RERELEASE: S1E1: Not All Fun and WarGames

Summary

Podcast Summary: SNAFU with Ed Helms

Episode: RERELEASE: S1E1: Not All Fun and WarGames
Publisher: iHeartPodcasts
Original Air Date: July 27, 2026

Episode Overview

This re-release of SNAFU’s very first episode, “Not All Fun and WarGames,” sets the tone for the show: a darkly comic but incisive look at the greatest screw-ups in history, here focusing on the 1983 NATO war game, Able Archer 83, which nearly triggered a real nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Host Ed Helms blends nostalgia, history, and contemporary relevance, arguing that humanity's knack for catastrophe still shadows us. With guests like Matthew Broderick and experts in Cold War geopolitics, Helms takes listeners through the real-life events that eerily mirrored the Hollywood thriller “WarGames”—and almost ended civilization.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Movie That Became Reality: “WarGames” and Able Archer 83

• Matthew Broderick joins (star of “WarGames”) to reminisce about the film, where a teenage hacker almost launches WWIII by accident.

  • “I had gotten the lead of a, you know, studio movie... Incredible. Yeah, absolutely incredible.” — Matthew Broderick (04:54)

• Ed Helms describes how, as a child, the film terrified him and how he was convinced its premise—a nuclear war triggered by accident—could come true.

• Helms reveals the shock that, months after the film’s release, reality almost imitated art: in November 1983, the NATO exercise Able Archer nearly triggered nuclear war because the Soviets thought it was real.

  “The premise of WarGames was fucking real. Yeah, it came true only months after the movie’s release.” — Ed Helms (07:11)

2. Inside Able Archer 83: Routine Drill, Hidden Peril

• Gene Gay and Colonel Spike Callender, participants in the exercise, recall it as routine, never realizing at the time that the Soviets went on high alert as a result.

  • “Nothing to me from that exercise at the time, you know, jumped out.” — Colonel Spike Callender (11:17)

• Only decades later did participants (and the world) learn that Soviet commanders were poised to launch nuclear weapons, thinking a real attack was imminent.

  “It is a miracle we did not all die. Like, it’s just goofy.” — Jeffrey Lewis, nuclear historian (14:19)

• Jeffrey Lewis points out the dark comedy of the incident, noting its self-inflicted, accidental nature.

3. Nuclear Paranoia in Pop Culture & Politics

• 1983 was a peak year for nuclear anxiety in Western culture, reflected in music (“99 Luftballoons”), television (“The Day After”), and even Dr. Seuss.

• “The Day After”—a TV movie depicting nuclear apocalypse—had an enormous impact, watched by nearly 100 million Americans.

  • “The general public, they were... Pardon my language, but they were scared shitless.” — Ed Hume, screenwriter (19:24)

• Ed Helms plays a clip from a post-movie panel with Ted Koppel, George Shultz (Secretary of State), and Carl Sagan, highlighting the government's attempts to downplay real risks—even as they’d just narrowly avoided disaster.

  “Secretary of State George Shultz assures the American public that the administration status quo is effective in preventing nuclear war. Eleven days after a nuclear war scare.” — Ed Helms (22:50)

4. Cold War History: Nuclear Arms Escalation and Mutual Assured Destruction

• Quick primer on the atomic and thermonuclear arms races (1940s-1980s), culminating in both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. being able to destroy each other dozens of times over.
  • “By the early 1980s, our nuclear fruit basket contained big nukes, small nukes, extremely precise nukes.” — Ed Helms (31:48)
  • “Each side having the capacity to destroy the other many, many times over — to make the rubble bounce.” — Jeffrey Lewis (29:19)

5. The Secret Near-Miss and the Hunt for the Truth

• For decades, Able Archer 83 remained an obscure rumor. The CIA minimized the danger in its reports, dismissing the Soviet response as low risk.
  • “The conclusion was that the war scare is not real.” — Nate Jones (38:30)
• Historian Nate Jones describes his efforts to uncover the truth using FOIA requests and government archives—dirty, frustrating work hampered by bureaucratic obstacles.
  • “You can file, but you’ll never get it.” — Reagan Library Archivist (52:03)
  • Jones vows: “I’m gonna fight this until the end. And I don’t think the government should be keeping this secret.” (52:40)

6. Ronald Reagan: The Movie President’s Real-Life Reversal

• Reagan’s 1983 rhetoric was hardline anti-communist, demonizing the Soviets. But after Able Archer, in early 1984, his tone dramatically softens—as if shocked by a near-miss.

  • “We need to find meaningful ways to reduce the uncertainty and potential for misinterpretation surrounding military activities.” — Reagan, January 16, 1984 (44:46)
  • Historian Beth Fisher notes this as a subtle but critical shift in U.S. policy, likely triggered by the events of November 1983.

  “All of a sudden, this very aggressive, very anti-communist president is talking about Sally braiding Anya’s hair.” — Ed Helms (45:16)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Childhood Fear Vindicated:

  “I Fucking told you so.” — Ed Helms channeling his 9-year-old self, upon learning WarGames was almost reality (08:45)

• The Dark Comedy of Existential Risk:

  “Almost all of the war scare is totally self-inflicted, which makes it like really darkly comic.” — Jeffrey Lewis (14:35)

• The Absurdity of Routine:

  “Practicing how to fight the end of the world as one does.” — Ed Helms, describing military drills (11:23)

• Soviet Response:

  “I mean, it is a miracle we did not all die. Like, it's just goofy.” — Jeffrey Lewis (14:19)

• Summing Up U.S. Policy:

  “We didn’t have a better idea. I’m just going to build as many nuclear weapons as I can to keep the bad guys away from me... Wrong, but incredibly powerful.” — Jeffrey Lewis (31:48)

• Government Secrecy:

