I dont believe it.
It makes no sense.
"There is something so strange."
"Perhaps you could suggest some
fantastic explanation. "
"Could'nt it be this sort of thing"
He turned the drawing round.
"Yes," she said,
"That is what I mean."
This was the first explanation
of the splitting the atom.
Robert Oppenheimer said:
"Impossible."
But within 15 minutes he decided
it was real.
He realised it would release
some great amount of energy,
That you could
generate power
and make bombs.
Within one week, on
Oppenheimer's black board
There was a drawing of
the bomb.
Enrico Fermi stood
in his office
and looked out of Manhattan.
He kept his hand to
the size of a tennis balll.
"A little bomb like that" He said
"And it would all disappear."
Countdown To Zero
There is no doubt in my mind
if the terrorists had
acquired a nuclear weapon,
They would not have hasitated to use it.
SoI guess the question is:
Could They Ever Get One?
Al-Qaida is determined
to acquire nuclear weapons
and use them if they get them.
In the early 90's
they tried to buy highly
enriched uranium in Sudan
They got scammed
Just prior to the
we do know that Osama bin Laden and
his lieutinent Zawahiri
sat down with two
Pakistani nuclear scientists
and discussed
nuclear weapons.
Before releasing sarin gas
in the Tokyo subway
the Japanese cult
Aum Shinrikyo
attempted to acquire a
nuclear bomb in Russia.
They bought a sheet
farm in Australia
to mine uranium to
build their own bomb.
The objective of Al-Qaeda is:
is to kill 4 million Americans
including two million children
This is in his calculations,
the..which is required to
balance the scales of justice.
He takes
various incidents
from Shatila to
the war in Iraq,
and counts up the
bodycount and says
"Thats how many people
we owe: 4 million. "
You are not going to get
hijacking airplanes and
crashing them into buildings.
Actually, I am not that worried
about nuclear weapons.
Its not one of my main worries.
Isnt everyone worried about
nuclear weapons?
There are all concerned
nuclear war?
Thats a stupid answer,
no
I don't know. Its never been something
that I actually had to think
in my everyday life.
It might get on your conscience
and maybe then disappears
I do not think anybody is going
to use in this day and age
it is ridiculous to even think about it.
What can you do?
Nothing.
At the end of the day a small button
and there is going to be a big mess at the end of that
Somebody is going to make a mistake one day
and we are all going to suffer for it.
There are three ways to
acquire a nuclear weapon:
You could steal a bomb,
You could buy a bomb
and you could build a bomb.
Of all the things I've learned after 9/11,
about terrorism iintent
the most startling discovery
for me personally
was realising they were trying to
build a bomb.
The hardest part of
making a nuclear bomb
is getting the material,
highly enriched uranium
or plutonium.
Many countries have
these materials,
and often they are poorly guarded
But if I were
a terrorist
intending to build
a nuclear bomb,
and i wanted to blow up
a major city
I would look to the countries of
the former Soviet Union.
There have been many cases
involving the theft
of highly enriched
uranium or plutonium.
And every time there has been a black market ceasure
of stolen HEU or plutonium
andthey were able to
track to its source
It came from Russia.
There was a case at a Russian naval base
in the early 1990s.
One of the naval personel told a relative of his
where the highly enriched uranium at this place was
This relative walked through a gapping hole
and a security fence
walked upto what you and i would
consider to be a tool shaft
snapped the lock
with an iron bar.
He set off no alarm.
It was not detected at all.
The Russian military prosecutor in that
case said, quote:
"Potatoes were guarded better ".
At a facility called Luch,
where they fabricate fuel made from
highly enriched uranium,
there was a worker there who knew
that as long as the output
was within about 3 percent of the input
they figured it was normal loses to waste
and they didnt bother to investigate.
So he kept stealing
small amounts
of highly enriched uranium
day after day,
over a long period of time.
Eventually he stole a kilogram and a half
of 90% of highly enriched uranium
He set off no alarms.
Noone noticed.
He had friends
who were making their living
stealing car batteries.
And they said:
"Maybe the guy in Moscow who buys or is still in car batteries
"will Buy your
stolen uranium . "
So they went down to
the train station together,
and the police came in and arrested the car battery thieves
and he got arrested along with them
Thats the only way he was ever caught .
We have cases in which people
from the Russian nuclear arsenal
were sellling material
and they were captured
We have cases in which people from
Russian nuclear labs
were selling materials
they was captured.
