#192 – Annie Jacobsen on what would happen if North Korea launched a nuclear weapon at the US

#192 – Annie Jacobsen on what would happen if North Korea launched a nuclear weapon at the US

"Ring one: total annihilation; no cellular life remains. Ring two, another three-mile diameter out: everything is ablaze. Ring three, another three or five miles out on every side: third-degree burns among almost everyone. You are talking about people who may have gone down into the secret tunnels beneath Washington, DC, escaped from the Capitol and such: people are now broiling to death; people are dying from carbon monoxide poisoning; people who followed instructions and went into their basement are dying of suffocation. Everywhere there is death, everywhere there is fire.

"That iconic mushroom stem and cap that represents a nuclear blast — when a nuclear weapon has been exploded on a city — that stem and cap is made up of people. What is left over of people and of human civilisation." —Annie Jacobsen

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Pulitzer Prize finalist and New York Times bestselling author Annie Jacobsen about her latest book, Nuclear War: A Scenario.

Links to learn more, highlights, and full transcript.

They cover:

  • The most harrowing findings from Annie’s hundreds of hours of interviews with nuclear experts.
  • What happens during the window that the US president would have to decide about nuclear retaliation after hearing news of a possible nuclear attack.
  • The horrific humanitarian impacts on millions of innocent civilians from nuclear strikes.
  • The overlooked dangers of a nuclear-triggered electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack crippling critical infrastructure within seconds.
  • How we’re on the razor’s edge between the logic of nuclear deterrence and catastrophe, and urgently need reforms to move away from hair-trigger alert nuclear postures.
  • And plenty more.

Chapters:

  • Cold open (00:00:00)
  • Luisa’s intro (00:01:03)
  • The interview begins (00:02:28)
  • The first 24 minutes (00:02:59)
  • The Black Book and presidential advisors (00:13:35)
  • False alarms (00:40:43)
  • Russian misperception of US counterattack (00:44:50)
  • A narcissistic madman with a nuclear arsenal (01:00:13)
  • Is escalation inevitable? (01:02:53)
  • Firestorms and rings of annihilation (01:12:56)
  • Nuclear electromagnetic pulses (01:27:34)
  • Continuity of government (01:36:35)
  • Rays of hope (01:41:07)
  • Where we’re headed (01:43:52)
  • Avoiding politics (01:50:34)
  • Luisa’s outro (01:52:29)

Producer and editor: Keiran Harris
Audio engineering team: Ben Cordell, Simon Monsour, Milo McGuire, and Dominic Armstrong
Additional content editing: Katy Moore and Luisa Rodriguez
Transcriptions: Katy Moore

Episoder(326)

#188 – Matt Clancy on whether science is good

#188 – Matt Clancy on whether science is good

"Suppose we make these grants, we do some of those experiments I talk about. We discover, for example — I’m just making this up — but we give people superforecasting tests when they’re doing peer revi...

23 Mai 20242h 40min

#187 – Zach Weinersmith on how researching his book turned him from a space optimist into a "space bastard"

#187 – Zach Weinersmith on how researching his book turned him from a space optimist into a "space bastard"

"Earth economists, when they measure how bad the potential for exploitation is, they look at things like, how is labour mobility? How much possibility do labourers have otherwise to go somewhere else?...

14 Mai 20243h 6min

#186 – Dean Spears on why babies are born small in Uttar Pradesh, and how to save their lives

#186 – Dean Spears on why babies are born small in Uttar Pradesh, and how to save their lives

"I work in a place called Uttar Pradesh, which is a state in India with 240 million people. One in every 33 people in the whole world lives in Uttar Pradesh. It would be the fifth largest country if i...

1 Mai 20241h 18min

#185 – Lewis Bollard on the 7 most promising ways to end factory farming, and whether AI is going to be good or bad for animals

#185 – Lewis Bollard on the 7 most promising ways to end factory farming, and whether AI is going to be good or bad for animals

"The constraint right now on factory farming is how far can you push the biology of these animals? But AI could remove that constraint. It could say, 'Actually, we can push them further in these ways ...

18 Apr 20242h 33min

#184 – Zvi Mowshowitz on sleeping on sleeper agents, and the biggest AI updates since ChatGPT

#184 – Zvi Mowshowitz on sleeping on sleeper agents, and the biggest AI updates since ChatGPT

Many of you will have heard of Zvi Mowshowitz as a superhuman information-absorbing-and-processing machine — which he definitely is. As the author of the Substack Don’t Worry About the Vase, Zvi has s...

11 Apr 20243h 31min

AI governance and policy (Article)

AI governance and policy (Article)

Today’s release is a reading of our career review of AI governance and policy, written and narrated by Cody Fenwick.Advanced AI systems could have massive impacts on humanity and potentially pose glob...

28 Mar 202451min

#183 – Spencer Greenberg on causation without correlation, money and happiness, lightgassing, hype vs value, and more

#183 – Spencer Greenberg on causation without correlation, money and happiness, lightgassing, hype vs value, and more

"When a friend comes to me with a decision, and they want my thoughts on it, very rarely am I trying to give them a really specific answer, like, 'I solved your problem.' What I’m trying to do often i...

14 Mar 20242h 36min

#182 – Bob Fischer on comparing the welfare of humans, chickens, pigs, octopuses, bees, and more

#182 – Bob Fischer on comparing the welfare of humans, chickens, pigs, octopuses, bees, and more

"[One] thing is just to spend time thinking about the kinds of things animals can do and what their lives are like. Just how hard a chicken will work to get to a nest box before she lays an egg, the a...

8 Mar 20242h 21min

Populært innen Fakta

mikkels-paskenotter
fastlegen
dine-penger-pengeradet
relasjonspodden-med-dora-thorhallsdottir-kjersti-idem
foreldreradet
rss-strid-de-norske-borgerkrigene
treningspodden
jakt-og-fiskepodden
takk-og-lov-med-anine-kierulf
sinnsyn
hverdagspsyken
rss-bisarr-historie
tomprat-med-gunnar-tjomlid
rss-kunsten-a-leve
rss-kull
fryktlos
rss-var-forste-kaffe
rss-sunn-okonomi
gravid-uke-for-uke
hagespiren-podcast