. The explosion stopped. A ping came back to them.

[C]

Hello?

[B]

It opened communication, allowing the situation to be defused, disaster averted. Right, except boil it down. And what actually saved us from nuclear Armageddon was one guy, one guy who had to do split second, oxygen deprived mind parkour. What if he'd been sick that day? And then you realize that the story of this submarine is literally one of dozens of close calls that we know about. And if this is what it takes to stop us blowing ourselves up, then that begs another question. Welcome to Are we Doomed? A new podcast about the end of the world. From nuanced tales to distributed by the NPR network. There are so many things that could take humanity out. Nuclear war, climate change, pandemics. Maybe AI. And the less immediately worrisome, your supervolcanoes. Aliens. Or something called grey goo. Which you'll hear about this episode. I've been keeping a notepad, a tally of ways the world could end. It has 104, 41 entries so far. Should we be worried? My name is Ben Bradford. I'm a journalist. I've spent a lot of time covering government and policy and business and history. All of which probably leans me toward pessimism for our chances of survival. But I'm willing to be convinced, maybe even hoping more than that. I am fascinated by the big threats that we face and why and what it can mean. I know this puts me in good company. Otherwise, why do half our TV shows take place post apocalypse? Why are the other half Yellowstone spinoffs? Why did every ancient culture have its own story about how the world would end? In this podcast, we're going to examine our potential dooms. What causes them, how we as humans cope, what the past can tell us, and ultimately how we can fix, avoid or beat the things that might wipe us out. If you share this interest, want to learn more, or just want some wild stories about big things, we're happy to have you sitting shotgun. We're starting with a doozy. The threat nearly all of us on this earth have lived under our entire lives. Nuclear Armageddon. But when you look at how it would have to happen, my conclusion, and maybe yours will be, is that this would be a really embarrassing way to go out. How plausible is nuclear war?

[C]

Oh, it's entirely plausible. It's actually not difficult at all to have a nuclear war. All you need to do is to have certain world leaders give the command and in all likelihood that command would be followed. And then you have a nuclear war. It's pretty much the easiest way to cause a global catastrophe.

[B]

This is Seth Baume. His job is to research doomsday threats. The academic term, global catastrophic risk.

[C]

I study the risk of civilization ending global catastrophe. I am proud to say that since my colleague and I co founded the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute, there have been zero civilization ending global catastrophes.

[B]

Yeah. Thank you.

[C]

You're welcome.

[B]

Seth thinks all day about the end of the world, so I figured he'd be a good first person to talk to not only about nuclear war. But just as we start this series to get a little world ending 101. What are the issues that worry you the most in your own personal hierarchy? What Is your list.

[C]

Traditionally, the big three have been climate change, pandemics, nuclear weapons, and I think it's now fair to put artificial intelligence in there as the big four.

[B]

Not every threat makes sense. And if you find yourself interviewing someone whose job is studying the end of the world, you have to ask them

[C]

for a wacky one that is a part of the job. A good example would be grey goo.

[B]

Did you say grey goo?

[C]

Grey goo, yes. Nanotechnology that eats the world.

[B]

Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah.

[C]

Basically something that is self replicating, consumes things that it can get energy from, such as, you know, living things and we're dead and that's it. The whole world just turns into this stuff.

[B]

Grey goofy.

[C]

This was an idea that got some attention and as part of broader conversations about nanotechnology. And my understanding is that no, it would be fairly straightforward to avoid this thing happening.

[B]

Yeah, one less thing off the list. We don't have to worry too much about grey goo.

[C]

I don't, I don't worry a lot about grey goo, that's, that's for sure.

[B]

So for those of you walking around not stressing about grey goofy, good job, keep it up. You are dealing all the time with, in some ways the most depressing topic possible. Are you just bummed out all the time?

[C]

No, occasionally, but most of the time, no. And part of it is just because at a certain point it just becomes a job on a day to day basis. My focus is not on the emotional gravity of what I'm doing, it's on the darn it. I have like 30 emails that I need to reply to and I have this deadline coming up and I have this deadline that passed last week and I still haven't done it and they're mad at me and you know, things like that. The other half of it is that there is a bright side to this. Because if we manage to avoid the collapse of this civilization that we have, the future's looking good. The future is full of potential for us.

[B]

Everything's rosy as long as we don't blow ourselves up, which of course is the big if, especially with nuclear weapons. Have we just built an easy button to end the world? How likely are we to press it? This is the real reason I've called Seth.