  “If you can’t tell, [FOIA] has dominated his life for the past decade.” — Ed Helms, on Nate Jones’s research (35:06)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:47] Ed Helms introduces the premise: WarGames, nuclear fear, and the reality of Able Archer 83.
• [04:54] Conversation with Matthew Broderick about making WarGames.
• [06:10] Ed Helms reveals how WarGames’ plot became reality with Able Archer 83.
• [10:16] Introduction to military participants who didn’t realize a crisis was unfolding.
• [13:48] Soviets on high alert, unknown to NATO.
• [14:19] Jeffrey Lewis: “It is a miracle we did not all die.”
• [17:19] “The Day After” movie airs, petrifies America.
• [21:41] Post-“Day After” panel: George Shultz downplays risks.
• [27:32] Jeffrey Lewis: “This is more like two drunks in a bar circling one another” (on the Cold War).
• [29:19] The concept of nuclear overkill and “making the rubble bounce.”
• [34:20] Nate Jones begins his historical detective story.
• [44:46] Reagan’s speech “We need to find meaningful ways to reduce the uncertainty...”
• [51:42] Nate Jones uncovers crucial box at Reagan Library—declassified materials still withheld.
• [52:40] Jones’s determination to uncover the truth.

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Tone and Style

True to Ed Helms’s comedic background, the episode is wry, energetic, and honest—with frequent asides, self-deprecating humor, and colorful but relatable language. The show uses potent pop culture references (“WarGames,” “The Day After,” “99 Luftballoons”) to anchor complex historical events in familiar, emotional territory. While fun and informal, the episode carries an undercurrent of dread and gravity—reminding listeners that humanity’s greatest mistakes are often mundane, bureaucratic, and, above all, frighteningly possible even today.

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Takeaways

• History’s most profound disasters often look innocuous until revealed as colossal mistakes in hindsight.
• The difference between routine and catastrophe may be mere misunderstanding and paranoia—sometimes no one in charge even realizes a crisis is underway.
• Government secrecy and bureaucracy often delay our understanding of what really happened; the work of dedicated researchers is essential for the truth to come out.
• Pop culture can anticipate and influence world events in surprising, unsettling ways.
• Ultimately, we are “toddlers with nukes”: capable of great invention, but never far from disaster.

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Next Episode Teaser:
Ed promises to explore what was happening inside the minds of Reagan and his Soviet counterpart, and how 1983 became a year “batshit” enough to bring the Cold War to the edge of apocalypse.

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For Listeners:
New to SNAFU? This episode is the perfect entry point—offering a mix of gripping history, cultural nostalgia, dark comedy, and urgent relevance that’s both entertaining and sobering.

Transcript

[Ed Helms]

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[Ed Helms]

Hello again everybody. Ed here and I'm really excited about what I'm going to share with you today. It's the first ever episode of the very first season of snafu. I will never forget calling up War Games star Matthew Broderick for that first episode to ask if he had ever heard of the NATO military exercise able archer 83. And now I ask, have you ever heard of it? If you're a new fan of SNAFU and you've never listened to our beloved season one, then stick around for a tale of nuclear dread, traitorous spies, and a war game gone horribly wrong. It was the closest we we ever actually came to a nuclear war since the Cuban Missile crisis. And it's a story that really echoes in the present moment, especially with the rising international tensions around who has nuclear arms right now and who doesn't. We'll be sharing the second episode next week along with all the episodes on YouTube for the first time ever. But you can also go back and listen to the audio on any podcast app. Be sure to let us know what you think if you check it out. I'm always so excited to know kind of what the listeners are thinking and feeling about stuff. Now this of is our very first season, and it's very near and dear to my heart. I'm insanely proud of it. So check it out. Here is not all fun and War Games. Did you ever watch a movie as a kid and convince yourself that it was real, that its outlandish premise could possibly come true? I know I did. And for me, one of those movies was War Games. Great to meet you. Great to meet you, too. I'm Ed, by the way. Yeah, that's Matthew Broderick. He's a national treasure and also the star of War Games, a movie about an almost accidental nuclear war that I watched maybe a hundred times as a kid. Came out in 1983, and it was Matthew's breakout role.

[Matthew Broderick]

The fact that I had gotten the lead of a, you know, studio movie was. Yeah, Incredible. Yeah, absolutely incredible.

[Ed Helms]

His character was a hacker, a tech genius.

[Ronald Reagan]

David Lightman was a master at computer

[Ed Helms]

games, and Matthew was great in it. I mean, obviously, right? He's an incredible actor.

[Matthew Broderick]

Wait, now, how do I adjust my volume? Can you speak? You guys.

[Ed Helms]

Talking, Talking, talking, speaking.

[Matthew Broderick]

Okay, I'm now nodding because I want to now pretend that it's working.

[Ed Hume]

Okay.

[Matthew Broderick]

Yeah. So it's perfect.

[Ed Helms]

Matthew Broderick is clearly not a tech genius in real life, but that's just further proof what a great actor he is. So in War Games, teenage hacker David Lightman tries To impress a girl at school, Jennifer, played by another 80s icon, Ali Sheedy. Along the way, he accidentally hacks into a supercomputer that the US is using to game out World War 3 scenarios. Hence, war Games.

[Nate Jones]

How about Global thermonuclear war?

[Ed Helms]

It gets misinterpreted as a real nuclear attack and almost starts World War Three. This is not an exercise.

[Matthew Broderick]

Terrifying.

[Ed Helms]

Yeah, I am not charmed by that. I am terrified by that. When I was nine years old, War Games really captured my imagination in the sense that I became utterly convinced it was real. I even had a breakdown at summer camp because of it all the other kids were having a grand old time. Meanwhile, I was just terrified that at any moment we'd all die in a fiery nuclear Armageddon. Yeah, I guess I was a bit of a wet blanket while everyone else was just trying to get pumped up for s'. Mores. So why am I talking to Matthew Broderick about War Games? After all, it's just a movie. An outlandish premise of fantasy, right? Eventually we all grow up and realize that movies aren't real. There are no accidental nuclear wars. Right? Well, my friends, imagine my surprise when I learned that the premise of War Games was fucking real. Yeah, it came true only months after the movie's release. That's right. As it turns out, in 1983, a real life military exercise, a war game, almost started an actual nuclear war. Just like War Games, this exercise that almost ended it all. It goes by the codename AbleArcher83 and that's what this show is about.

