Most Replayed Moment: Here's What Happens When A Nuclear Bomb Drops! These Countries Will Be Safe!

Summary

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett – Most Replayed Moment: “Here’s What Happens When A Nuclear Bomb Drops! These Countries Will Be Safe!”

Episode Overview This special episode of The Diary Of A CEO revisits the podcast's most replayed, chillingly memorable segment discussing the catastrophic consequences of a large-scale nuclear exchange. Steven Bartlett and his guest (an investigative journalist and expert on nuclear war scenarios) unpack the aftermath of nuclear strikes—the horrifying visuals, the implications for humanity, and which countries might offer the last refuge on Earth. The discussion balances factual detail and emotional gravity with a thread of hope regarding prevention.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Immediate Aftermath of a Nuclear Strike

• Expert Describes the Attack
  • The guest outlines in graphic detail what follows the detonation of a 1-megaton nuclear bomb over a target like the Pentagon, sourced directly from defense scientists and Pentagon documents.
  • “On top of the initial flash of thermonuclear light, which is 180 million degrees, which catches everything on fire in a nine mile diameter radius… each one of these fires creates a mega fire that is 100 or more square miles.” (B, 01:29)
• Total Destruction
  • The U.S. hit by 1,000 Russian nuclear weapons would be transformed into a landscape of unchecked fire and devastation.
  • “In the scenario at minute 72, a thousand Russian nuclear weapons land on the United States. And so it just becomes a conflagration of fire…hundred, two hundred square mile fires burning.” (B, 02:09)

2. The Lethality and Grim Reality for Survivors

• Death Toll Calculations
  • A key estimate: a nuclear war could kill up to 5 billion of the world's 8 billion people, primarily due to famine caused by nuclear winter (B, 06:01).
  • “The number that they have is 5 billion people would be dead.” (B, 06:01)
• Violence and Breakdown of Society
  • Survivors would inhabit a lawless, brutal world.
  • “Khrushchev…said after nuclear war the survivors would envy the dead… It's man returning to the most primal, most violent state as people fight over the tiny resources that remain.” (B, 03:30)
• Visceral Imagery
  • Steven recites a passage narrating the horror:
    “A thousand fireballs, each more than a mile in diameter…tens of millions of unfortunate survivors suffering fatal third degree burns. People naked, tattered, bleeding and suffocating. People who don't look or act like people anymore.” (A, 04:45)

3. Nuclear Winter and Where Might Be Safe

• Climate Catastrophe
  • Post-strike, mid-latitude countries become uninhabitable—fields frozen, sunlight lethal due to ozone loss.
  • “Most of the world…the mid latitudes would be covered in these, you know, sheets of ice… agriculture would fail. And when agriculture fails, people just die.” (B, 07:29)
• Safe Zones: New Zealand & Australia
  • They are best positioned to sustain agriculture and shelter survivors.
  • “That's exactly where you'd go. According to Toon, those are the only places that could actually sustain agriculture.” (B, 06:45)

4. The Asteroid Analogy and Human Agency

• Historical Perspective
  • Nuclear war compared to the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs—except this is a preventable, man-made threat.
  • “Professor Toon compared nuclear war to that situation…Nuclear war is a man-made threat and therefore, it has to be a man-made solution.” (B, 08:19)

5. The Power and Responsibility to Prevent Catastrophe

• Presidential Authority & The Day After
  • Past reductions in nuclear arms were prompted by powerful storytelling and political will.
  • “President Reagan was…pro nuclear weapons…He saw The Day After and he changed his position. He wrote in his White House journal that he became greatly depressed…And they famously issued a statement that said a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” (B, 09:20–11:30)
• From 70,000 to 12,500 Warheads
  • Treaties and activism have reduced the global arsenal, proving progress is possible.