[C]

The short answer is we don't know. It's not like me as a researcher. I can run a field experiment where I drop a nuclear weapon, have it explode and see how different countries react to it.

[B]

You can't do that.

[C]

Yeah, right. It's kind of the guesswork because we fortunately haven't really been in this situation before.

[B]

But that does not mean we have to blunder in the dark with no sense of the risk without actual examples of nuclear war. Seth and researchers turn to the data points that do exist. Close calls stories like of that submarine, he calls them partway events.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. Events that have gone part of the way to nuclear war. And these are really worth studying because we don't have a lot of examples of actual nuclear wars.

[B]

What do you think we can learn from those?

[C]

Well, one thing that it tells us is the variety of ways that we could end up in a nuclear war

[B]

based on how we've almost gone to war in the past. Seth can paint all kinds of scenarios that lead us to nuclear destruction.

[C]

Something akin to a proxy war, some crime crisis. China, there's tensions there. India and Pakistan, it escalates. Instantly goes to nuclear war.

[B]

But if you go through all the possibilities he can think of every single way we can conceive of for a world ending nuclear war to trigger, all of them fall into one of two categories. There are only two ways to start a nuclear war and we're going to look at them both. How to start a nuclear war method. The Oopsie. Oopsie.

[C]

One side thinks mistakenly that the nuclear war has already started.

[B]

So this is like that submarine story almost firing a nuclear torpedo due to a misunderstanding. Oopsie. It could also be a terrorist gets their hands on a nuclear weapon, blows it up and a country gets the blame and gets attacked with nuclear retaliation. Seth's best example is another story because this one was on a random peaceful day after the Cold War. No heightened nuclear tensions. And it started with the US and an ally minding their own business. They were doing science.

[C]

The United States of Norway launched a scientific weather rocket off the northern coast of Norway in I believe it was 1995. And Russia's radar system picked up the launch. Makes sense. But they looked at what their radars were picking up and it looks like it might be an initial nuclear attack.

[B]

Russia's nuclear forces scrambled into high alert. They woke up the country's president, Boris Yeltsin.

[C]

Boris Yeltsin.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And the story that I've heard is that fortunately that night he happened to be sober.

[B]

Good.

[C]

And he thought about it and it just to him it didn't make sense that the Americans would be attacking.

[B]

Yeltsin thought about what to do.

[C]

So he was like, no, no, no, we're not launching.

[B]

But a more paranoid leader, a leader who's knocked a few more drinks Back or a time when an attack seems more plausible and maybe our whole world is different, all because of a misunderstanding.

[C]

Yeah, it was just a scientific weather rocket.

[B]

So that's nuclear doom by mistake. The oopsie. Oopsie. And experts I talked to loved to tell me about nearer oopsies. Computer glitches, the sun reflecting off clouds, a flock of geese one time. All these have at some point triggered countries early warning systems signaling an attack was imminent. If they'd fired back, it would have started nuclear war by oopsie. How to start a nuclear war? Method 2. If it doesn't happen by accident, then it would have to be on purpose. But who would do that, knowing the possible consequences?

[C]

Nobody would rationally want nuclear war. That's not quite correct.

[B]

Tell me why.

[C]

Imagine the war in Ukraine playing out in a way that, that is difficult for not just Russia per se, but the Putin regime in particular. Then he may find himself struggling to maintain power in Russia. And if he finds himself out of power in Russia, he might lose more than just power. Potentially he could even lose his life.

[B]

In this scenario, Russian President Vladimir Putin thinks what have I got to lose? Screw it. And fires a nuke to change the course of the war. It's an act of desperation, the ultimate Hail Mary to hang onto power.

[C]

But that really is a roll of the dice because once the first nuclear weapon has launched, then you have to wait and see what happens next.

[B]

Because there's no way firing a nuclear weapon doesn't get a response, a really big response from your adversary and possibly the rest of the world. The screw it is in some ways a more boneheaded way to go than even the oopsie, because we all make mistakes. So those are your two methods into nuclear Oopsie or screw it. But that's just the way in the first missiles aren't what ends the world, it's what happens next. The response to that first launch, the chain reaction, the thing where Seth said

[C]

then you have to wait and see

[B]

what happens next because that first launch turns the key on a well understood process of retaliation we humans have devised in brilliant human fashion. This process is either so coldly logical that it has prevented any nuclear weapon from firing in 80 years, or it's so stunningly stupid it's constantly almost killing us in close calls, or both.

[D]

At the core, the core of this whole equation is you're threatening to destroy your way of life in the name of saving it.

