Part Three: The Men Who Might Have Killed Us All

Summary

Behind the Bastards: "The Men Who Might Have Killed Us All" – Part Three
Podcast: Behind the Bastards (Cool Zone Media & iHeartPodcasts)
Host: Robert Evans
Guest: Margaret Killjoy
Date: December 9, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode delves into the architects, mindsets, and mythologies behind the rise of nuclear weapons and the United States’ early strategy of nuclear air power and deterrence. Robert Evans and guest Margaret Killjoy trace the logic, propaganda, and catastrophic near-misses of the Cold War, revealing a system built less on sober judgment than on hubris, lies, and repeated disregard for massive civilian casualties. They use historical anecdotes, dark humor, and sharp analysis to confront decisions that nearly ended humanity, focusing on men like Curtis LeMay and Douglas MacArthur, the build-up of the Strategic Air Command (SAC), and the shift from conventional to thermonuclear weaponry.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

The Necessity (or Not) of Nuking Japan

• Discussion of Truman’s decision: Did dropping atomic bombs force Japan’s surrender, or was Japan already beaten?
  • It’s still debated, with Robert citing evidence (War Department surveys, historians) that Japan likely would have surrendered without atomic attacks ([03:00–09:15]).
  • Quote:
    • Robert: “Japan was defeated not because of the nukes... but because they were defeated viciously and comprehensively in every field.” ([04:13])
    • “The Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs did not defeat Japan, nor... persuade Japan to accept unconditional surrender.” – quoting War Department report ([07:51])
    • Robert: “I guess I go with Ike on this one. ... It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” ([09:13])

The Immediate Aftermath and Downplaying Nuclear Horror

• Curtis LeMay & other ‘bastards’ move quickly to normalize the bomb in America ([10:00–15:15]).
• Minimization and Lies:
  • General Groves at a Senate hearing claims radiation poisoning is “a very pleasant way to die,” a direct falsehood ([12:32–12:50]).
  • Robert: “That was a lie. That was not just Groves not knowing. That was Groves lying to try and make nukes more palatable for Americans.” ([12:52])

Doomsday Logic and the Rise of SAC

• From total war to perpetual threat:
  • LeMay and others advocate for a limitless Air Force, pushing “deterrence” as America’s only future, building a force always on the edge of launching ([15:00–20:20]).
  • Robert: “No one has ever tried harder to wipe out the human race than Curtis fucking LeMay.” ([16:57])
• Blessing and curse of nuclear deterrence:
  • Early justifications for nukes relied on inflated casualty estimates and the assumption only the bomb could hold off the Soviets.
  • “If we are prepared, it may never come. ...It is not immediately conceivable that any nation will dare to attack us if we are prepared.” – Quoting LeMay’s deterrence logic ([18:46])

The RAND Corporation and Insane Ideas

• Establishment of RAND:
  • Born from Air Force funding, its first project was a “death ray” – a sign of disconnect from reality among Cold War planners ([22:31–23:17]).
  • Margaret jokes about the “Life Ray,” satirizing defense contractor branding ([23:48–24:22]).

Obsession with Strategic Bombing & Civilian Casualties

• Bonus Effects:
  • Discussions around North Korea and Germany make clear U.S. planners embraced “bonus effects” – euphemism for massive collateral damage ([29:42]).
  • Margaret: “It's the opposite of collateral damage. But it's the same concept.” ([29:54])
• Korean War as Test Case:
  • LeMay orders mass civilian bombings when precision fails. At least 2 million North Korean civilians are killed, 1/5 to 1/6 of population ([43:34–43:46]).
  • Margaret: “Jesus fuck. I straight up didn’t know that. ...Oh my God.” ([43:34–43:46])
  • Robert: “We murder 2 million people and it doesn’t win.” ([43:46])

Nuclear Near-Misses and Coverups

• Loss and concealment of nukes:
  • SAC repeatedly loses nuclear weapons through carelessness and accidents, sometimes resulting in conventional explosions with radioactive material near civilian areas ([51:16–52:01]).
  • “That was the fifth nuclear bomb lost...from the end of WWII to November of 1955.” ([51:50])

The Race to the H-Bomb (Thermonuclear Era)

• From fission to fusion:
  • The shift to the hydrogen bomb increases the apocalyptic power by an order of magnitude ([56:25–58:47]).
  • Robert: “These are not survivable. ...There is not an after thermonuclear war.” ([57:34])
• Testing impacts:
  • U.S. atomic tests in the Marshall Islands erase entire islands, irradiate populations, and constitute ongoing crimes against humanity ([60:15–60:59]).
• Insatiable stockpiling:
  • By 1959, U.S. has more than 12,000 nuclear weapons, making atomic strategy ever more unhinged ([66:55]).

Military-Industrial Madness

• Army and Air Force rivalry only means more nukes:
  • Eisenhower cuts army manpower, so the army asks for nuclear shells, mines, and missiles by the hundreds of thousands ([67:49]).
  • Margaret (re: nuclear landmines): “Nuclear landmine’s a great plan. I can’t come up with any negative thoughts.” (sarcastic) ([67:49])
• **Defensive nuclear weapons (like anti-air nukes) are “arguably ethical” only by comparison, as even these plans could trigger widespread fallout ([68:47]).

Launch-on-Warning and Hair-Trigger Logic

• LeMay and preemption:
  • No longer just retaliation – now “counterforce” and readiness to strike at the first signs, increasing risk of accidental war ([63:58–64:59]).
  • Margaret: “He’s very concerned about national survival. Like I’m much more concerned about humanity’s survival. ...if you destroy all life on Earth, the nation’s gone.” ([65:04])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• On dropping the bomb:
  • “It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing. We didn’t have to do that.” – Robert quoting Eisenhower ([09:01–09:18])
• On military logic:
  • “We have a new toy, we’re gonna see what this thing does.” – Margaret on the urge to use nukes ([10:31])
• On official lying about radiation:
  • “In fact, they say it is a very pleasant way to die.” – Gen. Leslie Groves (sarcastically quoted) ([12:32])
  • “That was a lie. That was not just Groves not knowing. That was Groves lying...” – Robert ([12:52])
• Euphemizing mass death:
  • “It’s the opposite of collateral damage. But it’s the same concept.” – Margaret ([29:54])
  • “‘Bonus effects’ is used a lot in nuclear war planning. … That’s a bonus effect, baby.” – Robert ([29:42])
• On Curtis LeMay:
  • “No one has ever tried harder to wipe out the human race than Curtis fucking LeMay...” – Robert ([16:57])
• On the “logic” of deterrence:
  • “The only way to win a nuclear war…was to strike first and strike hard. … Successful defense can now only lessen defeat.” – Quoting SAC doctrine ([63:57])
• On the H-bomb:
  • “The prototype thermonuclear weapon...made it equivalent to a thousand Hiroshima bombs.” ([58:42])
  • “You can see just in the picture how catastrophic these weapons are.” ([61:00])

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Important Historical Timestamps

• 00:48 – Margaret joins, noting she expected a Warhammer 40k discussion
• 01:06–02:00 – Story of Louis Slotin sacrificing himself (atomic research)
• 03:00–09:15 – Exploding the myth that nukes ended WWII
• 10:00–15:15 – LeMay’s vision and the PR campaign for the bomb
• 16:26–20:20 – Advocacy and logic of unchained Air Force deterrence
• 22:31–24:22 – RAND Corporation (and “death ray”) origin story
• 29:42–30:30 – “Bonus effects” (civilian casualties) discussed
• 43:34–44:09 – US bombing kills 2 million North Koreans
• 51:16–52:01 – Nuclear weapons lost/dropped by SAC
• 56:25–58:47 – The debut and destructive power of hydrogen bombs
• 67:49–70:20 – Army requests for nuclear landmines, anti-air nukes, and escalation
• 63:57–64:59 – LeMay's move to "Launch on warning" strategy increases risk

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Tone & Style

The hosts balance dark, biting humor with rigorous historical evidence to underscore just how perilous early nuclear strategy was and how little the architects seemed to care about human consequences. Both use sarcasm and irreverence to expose the absurdity and horror built into the nuclear age: “If anyone gets into the military whose name rhymes with either of these guys’ names, we need to redact it immediately.” ([18:46])

Margaret’s asides (“Nuclear landmine’s a great plan. I can’t come up with any negative thoughts.” [67:49]) and Robert’s running theme of shock – “It’s remarkable we lived through the Cold War. Yeah, yeah.” ([20:22]) – bring levity to a deeply serious, chilling narrative.