6. The AI & Nuclear War Risk

• AI as a Trigger for Catastrophe?
  • Steven recounts a scenario posed to ChatGPT, where AI instigates nuclear war.
  • The guest explains why most nuclear weapon systems remain deliberately analog and insulated from such digital risks.
  • “Our ballistic missile systems are…analog because of the exact fear that you describe and that ChatGPT described back at you.” (B, 14:12)
• Navigating by the Stars
  • Missiles guide themselves by celestial navigation to prevent electronic hijacking.
  • “It's actually a really interesting concept that the most advanced…ballistic missile is guiding itself to its target by this ancient concept…looking at the stars.” (B, 15:47–16:29)

7. Probability, Human Nature, and Learning from History

• Inevitable War?
  • Probability increases the longer nuclear weapons exist, raising existential questions.
  • “If we play this forward…I don't know, a thousand years, what is most likely to cause the end of humanity?...the longer we're here, the longer we have these weapons, the higher the probability.” (A, 18:41)
• Can War Be Unlearned?
  • Anthropological studies show humans oscillate between suspicion and collaboration.
  • Positive change is possible through learning and training new ways to view the “other.”
  • “What we do know is that people can learn to think differently… if that's too Pollyanna-ish to find the way in which…How do I look at the person coming at me as someone who could be on my team or…not an enemy that I would have to kill.” (B, 21:06–23:33)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The survivors would envy the dead.”
  — (B quoting Khrushchev, 03:30)

• “5 billion people would be dead.”
  — (B, citing Prof. Brian Toon’s research, 06:01)

• “You have to imagine people living underground, fighting for food everywhere, except for in New Zealand and Australia.”
  — (B, 07:29)

• “Nuclear war is a man-made threat and therefore, it has to be a man-made solution.”
  — (B, 08:19)

• “He saw The Day After and he changed his position. He wrote in his White House journal that he became greatly depressed.”
  — (B, referencing President Reagan’s change of heart, 10:30)

• “Our ballistic missile systems are…analog because of the exact fear that you describe and that ChatGPT described back at you.”
  — (B, 14:12)

• “The most advanced, potentially civilization ending ballistic missile is guiding itself to its target by this ancient concept…looking at the stars.”
  — (B, 15:47)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:29] – Describing nuclear blast aftermath; firestorms and total devastation.
• [03:30] – Why survivors would envy the dead; society's collapse.
• [06:01] – Food crisis and death estimates: 5 billion dead.
• [06:45] – Only New Zealand and Australia might be survivable.
• [08:19] – Nuclear war vs. asteroid impact: human responsibility.
• [09:20–11:30] – Reagan, The Day After, and nuclear weapon reductions.
• [14:12] – Analog safeguards and AI scenarios.
• [15:47–16:29] – Missiles navigating by starlight: a built-in analog defense.
• [18:41] – Probability of nuclear war over time.
• [21:06–23:33] – Anthropological perspectives; can humanity “unlearn” war?

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Tone & Concluding Thoughts

This episode delivers a sobering, fact-driven narrative underscored by empathy and a belief in the possibility of human-led change. Steven Bartlett’s inquisitiveness and the guest’s deep expertise make the catastrophic consequences of nuclear conflict vivid and real, while also highlighting the crucial agency individuals and leaders hold in averting disaster.

The chilling reminders of what is at stake are balanced by hopeful notes—a testament to storytelling’s power to shift policy and societal trajectories, and the final suggestion that humanity can, with effort, learn to build trust and peace.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Minutes after the strike, I describe the first bomb in the scenario that strikes the pentagon. It's a 1 megaton thermonuclear bomb in painstaking, horrific detail, all sourced from Defense department documents, Defense scientists who have worked for decades to describe precisely what happens to things and to humans. And it's horrifying. But on top of the initial flash of thermonuclear light, which is 180 million degrees, which catches everything on fire in a nine mile diameter radius. On top of the bulldozing effect of the wind and all the buildings coming down and more fires igniting more fires, on top of the radiation poisoning people to death in minutes and hours and days and weeks if they happen to have survived. On top of all of that, each one of these fires creates a mega fire that is 100 or more square miles. And so essentially, in essence, what do you see? Well, in the scenario at minute 72, a thousand Russian nuclear weapons land on the United States. And so it just becomes a conflagration of fire. It's just fire Fires burning fires, hundred, two hundred square mile fires burning. And then we move into nuclear winter. And that's sort of the denouement of the book where I tell you about nuclear winter from the point of view of one of the original scientists who wrote that original nuclear winter paper with Carl Sagan back in 1983 and his name is Professor Brian Toon. And he spent the decades since working with the state of the art climate modeling systems that can now precisely tell us what nuclear winter will look like.