Almost all of those cases
until the material was seized
and had never been noticed
to have been missing.
All the black market seizures that
I am ware of were serendepetous
They were caught by luck.
So we dont know weather it is
the iceberg or the tip of the iceberg.
Once you have managed to acquire
highly enriched uranium,
you need to smuggle it out of the country
Georgia is located
along Russia's southern border
and things like highly enriched uranium
could be smuggled from such a place
by Azerbaijan,
Iraq, Iran,
Turkmenistan, Afghanistan
and so on so forth.
The Georgians invented a so called man
of Turkish nationality
who said he was a Muslim and
representing a
serious organization.
Oleg Khintsagov
believed he was selling
highly enriched uranium
to make an atomic weapon to terrorists
If a truck driver
can get hold of it,
a small time husler
who just wants to become a rich guy
imagine what
professionals could have done
Real professionals
with an ideology,
with an agenda
with brains
Once you have moved the
highly enriched uranium,
you could use
any number of ports
in the Middle East
or the Mediterranean
to ship the
HEU to your destination.
smuggling highly enriched Uranium
into the United States,
is pretty straight forward
lead pipe will
shield the HEU.
The detector would have be
within a few inches
to pick up any radiation.
And then hide it amongst
everyday goods
A hundred pounds of highly enriched uranium
is smaller than a football.
It would fit in a 6 pack beer cans
go to the united states everyday
Every way the drugs come to new york city
would be the same way you would imagine
highly enriched uranium coming.
If you have any doubt about
the ability of al-Qaeda
to bring highly enriched uranium
into the U.S.
They could always hide it
a bale of marijuana.
Terrorism is just one threat
the deliberate threat.
There is also the
unintentional threat
of a nuclear detonation
by accident,by error
or by misjudgment.
We like to think that
the U.S. military
or other military who are
controlling nuclear weapons
are perfect organizations ,
they will never fail .
We expect them to have 100% reliability.
But even the well-disciplined,
very professional U.S military
made serious serious mistakes
with nuclear weapons.
An atomic bomb breaks loose
from a mounting shakle / i
in a B-47 jet over
Florence, South Carolina, / i
causing a sensational freak accident./ i
A B-52 bomber was loaded with nuclear weapons by mistake / i
An American airplane flew 1500 miles
across the nation we are told, / i
with six nuclear warheads on aboard. / i
And nobody knew.
not the aircraft crew, / i
not the commanders on ground. / i
we have had B-52's explode
in the air
during refueling mission
causing 4 thermonuclear weapons
to fall onto the Spain territory
and into the Mediterranean.
A B-52 bomber
carrying nuclear weapons / i
crashed near U.S
Air Force space in Greenland, / i
scattering deadly plutonium
over the icecap. / i
In 1960, a BOMARC air defence missile exploded,
melting a nuclear warhead.
In 1968, the USS Scorpion
sank
of Azores.
Nuclear weapons on board
were never found.
A B-47 bomber disappeared
over the Mediterranean.
Nuclear weapons on board
were never located.
In 1959, an aircraft crashed near
Whidbey Island, Washington.
The nuclear debt charges
were not recovered.
Skyhawk's strike aircraft
carrying a nuclear weapon
rolled off an aircraft carrier
in the Sea of Japan
The weapon was never recovered.
There are many ways
in which efforts
to make a system
more reliable
actually backfire and make it less reliable
Sometimes we had
a redundant system.
and backup systems
so that if one fails,
another can take its place.
But complexity is the
enemy of reliability.
Because as you add
system is making more complex
because its harder to understand
all the potential interactions.
Its that unlikely bizzare interaction
where one person interacts with
another in a way that wasnt anticipated
or one backup system interacts
with another
in ways that you cant figure out ahead of time
and therefore cant plan around
Those are what cause the problems
In 1961, a B-52
broke apart in midair
over Goldsboro,
North Carolina
causing two nuclear bombs to fall
One parachute functioned properly,
and that bomb survived with minor damage
The other parachute failed to open
When that bomb hit
five of six safety devices malfuntioned
A single switch prevented
a nuclear explosion.
When i worked
in the Pentagon
i believed that the likelyhood
of a nuclear weapons accident
in the United States occuring was very low
I still believe that
But low probablity events happen
they happen all the time.
There's a first time in
history for every event.
Eventually those low probablity events will occur
No! That supposed to happen?
Like there is probably
every country in the world today
How many countries do i think
have nuclear weapons?
- List them?
- China.
I dont think i suckup for this.