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Conclusion

The episode casts a critical light on the men, ideologies, and missteps that brought the world to the brink of destruction perennially, exposing how the logic of deterrence rests on deeply flawed—sometimes downright dangerous—assumptions, institutional inertia, and outright lies. Through historical narrative and gallows humor, Evans and Killjoy reveal that civilization’s continued survival is far more miraculous—and fragile—than most people realize.

Transcript

[A]

Media.

Welcome back to behind the Bastards, the special episodes on how we're all possibly going to die in nuclear hellfire. I'm Robert Evans. This is a series we'll be doing over the course of two weeks, five episodes. We're in our second week, so you'll be getting a bonus episode this week about the sons of bitches who created the doomsday device that, again, could kill every single person you've ever known and loved and every animal on Earth except for, you know, cockroaches and the like. 15 minutes from now or right now, you know, we'd have no way of knowing. Unless you're, I don't know, in the White House at this exact moment. Margaret Killjoy, welcome to the show. How are you doing? You thinking about nukes?

[B]

Well, I got promised this is about Warhammer 40k, but I suppose we're learning about the nuclear apocalypse.

[A]

I'll bring you on when we do our Warhammer show. That'll. Oh, yeah, yeah. There's a lot of genocide in that, too.

[B]

I could be the podcast edit for that, because I actually don't know anything about Warhammer.

[A]

It does involve a lot of nukes and radiation poisoning, which is what we ended our last episode talking about. Our friend Louis Slotin, who was the partial father of the first atomic bomb, had his innards dissolved due to a horrible nuclear error. And, oh, yeah, he got to, like.

[B]

Kind of, like, leave a record for.

[A]

Science because he was a pretty cool guy. Like, that's. That's badass. Like, when you know that, like, okay, well, I have just taken an immediately fatal dose of radiation. I'm going to die the most nightmarish death imaginable. Time to take notes. Like, fucking. That's cool. That's cool. Like. And I guess also acting with agency.

[B]

Is, like, a really good way to not stress, right?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

You know, like, I have a job. I'm just doing my job.

[A]

And I'd say it takes him off the perpetrator. Like, he did help build that first nuke. But as we've discussed, there's some mitigating factors, I think, dying to it afterwards, you know?

[B]

Yeah, his comeuppance happened.

[A]

I'm taking him off the list of guys I'm pissed at. Yeah.

This is an Iheart podcast. Guaranteed human.

So before we move on past World War II, we should at least linger on what guys like LeMay and General Power would have argued was the most important question of the whole war. Right. Which is still a question that people debate today. Did the use of atomic weapons against the Empire of Japan force its leaders to surrender, thus sparing both Japan and the Allies, primarily the US a hideously bloody ground invasion. Right. This is a question people still argue about. There's not an objective answer here. I think you'll, it'll be pretty clear where I tend to land once we get through this. Right. But this isn't something that, like, this is something that's debated. Right. Like we're, I'm not going to come in and just give one side of this. Again, I have my, my take on the matter. I think it's worth emphasizing, even if you argue that the sheer horror of atomic warfare forced Japan to surrender, that the military of Japan never independently agreed to call it quits, and if the Emperor of Japan had not broken the Supreme Council's deadlock and started peace negotiations, we can't say that the civilian population wouldn't have continued supporting the war effort no matter how many firebombs or even additional nukes fell. Right. We actually don't know that. There's also, like, that's, that's a valid point. There's also an argument that the view pushed after the war, which is that the horror of nuclear warfare was justified by avoiding a greater slaughter in Japan. That like if we had invaded the main islands, so many more people would have died. That, that gives too much credit to atomic weapons as a single weapon system. In an article for Outrider.org, jasmine Power writes, there is general agreement that the bombing of Nagasaki did little in the way of changing the hearts and minds of the Japanese military. By blaming their surrender on the atomic bombs, Japan avoided the Soviet Union having a hand in the post war reconstruction process. Japan was afraid that the Soviet Union might try to push a communist regime onto the country. And it was also very convenient for the US that Japan attributed their surrender to the atomic bombings and.

[B]

Oh shit. So it was a way to stay capitalist, was to be like, oh, it was the nukes. The nukes did us in.

[A]

More than that. It was a way to avoid what happened to Germany. Right. They're watching Germany get split up. Right. That's obvious at this point. And they don't want that, you know. And surrendering now before the Soviets are in, you know, in the mix, so to speak, means that the country doesn't get split, split up. Right. You're not gonna have Tokyo divided or whatever. Right. That's one argument people will make, you know, and in this view, pretty simply, Japan was defeated not because of the nukes, although that's not A non factor. But they were defeated because they were defeated viciously and comprehensively in every field of military endeavor. It's not just the nukes. It's the fact that we beat the shit out of them all across the Pacific, Right? Yeah. Like, which is probably, I mean, certainly a more accurate view than just saying it was the nukes. Right. Like there was a whole war, a lot of guys had to die to finish that thing. Right? And yeah, Harry Truman, the president who ordered the atomic bombs dropped, went on record basically saying that military planners had told him that when they were looking into, like, how many people would die in an invasion of the Japanese Home islands, American casualties alone would have been in the neighborhood of 500,000 to a million. And if you're talking about the kind of casualties, casualty ratios that we saw on these other island hopping campaigns, and that would have meant both the military and civilian cost for Japan would have been higher than that. Right? Now, that said, this is not a real estimate, as best as I can tell you will encounter it often. It comes up constantly. But it's heavily debatable whether or not those numbers that 500 to a million American casualties estimate have any basis in reality, per an article.

[B]

How many did we lose in Europe?

[A]

We lost in the whole war. The United States lost about half a million people.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Like, so this, this would be basically doing World War II all over again for us, more or less, right? Yeah. It's not perfectly accurate, but it's pretty close. And I want to quote from an article by Alfie Cohn on kind of the veracity of these numbers. Historian Barton Bernstein writes that military planners at the time put the number of American casualties between 20,000 and 46,000. But far more disturbing than this discrepancy is the strong possibility that neither an invasion nor a nuclear attack was actually necessary to get Japan to surrender. And this is an interesting point because if you're saying, oh, 500,000 to a million Americans killed and injured, millions of Japanese people dead, you know, maybe the nukes save lives. But if you're looking at, well, 20 to 40 or 50,000American casualties, probably twice that many Japanese casualties, well, maybe that's better than nuking the island, right?

You know, or could they have just.

[B]

Laid siege the whole. Because they were already in fact doing that.

[A]

And that's another point, as we'll get to. That's another point people will make is that Japan would have broken on its own. Right. In a good essay on the subject for his book, you know what they the Truth About Popular Belief. Alfie Cohn gives a succinct version of what we might call the skeptics case against the necessity of nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He notes that the US firebombs had already incinerated Japan's six largest cities and are basically the siege that we put on the home islands had blocked all oil from entering the country. What held up Japanese surrender was in part a desire for the Emperor to retain his title. Cone cites a 1946 report from the War Department Strategic Bombing Survey Study Group which concluded the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs did not defeat Japan, nor by the testimony of the enemy leaders who ended the war did they persuade Japan to accept unconditional surrender. The Emperor, the Lord Privy Seal, the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister and the Navy Minister had decided as early as May of 1945 that the war should be ended even if it meant acceptance of defeat on Allied terms. Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the survey's opinion that Certainly prior to this 31st of December 1945 and in all probability prior to the 1st of November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or completed. This is the US War Department.

[B]

So that's the they were already beat theory.

[A]

They were beat. They were beat. And I would say that's by far the strongest argument if you're going with a fact based argument. Not that it's the only one, but I think it's the strongest. You know, your, your feelings may vary on this. I'm not a historian, but I'm convinced pretty well. Now, there was at least one other secret intelligence assessment from the same time done by the US Army's Planning and Operations Group which reached similar conclusion and several prominent US officers agreed. Admiral William Leahy, the President's Chief of Staff during the war, called Truman's decision to deploy an atomic bomb for the first time, adopting, quote, an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark ages. Which is a nuts thing for the President's Chief of Staff to say about what, like.

Dwight Eisenhower reached a similar conclusion early on, arguing it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing. So I guess I go with Ike on this one. Not a perfect man, but he pretty much, he knew World War II pretty well.

[B]

That's why you have the I'm with Ike button.

[A]

Yeah, I'm with Ike. It wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing, we didn't have to do that.