[A]

Because I've always thought, you know what, nuclear war wouldn't be that bad if, you know, Russia launched a thousand of their nuclear bombs at the United States and I was here in New York, where I am now, I would die instantly, so I wouldn't really know it happened. Is that true?

[B]

I think you would want to die instantly. I mean, there's a quote from Nikita Khrushchev, the former premier of the Soviet Union. And he said after nuclear war the survivors were, would envy the dead. Because there is right, there is this sense of if you survived, I mean, there is no more law and order, there is no more rule of law, there is no government. Craig Fugate made that very clear. The bunkers that the people in the military command and control centers would be in, let's say the secret bunkers, not the ones that are targets that Russia's gonna take out that I write about in the book, but the smaller ones, those are going to only for as long as there's gasoline to run the diesel generators. And then those people are going to have to come out. And who's left? It's man returning to the most primal, most violent state as people fight over the tiny resources that remain. And by the way, they're all malnourished, everybody's sick and most people have lost everything and everyone they know. How's that going to feel?

[A]

It's going to feel as you describe here on page 277. There are a thousand flashes of light superheating the air in each ground zero to 180 million degrees Fahrenheit. A thousand fireballs, each more than a mile in diameter. A thousand steeply fronted blast waves. A thousand walls of compressed air. A thousand American cities and towns where all engineered structures in 5, 6 or 7 miles radius change physical shapes, collapse and burn. A thousand cities and towns with molten asphalt streets. A thousand cities and towns with survivors impaled to death by flying debris. A thousand cities and towns filled with tens of millions of dead people, with tens of millions of unfortunate survivors suffering Fatal third degree burns. People naked, tattered, bleeding and suffocating. People who don't look or act like people anymore. Across America and Europe, hundreds of millions of people are dead and dying while hundreds of military aircraft fly circles in the air until they run out of fuel. I mean, that is, that is some visual. How many people would be dead or dying, do you think, after those 72 minutes.

[B]

Hundreds of millions of people die in the fireballs? No question. But the number that I think is very interesting to think about comes from Professor Toon and his team who wrote a paper for nature recently, 2022, and sort of updated nuclear winter idea based around food. And the number that they have is 5 billion people would be dead.

[A]

The population of the planet currently is what, 8 billion?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So there'd be 3 billion people still alive. Where shall I go to be one of the 3 billion? I was just in New Zealand and Australia.

[B]

That's exactly where you'd go. According to Toon, those are the only places that could actually sustain agriculture.

[A]

I was there two weeks ago. Not even two weeks ago. It was maybe 10 days ago. I was in New Zealand and Australia. And at that time, I think Iran attacked Israel.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

I was kind of happy you were.

[B]

In the right place at the right time.

[A]

I was kind of happy for where I was located. If I'm gonna. I was thinking, I actually remember talking to my friends and I pulled up a map and I was trying to see how far away I was from everything. I was thinking, if cause World War 3 started trending on Twitter. I was thinking, if it does break out now, I think I'm probably pretty well placed. Is that the place to be?