- UK. may be
America i'm guessing
Oh. Oh. Us Oh
I .. that was a given
- France.
- Germany?
- Australia?
- Canada? I do not think Canada
- No, not Japan.
- There's more. I know there's more.
Iraq, Iran,
Saudi Arabia.
All other countries. They are not
telling us. They have them
- Afghanistan?
- North Korea?
- North Korea.
-Do they?Ok, North Korea.
Who knows?Who knows exactly?
I think that's it.Yeah
After the United States detonated.
the first atomic bomb
in the New Mexico desert
nuclear technology
began to spread
and other countries
began to acquire
their own
nuclear bombs.
Great credit is due
for this mighty British achievement
for it seems that by the possession of such
deadly weapons peace can be maintained
in this troubled world
At Reggane,
deep in the Sahara
France goes forward
with the detonation
of her first
atomic bomb. / i
The explosion carries France
a step forward / i
towards the dream of General. de Gaulle
towards national glory restored . / i
This is a giagantic success
of Mao Tse-Tung's thought. / i
Our nations first nuclear test
surpasses the levels of
the first nuclear tests / i
of the United States,
Britain and France. / I
Their criminal intent to block and prevent
our nations/ i
people from nuclear weapons / i
have been thoroughly smashed/ i
Pakistan, which has often
went to war with India, / i
might now have to join the
once select nuclear community / i
in self defense
and warned: / i
"numbers in the nuclear club will not stop at six"/ i
One Prime Minister of Pakistan said
Pakistan would build a nuclear weapon
even if it meant that the people would
have to eat grass
"We will make the bomb even if
we have to eat grass. "
In Karachi, they
poured into the streets / i
pulling the symbol of the
power they were celebrating. / i
The bomb has become a
source of national pride. / i
thought there was a jubliation
in the streets of Pakistan.
The first time we achieved something
which places us in the ranks
of very very few
countries of the world.
We were proud
of our scientists,
we were proud of
our capabilities,
we were proud of our strength.
The people thought that :
"Now let India
do anything to Pakistan.
"Let's see what they do."
I had North Korean officials say to me
a lesson they took away from the
toppling of Saddam Hussein was that
Saddam was ousted because
he didnt have a bomb
They were not going to let the same
thing happen to Kim Jong-Il.
Therefore,they needed
to have a bomb.
North Korea has
feared of disappearing
into what the communists used to call
the "dustbin of history,"
like all their other communist friends
and they see the nukes
as the one thing that makes them the country
that is taken seriously by the U.S
and the other big players in the neighbourhood
Every country has enemies.
Every country can use
self defense
as a rationale for
acquiring nuclear weapons.
But if every country does so
it is a much more dangerous world.
When we see something that is
technically sweet, / i
you do it . / i
That is the way it was
the atomic bomb.
The father of the atomic bomb,
Robert Oppenheimer / i
gave some frank answers to
some important questions in 1947. / i
I have been asked whether in
the years to come will it be
pssible to kill
in the 20 largest
American towns / i
by the use of
atomic bombs / i
in a single night. / i
I am afraid that the answer to
that question is yes. / i
I have been asked whether
there is hope for the naions security / i
In keeping secrets some of the
knowledge / i
which has gone into the making of the bombs. / i
I am afraid there is no such hope
A nuclear weapon in a sense
is the most
simple configuration of
nuclear material
that you can imagine
You just bring together
certain quantity of
fissile material
highly enriched uranium
or plutonium
and if you do it right
it will explode.
The design of the first
atomic bomb
was a very deep secret
In fact that was a time when
people didnt even know
whether a bomb was possible.
Now the making of the atom bomb
has become much easier.
Those who say that building
a nuclear weapon is easy
They are very wrong
Those who say building a crude device is very difficult
They are more wrong
Do you agree with that statement?
I wont comment on that statement
- Okay, Alright
People from the U.S Nuclear laboratory were
testified to a classified section to the Congress
and they said it would be possible
make a nuclear bomb
with all parts being
Commercially available
except from the actual nuclear material
Senator Biden asked
the heads of the three
weapons labs:
Is it possible?"Is it really possible that the
terrorists could do this? "
They said "yes."
They said:"This is something that we test
our graduate students from time to time.
"We take two students who
havnt been prepared for doing this"
We tell them: "See if you can
make a bomb that would work. "
"And on the whole most of them passed this test"
Biden said: "Prove it"
And so they went and
made a nuclear bomb,
with everything other than
the nuclear material,
from commercial parts.