[Matthew Broderick]

Wow, that's an amazing story. I'm surprised. I don't know about that, but I don't think I do know about it.

[Ed Helms]

Too bad they don't give out an Oscar for Best Nuclear War Prediction. The War Game screenwriters would have been a shoe in. It's like kind of a perfect screenplay. I don't think they were too far off when I first heard the story of Abel Archer 83. Let's just say my childhood fears were instantly validated. Thinking back on that moment at summer camp, paralyzed by the fear that the outlandish plot of War Games would come true. Camp counselors hovering around me, trying to console me, saying, come on, dude, it's just a movie. Let's go canoeing, Everything's going to be fine. Well, looking back, I realize now it was not fine. It was so incredibly not fine. They were wrong and I was right. I'd just like to say on behalf of nine year old me, I Fucking told you so.

[Ed Hume]

Whew.

[Ed Helms]

That felt good. But vindication aside, learning this story still leaves me a little unnerved, maybe even alarmed. Because if a military exercise almost caused a nuclear war in 1983 and nobody knew about it, what a complete and utter snafu. SNAFU is a military term first used by soldiers in World War II. It's an acronym, SNAFU. It stands for Situation Normal All Fucked Up. Meaning this is so fucked up. But then again, isn't it always? That's what this show is about. The gaffes, the disasters, History's greatest screw ups. This season, the story of able Archer 83. It's the ultimate Cold War mystery. A stew of espionage, paranoia, shady politics and dangerous miscalculations. Oh, and a lot of mind games. Put on your hazmat suits, listeners. I'm Ed Helms, your host, and this is SNAFU. Able Archer 83. Situation Normal all fucked Up.

[Jeffrey Lewis]

It's just this whole game of deception and counter deception and who can you trust?

[Ed Helms]

America is preparing a sudden nuclear attack on our country.

[Ronald Reagan]

I heard a young father saying, I love my little girls more than anything. And I would rather see my little girls D now. Than have them grow up under communism.

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Really, for the first time in my life, I felt like there could be nuclear war.

[Ed Helms]

It wasn't a question of would it happen. It was a question of when was

[Ted Koppel]

it going to happen.

[Ed Helms]

We were preparing to fight Armageddon. That's what we were told. That's what we believed.

[Jeffrey Lewis]

We were training to fight the end of the world.

[Ed Hume]

It was a week, just like every other week. Abel Archer 83 was not anything out of the ordinary.

[Ed Helms]

This is Gene Gay. He was a participant in the 1983 Abel Archer War game. Gene, like a lot of men who participated in Able Archer that year, recall it the same way. Which is to say they don't really recall much at all.

[Colonel Spike Callender]

Nothing to me from that exercise at the time, you know, jumped out.

[Ed Helms]

That's Colonel Spike Callender. And he says the same thing. Nope, nothing of note to these men. That week in early November 1983 was just a week like any other week. Just another week of standard military exercises. Practicing how to fight the end of the world as one does.

[Colonel Spike Callender]

The whole purpose of Able Archer was the emphasis on the practice of the nuclear weapons release procedures.

[Ed Helms]

Able Archer was a NATO exercise. In November of 1983, the Able Archer players sat in a bunker in Belgium practicing how, if it came to it, they'd fight a nuclear war against the Soviet Union. It's like a soccer team doing drills, but instead of training for a game, they're training for Armageddon, which, like a soccer game, you can't use your hands because they got blown off.

[Colonel Spike Callender]

The whole idea was if you ever had to do it, you know, you didn't want to do it for the first time.

[Ed Helms]

When Spike says do it, he's referring to the task of launching planet destroying weapons. It's an example of how military professionals are weirdly cavalier when they're talking about their work. It's kind of shocking how something so gnarly can sound so routine.

[Colonel Spike Callender]

How do you look at what the requirements truly are, you know, for those weapons systems and the numbers of them? So it would be a matter of bean counting in some respects. If you have a Soviet division, what is the number of weapons that might be required to reduce the effectiveness of that division to where it was no longer military capable?

[Ed Helms]

See what I mean? My point is this. To men like Gene and Spike, there was nothing exceptional about gaming out a fictional war during Abel Archer. It was routine. But a few decades later, Gene and Spike would learn that able archer 83 was anything but routine.

[Colonel Spike Callender]

I was in my own little world. I hate to use the word oblivious, but I've used that word before.

[Ed Hume]

It was many years later that I found out about it. That anything other than the exercise took place in the real world situation that occurred during that time. I was not aware of that until years afterwards.

[Colonel Spike Callender]

I never heard of anything more, you know, about this exercise until what, 20 or 25 years later.

[Ed Helms]

What Gene and Spike would come to learn is that while they were sitting in their bunker back in 1983 rehearsing the end of the world, the Soviets were listening. And they seemed to be convinced it was not a rehearsal at all. Soviet missile commanders were placed on high alert. Soviet leaders retreated to their bunkers, fingers hovering over the proverbial big red button. And NATO had no idea.

[Jeffrey Lewis]

I mean, it is a miracle we did not all die. Like, it's just goofy.

[Ed Helms]

This is Jeffrey Lewis. He's an expert on nuclear history and geopolitics. And he finds the whole story of Abel Archer, what he calls the war scare, to be sort of funny.

[Jeffrey Lewis]

Almost all of the war scare is totally self inflicted, which makes it like really darkly comic.