Now, I've allowed that. There's still some room for argument here about how much the use of nukes influenced Japan's decision to surrender, because the bombing campaign in general influenced their decision to surrender and the nukes were part of that. Right. But what isn't arguable is this. President Truman and men in high positions within the US army like Curtis LeMay never considered anything but a nuclear option. Once they knew they had a bomb. Right. There was never any possibility in their minds but that they would use it. Per Cone's article, the fearsome new weapon was not treated as an option of last resort. It would be easier to accept the argument that he, Truman, had no choice but to drop the bomb if other possibilities, such as demonstrating its power to Japanese leaders on an unpopulated island and demanding surrender, had been carefully consider. They were not. There was never a serious attempt to find a strategy short of obliterating the children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As Yale sociologist Kai Erickson put it, using nuclear weapons was not by any stretch of the imagination a product of mature consideration. We have it on the authority of virtually all the principal players that no one in a position to do anything about it ever really considered alternatives to dropping the bombs on Japan.

[B]

So it's pretty much, we have a new toy.

[A]

We're gonna see what this thing does.

[B]

Yeah. The speedometer goes up to 200. I'm going to 200. Yeah.

[A]

We're already plan for the next war. Like, they handed LeMay a list of Soviet cities that might be nuclear targets. Right. Like they wanted to use this thing in part to scare the Russians. That's not all it was, but that was part of their logic, right? Yeah. Now it bears emphasizing that the atomic bombs we dropped on Japan killed between 150,000 and 250,000 people. The initial death toll was horrific enough, but it was what came after that really was the nightmare. I've spoken to a Hiroshima survivor and she described the sight of thousands of blinded, burnt people throwing themselves into rivers in a desperate attempt to quench their burning bodies. And all of these, like, a huge number of these people died. Like the rivers were just flooded with corpses, charred bodies of people who had tossed themselves burnt and singeing and like melting basically into the water. Like, it's, it's, it's, it was horrible. And in the days and weeks after the bombing, survivors started to sicken, vomiting up blood, pulling their hair out in clumps from radiation poisoning. Right. Like this is Something that we were pretty immediately aware that not only does the bomb kill a shitload of people when it goes off, but there are knock on effects that continue killing people. Right. Even though we didn't have a full understanding of this, we had a pretty good understanding pretty early of what we were doing to people with these things. The Air Corps generals did their best to minimize the horror of atomic weapons. In November of 1945, General Leslie Groves, who's again the military head of the Manhattan Project, sat before the U.S. senate Special Committee on Atomic Energy. And I want to read you a selected Q and A from that meeting. Senator Milliken. General, is there any medical antidote to excessive radiation? General Groves? I'm not a doctor, but I will answer it anyway. I always love it when people say that the radioactive casualty can be of several classes. He can have enough so that he will be killed instantly. He can have a smaller amount which will cause him to die rather soon. And as I understand it from the doctors, without undue suffering. In fact, they say it is a very pleasant way to die.

[B]

Oh yeah, that's what people say about.

[A]

It all the time. That's what people say about radiation, about having your insides liquefied. Pleasant chill.

[B]

All the parts of you that tell you that you're in trouble are also destroyed.

[A]

So yeah, exactly, you're fine, you're chillin' now.

[B]

Happens to everyone.

[A]

That was a lie. That was not just Groves not knowing. That was Grove's lying to try and make nukes more palatable for Americans. When he said that, the average citizen, and indeed the average senator, would not have had to dig very deep to find at least a little countervailing evidence that radiation poisoning was not pleasant. Precisely what had happened on the ground in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not yet fully understood by most Americans. But early reports of horrific burns and lingering sickness far from the blast site were available. More to the point, you've heard about the radium girls and the like, people who'd been exposing themselves to different kinds of radiation for decades and they died horribly. We knew radiation poisoning was not pleasant before we ever dropped it. Atomic bomb, Right. Now, again, the point here is that Groves was. He was not just lying, he was engaged in a cover up. This is a conspiracy. And it's a conspiracy that ran parallel to one of the most successful marketing campaigns of all time, the Campaign to Get Americans on the Bomb. Step one of that campaign was to keep people from thinking of the horrors of atomic weapons for a little while longer. We knew eventually it would get out right These generals all knew you can't lie about this forever, right? But the longer we lie about it, the more money we get into these programs, the more momentum they get behind them, the more we can centralize the US military and defense apparatus around nukes, which was their goal. Right. Their goal was replace as many humans as possible with atomic weapons, and they start on it almost immediately. For these generals as for Curtis LeMay, the existence of the atom bomb seems to have given some sort of purpose and provided a dark animating force to the remainder of their lives. Immediately after the war's end, they set to work launching a new kind of campaign, a media blitz targeted at convincing decision makers in the US that nukes were the only future for the military that was worth caring about. Three months after the bombing of Hiroshima, LeMay visited the Ohio Society in New York City to give a speech. He warned, promised the men a symbol that the next war, understood to be the next world war, would be fought with rockets, radar, jet propulsion, television guided missiles, and that all of these weapons would be launched at speeds faster than sound and involve atomic power. So he's, he's got a pretty clear vision of the future, our friend Curtis lemay, and he is now trying to sell it.

[B]

And, like, are there other. Because, okay, we have this, like, thing where apparently people who build bombs are obsessed with how bombs are the only thing.

[A]

Yes, right.

[B]

Are there other character classes who feel, like, similar, about, like, like, are like the fighter jets being like. No, all that matters is fighter jets.

[A]

Yes, yeah, yeah, go ahead. Yes, there are and we will talk about that. Unfortunately, most of the people who disagree with lame just want nukes to be used differently. But there are some people, there's a couple of decent human beings still in the military establishment in this period who are like, what the fuck is wrong with you people? Are you out of your minds?

[B]

Yeah. Do you know what this thing does? I'm able to figure out this means destroy the world.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That seems bad.

[A]

Why are we building the world killing machine? Why are we doing this?

[B]

We live here. This is our world here.

[A]

This is the one planet that we've got.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Back in 1921, Duhay had argued that the invention of the bomber craft basically rendered all other types of weaponry obsolete. And LeMay was making a similar argument, but with the nuclear weapon at the heart of this fabled air force that could finally do the whole job of war all on its own. He argued, quote, the air force must be allowed to develop unhindered and unchained. There must be no ceiling, no boundaries, no limitations to our air power development. That doesn't sound at all like a crazy man.

[B]

No.

[A]

And it's. You know, this is a pretty bleak series of episodes. I will say one thing that has me optimistic is that Curtis LeMay tried harder than any single human ever has to end the human race. And he didn't do it. And I don't quite know why. Like, it's shocking that we survived. Curtis LeMay, he would do shit like fly bombers into Russian airspace just to, like, tweak them. Like, he was such a piece of shit. And they always had nukes, right?

[B]

Quantum immortality as a species. That's all I got.

[A]

It's nuts. Like, no one has ever tried harder to wipe out the human race than Curtis fucking LeMay with his fucking dead face. Oh, man, it's nuts.

[B]

I wonder if the villains and pulp stuff from 200 years ago didn't even claim that they're gonna destroy the world. Whereas now we have villains who are like, I'm going to destroy the world.

People can now.

[A]

People can now. And we have examples of people who really worked hard to try to do that. And this is ultimately kind of why we are now at the point where the whole human race is, you know, 15 to 30 minutes away from annihilation at any given moment in time, which is Curtis LeMay. And a bunch of guys that followed him felt, felt the air Force. And to them, this means the nuclear air force must be allowed to develop unhindered and unchained. I cannot emphasize enough how much of LeMay's speech to the Ohio society was just warmed up. Duhei, he insisted no air attack, once it is launched can be completely stopped. This was an echo of Duheille's argument that the sky was too vast for bombers to be perfectly intercepted. Right. And this hadn't proved true in World War II, but when you got nukes, it kind of is true. Right. If you send 500 bombers and they each have a nuke, one of them's gonna drop that fucker, you know? Yeah.

[B]

Also when people say history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

This feels a little on the nose. I actually wasn't sure. Duhme and Lemay.

[A]

Duhay. Yeah.

[B]

Duhay and LeMay.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. It is weird. How can they literally rhyme? Yeah. I hadn't even got that. Fuck no.

[B]

Cause I was struggling to remember which one was which.

[A]

Yeah. Duhay's the ome old Italian guy who was like, in 1921, bombers are the future. All we need. No use in having anything else a.

[B]

Couple decades later, the man who rhymes says the same thing. Nuke.