[E]

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[A]

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[B]

So, to recap, if you're trying to start nuclear war, please don't. There are two ways to the oopsie where a country thinks another country has intentionally fired and the screw it, where a country does intentionally fire. To hell with the consequences. But to end the world, you need more than one nuke, as almost incomprehensibly devastating as that could be. The world is big. Humans are many. So to doom us, you really need nations unloading arsenals of hundreds or thousands of nukes at each other in a Fourth of July festival of nihilistic destruction. How does that happen? That's what we need to figure out. I wanted to find someone with impeccable credentials to answer this question. Someone with first hand experience in government, at the Armed Services Committee, in Congress and at the Pentagon and at the national labs where nuclear development takes place. Someone who as an academic understands the policy, the politics, the budgeting. And that person is Sharon Weiner.

[D]

I was a rabbit being chased by bunnies over a pond.

[B]

Sorry, that's from later in the interview. That person is Sharon Weiner at American University.

[D]

I am a professor and I engage and teach students on national security issues and nuclear weapons.

[B]

Sharon grew up on a family farm in Missouri during the Cold War.

[D]

We would have been in some of the fallout pattern had the Soviets attacked Whiteman Air Force Base, which is where there were a lot of ICBMs at the time. But I don't think I dwelt on it very much.

[B]

Something must have seeped in, because when Sharon went to college and then grad school, the first woman in her family to do so she studied politics and international relations, and more and more found herself focusing on nuclear war.

[D]

But I think what resonated with me wasn't necessarily. This is bad to say it wasn't necessarily the horrible human cost, but the fact that the things I was learning about nuclear weapons and deterrence just didn't make sense to me.

[B]

Part of what didn't make sense to Sharon, it turns out, is the same question I've now called to ask her about all these years later. What happens after that first nuke screams into the air. Can you walk through a scenario where we go from a nuclear weapon being fired to what happens after that?

[D]

Sure.

[B]

Sharon's scenario here is not something she's just making up. It is the best estimate by experts at Princeton of a plausible course of nuclear war.

[D]

Let's say there's a conflict where Russia's losing conventionally and it decides to escalate, to de escalate. This is what we think Russia's strategy is. So it launches a warning shot at a NATO target. One nuclear weapon, maybe a couple nuclear weapons at a NATO target.

[B]

In other words, this is screw it.

[D]

Well, the logic of controlling escalation is you have to respond with just a

[B]

little bit more controlling escalation. This is one of the key concepts in nuclear strategy. It means someone fires a nuke, you fire two nukes back. You punish them. Don't you dare fire anymore.

[D]

So NATO escalates firing back.

[B]

But can you see the problem with this?

[D]

Well, of course, if everybody's playing that game, Russia uses a few more back. And so in the first set of this, within three hours, Russia's used 300 tactical nuclear weapons in Europe, and NATO has responded with 180.

[B]

We're talking cavalierly, but each one causes untold destruction. An image I can't get out of my head is that every nuke is the equivalent of pushing the surface of the sun briefly against the Earth. And then it gets worse.

[D]

It's not just the heat, it's the fact that the winds are so high it sucks things surrounding it into the center of the inferno. You can be asphyxiated because all the oxygen. Oxygen. Has been sucked into this giant storm. So, yeah, there are lots of devastating. Laughing. There are lots of devastating things that happen when a nuclear weapon goes off.

[B]

It's grim. Yeah, it's grim.

[D]

It's grim. But the logic of escalation doesn't stop there. Right. Because you want the other side to back down. And so your question is, do you double down or do you play it Safe.

[B]

This is a key question. As the horror of nuclear war unfolds, will countries pull back? Will they see the destruction and say, this is too much? Sharon says based on human psychology, probably the opposite.

[D]

Decision making theories suggest that people in a situation like this, where they're afraid of losing, where the safe play is, to play it safe, they actually double down and they engage in riskier behavior. So in this scenario, in the second round, the US has expended all its nuclear weapons in Europe. So it launches 600 warheads at Russian nuclear targets, what are called counterforce targets, to try and limit Russia's ability to launch further nuclear weapons.

[B]

And so basically it's we want to fire back and destroy as many nuclear sites as we can so that they have less nuclear weapons that they can then continue to fire upon us.

[D]

Yeah, that's exactly the logic. Okay, well, Russia, of course, then launches more nuclear weapons before they can be destroyed by the United States. So summing this up in less than five hours, you have about 100 million casualties. And we haven't even included the deaths that come in the days after from nuclear fallout.