They actually brought it in to the
classified hearing room in the Senate.
Typically, an implosion
bomb would have something like a
the size of a grapefruit.
If, lets say, between
is available,
then the design is not
a major factor.
It would not be very efficient.
it would not use all the uranium that was used in it.
and yet it would be enough to level a city
During my 10 years
as prime minister,
what i really noticed was that
it was actually the threat of the proliferation,
the fact that these
weapons could fall
into other peoples hands
That was the thing
that troubled me,
that kept me
awake at night.
In the capital, Islamabad, / i
word hit the streets in early afternoon:
Another nuclear device
tested successfully. / i
As
Pakistan celebrated, / i
the public hailed AQ Khan
as the father of the Islamic bomb. / i
In 1974, AQ Khan
was working at a company
that was developing a brand new
process of enriching uranium
He stole their designs and took
the list of all the suppliers.
At the end of the day he is
not really a master scientist
but he is a master smuggler
and a master organizer.
He knows how to get
the pieces out of the countries
and how to find stuff
and buy stuff
There was this whole plan
to start an operation setup
by the intelligence services,
by the army and by Dr. Khan
Restrictions were placed
Sanctions were placed.
But somehow the pakistanis
got around that
and the formal help actually
came from India's enemy- China
China gave a blueprint of a
nuclear bomb to Pakistan.
Around
early 1980s,
Khan makes contact
with the Iranians,
who were very interested
in getting a bomb
but clearly dont have the scientific
or industrial capacity
to do it themselves
And thus he starts on a
a commercial enterprise.
Khan has got a full marketing
regime laid out
brochures and videos tapes that
offers nuclear wares
It extremely lucrative business
He had extensive
contacts, networks,
and he didnt much care about
who the ultimate client was going to be
He contacted Iran
North Korea, Libya,
but he didnt just give them the technologies
He also took the bomb designs
that the Pakistanis had
and threw those in as a sweetner
He gave them 24/7 technology support
.
Got a problem?
Call 1-800-AQKHAN.
It was a full service operation
The U.S. intelligence began
to focus on AQ Khan
in the late 1990s.
The homerun was in
December 2003 with Libya.
The CIA and British Intelligence
essentially caught the Khan network red handed
Selling a full scale nuclear weapon to Libya.
If it wasnt for AQ Khan,
Libya never would have got the centrifuges
but that they have
thankfully today given up
If it wasnt for AQ Khan,
there wouldnt be an Iranian nuclear program
Iran is the tip of the spear
It's the big problem
that we have to solve.
They promised not to
build nuclear weapons,
but the problem is that the
very same centrifugals
very same factory
that can enrich uranium
to low quantities
for nuclear fuel
can enrich it
to high quantities
for nuclear weapons.
So the question is:
Do you trust Iran?
By their own admission they
have deceived inspectors
about their nuclear activities
for 17 years.
Without question Iran is trying
to get a nuclear bomb.
They have made that very clear,
despite their promises
that they are only pursuing
civil and peaceful objectives
for their nuclear program.
They are really good
They are trying to bring things in
that can be used for their nuclear program
The Iranians
have worked very hard
to hiding and disguising their facilities
Many of their facilities are
in crowded urban areas
underground,
extremely well protected
from any sort of
aerial bombing
If Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons capability
the impact is across the whole of the the region
We will get a whole set of other countries
deciding they have got to acquire
nuclear weapons capability
Syria, Saudi Arabia,
Turkey, Egypt ...
the rivals of the Iranian
Shite state
would match their capabilities
and would go from the Middle East
with one nuclear armed nation Israel
to one with three, four or five
nuclear armed nations
They are surrounded by
very unstable regimes and countries .
If Iran acquires
everything it needs,
without doubt pieces of that
become more readily available
to terrorist organizations like Hamas.
The risk that you have today
with regimes like
Iran or North Korea
is they are prepared
to start trading
that nuclear weapons capability
and technology.
The Pakistanis had the
nuclear know how.
they didnt have a
delivery system.
The North Koreans
had the missile,
and didnt have the
nuclear know how
So there was a natural convergence of interests here
The North Koreans have
a long track record of
selling military technology
and missiles to
the Syrians,to the Iranians,
to the Iraqis, Pakistanis.
They dont really
have any other exports.
Daily life is very real
Food is in short supply
you drive around the
capital,Pyongyang, at night
and its basically dark.
