Behind the Bastards – Part Two: The Men Who Might Have Killed Us All (December 4, 2025)

Podcast: Behind the Bastards — Cool Zone Media & iHeartPodcasts
Host: Robert Evans
Guest: Margaret Killjoy
Summary Contributor: [Your Assistant]

Overview

Part two of "The Men Who Might Have Killed Us All" delves deep into the evolution of strategic bombing doctrine, the personalities that shaped nuclear policy, and the terrifying logic of mutually assured destruction (MAD). The episode traces how military leaders’ faith in air power—especially the use of nuclear weapons—solidified in the minds of those building America’s doomsday arsenal. Through a mix of history, biography, and dark humor, host Robert Evans and guest Margaret Killjoy reflect on the flawed thinking and haunted individuals who led humanity to the brink of annihilation.

Key Themes and Discussion Points

1. The Legacy of the Bomber Mafia and Strategic Bombing

• Background on Strategic Bombing

  • Robert recounts the influence of Italian theorist Giulio Douhet and the U.S./U.K. "Bomber Mafia," including figures like Arthur "Bomber" Harris and Curtis LeMay, who believed that overwhelming airpower could win wars without ground troops (05:36–09:45).
  • Douhet’s theories vastly overrated the effectiveness of strategic bombing and assumed the enemy wouldn’t adapt; reality proved otherwise in WWII.

• Curtis LeMay’s Rise

  • LeMay's difficult childhood in the Midwest shaped his relentless and disciplined personality, driving him toward military achievement ("His first job was...shooting sparrows for a nickel each to feed a neighbor's cat. There's so much backstory in that sentence.” – Robert, 07:05).
  • He dismissed the zigzag bombing approach in Europe, innovating by having bombers fly straight for safety and efficiency—tactics he tested by flying lead himself (12:14–13:10).
  • Notable for leading by example, earning loyalty from crews but also pushing brutal policies ("I will be in the lead plane on every mission. Any plane that takes off will go over the target or the crew will be court martialed. The abort rate dropped overnight." – quoting Robert McNamara about LeMay, 15:10).

2. Brutality and Myth-busting: WWII’s Air War

• Failures of Bombing Alone

  • Strategic bombing in both Europe and the Pacific failed to deliver victory alone. Despite the vast destruction, ground and naval battles were critical (19:30–21:13).
  • "Bombing alone did not destroy the Third Reich. Its capacity to wage war was degraded not just through bombing, but through a mix of air, ground and naval warfare." – Robert, 19:31

• Japanese Campaign and Firebombing

  • Precision bombing over Japan didn’t destroy high-priority targets; LeMay resorted to area firebombing—burning Tokyo and many other cities, embracing total war logic (33:17–36:40).
  • “You’re going to deliver the biggest firecracker the Japanese have ever seen,” LeMay said before the Tokyo operation (36:13).
  • The death toll and devastation from the firebombing of Tokyo was the largest from any single air raid in history.
  • Despite killing 90,000+ civilians in one night, the Japanese did not surrender, shattering the "kill enough and they stop fighting" narrative.

3. The Advent of Nuclear Weapons and Escalating Logic

• Nukes as the “Answer”

  • The atomic bomb’s arrival retroactively validated the Bomber Mafia worldview—for them, air power suddenly looked truly decisive (53:59–54:09).
  • "[Nukes] were a weapon system that seemed to justify all of their duhei inspired theories of how aerial warfare ought to work." – Robert, 52:53

• Ethical and Strategic Consequences

  • LeMay, Doolittle, Hap Arnold, and others quickly embraced the view that bombers were now “all-important.”
  • The logic behind deterrence—escalating from we only use nukes as retaliation to always preparing for first strikes—developed rapidly (65:12–68:42).
  • “The only way to effectively plan for war is to destroy the whole species. And then we don’t have a war.” – Robert, 48:28

• Creation of the Doomsday Machine

  • MAD (mutually assured destruction) logic—needing constant readiness, subs, bombers in the air, etc.—emerged almost immediately post-Hiroshima (67:13–68:42).
  • U.S. planners were targeting 40 Soviet cities for nuclear annihilation before WWII even ended, revealing how quickly strategic logic turned genocidal (70:03–71:26).

