While The Rest Of Us Die 2x5

1. I've literally had arguments with people from my generation

2. who say, you know, the number one threat facing humanity

3. is the climate crisis.

4. Listen, it's terrifying and it's a massive problem.

5. But the problem that exists today, in this hour

6. as the minutes pass, is nuclear weapons.

7. We don't see it in the headlines, but the

8. threat of nuclear Armageddon has never been greater.

9. And we just assume that everything's okay.

10. Everything is not okay.

11. While our leaders tell us we need atomic weapons

12. to deter a nuclear attack, the truth is,

13. they have already used them against us.

14. It was mass destruction of our world.

15. And today, new nuclear weapons are still being built,

16. enriching an elite few.

17. It's not strategy, it's not logic.

18. It's money and politics.

19. Making the world more dangerous by the minute.

20. It would take about an hour to destroy everything humanity

21. has built up over the millennia.

22. !

23. For over 70 years, our leaders have told us one thing

24. under the bright lights...

25. The protection of the lives and property of Americans

26. is the responsibility of all public officials.

27. I care, we're trying.

28. We have it so well under control.

29. Help is here and we will not stop working for you.

30. But for decades, America's shadow government and its

31. powerful friends have spent trillions of dollars on an

32. agenda that serves their interests, not ours.

33. You guys paid for all this.

34. So, when the shit really hits the fan,

35. we're on our own.

36. This is not science fiction.

37. This is reality in America right now.

38. The truth is, the rich and powerful will do

39. whatever it takes to save themselves...

40. While The Rest of Us Die.

41. 10, 9...

42. 8, 7...

43. 6, 5, 4...

44. 3, 2, 1.

45. During the Cold War,

46. America's biggest nuclear weapons test site

47. was less than 100 miles downwind of Sin City.

48. It's a large desert area,

49. about 60 miles north of Las Vegas.

50. In fact, in Las Vegas, they were a tourist draw.

51. Welcome to the Desert Inn Hotel in fabulous Las Vegas!

52. The one and only, Jimmy Durante, in person!

53. I've got an announcement to make.

54. In case of an atom bomb attack, everyone is to leave the room

55. and hide under the slot machines.

56. They haven't been hit since the joint has been open.

57. You could go to the big hotels in Vegas and get an

58. atomic cocktail and go and sit on the roof of your hotel and

59. drink your cocktail and watch...

60. science and technology, you know, blossoming on the horizon.

61. The towering cloud of the atomic age is a symbol of

62. strength, of defense, of security for

63. freedom loving people everywhere.

64. The nuclear age began in July 1945,

65. when the United States successfully detonated the

66. world's first atomic bomb.

67. It was an event that had a profound effect on its creators.

68. The following month, the United States dropped nuclear bombs

69. on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

70. The Hiroshima bomb killed over 100,000 people.

71. Those bombings were also technically nuclear tests.

72. The 20-kiloton bomb dropped on Nagasaki three days after

73. Hiroshima was a different design.

74. It killed 74,000 more Japanese and provided the Americans

75. more data on their new weapon's capabilities.

76. They were only the second and third nuclear weapons

77. that had ever been built or detonated.

78. The bombings of Japan were not simply acts of war.

79. They were also experiments, conducted by the United States

80. to see what these weapons would do.

81. In the aftermath of the Second World War,

82. the United States became locked in a global arms race

83. with the Soviet Union.

84. Spending trillions of taxpayer dollars

85. on a vast nuclear arsenal.

86. In the 1950s, we went nuclear nuts.

87. The arms race develops a sick logic of its own,

88. where you feel that there's some kind of advantage that you

89. can gain by having more nuclear weapons than the other guy.

90. As a result, whereas we started off the 50s with about

91. 200 nuclear weapons, by the time John F. Kennedy

92. becomes president in 1960, there were 20,000.

93. And we just kept racing bigger, better, more everywhere.

94. This demand for new and improved nukes

95. enriches a small corporate elite.