[B]

That is, that is according to Professor Toon. I mean, he was so generous with me. He shared a lot of his slideshows that he has for his students. And that is really pretty much what's left. I mean, because most of the world is certainly the mid latitudes would be covered in these, you know, sheets of ice, the freshwater bodies, places like Iowa and Ukraine would be just snow for 10 years. And so agriculture would fail. And when agriculture fails, people just die. And on top of that you have the radiation poisoning because the ozone layer will be so damaged and destroyed that you can't be outside in the sunlight. And so people will be forced to live underground. And so you have to imagine people living underground, fighting for food everywhere, except for in New Zealand and Australia. There was also another interesting detail that he shared with me that, you know, 66 million years ago, an asteroid hit Earth and Wiped out the dinosaurs and something like 70% of the known species. And Professor Toon compared nuclear war to that situation. And so when you really think about it, and again, this was also echoed by Craig Fugate, FEMA's director. You think about it, there's nothing we can do about an asteroid, at least not right now. And yet there is something. Nuclear war is a man made threat and therefore it has to be a man made solution.

[A]

What is the solution?

[B]

I really believe that people motivate other people. It's like a fundamental truth on the smallest scale and on the biggest scale. And so there's one person who is incredible and that is the President of the United States. For better or for worse, it's just the way it is. And so in the same way that the President has presidential sole authority to start a nuclear war, the President also has a very powerful pen with which he can write executive orders, an eo. And the story I tell on the hopeful note goes like this. When I was in high school in 1983, there was an ABC TV movie called the Day after. And it showed a fictional war between the United States and then Soviet Russia. It was horrific and terrifying. Okay? 100 million Americans watched it. 100 million Americans. It was like the third of the population and I think it was half the population then. President Reagan was one of those Americans. He had a private screening at Camp David. His advisors told him not to watch it. He did watch it. Before that, President Reagan was a hawk. He was pro nuclear weapons. His position was the more nuclear weapons the better. He was the one putting nuclear weapons in space with the Star wars program, the SDI program, okay? He couldn't have been more pro deterrence supremacy. He saw the Day after and he changed his position. He wrote in his White House journal that he became greatly depressed. His words. And he reached out to Gorbachev and then they had a Reykjavik summit, a summit in Iceland. Reagan and Gorbachev, and through communication, right through both of them realizing this is madness, realizing what could happen, seeing the day after and realizing, my God, this cannot happen. And they famously issued a statement that said the joint statement between the two of them that said a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. And the result of the Reykjavik summit was that the world has gone from 70,000 nuclear warheads. That was the all time high. 70,000. Why do you need 70,000 nuclear warheads? That's what there were in 1986. And now here we are because of the reductions, because of the treaties, thanks to those two 12,500 approximately nuclear warheads. That is the movement in the right direction. And it came from a dramatic story being told, and it came from the President taking action because people would not stand for this anymore. There were massive protests.

[A]

Do you believe we could ever get to zero?

[B]

Honestly, that is for the disarmament experts. I like to stay in my lane as a storyteller, as an investigative journalist. I like to give you the dramatic fast read and then pass the baton to those who have been working on that issue for decades, because, boy, are they qualified. I just had the great fortune of being invited to Brussels, where I was part of a nuclear expo, and there were members of the European Parliament in the audience. And I. And there were all these disarmament people there. And I learned a lot about all of these groups, and they have the answer, and they are the ones that should be asked that question. And they are doing a lot to get us there.

[A]

I went on chatgpt a couple of months ago, and I asked it, I said, could you play out a scenario where the world ends because an artificial intelligence basically gets leaked out of its. Out of the computer that it was born out. Born on. And the scenario that it played out involved nuclear war. Because halfway, I think it was in step three or four, it says that the AI basically takes control of the nuclear warheads, or at least some of them, and then it kind of launches them at other countries. And hearing ChatGPT say that and in step three or four, use nuclear weapons as a way to kind of make the world extinct, it felt plausible.