[A]

Yeah. If anyone gets into the military whose name rhymes with either of these guys names, we need to redact it immediately. So as Richard, I'm gonna quote now from a piece in the New Yorker by Richard Rhodes in which he lays out lame's thinking in the rest of this speech. And it all kind of follows from the basic idea that you can't stop an aerial nuclear attack. Quote, this meant to lamey that the United States would have to have an air force in being that could immediate move immediately to retaliate if the country was attacked. The preparation for retaliation, the threat of it might be sufficient to prevent attack in the first place. If we are prepared, it may never come. It is not immediately conceivable that any nation will dare to attack us if we are prepared. So In November of 1945, LeMay was already thinking in terms of what came to be called deterrence. But therein lay the contradiction. If no air attack could be completely stopped, then retaliation would not protect the country. It would only destroy the enemy's country in turn. Right. And what he means by an air force in being is you always have planes loaded with active nuclear bombs ready to fly minutes away from flight. And it's eventually going to mean you always have planes in the air with nukes. And that's going to mean for a period of like a couple decades there are never not nukes flying around in the air always. And this is before, there's no governor on these. This is not a thing. Today every nuke that we have, you have to get like codes and shit from the nuclear football. This is. Some guys in a plane have the ability to activate these things, right?

[B]

Like, oh, my wife left me.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. Like it's, it's fucking remarkable. We lived through the Cold War. Yeah, yeah. So yeah. What we see in this period, as early as 1945, is Men in the military establishment expressing a sense of interest in minimizing the harms of and knowledge about nuclear war to civilians. People were tired after World War II. Soldiers long deployed wanted to return to civilian life. The country desperately needed to stop paying for the costs of a wartime military. Yet now that the Cold War was kicking up, the US found itself simultaneously pressed with all kinds of new commitments. Nuclear weapons offered a solution to what seemed like an impossible problem. I'm going to quote from Rhodes again. In the four years that the United States held a monopoly on nuclear weapons, it reduced its military forces to bare bones Shrank the defense budget from its wartime high of nearly $90 billion to less than $15 billion. And counted on a small but growing nuclear arsenal to deter a Soviet march to the Atlantic across a war ravaged Western Europe. Right. And this is kind of the first use that we have for nukes after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which is, we can't keep all these soldiers in the field, but we're now responsible for guarding Western Europe from the scary communists. So let's just keep a bunch of nukes all over the place. That way we don't need as many guys, we can just set off a shitload of nukes and we can slow these, these Russians down while we get our shit in gear, you know. And this, this works as a deterrent strategy when the Soviets don't have a bomb. Right?

[B]

Right.

[A]

Because they don't have anything to counter this with. Hap Arnold sent a letter in 1945 laying out. And he's an Air Force general laying out some of the first principles. Well, the Air Force doesn't exist yet. He's an army air thing general laying out some of the first principles for what would become the theory of deterrence. Quote, we must therefore secure our nation by developing and maintaining those weapons, forces and techniques required to pose a warning to aggressors in order to deter them from launching a modern devastating war. In order to ensure this happened, Arnold ordered studies into the scientific projects the Air Force should support over the next 20 to 30 years. This resulted in 1946 and the air Force setting up the Rand Corporation. You've heard of the Rand Corporation?

[B]

Yeah, I did not know that they were. Air Force, huh?

[A]

Yes, that's how they start. And Rand just means R and D, like literally. That's why it's Rand, Right?

[B]

Oh, shit.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I assumed it was someone's name.

[A]

Yeah, it's the Rand Corporation. They're set up in Santa Monica, right on the coast. Beautiful area. And a former defense engineer named James Rubell later wrote of this is the first Rand project. Rand quickly proposed a death ray project which the Air Force approved. So, top men, guys, everyone's super sane. Not a bunch of dudes whose brains have been melted by lead and war trauma just trying to come up with apocalypse weapons. I don't know, guys. Death ray feels like a good idea. Let's get one of those fuckers. I watched War of the Worlds. To hell with it.

Now. And to be honest, if we'd made a death ray, that would be pretty cool.

[B]

Yeah. Would it be second Amendment, you know?

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. I would be carrying one this exact moment. Margaret. Yeah. I'm ready for a death ray. I think certain people should.

[B]

A death ray is a one on one. It's not really a major step up from bullets, you know.

[A]

No. It's probably faster and less painless to get shot with.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, and I bet it's, I don't know, good at killing Martians, which we might need to do if Elon Musk ever sets up a colony on Mars. Anyway, so I think we're both pro.

[B]

Death ray is what we're saying.

[A]

Actually, I've come around on the Rand Corporation. Margaret, I'm gonna be honest with you.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Speaking of the Rand Corporation, you know, who supports this podcast? Not the Rand Corporation, because we're primarily talking about how they nearly killed everyone like a million times.

[B]

We're sponsored by Death Ray International. That's why we are coming out so strong on death rays right now.

[A]

That's right. And actually the death ray company that sponsors us is called Life Ray, you know, because it'll, it's, it's a, it's a. It's a death ray for personal defense, you know. Yeah.

[B]

Save lives.

[A]

It saves lives. That's. That's the life ray.

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[A]

And we're back having a good time. So right around the time the RAND Corporation gets formed, you know, because the war is over, because the normal, normal life is starting to reassert itself, or at least the new normal. Some people have begun to question the logic with which men like Bomber Harris, Curtis LeMay and General Powell, I still can't believe his literal name, General fucking Power, approached aerial warfare. Was it really possible to break and General Motor?

[B]

Who is in charge of the motor pool?

[A]

Yeah, right. Yeah. Is it really possible to break a nation's will through bombing? Right this was a question that people, you know, there are guys like LeMay that are like obviously it is, look at what we did. And there are more thoughtful men who are like, actually the evidence doesn't really bear this out. And I wanna read a quote here about members of the Strategic Bombing Survey from Keeney's book 15 Minutes. How did one measure a broken will? Far more effective were strikes against petroleum refineries, airport factories and power plants, the loss of which ravaged the Germans war making capabilities and destroyed their economy. This led to post war air atomic planning that emphasized Soviet industry as targets for nuclear strike. Key targets that if destroyed would have an effect far larger than the facility's mere destruction. These plants were often located in major urban areas. Said one Air Force general of this conundrum. I think it was sort of a shock to people when a few began to talk about the bonus effects and industrial capital. And particularly when they began to ask what was a city but a collection of industry? And that's an important. Yeah, it's hideous.

[B]

Where the fuck do they live? It must be. These are suburbanites. This is because suburbanites have entered the war.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And are now running the army. Sure.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But that term bonus effects is used a lot in nuclear war planning. And a bonus effect is the added destruction that you get while destroying the targets you're actually aiming at in atomic war. So you're trying to.

[B]

It's the opposite of collateral damage. But it's the same concept.

[A]

It's collateral damage but good. Right. Like we needed to take out this tank factory and we killed a million civilians at the same time. That's a bonus effect, baby. Right? Yeah. And there's other bonus effects. Radiation poisoning causes bonus effects. Nuclear bombs, especially once we start making thermonuclear weapons, they cause firestorms. Massive firestorms. Some theoretically, some like the size of states. Right. And that's a bonus effect. You know, I mean as they've been.

[B]

Trying to do that since the beginning. Based on what you've told me last week. Yeah.

[A]

And they have been, you know, a firestorm really fucks people up. People don't like firestorms.

[B]

No.

[A]

The argument military leaders were making about the future for the first four years after World War II can best be summarized by a memo. General Loris Norstad, Assistant Chief of Staff for the Army Air Forces sent out in 1945. He laid out the need for a ready force of aircraft that could strike quickly and effectively anywhere in the world. In a memo to the House of Representatives, he argued the Existence of this ready force would act as a deterrent to any countries looking to acquire nuclear weapons. So first we need a ready force so that no one else will get nukes. If we always have planes ready to nuke people, no one else will even try to get them. Right. This is their first argument, you know.

[B]

Yeah. Not as strong as the argument that I think is coming based on what you told me last week.

[A]

Right, yeah. Now this ready force is established in March of 1946 as part of what becomes known as the Strategic Air Command. The SAC is responsible not just for nukes, but for the Air Force's long range bombing operations. Right. When we're bombing Korea, when we're bombing Vietnam, the SACs, especially in Korea going to be heavily involved. Right. And they're not obviously using nukes in those wars, but they come to control a lot of our nukes and they come to control our long range missile assets. I say control. Technically all of our nuclear weapons at this point are in the custody of the Atomic Energy Commission. Right. And they maintain direct control over the nuclear weapons that we're starting to build in the post war period. Right. But what you're going to see happen during these first four or five years after the war is we're increasingly deploying nuclear weapons around the world to have this air force in readiness. Right. This ready force. And so basically they're kind of cashiering these nukes out and SAC is maintaining control of them. Right. But the SAC gets them from the Atomic Energy Commission and the sac.

[B]

I'm surprised that none of them got stolen.