96. An ultra-modern plant outside Detroit plays host to

97. military representatives of a dozen NATO nations.

98. Here in two million square feet of floor space,

99. parallel assembly lines turn out the Jupiter and

100. the Red Stone missiles.

101. America is truly keeping pace in the missile age.

102. But before a new nuclear weapon was integrated into the

103. military arsenal, it had to be tested.

104. The United States conducted over a thousand nuclear tests,

105. more than all the other countries of the world combined.

106. When they went to test their weapons,

107. they're not gonna test them next to the people

108. who they care about.

109. Ideally, they're gonna test them out where, you know,

110. people they don't care about are.

111. The first location chosen for testing

112. was the Marshall Islands

113. an American protectorate in the Central Pacific.

114. And here is Bikini,

115. nearly 4,000 miles from the United States.

116. A tiny coral atoll destined for atomic bomb experiments.

117. These first pictures of the little island show the 165 men,

118. women, and children, as they prepare for the move

119. to another small island.

120. This is where the term bikini, the swimsuit, comes from.

121. So, we have these sort of legacies,

122. even in our vocabulary, of this weird period of sort of

123. American nuclear culture and enthusiasm.

124. In front of the palm thatched community house,

125. an American naval officer, through an interpreter,

126. discusses plans for moving the people.

127. The people of Bikini are a happy people,

128. and they chat gayly with the Americans as they wait to leave.

129. Modern dentistry brings only laughter.

130. The Marshall Islanders, they were told that they were

131. gonna have to evacuate their islands for a short time,

132. and then be brought back.

133. Instead, these bombs eliminated their islands.

134. They vaporized their island.

135. They polluted the, the fishing grounds.

136. But testing weapons so far from the continental United States

137. was extremely expensive, so the US government began

138. searching for alternative sites closer to home.

139. The decision was made to start testing nuclear weapons

140. in Nevada, and that began in 1951.

141. Over the next 40 years, roughly eight hundred underground tests

142. of nuclear weapons will be conducted inside the US.

143. But it's the above ground tests at the Nevada Test Site,

144. approximately 100 between 1951 and 1962,

145. that will have the most devastating and lasting impact.

146. Elaborate fake communities are built to replicate the impact

147. of a nuclear bomb hitting an American town.

148. The impact on actual Americans is not as elaborately planned.

149. And from the end of World War Two until today,

150. the overwhelming majority of people killed by

151. American atomic bombs...

152. will be Americans.

153. 2, 1...

154. What the Atomic Energy Commission knew at this point,

155. is that these tests would release

156. massive amounts of radiation, and that that radiation

157. would drift with the wind.

158. And so, the decision was made to aim these tests.

159. And the way they did that was by monitoring weather conditions

160. and meteorological conditions and testing nuclear weapons

161. only when the wind was blowing east.

162. So, away from Las Vegas and densely populated California.

163. So, a deliberate engineering took place.

164. The fact remains, this fallout wasn't falling on empty land.

165. The Nevada test site is about 100 miles as the crow flies to

166. the south of us, probably even less than that to the areas

167. where weapons testing took place.

168. Ian Zabarte is a leading member of Western bands of the

169. Shoshone Nation of Indians, and an activist who's on a mission

170. to bring justice to his people for the horrors that have

171. befallen them when America declared their sacred land

172. ground zero.

173. So, this is the federally recognized Duckwater

174. Shoshone Indian Reservation.

175. And there's about 360 tribal members here.

176. I'm related to just about everybody.

177. We're gonna talk to some people that were here

178. during the period of weapons testing.

179. These Shoshone elders have never before

180. told their stories on camera.

181. I slept in the house on a...

182. on a couch that was in the living room.

183. And the living room faced to the south.

184. And I can remember one morning being woke before dawn...

185. Everything was just bright and brilliant.

186. Whatever it was, it was almost impossible to see,

187. it was so bright.

188. And it was one of the experiments.

189. We were alarmed when we saw this great,

190. big dust coming from our southern side.