[B]

Okay, so I'm going to push back against that, which is by no means right. I'm not right. But we're just having it like sort of theoretical conversation. Conversation here. ChatGPT is gathering its information. Right. So my. I would argue that CHAT GP has got a lot of information from the Terminator movie.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay, there is that in the zeitgeist of what happens then I want you to consider that the communication systems in Nuclear Command and Control, which is actually nuclear command, control and communication, the. The ability to forgive NC3 to communicate with the actual weapons is so profoundly classified that I don't have access to it. But I'm going to give this to you as an idea. What I do know and learned reporting nuclear war a scenario is a fascinating detail that stands as an analogy, at least for me, which is how analog our ballistic missile systems are because of the exact fear that you describe and that ChatGPT described back at you. And will they stay that way forever? Probably Not. But are they that way right now? From what I understand, yes. Our submarine launched ballistic missiles that are just so the technology behind them. And I delineate it for the reader. It's astonishing that you can launch a missile from underwater, it can breach the surface. It's afterburners take off and then it begins its trajectory, you know, boost phase, mid course, phase, terminal phase, hits the target. This is incredible. And how does it get there, you might ask? I asked. It gets there by star sighting.

[A]

Oh, really?

[B]

So you realize there's this little panel that opens up in the ballistic missile and there are other ways that it's navigating, but the primary mean of navigation is star sighting. I mean, you just have to really stop and go, oh, my. First of all, it's actually a really interesting concept that the most advanced, potentially civilization ending ballistic missile is guiding itself to its target by this ancient concept like that our hunter gather ancestors used, which is looking at the stars.

[A]

It's looking at the stars and then navigating, using them.

[B]

And that's meant to be a defense against a system, an enemy taking control of your nuclear weapons.

[A]

The issue we have is that there's potentially nine or ten different nuclear powers, and they don't all have the same system. So if we get to the point of AGI, which a lot of people almost see as the singularity, almost. You can't see past that moment where there is a new being amongst us that is capable of thinking faster and more expansively and more intelligently than humans and those things we don't. I think it might look at our systems as child's play. Maybe not our systems, but maybe it'll look at North Korea's systems as child's play. It might be able to put that VCR into the system and play out the Nucleus simulation that tricks those people into believing they're being attacked in that.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And so.

[B]

Which is maybe time for the answer to your question of should we be at zero? Right, yeah. So what you have presented, which would be the whole point of somebody like me writing a book, that somebody like you would read of a younger generation and begin having these conversations with their colleagues and their thought leaders and the people that could maybe influence public policy and saying, well, that would be a very good reason to have zero nuclear weapons, or, you know, everybody gets 10. I'm making that up. But Right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because if you have 12,500 nuclear weapons, it's better than 70,000. But there's way too many for an artificially intelligent, you know, trigger Scenario like you're talking about.

[A]

Are you optimistic?

[B]

Optimistic about? I, I mean, I am an optimistic person by nature. And so do you think there will.

[A]

Be a nuclear war in the course of humanity?

[B]

I wrote this book as the optimistic, hopeful person that's saying, read this and realize that a man made problem has a man made solution.

[A]

Earlier you talked about there being high consequence and low probability, but the more the years tick on, that probability increases by nature of there being this mad king that might at some point. So, you know, and that's what I think. So I was asking myself, eventually, if we play this forward, I don't know, a thousand years, what is most likely to cause the end of humanity? Is it a mad king somewhere who doesn't want that? You know, he realizes that he's gonna either die, he's got cancer, he realizes that, you know, he's got some sickness and he doesn't really want his son to take power. He starts getting a bit agitated, maybe he has some kind of psychosis, schizophrenia, I don't know. Decides to in his dying days to let a couple of these things fly. Is that eventually gonna happen? The laws of probability, the laws of averages say that the longer we're here, the longer we have these weapons, the higher the probability.

[B]

I mean, I leave that to people like you to think about and talk about, because I do, and I am fascinated that I find that people of your generation ask that question a lot more than perhaps people of my generation and older. Like, that was not a mindset that people necessarily hadn't talked about. And I think that has to do with the confluence of events that you talk about. First of all, people are. Have access to information in a manner they didn't, you know, 30, 40 years ago, or it took a lot more effort. And also that there are these incredible new threats that you're talking about that are. That you cannot overlook. And so you would think that it's time to kind of. And I'm not a Pollyanna, but you have to move away from seeing everyone and everything as an enemy and moving toward. It's fine to have adversaries. Having opponents is, you know, sportsmen have opponents, right? But everyone being an enemy and having, you know, wars escalating around the world, it seems as if what you are saying is there has to be a fundamental shift in what people are considering important.