[A]

Oh, they. Oh, Margaret, just wait. None of them got stolen, maybe, but we lose a lot of these fucking bombs. Okay, we'll get to that. But the SAC today, one of the things that scares me about our current nuclear force is that it is the shittiest job in the Air Force, maybe in the whole military. People will argue about this, but I've talked to a couple of nukes and they did not like it. It is not a prestigious job. It is not a fun job. It is boring. People cheat on tests constantly. There's stories about guys in nuclear silos doing fucking ecstasy, you know, because it's a shit job. In this period of time, it is not seen as a shit job. These are seen as. This is the best part of the military to be in. This is the most elite force in the military. It's certainly the best thing to be if you're any kind of pilot. Right. And these are the best pilots and engineers that our entire military can put together, right? And they're tasked with a singular purpose. I mean, so it's different at this point. That is probably what you want now. That's the idea. It's debatable. Are they ever really that good? We'll talk about that. Curtis LeMay takes command of the SAC in 1948. He's not the first guy in charge of it, but he takes command and he really, he forms it in a meaningful way. The next year, 1949, the USSR detonates its first nuclear warhead, terrifying members of the US defense establishment. There had been a lot of guys. Anyone who was smart knew well, of course Soviet Union's got a good science program. They have resources, they've got spies. They're gonna get a bomb, right? They have the ability to get uranium or plutonium, all this, whatever shit they need. There's like a fifth of the world's landmass. They have the ability to do this.

[B]

Yeah, like we invented the wheel. No one else has the wheel. No one's gonna figure out the wheel.

[A]

They figured out machine guns too. God damn it. No, of course they were going to do this. But there were, and it's a mix. There were plenty of people, obviously there were a number of people in our military who knew that this was going to happen at least some point. But there are a lot of people who are shocked, right? And are terrified and like, oh my God, I can't believe the communists figured out this bomb right? Now.

[B]

Is this because that like spy couple or is that they.

[A]

They. There are several spies who play a role. And honestly I think that that probably did more to stop nuclear weapons from being used again in war than anything else. I think once the US has them, if the Soviets didn't ever acquire them, we probably would have wound up nuking the USSR at some point.

[B]

Yeah, that seems very likely.

[A]

That's unprovable. But that's kind of where I come in, right? Of like. Well, it's kind of the gun. It's the gun thing. Do I wish, like there were no semi automatic and automatic assault rifles at all in the country? That would probably be more pleasant. Am I not gonna have one when the crazy ass motherfuckers I know have them? Like.

[B]

The people who want to kill me have it. I've read enough history to know what happens after you disarm.

[A]

And here's the problem. There's a logic to that. And also that leads us both to having 400 million guns and having tens of thousands of nukes, right? So it's like I understand the thought process, but it might fundamentally be what will doom us. Right.

So there's a degree to which like I have to put myself in where these guys are. And keep in mind this is not a period of time in which all of our generals are. Most or many of them are dudes who just came up and have done this as like a desk job. Right. All of these. Curtis LeMay saw heavy aerial combat, all of these guys did. Right. So these dudes are fucked up and crazy at this point. These people have incinerated cities from the sky. They're not thinking the way normal people think anymore, you know. And the same is true of the Soviets by the way. They lost 20 million people in this war. The Soviets were not getting into it. Cause I have less detail on it. But they are making mirror decisions generally to the U.S. right? Sometimes a little less crazy, sometimes a little crazier. But they're also have all been completely deranged by this hideous war, Right? Yeah. So I do have a little bit of like, well fuck, how could this not have gone bad, right?

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

So for quite a while after the Soviets detonate their first atom bomb, the US will retain a massive advantage in the number of nuclear weapons. Right. That will not last forever. Eventually we reach parity. I think they do actually beat us at one point in total number of nukes. So it's a little hard to know. But from this point forward there was no denying that nuclear deterrence would eventually be a thing. Right. And so you wind up in this, there's 19, like 50 to like 52, 53 is this insanely dangerous period really up until like the early 60s where the Soviets have some nukes but not all that many and the US has a lot and we could have started and won a nuclear war. It would have been really pretty easy for us. Right?

[B]

Right.

[A]

There would have been casualties and tens of millions of deaths, but they would have mostly been over in Europe. Right. Because the Soviet Union just didn't have a lot of bombs and they didn't have the ability to get a lot of bombs over here. There's no ICBMs. You're flying fucking bombers. Right? Yeah.

[B]

So we would have lost Alaska maybe.

[A]

Right. Like their long range bombing capacity, especially in like 1949, 50 is probably could have accomplished that, but it wasn't great, right, right. In 1950, a year after the first Russian nuclear test, the United States had nearly 300 nuclear weapons, the USSR had five. The newly founded Joint Chiefs of Staff in the US Department of Defense, which. That all gets started in this post war period. Right. We don't have the Joint Chiefs or like, you know, in World War II. Right. This is a post war innovation, you know, if you want to call it that. But the Joint Chiefs of staff and the DOD had concluded after a study that some 200 nuclear bombs would be sufficient to depopulate most of the earth, quote, leaving only the stygial remnants of man's material works. That is the Joint Chiefs, they say 200 nukes will do that. And so we build 300.

Great.

[B]

150%.

[A]

Yeah, cool. Well, we'll get a lot more. By 1951 we'll have more than 400 such weapons. Right. Meanwhile, in its first three years as a nuclear power, the USSR goes from 1 to 50 atomic weapons of varying power. Shortly after taking over the SAC, LeMay decided that the new post war air force had gotten sloppy and he ordered a fake combat mission against Dayton, Ohio to prove it. A massive bomber raid. I love that he's like, well let's have him pretend to blow up Dayton. See how good they Ohio. Yeah, fuck it. So he has this massive bombing raid over the city that's like, it's a fake. They're not dropping real bombs obviously, but all of the fake bombs are horribly off target. Like they fuck up really badly. The supposedly elite force cannot drop bombs to. To save their goddamn lives. Right. This is probably less on train. I mean there's some degree of training. It's more that. Just like bombers aren't great at hitting things precisely at this point. Right? Yeah. And nukes, they're not TV guided.

[B]

I remember that. There were plenty of.

[A]

We're not doing that. Yeah, not quite yet. And it's a kind of, you know, one of the benefits of nukes. It's horrible to say this, but it is a benefit from a military standpoint, is that you don't have to be very accurate because it's a fucking nuke, right?

[B]

Yeah, but it's what people say about shotguns.

[A]

But real, right? But yes, accurate. Like you really can be pretty far off with a nuke and still hit your target. But these guys do so badly that even with nukes, they would not have destroyed most of their intended targets. This is not an effective raid. And LeMay calls this fake attempt to destroy Dayton, quote, the darkest night in American military aviation history. Because not one airplane finished that mission is briefed. And like, man, you were part of raids where guys died. I think that's darker. Like where guides died and the Mission wasn't really that successful. I think that's worse than a raid where fake bombs just don't hit very well.

[B]

I don't know, y' all incinerated babies.

[A]

Like, yeah, that might be darker. Hiroshima, all might be darker. Arguably, yeah. Now this means that when the Korean War kind of starts up, it's gonna be not quite the last point. Some people will argue that like, you know, there's some shit in the JFK's early administration like Berlin, there's some shit in, during the Eisenhower administration in Taiwan where we probably could have used nuclear weapons without total planetary annihilation or getting nuked into the Stone Age ourselves. Right. But the Korean War is the last major armed conflict where the US could have used nuclear weapons on a tactical level and known the risks were minimal, that things would have like spiraled into global annihilation, at least at that point. Right. And given that fact, given that we could have nuked North Korea and even China and guys wanted to, it's kind of a miracle that we didn't. It's like shocking to me when I get into the history that like we. That it didn't happen. Right, yeah. And going into the war, some powerful men in the Defense Department argued for just that action. Curtis LeMay was the most prominent of a cadre of officers who considered our nuclear arsenal the term they used for it was a wasting asset. In other words, because we know the Soviets are starting to build up a nuclear arsenal and starting to get long range bombers and the other things they need to be able to strike us every day. We don't use our nukes, they become less effective. Basically he's saying we gotta use them or lose them. Right. If we don't use them now, we'll never be able to use them. Right, Right.

[B]

And if you're playing the world like a video game, this is true. Right. If I'm a video game general, I.

[A]

Would, I would start nuking immediately, which I do in any video game that gives me a nuke. Right? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Which is why gamers should not be allowed in the Department of Defense. No. Oops.

[B]

All gamers, turns out, under strict control by non gamers.

[A]

Right.