191. And it was just a great big, big rolling dust storm, like,

192. coming into Duckwater.

193. And my mom and dad told us that fallout,

194. that's that atomic bomb they let off.

195. As I get older, I notice that several of the family members

196. here in Duckwater have cancer.

197. And so, exposure to fallout...

198. you know, in any form, the consequences

199. are basically, parts of your body die.

200. And significant exposure means more parts of it die,

201. eventually to the point where...

202. the cells can't reproduce themselves.

203. Or they reproduce in a way that's mutated and that

204. leads to a cancer.

205. And in places with high contamination there's a

206. legacy of cancer history that never would have existed

207. in the absence of nuclear weapons testing.

208. So, when I returned home...

209. permanently in 1983, my family was dying.

210. I find my uncle is dying.

211. His throat is falling out from cancer.

212. And my grandfather, his skin fell off.

213. And then he died a month later from the stress,

214. and they said it was...

215. a heart attack.

216. I look around here and I see cascading effects as a result

217. of radiation exposure and fallout among my family.

218. When the United States began testing these weapons,

219. we didn't know what was going on.

220. The radioactive fallout beyond several miles from

221. the test site has not been known to be serious.

222. We must remember that radiation, it is part of nature.

223. The health of people in these communities was seen as an

224. acceptable sacrifice by the Atomic Energy Commission,

225. in order to have a larger and more sophisticated

226. nuclear weapons arsenal.

227. To fall behind any other nation in atomic progress

228. is a national risk.

229. And so, when people from the downwind area went to the AEC,

230. and said, "Why didn't you warn us?" The Atomic Energy

231. Commission said things like, "We have to make sacrifices

232. in order to protect democracy."

233. Yes, the very nature of testing weapons for natural defence...

234. requires we accept the possibility of some exposure

235. to additional radiation.

236. But the western Shoshone sacrificed both their blood and

237. treasure for America's nuclear industrial complex.

238. The first thing to keep in mind about the Nevada testing site

239. is that it's actually legally the property of the

240. Western Shoshone Nation.

241. It was deeded to them in the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley,

242. and they have never actually ceded that land.

243. During the height of America's bloody civil war,

244. the Shoshone signed one of the last Indian treaties

245. with the US government.

246. America was weak during the civil war.

247. It needed alliance with the Shoshone.

248. We allowed for the overland stage.

249. We allowed for the telegraph. We allowed for the railroad.

250. Not what we have today with nuclear weapons testing.

251. No nation would enter into a treaty that would end

252. in its ultimate destruction.

253. According to the Treaty of Ruby Valley,

254. the Western Shoshone lands stretched for nearly

255. 100,000 square miles covering much of Nevada and

256. into California, Idaho, and Utah.

257. But with the advent of the nuclear age in 1945,

258. the United States began forcing the tribe off their land

259. creating a vast patchwork of

260. high security military installations.

261. And then I run into a weapon of war.

262. A fence was put up around this site.

263. And, the Western Shoshone were denied access to

264. traditional hunting and gathering sites...

265. Sites that were spiritually significant to them.

266. And not only was it going to be off limits,

267. it was going to be destroyed.

268. This is the violence of colonialism,

269. which is really fundamental to the...

270. the birth of the nuclear age.

271. The Western bands of the Shoshone nation of Indians

272. are the most bombed nation in the world.

273. It was mass destruction of our world, really.

274. It was just being destroyed forever.

275. And you can actually see the scars of this.

276. If you go on and look at satellite pictures,

277. it looks like the moon. It's all craters.

278. I'm trying to get back to where my ancestors are from.

279. And I can't, because...

280. these people have decided to kill my land and people.

281. What happened to the Shoshone people has left Ian Zabarte

282. angry at a government that still occupies what he sees

283. as his people's sacred land.

284. This is Shoshone property! Get the ... off!

285. Leave!

286. But the Shoshone Nation were not the only victims

287. of America's nuclear testing.