4. Personalities, Regret, and “Tickling the Dragon’s Tail”

• Scientists' Guilt and Horror
  • Brief biographies of Manhattan Project physicists, especially Louis Slotin—an adrenaline-seeking “cowboy” who built the Trinity bomb core and later died of acute radiation poisoning, a death that provided crucial data but left him personally horrified by his role (55:20–77:35).
  • Slotin and Manhattan Project founder Leo Szilard have moral crises over the use and proliferation of nuclear weapons ("Szilard starts off being the guy who sends Roosevelt a letter saying, we need to build this thing. And he ends out being like, under no circumstances can we use these things. Please don't embark down this road to madness.” – Robert, 74:00).
  • Slotin’s act of sacrifice (drawing the map to help colleagues after his fatal exposure) and final disgust with his work are highlighted as emblematic of the scientist’s dilemma.

5. Modern Reflections: Hopeless Logic and Human Fallibility

• Six Minutes to Midnight

  • The horrifying reality that world leaders have mere minutes to decide whether to end humanity ("If a nuke goes off anywhere, you’re gonna have like six minutes to figure out do I end the world over this or not. Right? And that’s probably bad for us." – Robert, 26:36).
  • The flawed hope that deterrence will always work, even though it relies on hair-trigger decisions and fallible humans.

• AI Risks & System Complexity

  • Margaret expresses concern that future AI-run military systems might cause accidental launches due to errors, compounding the risk: “I’m worried about AI taking control of the military systems that track things… and hallucinate an ICBM.” (81:50)

• Absurdity and Dark Humor

  • Ongoing jokes about podcast hosts controlling nukes, the logic of everyone getting a kill switch, and voting to destroy the world ("Every vote: Kill everyone, yes or no?” – Robert & Margaret, 49:54), highlight the surreal, existential dread underlying the episode.

Notable Quotes

• Robert Evans (on bombing ideology):

  “I'll tell you what war is about. You've got to kill people, and when you've killed enough, they stop fighting.” (46:23, quoting Curtis LeMay)

• Margaret Killjoy (on escalation logic):

  “When you have a hammer, everything needs to get exploded.” (41:12)

• Robert Evans (on Slotin):

  “...his body is starting to turn into soup. They keep him alive for nine days in the hospital, but there’s never any hope. It would have been kinder to shoot him in the head.” (76:14)

• Host–Guest Banter on Mutually Assured Destruction:

  “The only way to effectively plan for war is to destroy the whole species. And then we don’t have a war.” (48:28)

• On the Absurdity of Deterrence:

  “Six minutes to choose to launch all of the missiles or not. That’s how it works for a US President… That’s probably bad for us.” (26:36)

• Robert (on AI risks):

  "If we connect AI to any of this at all, it's just gonna amplify the chances that somebody fucks up in a way that ends with the nukes all going off, right?" (82:12)

Timeline & Timestamps

| Segment/Topic | Timestamp | |------------------------------------------------|--------------| | The origins of MAD & Bomber Mafia | 05:36–21:21 | | LeMay’s tactics and firebombing of Tokyo | 32:00–36:40 | | Strategic bombing’s failings in WWII | 19:31–21:13 | | “Six minutes to midnight”—nuclear brinkmanship | 26:08–27:45 | | Nuclear escalation logic & target lists | 68:42–71:26 | | Stories of Slotin, scientist’s remorse | 55:20–77:35 | | AI, system errors, and modern nuclear fears | 81:38–83:00 |

Tone & Takeaways

• The episode mixes dark historical analysis and biographical sketches with bleak humor, pop culture asides, and pointed riffs on military hubris.
• The hosts emphasize that the logic underpinning nuclear deterrence is not rationally comforting; it’s a series of cascading decisions by traumatized, often single-minded individuals whose solutions invite cataclysmic risk.
• Scientists’ personal regrets and the role of accidental deaths (“tickling the dragon’s tail") ground the narrative in personal tragedy, counterbalancing the abstraction of strategic logic.
• The episode closes with resigned laughter at humanity’s inability to escape its own deadly logic (“Don’t think about the fact that literally nothing can save you if the nukes all fall...” – Robert, 85:06).

Final Thought

This episode paints a deeply chilling, occasionally hilarious, and ultimately tragic portrait of the people and ideas that almost killed us all—and who paved the way for the existential sword still hanging over humanity. As LeMay put it, “You’ve got to kill people, and when you’ve killed enough, they stop fighting”—a phrase that echoes ominously in the age of the kill-everyone button.

For further existential dread, subscribe to Behind the Bastards and check out Margaret Killjoy’s “Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff.” Don’t forget to tell your friends you love them—while you can.