[B]

In a worst case scenario, debris kicked up by the explosions spreads into the stratosphere, blocking the sun, cooling the atmosphere similar to what killed the dinosaurs. Temperatures go below freezing in much of the world for years. We go the way of the dinosaurs. I just feel this like kind of yawning chasm of horror. And it's not just the amount of destruction, but it's this idea that you and I can be having this conversation. And if something is going wrong right now, as we have this conversation, if Russia were to decide, hey, we're going to fire a tactical nuclear weapon, and then this sort of process of escalation starts, that 45 minutes from now our world is totally different.

[D]

Effectively over. Are you in Washington?

[B]

I'm in Los Angeles.

[D]

Oh, okay. Well, you might be okay for no, Vandenberg.

[C]

Sorry.

[D]

Goodbye.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, it's crazy. It is crazy. And the point is, once one nuke gets fired, it could be a short greased up slide down to the end of the world. But the craziest part about this, this is intentional. This is the system designed for your safety. Mutually assured destruction. Right? Deterrence to stop anyone from firing. I don't know about you, but these are terms I absorbed as a kid. Unexamined. Oh, that's how it works. And it does make a kind of schoolyard sense. If you hit us, we hit you, and so no one hits each other. But that also means if it could Only take one hit to escalate to doom. Just one. And that will only happen by accident or someone screaming yolo. Then this is why, of all the ways the world could end, nuclear war would be pretty embarrassing. Like imagine alien archaeologists pulse down on their flying saucers. They pick over the husk of our burnt world. They piece together that we've blown ourselves up by ego or by accident. Like, oops. Our fancy technology couldn't tell the difference between real nukes and some birds. And then we just kept trying to deter each other from firing more weapons by firing more weapons until we collapsed our atmosphere. That's embarrassing. I'm certainly not the first person to point out the absurdity movies like Dr. Strangelove were on it as far back as the 1960s. No, sir, it is not a thing a sane man would do. The doomsday machine is designed to trigger itself automatically. But surely you can disarm it somehow. No, it seems like we have built a doomsday machine. But we might be able to disarm ours or at least ratchet down the chances it goes off. See, now that we understand how nuclear war can start and how it escalates, we can begin our segment Are we doomed? Solves nuclear war. There are some ways we might make an embarrassing early atomic exit less likely. Start with the decision making process in a possible nuclear scenario. In the US it's the President and only the president who decides whether to fire. Sharon Weiner thinks there's a series of flaws in that process that could raise our chances of an oopsie or intemperate response.

[D]

Have you ever done virtual reality?

[B]

I never have.

[D]

I had never done virtual reality and someone put a headset on me and showed me this little game where there's aliens that have landed on a pond and there's a little bunny hopping around trying to make friends with the aliens. The aliens start shooting at the bunny and suddenly you look down at yourself and you have a big bunny belly and bunny hands. And you're the bunny. And you realize, holy crap, run. And you realize, of course you know you're not a bunny, but that your heart rate is elevated and that you actually felt like you had to flee. And at that moment I thought, gosh, I can use this.

[B]

Sharon had been worried about how the President of the United States would feel. Grabbed by Secret Service, hustled to a bunker, told it appears a nuclear attack is headed toward us. The best estimate is that a president has just minutes to decide how to respond. If they want to act before the missiles Land.

[D]

It's a really short time frame and it's a crisis where the stakes are extremely high. And we know from psychology and behavioral economics that as human beings we are not at our best decision making capacity during a crisis. I mean, one of the. I can't remember which Bush president it was said he wouldn't have time to get off the crapper in that amount of time.

[B]

It was George W. Bush.

[D]

So his words, not mine.

[B]

Sharon wanted to test how a president might act soberly and cautiously or rashly. You may object to this term, but essentially you built a video game.

[D]

Oh, it's not a video game. It's a virtual reality game. Thank you. So what my colleague Moritz and I did was create a virtual reality experience that mimics a nuclear crisis.

[B]

The way this works is they slap a VR headset on you and then in the simulation, you're the President of the United States.

[D]

You're in the Oval Office, and suddenly you're evacuated to an emergency operations center in the basement of the White House. You're r. You said, look, we detected 299 ICBMs coming from Russia.

[B]

300 incoming missiles, casualties in the range of 2 million.

[D]

People are briefing you on a nuclear crisis, presenting you with options and asking you what to do.

[B]

You don't have much time to make a decision. You can ask your advisors questions. You use your actual voice so you

[D]

can ask them anything you want.