288. Trespassing with a badge.

289. Can't even ... ing prove ownership.

290. Trespassing.

291. All ... ing trespassers.

292. This is Shoshone property! Get the ... off!

293. Leave! ing trespassers!

294. You violate the US Constitution!

295. You violate the ... ing Nevada Constitution!

296. You're ... ing trespassers! Get the ... out of here!

297. Ian Zabarte shouting at security officers along a

298. remote Nevada highway, is evidence of his frustration

299. of being unable to get back the land taken from

300. his tribe to facilitate nuclear testing.

301. I don't relish shaming people.

302. My life would be easier without the,

303. the stress of having to watch the abuses.

304. And having to check Americans and tell them the difference

305. between right and wrong.

306. But he's trying to teach lessons about right and wrong

307. to a government that, today, puts average Americans at risk

308. from a nuclear disaster and was once willing to

309. sacrifice the lives of US soldiers.

310. All in the name of nuclear supremacy.

311. The first atomic warfare maneuvers begin.

312. Selected at random,

313. these men will see the A-bomb close up.

314. In the 1950s, America's atomic weapons experiments at the

315. Nevada Test Site also included testing on human subjects.

316. The US Army wanted to understand what it would

317. take to fight on a nuclear battlefield.

318. Sergeant O'Brien? How about radiation?

319. Do you think there's much danger from radiation?

320. Well, radiation is the least of the worries that

321. the men are thinking about.

322. I think most people thought the radiation was

323. the greatest danger, didn't they?

324. Where did they learn different?

325. We were prior to our instructions here.

326. We received a very thorough briefing before we even

327. came this close to contact with it.

328. You feel that those instructions have given you

329. confidence in your abilities?

330. - Very much so. - To protect yourself?

331. Yes, sir.

332. And so, they began doing these series of tests.

333. They would dig trenches.

334. The men were told to get down in the trenches and

335. cover their eyes with their hands.

336. Soldiers who were on site for these tests described

337. seeing all of the bones in their hands...

338. with their eyes closed.

339. While the mushroom cloud is still being formed,

340. the soldiers pop out of the ground and run towards it...

341. because they were told it's important to understand

342. how to fight on a radioactive battlefield.

343. Many of them described walking past cages that had

344. test animals wearing various military uniforms.

345. Model homes that were constructed.

346. So, these soldiers are marching through these

347. sort of apocalyptic landscapes...

348. that are extremely radioactive, you know,

349. directly onto the site where the actual weapon was detonated.

350. And we now know without a doubt,

351. you don't fight on a radioactive battlefield,

352. you die there.

353. Some of these soldiers were ordered to advance

354. within half a mile of ground zero.

355. When I see the footage of young men walking into

356. what is effectively a suicide mission...

357. it breaks my heart, it outrages me.

358. But it also underscores that there are some leaders in the

359. American government who will violate the sacred compact

360. they have with our American men and women in uniform.

361. You're not supposed to send them on suicide missions

362. unless there's a higher calling.

363. And what higher calling was there in sending 19-year-old

364. and 20-year-old soldiers trudging into a nuke blast?

365. It's unconscionable.

366. And a lot of these folks developed cancers and

367. other problems over the time.

368. And when some of them went to the Veterans Administration,

369. in order to get health care, they were told that leukemia

370. wasn't covered under their VA benefits.

371. It's not just that that exposure and testing happens,

372. but every single time, American veterans have to fight for

373. recognition that it happened.

374. They have to fight for health care support after it happened.

375. And they have to claw and battle for compensation.

376. So, a number of these men who were still very young,

377. who had young families, and were receiving death sentences,

378. essentially, from their doctors,

379. a number of them contacted their elected officials and said,

380. "I need help getting medical care."

381. And these gentlemen who became known as the

382. atomic vets, really galvanized public concern.

383. As many as 400,000 American servicemen may have been

384. exposed to radiation from nuclear weapons testing.

385. And they helped people who, you know, ordinary people.

386. Housewives, Indigenous families.

387. People who had been pointing to health problems they believed

388. were connected to radiation exposure.