So at the start of hostilities in Korea, strategic bombing advocates encouraged a campaign against a handful of significant strategic targets in North Korea. And they succeeded in these bombing raids on paper. Right. The SAC destroys the targets assigned to them. But North Korea, if you know much about North Korea then and now, they didn't have a lot of expo. There wasn't a lot that we could really do to fuck em up that bad by bombing them. Right. Like we do some damage, but that's just kind of not how their military's wired at this point in time. And to make matters worse for the United States, we start this war using very new high tech guided bombs like the Aspect. But those run out immediately, which is a thing in modern warfare too. If you look at what's happened in Ukraine, right. Like I was about to say, yeah, you have these incredible munitions that are capable of really impressive things, but also it's really hard to make them and you need to explode.

[B]

Yeah, we've already exploded them all.

[A]

And it turns out you go through that shit real fast in a war. So as I said, Curtis LeMay had taken over control of the SAC in 1948 and he was the architect of the bombing campaign against North Korea. He interpreted the fact that we had run through all of our most advanced munitions without ending the war as another L for team precision bombing. Basically LeMay's like, well look, clearly just striking strategic targets doesn't work. So he orders US bombers to start playing the classics. Colonel Riccione in that article that he wrote describes SAC's plan as to quote, increase the level of pain in North Korea by bombing civilian targets. LeMay and the SAC used US air power to kill around 2 million North Korean citizens over the next two years and change.

[B]

Jesus fuck. I straight up didn't know that. I know so little about the Korean War.

[A]

It's between a fifth and a sixth of the population of North Korea. We kill through primarily aerial bombing.

[B]

Oh my God.

[A]

But it's also still a hideous war crime. Like we murder 2 million people and it doesn't win. Like again. The thing that keeps happening, that has always happened every time someone like LeMay is like, well, we just gotta cause them enough pain that their morale breaks. And what happens is their morale doesn't break. Right? And it.

[B]

They're always like forever and ever. I've been just in a bunch of stuff about people defending against the Roman Empire in Gaul and things like that, right? And you start saying like, oh well, these people, like, these people, you know, the horrible Druids, they sacrifice children or whatever, right?

[A]

Who wasn't.

[B]

I know one who wasn't.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And even if they were, do you know how many, you know how many children you'd have to sacrifice to get anywhere near the evil of what Rome did in terms of killing them?

[A]

Julius Caesar does a genocide in Gaul. Yeah.

[B]

And so like communism is whatever, it's.

[A]

The same Thing as the people who are like, well, the conquistadors stopped the child sacrifice and the Americans killing all the children. You think the Spanish Inquisition didn't involve any fucking kids dying, man? Yeah, totally.

[B]

Okay, bro, Totally.

[A]

Yeah. Look, I'm not saying. I'm not saying any of these. Any society, any organized empire anywhere in the Americas or elsewhere has been a nice empire. None of them are. But if you're just being like, well, look at the bad things they did, uh huh. What were you guys getting up to, huh?

[B]

Yeah. Does that justify you killing 2 million people?

[A]

Yeah. Come on, bro.

[B]

Was North Korea so bad that they all just need to die?

[A]

It's the same thing as like, well, look at all these fucked up things and plenty of fucked up things. The Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China did a lot of. But like, we murder millions of people from the sky repeatedly, all over, like, the world.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So, you know, I don't know. Don't get up your own ass about your side being particularly nice.

[B]

The angels, right?

[A]

The angels as you incinerate cities.

Villages largely. But yeah. Once again, though, this is really important. Actual war disproves all of the foundational assumptions of our military leadership. First off, North Korea invades despite the fact that the US has troops in South Korea and we have an overwhelming edge in strategic bombing, per the theories that lemay and Duhei both espoused. If you have a good enough strategic bombing force, you won't get attacked. Right? That's the point. It just doesn't work. It's never true.

That. Also the fact we have air superiority, but it doesn't stop North Korea from fighting effectively. And none of the bombing we do doesn't shatter civilian morale. In fact, a strong argument could be made that the Korean War goes as badly as it does because guys like LeMay had gotten their way in the interwar period. As I noted earlier, we really cut back on the military after World War II. And in fact, all military development outside of making the SAC stronger took a back seat. And as a result, when North Korea invades, the US troops stationed in South Korea are not well prepared. Their weapons are barely maintained. I talked to my grandpa about this. He was there the whole war and he was like, yeah, we were in shit shape when the war started and it was because they had let like, we like fucking our bazookas wouldn't fire and shit. Like, we had like. There were serious issues with like, the maintenance of basic equipment because guys like LeMay were like, all we need are bombers, bro. Trust Me, all we need are bombers, you know?

[B]

Yeah. Whereas they actually needed the life ray.

[A]

Right. We needed the life. A couple of life rays would have really solved this whole problem. They wouldn't have even tried if we had a life ray.

[B]

That's what I'm saying.

[A]

Now, after North Korea invades, they push the small US garrison and the South Korean forces down the peninsula until General Douglas MacArthur, at the head of a UN amphibious landing force, came aground at Inchon and pushed the North Koreans back almost to the border with China. Then China enters the war with a shitload of dudes and suddenly the UN forces are in full retreat and they get pushed back. It's really. It's a. It's a. It doesn't. Not enough study of not enough people. Americans know anything about the Korean War, but it's a fucking wild ass time. Yeah.

[B]

I know so little about it. It's World War II and then Vietnam. That's what I know.

[A]

Right. It's a little. It's. It's. And Korea is kind of halfway between World War II and Vietnam in terms of like fighting tactics and all that stuff. You know, you do have a lot of these big armored clashes. You have dog fights and stuff, but you also have more advanced these, you know, you have these guided missiles and stuff. Right. Early ones.

So Douglas MacArthur, as he's getting the shit hammered out of him, requests 10 atomic bombers with live nukes be put on standby in Guam. Right. Because he wants to have the option to use them in an emergency situation. Right. Truman says yes to this. MacArthur also wants these planes and their nukes placed under his direct control. And this is a weird moment where Curtis LeMay may have saved a lot of people's lives. And I don't think it's for a good reason, but he steps in and he begs Truman to say no and keep the bombs under sac. He wants the bombs to stay with the sac. Right. He wants to have control over them. But I do think he is less. I don't think he would have. I don't think. He certainly was not unwilling to nuke North Korea, but he was less interested in doing it than MacArthur. Right. He was not convinced it was the only path forward, and MacArthur was really convinced it was the only way to win. Right.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Now, for decades, because the fact that we sent nukes to Guam during the Korean War has been well known, but if you look up any histories that are like, older, Prior to the 21st century, it will say the SAC sent nine planes and nine atomic bombs to Guam. We now know that this was inaccurate. And I'm going to quote from the book 15 minutes here. The first nine departures for Guam were uneventful. But as the last B29 accelerated down the Runway, two propellers ran away as the bomber lifted off, forcing the pilot to shut down two engines. In what would later be described as heroic flying. The pilot somehow pulled the fuel laden bomb laded bomber into the air and managed to turn back towards the Runway. But as he did, he lost altitude and the bomber simply went into the ground. The crash was not hard, reported an aide to General LeMay. But 12 men were dead and eight were trapped in the burning wreckage, which came to rest at the edge of a trailer park that housed military families. That's a nuke. We blow up a nuke next to base housing. And that's why everyone just knew that we sent nine planes. Because they just pretend this doesn't happen. They lie about, they cover this the fuck up, right?

[B]

So this is like, this is drop safe. Nukes are drop safe.

[A]

Kind of. The good news is that because of how nukes work, they don't detonate on accident. They have to be set up for. In order to get the big. The explosion that we all recognize as a nuclear blast, you have to set off a nuke in a specific way. The bad news is that even if it's not set off in the way that causes a traditional atomic blast, you're still talking about 5,000 pounds of conventional explosives in the bomb and a bunch of radioactive material. So it does, it can still make. From what I've seen, because this happens a few times, it doesn't always make a dirty bomb, but it can. You can get radiation contamination when one of these things explodes in a plane crash, right? That does happen sometimes. I don't actually know if it does in this case because of how much was covered up. I can't tell you if any of these fucking civilians in the base house got rad sick. But the blast of this nuke not going off as a nuke is felt 30 miles away. It kills seven rescue personnel and it injures 181 civilians. The air force immediately lies and says, oh, that was just loaded with normal bombs. It was a training mission. Sorry, guys. Not a nuke though. Don't worry.

[B]

Yeah, unlike the nine planes next to it, right?

[A]

It was 44 years before the fact that a fucking nuke exploded was declassified. And Margaret, that's not close to the only nuke we lost. This is the thing. I did not know we fucking Lose so many nukes, it's crazy. On November 10th of 1950, an SAC bomber encountered engine trouble and had to drop an MK4 atom bomb set to self destruct a hundred miles outside of Quebec.