[B]

In the real world, a game master is selecting their answers from hundreds of possible choices.

[D]

On a tablet, everybody in the scenario is doing their job.

[B]

A military aide pulls out three attack options. This is a real thing out of the nuclear briefcase, pieces of paper that detail different levels of nuclear strike. You have less than three minutes to make a decision. What will the President? What will you do? Sharon and her colleague tested the simulation on Princeton students and at the think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations, which has former generals and cabinet secretaries as members. What do you think she found?

[D]

Almost everybody launched nuclear weapons. Even people going in who said they thought nuclear weapons were immoral. Some people will say, I'm really concerned that this is a false alarm and that there's actually not an attack. And then they will launch nuclear weapons anyway, as opposed to waiting and not doing anything. Because you can always. I mean, you don't have to launch. You can ride out. And most people completely forget that. Even people who knew it going into the simulation. So it's a crisis.

[B]

You forget what you know you're running from the aliens as a rabbit.

[D]

Yep.

[B]

This is one of the big flaws Sharon found humans are biased toward rash action. And when deciding whether to push a button that could end all things, the decision making process we have designed actually adds pressure to push that button. Not great. What's nice is compared to a lot of other things about nuclear war that seem thorny and intractable, we can design a better meeting. So that's what we're going to do. Sharon has three fixes that could make panic launching nuclear weapons less likely. Here's fix number one.

[D]

In a crisis, your brain looks at the options that are presented visually versus the ones that you're told, and they're not equal.

[B]

You heard how the president is presented with pieces of paper with options to respond, ways to counterattack. Sharon says add one more page.

[D]

So let's present, in addition to attack options, let's present the option. Here's a reminder. You don't have to do anything.

[B]

One more piece of paper on there that just says, wait, wait, make sure hold your fire is an option along with everything else. Seems reasonable. Fix number two, don't just put the decision on one person's judgment.

[D]

Enlarge the number of people who have to agree. It's a bit odd that one single human being can decide to entirely destroy the United States through nuclear war without consent or approval of anybody in Congress.

[B]

Finally, fix number three. Make the lives at stake feel a little closer.

[D]

Put the launch codes inside somebody's chest cavity and you have to kill them to get them out.

[B]

Whoa. No, this is not actually a suggestion. Sharon is making a point about what ordering a nuclear strike means and that we should recognize it.

[D]

The only way you can use nuclear weapons is stab me and kill me. If you're not willing to do that, then you shouldn't be using the nuclear weapons.

[B]

Charon does have a real fix number three. And while it does not involve chest cavities, it is also bold. It challenges everything that I have taken for granted about nuclear defense. I am not sure if it's a good idea, but it's definitely worth hearing. Because if Sharon is right, this single idea could do more than anything else to make nuclear doom go the way of grey goo.

[E]

Before the day gets busy, make sure you get connected. The Connector is your daily podcast for answering the question, what's happening in Idaho? Make it part of your morning routine. That's the Connector, Idaho Daily News from Boise State Public Radio, part of the NPR Network.

[A]

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[E]

Your support helps deliver life changing Support in over 35 countries. Visit mercycorps.org donate that's Mercy C O R P S to Build a Stronger Tomorrow.

[B]

We've been talking about ways to improve the presidential decision making process so that rashly launching nukes becomes less likely. Also, there were knives. I want to mention there is an argument that we should not make it tougher to push the button. This argument is that our nukes protect us US from other countries nukes. Right. So then there needs to be no question that we will use them if attacked. We need to be on a hair trigger because if we're not, if other countries think we won't launch, then what's stopping them from nuking us? Suddenly there's no deterrence, no mutually assured destruction. The nukes fly and we get Armageddon that way. This is a prominent idea, actually a key tenet of our nuclear policy, and one that I've certainly grown up believing. But that leads to our third fix for solving nuclear war. Sharon Weiner, our nuclear expert who has worked in government and academia, has one more big idea. What if the whole argument I just laid out about deterrence is wrong?

[D]

There's a temptation to say, well look, there hasn't been a nuclear war, so it's worked properly.

[B]

Is that not true?

[D]

So where's the causal connection? I can think of lots of other things that stopped a nuclear war from occurring over the last 60 some odd years.

[B]

Like the rest of the US military or economic interdependence, or the remembrance of how horrific the devastation was in the only use when the U.S. bombed Nagasaki and Hiroshima in World War II.

[D]

But also, you're discounting the role of luck. And this is not my argument. This is argument made by Lee Butler, who was the former head of Strategic Command, who said deterrence didn't work. It was God that saved us from this.