389. In 1990, the government finally passed the Radiation Exposure

390. Compensation Act, granting financial payouts

391. of between 50 and $100,000.

392. Anyone who's gone through a bout with cancer can tell you,

393. if you're uninsured, $50,000 doesn't cover a whole lot of

394. chemotherapy, unfortunately, nor does it actually make up

395. for the loss of a family member.

396. Over 38,000 total claims have been approved.

397. And around $2.5 billion has been paid out in compensation.

398. But over 13,000 applicants have had their claims denied,

399. including many members of the Shoshone Nation.

400. There were a lot of people like my husband who...

401. was an engineer. And, they would

402. take all the information from the experiments.

403. So, they'd go into the test area soon after the experiment.

404. He had died of cancer.

405. He drank a little bit after that, that experiment,

406. and they said that that was probably a cancer that

407. was caused by the alcohol.

408. So, we didn't get any compensation at all.

409. And it's not only the Shoshone

410. who are struggling to get compensation.

411. The Marshall Islanders are still denied medical treatment

412. for their conditions or payments for their conditions.

413. It is a constant fight.

414. Rough guess, hundreds of thousands of people...

415. in the United States and our possessions,

416. have died in the production, testing,

417. and maintenance of our nuclear weapons arsenal.

418. They're dying still.

419. And even today, we are all at risk from new and potentially

420. deadly nuclear threats that are kept hidden from us.

421. Most of the public, most politicians...

422. believe that nuclear weapons are safe and secure.

423. And that the day-to-day operations are reliable.

424. That is not true.

425. I, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, do solemnly swear

426. I will faithfully execute the office

427. of President of the United States.

428. - So help you God. - So help me God.

429. January 20th, 1961.

430. President Kennedy takes the oath of office.

431. Three days later, a nuclear armed B-52 bomber begins

432. a routine flight over North Carolina.

433. They had some engine trouble and, actually,

434. part of the bomber exploded.

435. In this particular case, it was carrying two extremely large

436. thermonuclear weapons, two hydrogen bombs.

437. Came right out of the fuselage.

438. The hydrogen bomb is basically like bringing

439. a piece of the sun down on earth.

440. Now, there are safety devices on all nuclear weapons

441. precisely intended to stop them from going off,

442. unless they're supposed to.

443. And in the case of one of these nuclear weapons,

444. the parachute deployed, it floated safely to Earth,

445. and it was recovered.

446. The other one wasn't so lucky.

447. The parachute didn't deploy.

448. And the signal to the bomb to fire was actually given.

449. So, the bomb should have exploded.

450. There was one safety feature,

451. apparently a low voltage switch, that held.

452. We were saved by a tiny microcircuit.

453. A switch, really.

454. If it had gone off, we would have lost about

455. half a North Carolina.

456. When a nuclear weapon is stolen, dropped,

457. somehow damaged, it's called a broken arrow.

458. Basically, meaning that the weapon is no longer

459. in the custody of who it's supposed to be in,

460. or that it won't function as intended.

461. And over the course of the nuclear era in the US,

462. there have been dozens of broken arrow incidents.

463. In addition to Broken Arrows, there have been a

464. terrifying number of white-knuckle close calls.

465. One of the most significant was in June 3rd, 1980,

466. when the NORAD board...

467. lit up with a ballistic missile attack

468. from the Soviet Union.

469. So, National Security Advisor Brzezinski

470. was woken up in the middle of the night.

471. And he was told by the military assistant,

472. "We've detected 220 incoming ICBMs from the Soviet Union."

473. And he decided to go back to the military aid, and said,

474. "Are you sure?" And the military aid checked and

475. came back and said, "No, we've made a mistake."

476. "It's not 220."

477. "It's 2,200."

478. Brzezinski thought this was it.

479. He looked over at his wife, sleeping,

480. and decided not to wake her because in thirty minutes,

481. we'd all be dead.

482. And Brzezinski says he was very close

483. to recommending retaliation.