And here's the wild part. That was the fifth nuclear bomb lost by the SAC from the end of World War II to November of 1955. Lost nukes in five years.

Oh, my God. And that counts as a success because we self destruct the nuke so it doesn't just land. Right, we'll get to that. Back to the Korean War, all right. Cause this is all going right. As this is all going on, MacArthur grows increasingly bullish on tactical nuclear warfare. As the situation in Korea grows more dire, he develops a plan that would have involved dropping between 30 and 50 tactical atom bombs on enemy air bases and depots. And then he would have followed up by a massive invasion of Taiwanese troops backed by two Marine divisions. Enemy reinforcements from China were to be blocked. This army that he's going to have basically cut Korea off from China. They're going to lay a belt of radioactive cobalt behind them in order to make it impossible for Chinese forces to cross into Korea for generations. That was the plan, is irradiate the entire border alongside nuking a bunch of people.

[B]

That's like salty in the earth behind you.

[A]

But another level, I cannot exaggerate how fucking insane Douglas MacArthur is at this point. Like he is completely dangerously unhinged. One of the craziest men to ever command a US military force. Truman refused this insane plan, thank fucking God. And As a result, MacArthur could criticize the President publicly, which led to him being removed from command. The Korean War ended with a shitload of dead people and without a real peace, but also without additional nuclear explosions. So, you know, that's good. It could have been worse, I guess, is what I'm saying, you know.

[B]

So civilian control of government is better than the military control of government?

[A]

Yeah. Because again, these people lose their fucking minds. And MacArthur, like Curtis LeMay, is a voice of reason here. That's how crazy MacArthur is not much of a voice of reason, but a little bit of one, because MacArthur is batshit crazy.

At the start of the Korean War, the US moved almost 90 nuclear weapons into Europe out of fears that a wider Communist invasion of the west was imminent. Now, the Soviet arsenal is really small at this stage, and again, there's no ICBMs. Bombers still aren't super good. So time is not as much of a factor. Right. We don't have to have these things Ready to detonate at five minutes notice. Right. And so for safety's sake, again, this is one of these. The Atomic Energy Commission kind of comes in and is like, we'll send the bombs over, but not the nuclear material. We will keep the nuclear cores in the US so that we can airlift them over to Europe on a moment's notice.

[B]

But because they're smaller than the bombs themselves.

[A]

Right, right. And. And it's safer than just having a live nuke where someone could see, steal it or set it off. Right.

[B]

You store the ammo and the gun in a different place when there's children around. Yeah.

[A]

This is. Moments like this of just minimal sanity are so rare in the nuke story that it's just like a breath of fresh air. Like, oh, somebody wasn't completely out of their goddamn mind. But you know who is out of their goddamn mind, Margaret?

[B]

Is it our sponsor, Life Ray.

[A]

That's right, liferay. Because it turns out Life Rays incredibly radioactive. They will fry your brain. Even being in the same state as one is very dangerous. Buy one today.

[B]

I think it's worth it.

[A]

Uh huh. For safety. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And we're back. So at this point, the Atomic Energy Commission maintained custody of our nuclear weapons when they were not actively in use. The DoD never likes this, and they used the opportunity to argue that the military should have direct control over our nuclear arsenal. Eventually, Truman agreed to give Strategic Air Command custody of these weapons in Guam. Right. This is kind of the first time that the military gets direct custody for a long period of time is in Guam. During the Korean War in 1951, the US had increased its stockpile of nuclear weapons from 299 to 438, twice the number the Joint Chiefs of Staff had been told in an internal report could destroy civilizations. As I noted, the USSR has around 50 bombs. Their stockpile will grow rapidly after this point. But to deal with the fact that the gap is starting to close, we start working on a bigger bomb. Right. It's first known by its nickname, the Super. And this is the first thermonuclear bomb, AKA the hydrogen bomb. And as a brief aside, most.

Post atomic apocalypse movies and fictions imagine a bunch of bombs, kind of like the Hiroshima bomb going off. That's what fallout does. Really? Because like you look at D.C. in Fallout, what is it, three or four? I forget which one D.C. is in.

[B]

I've played some of them, but I don't remember them.

[A]

You look at D.C. and most of the buildings are still relatively intact. Right. That doesn't happen if you drop a thermonuclear bomb. Annie Jacobson goes over like if one of the standard hydrogen bombs were dropped on DC and these are actively aimed at DC at all times. Right. The Russians always have some aimed at D.C. just like we've got shit aimed at Moscow. I'm not blaming them. We're both doing the same crazy shit. Everyone within a mile of the blast dies immediately. Everyone within two or three miles of the blast is incinerated over the course of a few seconds. Right? You're talking millions of deaths in the space of a minute or two. Like these are not survivable. Everything is. There's no buildings left. Everything is combusted near. Like the power of these bombs cannot be exaggerated. These are not survivable. There is not an after thermonuclear war.

[B]

Is it a different. Yes, it's like a fundamentally different technology.

[A]

It's the craziest thing you can imagine. Hydrogen bombs. Hydrogen weapons. Right. Like thermonuclear weapons. Work on the premise, what if you set off a nuke with a nuke. Right. Here's Annie Jacobson describing how these work. The super's monstrous explosive power comes as the result of an uncontrolled self sustaining chain reaction in which hydrogen isotopes fuse under extremely high temperatures in a process called nuclear fusion. An atomic bomb will kill tens of thousands of people, as did the ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A thermonuclear bomb, if detonated in a city like New York or Seoul, will kill millions of people in a superheated flash. These are.

[B]

So this is, I think it's fission versus fusion maybe or something.

[A]

Yeah, I think that's, that's basically what's going on here. But you're setting, instead of using conventional explosives to start the nuclear reaction, you're using a nuke to set off a nuke, basically, right?

[B]

Yeah. Yo, dog. Uh huh.

[A]

Uh huh. It's. It's just the craziest thing. The prototype thermonuclear weapon was designed by a guy named Richard Garvin and had a 10.4 megaton explosive capacity that made it equivalent to a thousand Hiroshima bombs.

[B]

Oh my God.

[A]

For an idea of what, that's the first one of these we make, right?

[B]

Uh huh.

[A]

These things, when we start detonating them, we'll talk about it. But like, we repeatedly horribly irradiate and like permanently injure huge numbers of US troops because we don't get nearly far away enough because we don't realize how big they're Going to be like, one of these is like 50% larger than we'd expected it to be.

Enrico Fermi, Garwin's mentor and a Manhattan Project scientist, actually sent a letter to President Truman begging him not to go through with testing the first hydrogen bomb. Quote, the fact that no limits exist to the destructiveness of this weapon makes its very existence and the knowledge of its construction a danger to humanity as a whole. It is necessarily an evil thing considered in any life. Don't build the torment nexus. I know, yeah.

[B]

But what if a torment nexus is built by the torment nexus?

[A]

Right, right, right. But Garvin wants to solve his fun problem.

[B]

I love that. They're like, we built the ultimate weapon. It can kill God. And people are like, not enough.

[A]

Not enough. What if we use one of those to bake a bigger one of those? Yeah. Truman ignores this letter from Fermi. The first thermonuclear bomb was detonated in the Marshall Islands in November of 1952. It left behind a crater large enough to hold 15 pentagons. In her book, Annie Jacobson relies on a before and after image of the Marshall Islands to show the destructive power of this device. Sophie's going to put it up. But you can see the bomb was detonated on an island called Illuge Lab. And you see the before, there's a luge lab, it's an island. And then in the after, there's just no island. Yeah.

[B]

That's just a black spot on the map.

[A]

It's gone. The island is gone. Yeah. A year or two ago, James Stout over at It Could Happen Here went to the Marshall Islands to report on. I mean, there's still ongoing fallout, both in the literal and figurative sense for the people of the Marshall Islands because of how many fucking nukes we set off there. Right. Like, there's tremendous suffering in the Marshall Islands. We are not doing this on, quote, unquote. I mean, they're on to the extent that they're uninhabited. It's because we forced people off. Right. Like, this is a crime against humanity. Our testing of thermonuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands is a crime against humanity. You can check out James Stout's reporting on it if you want more on that after this series. Right. I'm not going to be getting into it because he did that series, but.