[Ed Helms]

I have to agree. There's an old saying that tragedy plus time equals comedy. Well, if that's true, then a story about a nuclear near miss plus about 40 years should be fucking hilarious.

[Jeffrey Lewis]

Because if you step back, it sounds crazy, right? It sounds crazy that we could have had a serious nuclear crisis that nobody knew about. Like, that's nuts.

[Ed Helms]

It is nuts, Jeffrey, because it's not just that able. Archer. Participants like Gene and Spike didn't know that a nuclear crisis was unfolding under their noses. No one knew. Let that sink in for a second. If it's possible that a nuclear crisis could unfold right under our noses, that we were in danger without knowing it, does that mean it's still possible? Alright, let's set the stage a little bit. It's the 1980s. There was certainly a general and very pervasive anxiety about nuclear weapons. Pretty much everywhere you looked, you'd find nuclear paranoia. It wasn't just war games. It was all over pop culture. This delightful Little number is 99 Luftballoons by Nina. It's about 100 red balloons accidentally inciting a nuclear war. Kind of heavy for a kitschy pop hit. The 1983 Bond film had a nuclear plot. Dr. Seuss was feeling the heat. This bomb on the Zoox just as fast as you can. Even Sting chimed in. Personally, I love that song and I just love that Sting threw his hat right in the middle of an international conflict. Anyway, when it comes to examples of nuclear anxiety in 1983 pop culture, there's actually one that stands above all the rest. It was just a made for TV movie, but it became a cultural event and it would actually play a role in our Cold War mystery.

[Ted Koppel]

It was a movie like no other movie and it had a profound impact on New York. That's Story Next. We'll hear from people who, like you,

[Ed Helms]

watch the ultimate disaster movie the day After. A movie that would scare the living shit out of America.

[Chef Michelle Bernstein]

More than 700 people packed Riverside Church

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tonight to watch the Day After.

[Ed Helms]

Many said they came here because they were afraid to watch it alone. Everyone, and by everyone, I mean 100 million people, almost half the US population at the time, gathered around their TVs on the evening of November 20, 1983 and tuned in to ABC to watch.

[Ted Koppel]

Before the movie begins, we would like to caution parents about the graphic depiction of nuclear explosions and their devastating effects. In a moment.

[Ed Helms]

The Day After. Gather round, kids. Time to fill your innocent little heads with deep, reverberating drama. Pass the popcorn.

[Ed Hume]

I tried to do my part in making people keenly aware of what the real consequences would be.

[Ed Helms]

This is Ed Hume. He wrote the Day After. The film is set at the border of Kansas and Missouri. That's where the US nuclear missile silos are. The main characters are average townspeople in the American heartland.

[Ed Hume]

A bunch of people living in the Midwest doing ordinary things.

[Ed Helms]

At first, the whole nuclear war thing isn't really front and center. It just kind of lurks in the periphery. But even as it creeps in, the characters can't accept their fate.

[Ed Hume]

What was it? There's one scene where a woman is so in denial that she's running around making beds, as they know that missiles are being launched.

[Ed Helms]

Evie, don't bother with the bed just now.

[Jeffrey Lewis]

Eva, we've got to get down below.

[Ted Koppel]

Listen.

[Ed Helms]

Those missiles have all gone off. Oh, my gosh. Wow, she really wants to make those beds.

[Ed Hume]

And then it happens.

[Ed Helms]

It happens. The heartland is evaporated. The rest of the film is stomach churning. To put it lightly, it showed what a nuclear war would actually look like. Flashes of light, lives instantaneously incinerated. But the whole explosion part isn't the worst of it, because you get to see what happens the day after. Nuclear fallout, radiation poisoning, blistering skin and dying organs, piles of bodies and rubble, looting, hoarding, and everyday Americans turning on each other. I mean, all jokes aside, this is grim fucking stuff.

[Ed Hume]

The general public, they were. Pardon my language, but they were scared shitless.

[Ed Helms]

I, for one, felt that it was just devastating. Like every horror story you've ever read rolled into one story. We got a glimpse of what is really at stake in a nuclear war. I just want to go die with the blast and not have to live and start all over again. Okay, didn't heed the parental advisory. This is how that clip makes me feel. Okay, so, yeah, in 1983, there was a general sense of nuclear doom. Hell, it's why I had a mental breakdown at summer camp. But we didn't know that there was a specific crisis to be afraid of. We didn't know that we might have almost had a nuclear war during NATO's annual Able Archer exercise. So then the question, why not?

[Ted Koppel]

There is, and you probably need it about now, there is some good news.

[Ed Helms]

This is Ted Koppel from Nightline. He's hosting a live panel about the day after, right after the movie aired.

[Ted Koppel]

If you can take a quick look out the window, it's all still there. Wow.

[Ed Helms]

Deeply reassuring, Ted. Anyway, celebrity scientist Carl Sagan was there telling an already nauseous audience that he thought the film's portrayal of nuclear war was actually not as bad as it would be if it really happened. Oh, boy. Henry Kissinger was there, too. Probably talking about feasting on the souls of innocent children or something. But before the panel began joining us

[Ted Koppel]

live from his home in Suburban Washington, is the secretary of state, Mr. George Shultz.

[Ed Helms]

Ted Koppel brings out US Secretary of State George Shultz, President Reagan's right hand man. He was a serious man, loyal to the President. Famously bragged about enjoying staring contests with the Soviets, waiting for them to blink. Comforting. And so, mere minutes after the American public watched this horrifying film, hearts still in their stomachs, the man who would be standing next to the button pusher in chief answers the burning question at the front of every viewer's mind.

[Ted Koppel]

The future as we've just viewed it tonight, is that the future as it will be, or only the future as it may be?

[George Shultz]

Neither. That is not the future at all. The film is a vivid and dramatic portrayal of the fact that nuclear war is simply not acceptable. And that fact and the realization of it has been the policy of the United States for decades now. The successful policy of the United States.