484. Fortunately, there was a third phone call.

485. "It's a mistake. We're standing down."

486. NORAD did not detect any incoming nuclear weapons.

487. What happened is a computer chip failed,

488. and somehow triggered a warning that actually didn't exist.

489. Everything was perfectly fine.

490. The computer chip apparently cost 46 cents.

491. A computer chip almost caused World War Three.

492. Now, one might be tempted to say this was a one off,

493. but in fact it wasn't.

494. A similar computer chip failed 3 days later,

495. creating another warning of incoming nuclear weapons

496. that actually didn't exist.

497. There have been dozens of very significant false alarms.

498. Training tapes being inserted into computers simulating a

499. nuclear attack, and nobody knew it was just a training exercise.

500. Flocks of geese mistaken for a missile flight.

501. A rising moon over Norway mistaken for bomber launch.

502. But false alarms involving nuclear weapons

503. are not just a Cold War phenomena.

504. A false emergency alert about a ballistic missile threat

505. had people running for cover.

506. In 2018, all the residents of Hawaii got

507. emergency alert systems on their phone.

508. "Ballistic missile attack, seek cover.

509. This is not a drill."

510. And there was reason to believe it was true.

511. Rocket Man should have been handled a long time ago.

512. People thought this was it, cause tensions had been high

513. between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un,

514. the dictator of North Korea, with talk of fire and fury.

515. People are freaking out and, you know,

516. as well they should be.

517. Imagine just picking up your cell phone and seeing that the

518. government is telling you that you're about to be met with

519. nuclear Armageddon.

520. And so, people called family members in the mainland

521. to say goodbye.

522. I just want you to know that I love you guys.

523. You know, they took shelter anywhere they could think of.

524. People even took the covers off of manholes,

525. so that they could put their children in the storm drains.

526. And that maybe they would be protected there from

527. an incoming ballistic missile.

528. And for 38 terrifying minutes,

529. people thought this was the end of their lives.

530. Maybe the, the end of the world,

531. before it was disclosed that this was a mistake.

532. So, what went wrong?

533. An employee at the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency

534. accidentally sent out a real alert during a drill.

535. But if Hawaii had been connected to the national network,

536. and it was a national alert,

537. the entire country would have put been put into this panic

538. with no way of knowing whether it was real or not.

539. The point of all of these false alarms,

540. is once you get to the president,

541. how does the president know that it's a false alarm?

542. The president would have 15 minutes or less,

543. to make a decision about whether or not to respond.

544. How do we know that during that time, any mistake, any,

545. any problem, any glitch in the computer system would be

546. resolved, and that someone would be able to get to the

547. president and say, "Uh, wait a minute, um,

548. it's not 2,200 incoming nuclear weapons.

549. It's actually a faulty computer chip. My bad.

550. Sorry, we woke you"?

551. It's a bomb! Duck and cover!

552. But while Cold War fears led to irrational behavior,

553. they've been replaced by a complacency that may prove

554. to be even more dangerous.

555. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists say that we're

556. closer to the use of nuclear weapons now than

557. we were during the Cold War.

558. November 2008.

559. The world watches in stunned horror as terrorists carry out

560. a series of coordinated attacks in Mumbai, India.

561. The November attacks killed 164 people,

562. stirring fear that India and Pakistan,

563. both with nuclear arms, could slide toward war.

564. The attacks were the work of an Islamist militant group

565. based in Pakistan.

566. The terrorist attack was designed to kill large numbers

567. of people and provoke India into taking military action

568. against Pakistan, in order to trigger a larger war.

569. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists say that

570. we're closer to the use of nuclear weapons now

571. than we were during the Cold War.

572. The Cold War, in some ways, provided a kind of stability.

573. It was the US and the Soviet Union.

574. Today, there are more parties, more places for

575. miscalculations, more places about concern.

576. There are over 13,000 nuclear weapons in the world today.

577. While over 90% belong to the United States and Russia,

578. well over a thousand are in other countries.