There is a famous
satellite photo
that shows the
Korean peninsula.
and in the south, we see all these lights,
and then its just black
we are still dealing with his years
of unchecked activities and contacts
and its really a genie out of the bottle
that cannot be easily put back
We spend billions of dollars
putting in radiation detectors
but highly enriched uranium
is easily shielded
If you are depending on
portal monitors
to defend a city
against a nuclear detonation,
You have done far too much too late
Nuclear weapons
dont have to be
exactly on target.
Close is good enough.
If a terrorist thinks
that the portal monitor
might detect weapon,
they set it off in the port.
highly enriched uranium is
easy to smuggle
the radiation is very weak.
The detectors that we are
putting in place now
would have no chance of detecting
HEU
in a cargo container.
The signature of highly enriched uranium
is so slight
that they would have to set
the monitors very high
to detect it,and so
they are getting
thousands of false alarms
every day.
Toilets, will set it off
china
Ceramics,
stones like granites,
lot of biological materials
like tobacco, some algae,
televisions ,the
old style televisions,
kitty litter,lot of chemical products,
and well other stuff also
You wants to smuggle a
bomb into the United States?
Ship it in a truck with a kitty litter
No one would ever find it
They are great for really
radioactive stuff,
like cesium or something
that might be used
in a "dirty bomb."
But for the stuff that you
would use to make a nuclear bomb
that would incenerate the
heart of a major city
they are not gonna detect that.
Robert Oppenheimer
in 1946, he appeared in a
closed door session
of the Senate,
and one of the senators
asked him
if nuclear terrorism
was a potential threat.
He said "Of course"
"Terrorists could bring a
bomb into New York City
"And destroy the city."
Somebody asked him :
"How would you stop it?"
He said:
"With a screwdriver,
"To open up every container
that comes into this city. "
Once you have smuggled the highly enriched uranium
into the U.S.you would need a
place to build the bomb.
The bomb could be built
right in the target city.
The hard part was
what we did in 1945.
The hard part is doing
it the first time.
This is no longer a conceptual challenge
There is no trick.
There is no magic
that needs to be figured out
It's really just an engineering challenge
It's definitely not rocket science.
The rocket science
is more difficult.
you can make a
very simple weapon,
a so called gun type weapon
which was the one used in Hiroshima
It was so simple we didnt even test it
before we dropped it
It is essentially just
a gun barrel.
with a target and you can projectile,
and you propel the projectile into the target.
you will need an artillary gun
to fire a
one piece of HEU in the other,
which would be bolted
onto the muscle of the gun
The military sells these
things as surplus,
but they sell them to save it
You would have to make the
gun capable of shooting again
and you would want to test fire the gun
to make sure that
that it fired the
projectile at the right speed.
This is the only thing that
you would need to do off-site.
you would need a
group of people ...
lets say,between 15 to 20 to 25,
who would be knowledgable in
particular aspects
of weapons designs
of explosives.
Two or three people
to do the machining,
two or three people to
work on the gun
two or three people
to work on electronics,
People who are experts
in ballistics
People who know something
about nuclear physics.
you just need the machinist and metallar
just to make the pieces into the right
shapes and make sure they fit together
Ordinary explosives and
detonators
maybe some
electronic equipment.
You can go online
and easily find the
blade for $ 10,000.
you could find the furnace
for about $ 50,000.
And you can even find the
surplus recoilless rifle
probably also
for $ 10,000.
More than 90% of the effort
in the Manhattan Project
was making the
nuclear material
to make
the nuclear bomb.
If you can get hold of
that nuclear material,
then it doesnt take a
Manhattan Project to make a bomb.
If the circumstances
are right,
acquiring a
complete bomb
may be easier
than building one
In Algeria, in 1961,
officers within the French
millitary rebelled
and tried to seize a nuclear weapon.
As the rebels closed in
the weapon was detonated in a
degraded explosion
to prevent it from falling into the
hands of the rebelling officers.
The Japanese death terror cult, Aum Shinrikyo,
attemted to buy a nuclear
bomb from the Soviet Union.
They had a lot of resources,
We are talking well over
billion dollars of assets.
and secondly they had
tremendous access. At one point,
the group had more members in Russia in the
former Soviet Union than they had in Japan
In 1994, a senior leader made eight trips to Russia
His personal notebook
included a shopping list
for buying a nuclear warhead
for $ 15 million.