[Ed Helms]

If you watch the clip, George Shultz is shifty as hell. His eyes keep flickering just to the right of the camera and then back again like he's reading cue cards. He looks scared. Ted, seasoned journalist that he is, smells a little bullshit. He presses George.

[Ted Koppel]

Mr. Schultz, that is the answer of a Secretary of State to a reporter. And that's fair enough, because that's what you and I, I respectively, are. But what would a George Schultz, who is talking to a member of his family, say in response to the same question, same answer?

[George Shultz]

Well, I would give the same answer.

[Ed Helms]

I'll tell you why I think George is nervous. It's because 11 days before this interview, Abel Archer, 83, could have caused a nuclear war. A man in Schultz's position would have known about that, right? Surely he was shitting his slacks for the past 11 days trying to figure out how such a colossal fuck up could have happened. Now would be a great time to come clean, to say, yeah, we're gonna shake things up with our nuclear policy because the movie's right. This is scary shit. And yet, after watching the day after, George Shultz, Secretary of State, assures the American public that the administration status quo is effective in preventing nuclear war. Eleven days after a nuclear war scare. If you're chasing data down instead of seeing it in one place, you need the Intuit erp. Intuit Enterprise Suite. All your data in one place with built in AI for real time insights. Learn [e-mail] ERP I have tried the

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[Jeffrey Lewis]

It's a very different kind of crisis because it's so clumsy.

[Ed Helms]

Here's Jeffrey Lewis again.

[Jeffrey Lewis]

You know, this is more like two drunks in a bar circling one another.

[Nate Jones]

Damn it.

[Ed Helms]

Come on over here.

[Jeffrey Lewis]

And it's not so much that anybody would deliberately choose to start the war, it's just that things would spiral out of control.

[Ed Helms]

The two drunks here are of course the United States and the Soviet Union. Their drink bombs. And I'm not talking Jaeger. Here's the part of the show where I give you a crash course on the Cold War. Get out your pencils kids. Welcome to Arms Race 101.

[Ted Koppel]

An atom bomb destroys or injures in three ways by blast, heat and radioactivity.

[Ed Helms]

The OG atomic bomb was invented by the Americans in the 40s. You know the one, Hiroshima, Nagasaki. It only took the Soviets five years to figure it out for themselves. And once they had the bomb too, it began a decades long race for bigger and better death machines.

[Jeffrey Lewis]

The fun thing about the Cold War is that there were a huge variety of nuclear weapons and nuclear yields.

[Ed Helms]

Jeffrey and I have very different definitions of fun.

[Jeffrey Lewis]

So pretty soon after the end Of World War II, the United States developed a much more powerful nuclear weapon than even the city destroyers that we saw dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And these were called thermonuclear weapons.

[Ed Helms]

This is the early 50s. A thermonuclear weapon uses the radiation from the initial blast to ignite an even bigger blast. A Bomb within a bomb. The result is a warhead that's about the same size as the atom bomb, but way more destructive, like a million tons of explosive power instead of 10,000. In other words, it was economical, a bigger catastrophe for a smaller cost. You can't argue with savings like that.

[Jeffrey Lewis]

Once the United States, followed by other countries, developed thermonuclear weapons, there was no limit to how large a nuclear weapon one could make. The phrase that came to be used about the amount of nuclear destructive power was overkill because each side was worried that the other side would strike them first. So they needed to have backups and redundancy and more than you needed. And so in practice, what that led to was each side having the capacity to destroy the other many, many times over to make the rubble bounce. In one particular phrase, back in the

[Ed Helms]

60s, the US had enough nuclear weapons to destroy the Soviet Union 50 times over. You know, just in case some little cockroach escaped the first 49 blasts, which set the table quite nicely for this.

[George Shultz]

Good evening, my fellow citizens.

[Ed Helms]

That's John F. Kennedy back in 1962, telling the world in a televised speech from the White House that a nuclear crisis was unfolding in Cuba. US Biplanes had discovered that the Soviet Union was building nuclear missile sites on the Caribbean island nation a little too close to the United States for comfort. The purpose of these bases can be

[George Shultz]

none other than to provide a nuclear

[Ed Helms]

strike capability against the Western hemisphere. The US Navy set up a blockade, trying to prevent any Soviet ships from bringing their nukes anywhere near the island. The Soviet ships approached the blockade, nuclear weapons in tow. It was a full fledged nuclear standoff. The news coverage of the Cuban missile crisis was impossible to ignore. A major world event became television drama. For 13 days, Americans sat glued to their televisions until finally it was over.

[Ted Koppel]

Under aerial surveillance, the missiles that had threatened the United States went back where they came from.

[Ed Helms]

Everyone breathed a sigh of Marlboro. Smoke filled relief. And did we learn our lesson? Did we scale down operations at the bomb factory and literally cool our jets?

[Colonel Spike Callender]

No.

[Ed Helms]

No, my dear listener, of course we didn't. In the late 60s and 70s, the US would build more weapons. The Soviets would build a lot more weapons. We'd get rid of some and then build some more. By the early 1980s, our nuclear fruit basket contained big nukes, small nukes, extremely precise nukes.

[Jeffrey Lewis]

And so the question naturally arises, like, why the hell did we do that? And I think the answer lies in the fact that we didn't have a better idea. I'm just going to build as many nuclear weapons as I can to keep the bad guys away from me. How am I going to think about it any more than that? And that's a very powerful, simple idea. Wrong, but incredibly powerful. And it's how you end up with two countries with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons pointed at each other, ready on a moment's notice to end civilization as we know it. You know, over who controls Berlin, which admittedly is a very nice city.

[Ed Helms]

And that just about sums up that successful nuclear policy George Shultz was talking about earlier.

[George Shultz]

The successful policy of the United States.