579. These include North Korea, China, India and Pakistan.

580. And it's India and Pakistan where experts believe

581. the next nuclear war might break out.

582. These are captured Pakistani raiders.

583. This is a sample of their handywork at Batamaloo,

584. near Srinagar.

585. India and Pakistan have fought 4 wars or conflicts

586. since independence.

587. There's constant tension between the two sides.

588. What's changed since 1998, is that both sides

589. are now building nuclear arsenals.

590. And both of their arsenals were born out of a bizarre

591. American Cold War program called Atoms for Peace.

592. If a danger exists in the world,

593. it is a danger shared by all.

594. The Atoms for Peace program was kind of a demented,

595. utopian view of what nukes could be without recognizing

596. the unfortunate late-stage reality that we face today.

597. Information about the beneficial uses of atomic

598. energy knows no national boundaries.

599. The peaceful atom is here and now,

600. to serve what President Eisenhower has termed

601. the needs rather than the fears of mankind.

602. Under the program, the United States sent nuclear technology

603. to countries like the Congo and Iraq to for use developing

604. cheap, renewable energy, as long as they promised

605. not to use it for the development of atomic weapons.

606. The Atoms for Peace program was maybe the ultimate weapons

607. proliferation program in history.

608. Instead of sending AK 47s or sending fighter jets,

609. we sent the capacity to create nuclear weapons.

610. And thanks in part to US technology,

611. India successfully detonated its first nuclear bomb in 1974.

612. With Pakistan following in 1998.

613. Pakistan has said that if it fears that it's going to lose a

614. conventional war with India, it's gonna nuke India.

615. And India said if they nuke us, we're gonna nuke em back.

616. India and Pakistan both have about

617. 150 nuclear weapons, each.

618. Just a hundred nuclear weapons used on the largely

619. wooden urban course of South Asia...

620. would put enough smoke and particulates into the

621. atmosphere that would cover the Earth in a shroud.

622. That would last two or three years,

623. and you're gonna kill 40% of the food crops in the world,

624. unleashing a famine that would kill about

625. a billion to two billion people.

626. That is a civilization ending event.

627. And it's not only warring nations who may be able to

628. trigger a nuclear conflict.

629. Cyber-attacks have already happened on pipelines.

630. They've happened on the Pentagon.

631. They've happened on Fortune 500 companies.

632. Hackers have been able to get almost everywhere into

633. global computer systems.

634. Nuclear weapons are not unique to this.

635. I can tell you right now, there are definitely Chinese or

636. Russian spies who've gotten access to the power grids in

637. the United States and know how to take them out

638. in the event that they go to war with the US.

639. When it comes to nuclear weapons,

640. they're also not immune...

641. Everything could be hacked.

642. But cyber threats are more than the hacking of systems.

643. They also involve misinformation campaigns

644. that could cascade into a deadly confrontation.

645. April 23rd, 2013.

646. A tweet from the Associated Press's twitter account

647. sends the stock market into free fall.

648. The tweet was quickly deleted, but it shows what's possible.

649. I mean, the technology vulnerabilities are

650. pretty well documented at this point.

651. So, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that hackers

652. could get into a military Twitter account.

653. Or even a news organization and report false information that

654. would necessitate a response from an adversary that could

655. create a real-life war games scenario.

656. It'd be one thing if we had nuclear war because

657. we and the Russians or the Chinese just like

658. couldn't stop ourselves from it.

659. That would be a terrible tragedy.

660. But to do it because somebody is, you know,

661. playing with Twitter accounts?

662. It's impossible to reckon with how tragic that would be.

663. While our leaders tell us these nu clearweapons are

664. essential for national security, the truth is

665. they want them for another reason.

666. You can make a lot of money, making nuclear weapons.

667. That's why we still have these weapons.

668. It's not strategy, it's not logic.

669. It's all because of money.

670. Today, the Cold War has disappeared but

671. thousands of those weapons have not.

672. In a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war

673. has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up.