A perfectly secure nuclear weapon
is also a perfectly
unusable one
So here one has this paradox
between security and usability
Where is the worlds most dangerous place right now?
mu money it is Pakistan.
you have got an unstable government,
plus enough material for
up to a 100 nuclear weapons,
plus Osama bin Laden in the country.
What we have seen over the last two or three years
has been a spiral that has
been going downwards
Destabilization,the
spread of the Taliban,
the spread of radicalism,
the collapse of the economy.
So could there be a cornals coup in Pakistan
by Islamic radicals
within the military
and then could nuclear
weapons be at risk?
What happens if that country destablises?
What happens if the
army splits?
Who gets the weapons?
Who gets the
material for the weapons?
Who gets the scientists
who know how to build the weapons?
There is no such thing as perfect command and control
over the nuclear weapons,
even in the sophasticated
of the arsenals.
from the levels of the presidents gone down
there are human weaknesses,
technical problems
deficiencies and
vulnerabilities.
I was the launch officer for
Minuteman missiles.
and I spent three years
in Montana in a hole
in an undergorund launch
control centre
I was one of the guys responsible for
for getting these missiles off ground
in one minute. we didnt call them
"Minuteman missiles" for nothing.
When I was serving in the Air Force
as the launch officer,
there was a device in the launch control centre
into which 12 digits
had to be dialed in
in order to unlock the missiles for firing
This had been installed under Robert McNamara
over the objections of the Strategic Air Command
Since they couldnt prevent the panel from being installed
the StrategicAir Command
in Omaha
had set these codes to zero
and we all knew it.
That was the secret unlock code
for firing
our missiles:
In fact, in our launch
check list
we had to ensure
that the unlock code
was set to al zeros
before we completed
the launch sequence.
This changed in 1977
when they started using
actual codes.
But until then, I and one other
crew member
could have actually
formatted a launch order
a completely valid launch order
and transmitted it to the
entire American stratergic arsenal.
Looks like we are in a shooting war
Oh hell.Oh the russians have got it?
i think: Thats what i have been told / i
just came in on the
red phone.
My orders are toseal this base tight
and thats what i mean to do, seal it tight
Now I want you to transmit Plan R
"R" for "Robert"
to the wing.
- Plan "R",for "Robert".
- Is it that bad, sir?
looks like its pretty hairy
- Yes, sir.
I remember watching
"Dr. Strangelove"
and thinking they
had it all wrong.
You dont need to be a general.
We were only lieutenants,
but we could have started
World War III just as
easily as Gal. Jack Ripper.
We could have triggered
implementation
of the U.S. nuclear war plan
involving thousands and thousands
of nuclear weapons
fired at the
Soviet Union and China.
Standby
Message followed / I
Alpha, Tango, Golf, Reamer. / i
The life of a
watch officer
is really Pavlovian.
You have been trained and conditioned
so thoroughly
you kind of march up a long step
into a very well rehearsed script
thats written by check lists.
Step 1: All keys inserted. / i
Roger
We would jump up unlock our safe
take out codes
Check the codes against the mesage
and then proceed through a launch check list that
takes about one minute to carry an armour
Lets enable the missiles.
Key program activated. / I
All in flight. BF all.
Unlock code inserted. / I
Standby...
Unlock code inserted.
enable
Its enabled.
At the end of that process to
turn the keys
and launch upto 50 missiles
at Soviet Union and / or China.
Today, the position of
United States and Russia
is exactly the same as
it was during the Cold War.
So if the orders came
down,during now
fall of the Berlin Wall,
It would take about
two minutes
to launch all of the US nuclear ballistic missiles
their tunnels
in central U.S.
out of their tubes
in the midwest
It would time for the
Russians to do the same thing
and then it would take another 10 to 12 minutes
for everything else
thats on
launch ready alert
to be fired
So that within 15 minutes
all the forces on the launch ready alert
would be in the air in their flight
to the other side of the planet.
strategic nuclear weapons,
very high yield.
And they could kill
over a 100 million
Russians and Americans
within 30 minutes.
When we are working on nuclear
apps control
i found myself in a briefing in the Pentagon with a colonel
we had a short exchange about this
and in this context of this exchange
he said:
"But I do not understand what
would be such a big deal"
"If there was a
nuclear exchange"
"Only about 500 million
people would die.
"Life would go on afterwards."
And I can remember having a feeling like Woody Allen
and recall
"I'm sorry i have got an appointment
back on planet earth"
I dont think that anyone
really knows
how many nuclear weapons
there are on the planet today.
- I have a ...
- Does anyone know?