[Ed Helms]

Each side made a gamble that if they could just build enough weapons, their adversary wouldn't dare test them. So they didn't need diplomacy. They were bound by the contract of Mutually Assured Destruction. It was a horrific game of nuclear chicken. And it would lead right to able Archer 83, which some say is the closest we came to a nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis. But here's the thing. Able Archer isn't anything like the Cuban Missile Crisis. In fact, it's not like most crises we've experienced. Not just because no one knew about it, but because it was completely unintentional, a mistake. It's not like, I don't know, the Vietnam War or Russia's insane invasion of Ukraine. Today, during Abel Archer, two countries with absolutely no desire to get into a nuclear conflict may have almost started one in spite of themselves.

[Jeffrey Lewis]

If the Reagan administration nearly sleepwalked into a nuclear war, that suggests those people shouldn't be let anywhere near positions of power. And if the intelligence community missed the fact that the Reagan administration was sleepwalking toward nuclear war, that suggests we need different analysts.

[Ed Helms]

If all that's true, then it makes perfect sense. The Reagan administration would not want to leak a snafu this massive, so the public would never hear about Able Archer 83. Instead, it would become nothing more than a Cold War rumor. A myth only whispered about in the back hallways of the Pentagon. And it might have stayed that way if it wasn't for Nate Jones.

[Nate Jones]

Walking through. This is the vault. It really looks like the warehouse at the end of Indiana Jones, of just boxes, boxes, boxes. Sometimes I used to come here, just do a little bit of work, because the atmosphere of thousands of boxes looming over me helps me work.

[Ed Helms]

This is Nate Jones, an historian. Actually, he's really more of a sleuth, like a history detective who has dedicated almost 20 years of his career to uncovering what the hell really happened during Abel Archer 83.

[Nate Jones]

My desk is overrun with FOIA requests. It looks like at least 10,000 pages of FOIA requests and responses. So it's definitely a tree unfriendly business. But the government works on paper, so we got to work on paper.

[Ed Helms]

This FOIA that Nate is talking about, like everything in government, it's an acronym. It stands for the Freedom of Information Act. And if you can't tell, it has dominated his life for the past decade. For 10 years, Nate worked at the National Security Archive, where he and his colleagues used the Freedom of Information act to pry classified information about Able Archer 83 out of the government's claws. I like to picture them wrestling with a very stubborn bald eagle. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. At one point in time, Nate was like most people. He didn't know about Able Archer 83 until one day in 2004. A professor of his uttered a few words that totally changed the course of his life. He said, hey, Nate, I heard about this nuclear fuck up in 1983 called Abel Archer. Why don't you look into it?

[Nate Jones]

And he said, I really think this is an unsolved mystery of the Cold War. And I was pretty hooked right there.

[Ed Helms]

Like me, Nate heard about the mysterious Able Archer 83 story and asked himself, why doesn't anyone know about it? If we narrowly escaped nuclear Armageddon, shouldn't there be a national holiday or something? We should have Abel Archer Day. A day that commemorates our wonderful avoidance of nuclear annihilation. I'm not just saying this because I want an extra Monday off work, not dying. That's cause for celebration. All jokes aside, Nate was seriously concerned. I mean, if something like Abel Archer can happen, what does that say about how precarious our situation really is? Is the world safe? One thing is clear. If we're going to learn anything from this, we gotta know exactly what happened. Thank God for Nate Jones. At first, there just wasn't much out there as far as sources go. Anybody who knew the details of the crisis wasn't talking. There were a few mentions of a 1983 crisis in various memoirs from retired politicians and so forth, but it was also vague. I'll let Nate paraphrase.

[Nate Jones]

We're not exactly sure, but it was a very tense situation and we were worried.

[Ed Helms]

There was only one primary source available that even mentioned Abel Archer 83 by name. A CIA document written shortly after it happened.

[Nate Jones]

So here we have. So this is Implications of Recent Soviet Military Political Activities. And this is the first CIA report on what happened during the war. Scan what happened during Able Archer.

[Ed Helms]

This document is a crucial piece of the Abel Archer Archer puzzle because it reveals what the CIA thought about the crisis at the time. And it provides a hint as to why the public wouldn't learn about it until decades later. Classic CIA bullshit. I mean, they still haven't told us why they killed Kennedy. It was written in May of 1984, six months after Abel Archer, and it says, yeah, during the Abel Archer 83 exercise. It's so sort of looked like the Soviets were getting battle ready and it

[Nate Jones]

listed all these alarming things, but it came to the conclusion that, quote, we believe strongly that Soviet actions are not inspired and Soviet leaders do not perceive a genuine danger of imminent conflict or confrontation with the United States.

[Ed Helms]

The report said, yeah, sure, it looks scary, but in hindsight, we don't think the Soviets were actually going to do anything.

[Nate Jones]

So the conclusion was that the war scare is not real.

[Ed Helms]

That's right. The reason nobody knows about the able Archer war scare is because for decades the CIA would deny that anything dangerous happened during that exercise. But rumors still swirled in the intelligence community. Maybe there was more to the story, which you've probably guessed because there's a bunch more episodes left in this podcast. Nate Jones, fresh out of college, had a hunch that he could piece together the truth about Abel Archer given access to the right records.

[Nate Jones]

We couldn't really tell a good history without the records, and we couldn't get the good records without a fight against the government.

[Ed Helms]

Oh, it's on. Now might be a good time to introduce another main character.

[Ronald Reagan]

I don't know whether you know it or not, but I have a new hobby. I am collecting stories.

[Ed Helms]

Ronald Wilson Reagan. The man knew the power of a good anecdote. I mean, the guy could really spin a yarn.

[Ronald Reagan]

But I remember the story of a fellow which makes me think of a story. Everything makes me think of a story. I wanted to tell the story, whether anything reminded me or not.