[A]

But war has always existed and it's existed as long as humans have. So it makes me think that war is just part of humans trying to coexist. And all of the Things that are hardwired into us. Our search for status and ego and reproduction and resources and survival result in war like they result in recessions.

[B]

So I read a lot about the origin of war. It's a debate no one you know, but it is discussed. And the anthropologists, I think, have the most interesting sort of thoughtful concepts around it, which I'll share with you. Which is this because yes, technically there has always been war. And one of the debates is, you know, did war begin with civilization or were hunter gatherers warring? But more interesting to that, I think, is about the anthropologists who studied in the 60s, the hunter gatherer tribes, like in the Amazon, when there were still access to them. And they were sort of, you know, they were unaffected by civilization at all. And they could look at how they perceived enemies. And an interesting idea came out of that, which makes me think about optimist versus pessimist. Right? Sort of. Or rather those who trust versus those who are suspicious that no matter if a hunter is out hunting, that's part of a hunter gatherer tribal environment and he comes across another person, obviously there could be that person is either threatening or that person is someone to team up with against the greater threat. And the anthropologists do not know why it is that some people interpret this person with suspicion and then might kill him and others would interpret that person as a teammate. And so if we don't know how human, you know, is it genetics? Like, how do people either fall on one of those two sides? But what we do know is that people can learn to think differently. You talk with half your guests on the podcast about this. People can be trained, not, you know, propagandized, but people can learn to think differently. So if you're me, who is a hopeful person and wants to see the positive side of even my dark reporting, because that's a better choice for me and for my family, I train myself to find, if you will, the silver lining. Or rather if that's too Pollyannish to find the way in which. How do I look at the person coming at me as someone who could be on my team or even an opponent, but not an enemy that I would have to kill.

[A]

What you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode. If you want to listen to that full episode, I've linked it down below. Check the description. Thank you. This year, most business owners have had one thing top of mind, which is how to make AI work for them, because its potential is limitless. But if you don't know what you're doing, then you're guessing, which can be incredibly risky. Our sponsor NetSuite by Oracle helps businesses to get AI embedded throughout their organization. Whether they're earning millions or hundreds of millions, NetSuite is the number one AI cloud financial system and through their platform you get all of your accounting, financial management, inventory and HR in one place. Their AI connector also lets you pick the AI of your choice, connect it with your business's data, then you can ask it questions like how much cash on hand have we got in the company? Or who are our key customers? And because all of that data is connected, it makes your AI smarter so it can automate routine tasks, deliver specific actionable insights and help you cut the costs. Already, over 43,000 businesses have chosen to future proof their business with NetSuite. So if you'd like to learn more and how you can help your your business, just get their business guide which is called Demystifying AI and you can get that [e-mail] Bartlett I mean, listen, if you've been listening to this podcast for any period of time, you've probably heard me talk about sleep a gazillion times. It was the single biggest priority that I ignored for the vast majority of my life until I realized that it was upstream from everything that mattered to me. And this brings me to our sponsor, Helix. They make high quality tailored mattresses and bedding that are customized to fit and they help you to sleep better. That is their mission. In fact, a study found that around 82% of people in a study that slept on Helix mattresses saw an increase in their deep sleep cycle while sleeping on their mattresses. So if you're thinking that you're not sure about what the right mattress might be for you, their sleep quiz will look at you, look at your situation, your sleeping needs, and match you with the right mattress. And if it's not what you're after and you're not satisfied, you're still covered by their 120 night sleep trial. So you can either swap your mattress for another one or return it all together. Helix also offers a limited lifetime warranty and because you listen to this podcast, you can get at least 20% off site wide. Just head over to helixsleep.com diary that's helixsleep.com diary.