May be thousands,i dont know
Far more than I know.
I do not know. 15 000.
- 20 000.
- 50 000?
- 100 000.
- 500 000.
There is enough firepower
on a US nuclear sub
to annihilate
probably half the planet.
I have heard people say that we
have enough
nuclear weapons to create a new sun.
I think couple to
eliminate this city.
Do you know how many are there?
We estimate that there are about
The good news is
there used to be 60 000.
So we have cut those
arsenals by more than half.
But we, the United States,
still has about
on missiles poised for launch
in 50 minutes or less.
The really bad news is
that the Russians have the same.
If the Russians fired
missiles at the United States
the first warning
would come from satellites,
and they could detect
the flame from the booster rocket
within seconds,
easily
within a minute.
Suddenly, this early warning
hub in the United States
would become very frenzy
to try figure out
whether this is a false
alam or whether this is a real attack
and determine this
in 60 seconds.
The President would receive a briefing
from the duty officer
at Strategic Command Headquaters
That briefing of the President
of his response options
and their consequences
has to be delievered in as
little as 30 seconds
The president normally
would have no more than 12 minutes
to make a decision,
and maybe its little
as 10 seconds.
I knew that if the Soviets
did launch an attack,
that it would take 26 minutes for an
ICBM to leave russian soil
and land in Washington
or New York.
And I had that much time to
decide how to respond.
And the timeline was very short
We had just a few minutes to make a decision
how to respond at
what level of intensity.
Somewhere before the 10th minute
the order to execute
would be issued
The Strategic Air Command
probably would be airbourne by then
just as a precaution.
There might be a Presidential evacuation
so that the president would survive
an attack on Washington
But I know of cases
in which the President
chose not to be evacuated
And roughly by the 28th
minute, at the latest,
those of us not evacuated
would be dead.
For us it was a
kind of suicide duty
Any missile landing within
half a mile of our location
would probably have killed us
If we had survived the attack,
we were supposed to go to
a randezvous farm
Our air will only
So we go out through an escape
which was filled with sand
We would have to release the bolts
on cover and let the sand fall through
and then
crawl up the tube
Our tube came up the parking lot
so we would have to break through asphalt to get out
The randevous point be
and we would have to walk.
Disnt really matter though
Everyone knew that the radiation
would kill us quickly anyway
and you would never make
it to the rendezvous
In 1995, Pete Sampras won the
U.S. Open and Wimbledon.
George Clooney made his
first big movie
A bomb destroyed the
federal building in Oklahoma city
OJ Simpson was
acquitted of murder.
And we also came close
to an accidental nuclear missiles launch.
On January 25, 1995,
the United States launched a
rocket from Norway
to study
the northern hights
We told the Russians that
we were gonna launch that rocket
but somebody must have
forgot how to pass word on it
When they picked up the 4 stages of this rocket
they initially interpreted
this as 4 warheads
from a U.S nuclear submarine
which we often station off the coast of Norway
possibly
directed at Moscow.
That fit exactly
the characteristics
of the beginning of a
nuclear strike
One missile, coming over
exploding in the atmosphere
and sending out an electromagnetic pulse
that would fry all the electronics
radar surveillance,
Computers in the country to be attacked,
followed by an onslought of nuclear weapons
And for the first
in the nuclear age,
the Russians actually opened up the nuclear football
They went to
President Yeltsin,
they opened up the command and
launch codes, the button,
put on the desk and said:
"We are under attack."
Boris Yeltsin was basically given
Fortunately, Yeltsin
wasnt drunk
and he didnt believe what
the military was telling him.
He said:
"There must be some mistake."
Both the U.S. and Russia
guide their nuclear response
with a doctrine called
"Launch on Warning"
It is the policy if you believe
that you are under attack
you are supposed to launch the missiles.
you dont wait for them to land.
According to Russian military doctrine
Boris Yeltsin should have
launched all out nuclear attack
on the United States that morning.
We do not know what
happened in the Kremlin.
All we know is that he didnt.
There have been a no. of false
alarms during the Cold War.
We have had ocassions
where the rising moon
was interpreted to be a
Russian ICBMs attack.
A flock of geese
was thought to be bombers.
A training tape
was slipped into a computer
at our command and control
headquarters at NORAD
Everyone involved
thought
there was an actual attack underway.
A tape was inserted into the
early warning hub in Colorado
that simulated a large scale
Soviet nuclear attack.
And no one realised that it was
just a training tape
until the U.S had gone
into this sort of frenzy
check list procedure
to prepare
for nuclear war.