[Ed Helms]

He also famously loved movies. No surprise there. He was a movie star. Only president ever to make a movie with a chimpanzee. To be fair, Calvin Coolidge was in a play with a baboon once. But it's not the same thing. And it's also not true. Where was I? Reagan hosted regular screenings at Camp David throughout his presidency. In fact, he loved movies so much, he used to write film reviews in his diary. Saturday, February 14, 9 to 5. Funny, but one scene made me mad. A truly funny scene. If the three gals had played getting drunk. But no, they had to get stoned on pot. It was an Endorsement of pot smoking for any young person who sees the picture. Yeah, so that's actually a totally real Ronald Reagan diary entry. I shit you not. The man took movies very seriously and really overestimated the influence of a stoned Dolly Parton. Ronald Reagan's presidency was like the plot of a movie. And he was the hero, an American cowboy with a white hat fighting his nemesis, the evil communist menace. And he played the part beautifully.

[Ronald Reagan]

When action is called for, we're taking it. Our response can make the difference between peaceful change or disorder and violence.

[Ed Helms]

In fact, he played the part so well that he may have pushed it a little too far. Now, if you ask just about anybody how the Cold War ended, you'll get one of two answers. Either A, Ronald Reagan was strong, showed those Soviets who was boss and they backed down, or B, Reagan was just lucky enough to be the guy sitting in the White House when a young Soviet leader stepped in and reformed the joint. But what if there was an entirely different reason the Cold War ended? What if the Cold War really ended because of Abel Archer?

[Cyndi Lauper]

He was Ronald evil empire. Reagan talked a tough game against the Soviets engaged in a military buildup.

[Ed Helms]

Meet Beth Fisher. She's an historian and author of a book called the Reagan Reversal, where she writes about a drastic shift in Ronald Reagan's attitude towards the Soviet Union and listeners. That shift has very interesting timing.

[Cyndi Lauper]

I was doing my doctoral research, and it was on U.S. foreign policy. And I was going through a lot of speeches from the Reagan administration from the early 80s.

[Ed Helms]

Beth says that Reagan's speeches were pretty consistent from 1981 to about October 31, 1983, just before Abel Archer.

[Cyndi Lauper]

The Reagan administration was pretty confrontational. They charged that the Soviet Union was immoral. They lied, they cheat. They were the greatest source of international

[Ronald Reagan]

insecurity born of a society which wantonly disregards individual rights and the value of human life and seeks constantly to expand and dominate other nations.

[Cyndi Lauper]

The next major speech came on January 16, 1984.

[Ed Helms]

In his first major speech since Abel Archer, Ronald Reagan steps on stage and the American public meets a very new

[Ronald Reagan]

president during these first days of 1984. I would like to share with you and the people of the world my thoughts on a subject of great importance to the cause of peace relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. Just suppose with me for a moment that an Ivan and an Anya could find themselves, say, in a waiting room or sharing a shelter from the rain or a storm with a Jim and Sally. And there was no language barrier to keep them from Getting acquainted.

[Cyndi Lauper]

President Reagan told this little story about these two couples. Ivan and Anya and Jim and Sally.

[Ed Helms]

Ivan and Anya, a lovely couple from Moscow. And our beloved Jim and Sally from, I don't know, Toledo. They just feel Midwestern to me.

[Ronald Reagan]

And as they went their separate ways, maybe Anya would be saying to Ivan, wasn't she nice? She also teaches music. They might even have decided they were all going to get together for dinner some evening.

[Ed Helms]

Aw, dinner. How cute. Two months ago, Reagan would have ended that story with Jim poking Ivan's eyeballs out and Sally shoving Anya in front of a bus for freedom.

[Cyndi Lauper]

And it was really different. It was different in tone, it was different in substance.

[Ronald Reagan]

We do not threaten the Soviet Union. Our two countries have never fought each other. There's no reason why we ever should. Let us begin now. Thank you.

[Ed Helms]

The media picked up on Reagan's shift. The Ivan and Anya tale would go down in speechwriting history. But when Beth came across this speech, what caught her attention was one sentence so slight, so discreet, that if you didn't know what to listen for, you might miss it altogether.

[Cyndi Lauper]

Let's see, I have a quote here. We need to find meaningful ways to reduce the uncertainty and potential for missing interpretations surrounding military activities. I eventually learned that early drafts of the speech had been circulating within Washington in mid December.

[Ed Helms]

And remember, the old Reagan, the tough guy, was still giving hard line speeches right up until November 1st.

[Cyndi Lauper]

So my question became, what happened between November 1st and mid December? And that's when I discovered Abel Archer.

[Ed Helms]

Two months ago, a very secret nuclear near fuck up may have unfolded during November's Able Archer exercise. And then all of a sudden, this very aggressive, very anti communist president is talking about Sally braiding Anya's hair. All of a sudden he's worried about reducing the potential for misinterpretation surrounding military activities. Pretty interesting timing. I mean, I'm no Hercule Poirot, but seems like there might be a connection here.

[Ronald Reagan]

Reduce the uncertainty and potential for misinterpretation surrounding military activities and boom.

[Ed Helms]

Did you hear that? That's Abel Archer, right in the speech.

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[Chef Michelle Bernstein]

Press juices and shots I do not feel like I need a 20 step wellness routine to feel my best. They have all different flavors and they are the bomb. They have greens that are like straight up your hardcore greens like they're uber greens and Mighty Dozen that's a more balanced greens flavor. Or they have sunrise greens if you want sweet but without any added sugar. So get real wellness from functional superfoods, not from a trend your algorithm is pushing. I've seen those Suga's powerful cold pressed fruit and vegetable juices and daily wellness shots prove you don't need a wellness retreat to feel like you took one. So sip and let the superfoods do the work. Skip the fads, choose wellness that actually works. Cold pressed, organic and blended with benefits

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[Ed Helms]

Over 20 years after Abel Archer, Nate Jones began his quest to find out what really happened. As a student of history and a living human being, he was more than a little concerned about how a nuclear near miss was just a rumor in academic circles. Was George Shultz hiding something when he spoke to Americans during that panel? And is it just a coincidence that Reagan changed his tune so dramatically only months later? Nate started at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. It's a massive building overlooking mountains and the Pacific Ocean in the heart of Simi Valley, California. Inside, the Reagan foundation has completely reconstructed Reagan's Air Force One, which sits perched above a giant souvenir shop. Nancy and Ronald Reagan are even buried there. At the library, not the souvenir shop. Hard to buy a fridge magnet when the Great Communicator's corpse is staring right at you. And a couple of floors down in the basement, there's an archive. And that's where Nate begins his fight.