[B]

What do you think is the right number of nuclear weapons for the United States?

[D]

Oh, that's easy.

[B]

That's none, none, zero. Sharon thinks the best policy the U.S. could adopt is to get rid of our most destructive weapons, take them off the table.

[D]

To say it is a minority view might be even an exaggeration,

[B]

understating it

[D]

a little bit, understanding it just a little bit.

[B]

Because like without our nukes, what stops an adversary from blowing us up? Sharon says a lot of things.

[D]

We have a large conventional military and we have it positioned in various different places. And we will hurt you. And in the eyes of the rest of the world, your leadership is gone. You've also probably crashed the global economy. There are all kinds of other things. Why isn't that a deterrent to doing it in the first place? Why isn't that enough? Deterrence is based on the roll of dice. It is a lucky proposition. It is a bad bet for your security. Let's try and make another gamble. Let's gamble that if we don't have nuclear weapons, those places aren't going to attack us and maybe they'll give up their nuclear weapons too. Let's take the gamble that if we give up our nuclear weapons the rest of the world will say yay and pressure these other places to do it. I mean, I don't believe we're going to stop competing with them, but for God's sake, let's stop competing on mutual suicide.

[B]

It's a nice idea. Simple to prevent blowing the earth up. Get rid of the things that can blow it up. Of course, no country is rushing to take Sharon up on this suggestion and it seems far fetched that we'll be giving it a try anytime soon. But I like hearing it. It seems worth considering putting it out there because if she's right, it offers hope to avoid our easiest and quite embarrassing end of the world nuclear war. A screw it or an oopsie away from escalating into do. After we look at a threat on the show, we're always going to review how at risk we are from it. And to do that we've devised a deeply accurate, sophisticated method called the doom meter. The risk of nuclear Armageddon occurring and being deeply unpleasant. We know the nukes are out there. We know the system by which we could start hurling them at each other is somewhat wonky and not above reproach. We also know that these weapons are held by just a few governments. Highly destructive, deeply real, but somewhat limited. The doom meter puts the threat at referee whistle. That's pretty high. Let's get it together. I'll leave you with one more thought. I asked Seth Baume, who you heard earlier, whether his job measuring all different types of global risk had made him pessimistic if he feels we're doomed.

[C]

Not necessarily optimistic, but also not fatalistic. When you work in risk analysis, right, you have this deep understanding that bad things might happen, but not necessarily. We're not doomed, but we're also not guaranteed to make it out of this.

[B]

That might sound bland until you realize Seth is not just talking about risks we face now. Not just nukes or grey goo, but even billions of years in the future on Earth.

[C]

Eventually our planet gets engulfed by an ever expanding sun, which is a catastrophic risk. Maybe.

[B]

We'll address our very hungry sun in a future episode, but it feels weirdly hopeful that he thinks we humans might make it to the sun, exploding or doing something about it. We have a lot to survive to get there. Coming up on the next episodes of Are We Doomed Hurricanes of Hot Ash and gas? Manual World will Just mess unfortunately, we're

[D]

witnessing exactly what the tipping point looks like.

[B]

The Pope will endorse abortions.

[D]

I mean, I think my main feeling really terrifies me.

[B]

Design the AI that Kills us all.

[C]

My version of optimism is that I saw the past. Just the part I saw was terrible.

[B]

I'm building something that could cure cancer

[A]

or kill everyone that you've ever loved

[B]

and then just walk out and not get a rested. I am very worried about my son's brain turning to goo. Are We Doomed? Is production of Nuance Tales. This is a new weekly show and if you like it, we'd be honored and grateful for your help. You can get the word out by sharing with friends or enemies. And podcast ads don't fully cover this kind of show, so it is going to take listener support and if that's you, if you're interested in helping us, you can find out [e-mail] support this is separate from NPR. Our great distributor. Our supporters get bonus episodes peeks behind the curtain as we produce the show. Priority when we ask you what doom you want to see covered and more. That's [e-mail] support I'm Ben Bradford, creator and showrunner. Our producer is Lindsay Kilbride, editor Tracy Samuelson, engineer and sound designer Jay Sebold. Our fully animated YouTube episodes we are on YouTube are by Alborz Kamalazad Theme music composed by Dylan Dagenet Are We Doomed? Is distributed by the NPR Network. Big thanks to Dan McCoy, Kalia Ali and the rest of the team at NPR for all they do. And most of all, thank you for for exploring the apocalypse with us. We are thrilled to have you along.