674. April 5th, 2009.

675. A recently elected Barack Obama makes his first major

676. foreign policy speech in the Czech Republic.

677. I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment

678. to seek the peace and security of a world

679. without nuclear weapons.

680. And then in the process of trying to get to that goal,

681. he starts to talk to the Russians about

682. arms control agreements.

683. Today is an important milestone

684. for nuclear security and nonproliferation.

685. And for US, Russian relations.

686. And the Republicans in Congress "We have a price for

687. agreeing to, to arms control with Russia".

688. That price was for President Obama to agree to modernize the

689. nuclear submarines, bombers and intercontinental ballistic

690. missiles that make up the US nuclear triad.

691. All these missiles, bombers and subs that we had built in

692. the Reagan buildup of the 1980s are coming to the

693. end of their operational life.

694. And so, the Republicans and the nuclear industrial complex

695. wanted to get new systems online.

696. And so, the agreement Obama made,

697. is now a $1.7 trillion modernization program,

698. to literally, modernize all parts of the nuclear triad.

699. To be sure, we do need to modernize some of these weapons.

700. But there's a big difference between a sort of fixer upper

701. that's gonna keep these nukes around for another few decades

702. and a total overhaul of the system. And unfortunately,

703. we're paying for the latter

704. under the rhetoric of the former.

705. And that's gonna give us a whole new generation of subs,

706. bombers, and missiles that are gonna last

707. until the end of this century.

708. We're locking ourselves into this Cold War arsenal

709. for another century.

710. Now we're coming off of a pandemic where the economy is

711. having problems, where there are lots of health issues...

712. and we're talking about $1.7 trillion for nuclear weapons?

713. If you had $1.7 trillion today to spend,

714. and you could spend it on something to improve the lives

715. of Americans, where would nuclear weapons spending

716. be on that list?

717. My guess is it's not anywhere near that list.

718. Instead, this new arsenal means multi-billion-dollar contracts

719. for some of the biggest weapons manufacturers

720. in the United States.

721. The entire nuclear procurement process is deeply corrupt.

722. From the contractors who generate the requirements

723. inside the Pentagon, to the politicians in Congress who

724. accept contributions from these same contractors.

725. Doveryai, no proveryai.

726. Trust, but verify.

727. You repeat that at every meeting.

728. The end of the Cold War brought an end to the arms race

729. with the Soviet Union.

730. But while the ideological necessity for our

731. nuclear arsenal quickly disappeared,

732. the weapons, themselves, did not...

733. as defense contractors fought to maintain the huge profits

734. they made building them.

735. There are two ways that this works.

736. One is just direct campaign contributions.

737. So, if you look at the Democrat, Jim Cooper,

738. is the chairman of the strategic subcommittee of the

739. House Armed Services Committee, a very good man.

740. But some of his largest contributors

741. are nuclear contractors. So, he's directly taking money

742. from nuclear contractors to keep him in office.

743. The second conflict of interest is jobs.

744. The defense contractors make sure that there is someone in

745. every congressional district, some subcomponent,

746. some manufacturing,

747. something in every congressional district...

748. that actually is part of that weapon system.

749. All of us, I think have a responsibility,

750. to insist that the politicians who are overseeing our nuclear

751. weapons not be tempted by financial or career

752. considerations when they're making the decisions,

753. cause these issues about the life of our planet,

754. about the risks Americans and the world are exposed to by

755. these nuclear weapons, they're decided by politics and money.

756. As long as these weapons exist, we're always

757. just minutes away from nuclear Armageddon.

758. It would take about an hour to destroy everything

759. humanity has built up over the millennia.

760. And so, really, the only way to kind of backpedal out of this

761. incredible state of national and global precarity,

762. is to disarm these weapons.

763. The more we're able to see that nuclear weapons are

764. the problem, that they're our ultimate threat,

765. not our ultimate security,

766. the more the public will start to think that

767. we have to have policies to reduce the risks

768. associated with these weapons and, eventually,

769. eliminate them altogether.