[Nate Jones]

I go to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and go through all the boxes,

[Ed Helms]

looking through reams and reams of paperwork from our government's past, hoping to discover some shred of evidence amongst the redactions. For anything to do with Able Archer 83, the National Security Advisor's files, US military documents, documents from our allies, anything that could paint a picture of how a NATO exercise might have changed the course of history. And as you might assume, the archive isn't small. Presidential libraries contain a lot of stuff.

[Nate Jones]

It really essentially is a dumping ground.

[Ed Helms]

But hidden amongst all of it, there could be a needle in the haystack.

[Nate Jones]

Well, when I was there, my spidey senses went up.

[Ed Helms]

Nate finds a box. He blows off decades of cobwebs. He opens it, swats away the moths as they see light for the first time in 20 years. No, I'm being dramatic. The point is, the box is important. It's labeled NATO Military Exercises, November 1983. Jackpot.

[Nate Jones]

So go through that and pull out the folder. Open it up, and it has this. I believe it's a green card that says, every historian's nightmare. Withheld, classified. Go to the next folder, same thing. So it's a little bit heartbreaking, but

[Ed Helms]

this young historical treasure hunter will not be deterred.

[Nate Jones]

But I go to the archivist on duty and say, hey, what's the mechanism for getting this withheld stuff released? And I still remember he kind of gave me a kind of a mean laugh. He said, well, you could file a FOIA or a review request, but don't hold your breath. You can file, but you'll never get it.

[Ed Helms]

What a motherf. God. Bureaucratic piece of sh. Self righteous dag. Mother. Am I right? Did I go too far? I went too far.

[Nate Jones]

I felt that we had a right to know what happened. It's possible that it shows this danger, unacceptable danger of nuclear weapons. And if they're that dangerous, and the world was that dangerous then in 1983 and might still be that dangerous now, that danger shouldn't be hidden. Reclassification. And that right there got me a little bit angry and said, you know what? I'm gonna fight this until the end. And I don't think the government should be keeping this secret. And I'm gonna learn about FOIA and I'm gonna learn about appeals and maybe even sue, because the government's telling me, no, you can't have the documents, and I want the documents.

[Ed Helms]

Here's a message to that asshole who worked as the archivist on duty at the Reagan Presidential Library in the year 2004, our fearless FOIA warrior. Get the DAX. And what would they show? A very alarming account of what really went down in 1983, spurred by intelligence failures, reckless policies, failed diplomacy, and outright arrogance. Buckle up, boys and girls. It's gonna be a terrifying ride. Over the rest of the season, we'll spin a yarn so nuts that it would have Reagan himself shitting in his 10 gallon Stetson. We'll tell you how 1983 was a truly batshit year for the human race, complete with fake military invasions, a commercial airliner fleet full of passengers shot down, and a calculator right out of a spy movie that might have saved the world. And all that craziness would set the stage for the big snafu, a close call with nuclear war that would be kept top secret for decades. Next week on snafu, we'll get into the minds of the button pushers themselves. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Yuri Andropov, two men whose provocations and paranoia would push the world to the brink.

[Ronald Reagan]

It did give me a real understanding of the communist menace.

[Jeffrey Lewis]

Ronald Reagan, having campaigned on being tough, is not going to stand up and say, oh, that was just for the cameras. I'm actually an old softie. I love borscht.

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Really.

[Mibo Eyes Advertiser]

For the first time in my life, I felt like there could be nuclear wars.

[Ed Helms]

SNAFU is a production of iHeartRadio, Film Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio. Our lead producers are Sarah Joyner and Alyssa Martino. Our producer is Carl Nellis Associate producer Tori Smith. It's executive produced by me, Ed Helms, Milan Popelka, Mike Falbo, Andy Chugg and Whitney Donaldson. This episode was written by Sarah Joyner with a additional writing from me, Elliot Kalin and Whitney Donaldson. Our senior editor is Jeffrey Lewis.

[Jeffrey Lewis]

Make the Rubble Bounce.

[Ed Helms]

Olivia Canney is our Production assistant. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Additional research and fact checking by Charles Richter. Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley. Original music and sound design by Dan Rosado. Some archival audio from this episode originally appeared in Taylor Downing's fantastic film 1983 the Brink of Apocalypse. Thank you Mr. Downing for permission to use it. Special thanks to Allison Cohen and Matt Azenstadt.

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[Chef Michelle Bernstein]

Thanks to Suja Organic Pressed Juices and Shots. I do not feel like I need a 20 step wellness routine to feel my best. They have all different flavors and they are the bomb. They have greens that are like straight up your hardcore greens. Like they're uber greens and Mighty Dozen. That's a more balanced greens flavor. Or they have sunrise greens if you want sweet but without any added sugar. So get real wellness from functional superfoods, not from a trend your algorithm is pushing. I've seen those Suga's powerful cold pressed fruit and vegetable juices and daily wellness shots prove you don't need a wellness retreat to feel like you took one. So sip and let the superfoods do the work. Skip the fads. Choose wellness that actually works. Cold Pressed, Organic and blended with benefits. Suja Organic.

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[Ed Helms]

Guaranteed human.