[B]

No, I listened to that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You can see just in the picture how catastrophic these weapons are.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

In the immediate wake of the Ivy Mike Test, President Truman gave his farewell address. He mourned that, quote, the war of the Future would be one in which man could extinguish millions of lives at one blow, demolish the great cities of the world, wipe out the cultural achievements of the past. Such a war is not a possible policy for rational men. Now, that's not wrong, but you're one of the irrational men who made this possible. Like, you're wearing the banana suit here, Truman. Like, come on, man, you gave the call to use the first of these fucking things.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Jacobson goes into more detail about how military planners respond, despite what Truman says, to the existence now of thermonuclear weapons. What happened after US war planners saw what 10.4 megatons could instantly destroy simply boggles the mind. What came next was a mad, mad rush to stockpile thermonuclear weapons, first by the hundreds and then by the thousands. In 1952, the United States had 841 nuclear weapons. A year before Truman left office in 1951, a group of scientists and researchers that included Dr. Robert Oppenheimer launched Project VISTA. This was a study to analyze if there was any room for improvement in NATO's strategy for responding to a Soviet invasion. They concluded that having the SAC be in charge of basically everything through their one strategy of nuking everybody was a bad idea. Instead. Whoa, yeah, here's the problem. They conclude that instead, NATO should replace manpower with low yield tactical nuclear weapons that would evaporate advancing Soviet forces and that could be deployed by battlefield commanders on the ground. Now, there's a degree to which they're trying to do a kind of noble thing here. Right. The stated goal here is bring the battle back to the battlefield. If we're using nukes on soldiers but not nuking cities, maybe we don't consume every city in Europe with atomic hellfire. Right? That's what Project VISTA is kind of trying to argue for. And their conclusions are supported by the US army, not because the army is a particularly benevolent force, but because it reduces the influence of the sac. Right. The SAC has the nukes. Now the army wants some nukes of its own. Right? Right. As Schlosser writes in the book Command and Control, as would be expected, Curtis LeMay hated the idea of low yield tactical weapons. In his view, they were a waste of fissile material, unlikely to prove decisive in battle, and difficult to keep under centralized control. The only way to win a nuclear war, according to sac, was to strike first and strike hard. Successful offense brings victory. Successful defense can now only lessen defeat. LeMay told his commanders. Moreover, an atomic blitz aimed at Soviet cities was no longer the SAC's top priority. LeMay now thought it would be far more important to destroy the Soviet Union's capability to use its nuclear weapons. Soviet airfields, bombers, command centers and nuclear facilities became SAC's primary targets. LeMay did not.

[B]

That makes sense.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's not completely off base here. LeMay did not advocate preventative war, an American surprise attack on the Soviet Union out of a blue. But the counter force strategy he endorsed was a form of preemptive war. SAC planned to attack the moment the Soviets seemed to be readying their own nuclear forces. Civilian casualties, though unavoidable, were no longer the goal. Offensive air power must now be aimed at preventing the launching of weapons of mass destruction against the United States or its allies. Lemay argued this transcends all other considerations because the price of failure might be paid with national survival. Right? This is the origin of what becomes launch on worn. Right. So you don't wait to get a bloody nose. You don't wait for them to hit you. You wait until you're pretty sure they're about to hit you and you hit them. That's a really dangerous evolution strategically. Right? You can understand kind of how he gets there. But that ups the possibility of a nuclear war significantly. Once you're now saying we won't wait to get hit. Right?

[B]

It's so interesting too because it's all predicated on this idea that national survival.

[A]

Right?

[B]

He's very concerned about national survival. Like I'm much more concerned about humanity's survival. And not even because I'm a humanitarian people think, but because I'm a human.

[A]

Right?

[B]

Like if you destroy all life on Earth, the nation's gone.

[A]

Yeah. There's, there's. Well, and that's, that's part of the craziness. Like the understated crazy in that paragraph is that lame thinks tactical nukes are a waste of fissile material. Bro. You have four times as many nukes by 1951 as it would take to end civilization in just your country. What's wasted, bro?

Are you worried you're not gonna have enough of these fuckers?

[B]

That's before they made them the God killing machine that kills by God or whatever.

[A]

We need considerably less once hydrogen bombs are in the fucking mess. Now one of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's first concerns when he took office would be to bring a resolution to this conflict, right? This conflict between the army and the Air Force via the sacrifice. Right? After having his national security team take a new look at US defense policies Ike decided both sides were right. The US Needed tactical nuclear weapons on the ground in Europe, but we also needed an arsenal of thermonuclear weapons that could bomb the Soviets at a moment's notice. After all, in late 1953, the USSR detonated its first thermonuclear device. By 1954, the United States had more than 1,700 nuclear weapons. By 1955, that number had climbed to nearly 2,500. We were building roughly two bombs a day. By 1959, the United States had an arsenal of more than 12,000 nuclear weapons, and we were manufacturing more than five per day, including three different families of thermonuclear warheads. You see just how quickly, like, there's not any conceivable use for 12,000 nuclear warheads. Everyone's dead after the first thousand, at least, you know, maybe less. Right. Like.

Surprisingly, it was under Eisenhower that the army suffered its most significant budget cutbacks, losing a fourth of its manpower. This has kind of been forgotten, but Ike does. You know, people are generally aware of, like, the military industrial complex speech, but at the start of his presidency, Ike really prunes the military budget and actually causes, like, kind of an eruption of anger within the military at him. Generalizing Eisenhower because he's cutting back so much. The army, in order to deal with this loss of banpower, starts lobbying for more nukes of its own. Because that's the only thing you can get funded for now, right? That's all they're giving out, you know? General James R. Gavin, during secret testimony before Congress, laid out the number of atomic shells, anti aircraft missiles, and landmines the army needed. These are all nuclear artillery, nuclear anti aircraft missiles, and nuclear landmines.

[B]

Nuclear landmine's a great plan. I can't come up with any negative thoughts.

[A]

Sounds good. Sounds safe.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What's crazy is how many Gavin wanted 106,000 for battlefield use, 25,000 for air defense, and 20,000 to hand out to the rest of NATO. Jesus Christ, bro. These people are so crazy insane. I will say there is some. Maybe the only arguably ethical weapons that we're building at this point are the air defense nuclear weapons. Because the plan of this is if you have a huge bomber fleet coming in, the only way you can stop them maybe and ensure that none of them drop a nuke on a city is you nuke them in the air. Because nukes fuck up planes really bad. And that's actually kind of reasonable if there's this many of these things that, like, also is only Gonna kill soldiers. I mean the fallout and. Right. There will be consequences to that too. But it's a defensible position as compared to everything else that they're doing. Right. I can see how you might want to be able to just try to blow up 500 planes in the air with a big nuke. Right. That kind of makes sense. Like this is all crazy, but I get it.

[B]

You know what, it's so interesting because I'm under the impression our current system is the like shooting a bullet with a bullet approach.

[A]

Yes. Yep, yep.

[B]

Did we move away from skeet shooting?

[A]

We definitely have moved away from nuclear anti aircraft artillery. We have the ability to use that, but also we've gotten a lot better and so have our quote unquote adversaries at making planes that are hardened, you know, from EMP and the like. It's not, I don't think that's as much. There's just not much point in defenses. The other reason is that like okay, sure you could stop some bombers, but it's the ICBMs that are going to kill everybody. And the sub launched nukes. And you can kind of again we have these things called like thaad batteries that could be, if we actually had any placed in the US could be useful against like a sub attack. Right. You could actually stop a good number of sub base nuclear weapons. Right. With, with these batteries. But they're all deployed overseas protecting like Israel and the like. Right. We don't have any. One of the scenarios Jacobson talks about is like a North Korean sub nuking this huge like nuclear power plant on the coast of California which would cause this app titanic environmental catastrophe. And she points out like there are plans for having thaad batteries that could protect this thing, but we just, we're using them all overseas so we don't have any set up. And that's one of those things where I'm like, well I guess I'm. If we're going to be spending money on something, I would like to spend money on more of those. And not the bullet that shoots another bullet in the air or more nukes. I don't know.

[B]

Yeah, totally.

[A]

But none of this really is going to be enough. If there's a full scale nuclear engagement, you know, your best hope is that maybe someone. It's just one or two nukes that get fired and maybe we're able to stop them, you know.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Anyway, that's part three. Margaret. Yay. Got any pluggables to plug?

[B]

Well, if you like history, cool people who did cool stuff is the opposite of the show, although. So I still have to end up talking about terrible things all the time. And you can go listen to that cool people who did cool stuff. And you can also listen to Robert and I playing Pathfinder.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

On the It Could Happen Here feed. Or the Cool Zone Media book club feed.

[A]

That's right. You can check all that out. And you can check me out in a dike a day when we do the next episode, because you're getting a bonus one this week, you lucky ducks. Anyway, assuming that, you know, we don't all die in nuclear, which is entirely possible, it could happen right now. Oh, no, we're good. All right. Oh. Okay.

Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzone media.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube. YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, YouTube.com behindthebastards.

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