Airborne command posts,
actually,in some cases, took off.
The Presidents dooms day plane
actually left its base
in preparation
for an incoming Soviet strike.
Senator Charles Percy
happened to be there
at the time
and said there was
absolute panic.
Another false alarm
was caused by a computer
chip malfuntion
that generated
indications of large scale
Soviet attack
We raised the
alert levels.
Crews took launch
codes out of their safes.
Inserted the keys into
the launch switches.
Zbigniew Brzezinski was woken up
in the middle of the night
with the assured instruction
that a nuclear attack is underway
and that he had to go
wakeup President Carter.
There was 8 minutes worth of
nuclear launch preparations
that were triggered
by malfunctioning
computer chip
that costs less than a dollar.
And having missiles on hair trigger
is an accident waiting to happen.
As Fermi said
about the physics:
"What isnt forbidden
is compulsory,''
it will eventually happen.
There is nothing that makes
the launch of nuclear weapons impossible
If the probability
isnt zero, it will happen.
Right now the world has a policy
that is based heavily on technology
you keep something secret and
you call it a day
But secrecy has half life.
Things leak out
Centrifuges happen to be the technology
that is going to change the game.
They are going to democratize the process
of building nuclear weapons.
Uranium exists
everywhere on Earth.
Its more common than tin.
is uranium 238,
isotope that can not be
used for nuclear weapons.
except 0.7% that you
need to separate out
A centrifuge
Its basically a tube.
It spins the uranium in gas form
and pushes the heavier atoms towards the wall.
and the lighter atoms from the center.
And you can skin off the light atoms
You do this over and over again.
Many dozens of times,
and eventually you purify it to a
level that you can use it as a bomb
The common risk in them is
they are very complicated.
Technologies that take countries
decades to build
and the highest achievements.
But the fact is,
is that the centrifuges are
And this is 2010.
Enriching uranium is still
beyond the reach of the individual.
It is a logistics feat,
requiring thousands of centrifuges
working for
months or years.
But highly enriched uranium
is now within the
grasp of nearly any country.
And once you have the HEU
making a crude bomb is easy
We're not just
dicussing limits / i
on a further
increase of nuclear weapons. / i
We seek instead to
reduce their numbers. / i
We seek total elimination
one day/ i
of nuclear weapons from
the face of the earth. / i
Happy New Year, man. / i
Happy New Year. / i
I love you all. / i
In the first
millionth of a second ,
the fireball is 500 feet across
Within 10 seconds,
it would grow to over 1 mile
The temperature would rise
to 20 million degrees Fahrenhiet
hotter than the
surface of the sun
The blast would generate winds
in excess of 650 miles an hour
Forces of that magnitude
can destroy anything
that people can build.
Strongest Buildings
would be reduced to rubble.
Tens of square blocks would just be
melted, would just be evaporated
Everything would be vaporized:
the buildings,the cars,
the trees,the people,
the upper level of earth itself
There were 76 000 buildings
in Hiroshima.
The hospitals,the fire stations
the communications equipment;
the military installations.
Everything just flattened.
In the first 5 to 6 miles,
virtually everyone in that
Somewhere between 3&4 million people
dead immediately
in the first 5 miles
If you are lucky enough to be 8 or
then you would experience it as blast effects
Windows being shattered
It would shatter every window
and turn it to hundreds of missiles
flying outwards from the
center of the explosion,
at speeds more than
After the blast,
Its the firestorm that would combust everything
Everything flammable would burn
paper, cardboard, cloth,
heating oil,
gasoline.
Everything would burn.
Whole blocks would catch fire.
Hundreds of thousands of fires would turn
into a giant firestorm
Everything catches fire
There just will be no air to breathe.
All the oxygen would be consumed
and everyone would die.
It is useless to talk about the way
you die because you are burned to death
or because you have been blown to bits by the blast
Anyone looking in the direction of the
nuclear explosion they will be blinded.
The lungs would be ruptured by the pressure
or the eardrums would be ruptured by the pressure.
crush injuries from
buildings falling,
broken bones thrown in the air
against the buildings
Hundreds of thousands,
possibly millions
would die from the fallout.
The body does have a repair rate for radiation
but the doses are so heavy
and coming so quickly
that it would overwhelm the body's
repair mechanism
The 450 to 70 RAD dose kills you
because of white cells or blood cells
or you will go into seasures
or immediate coma
and you will die within a matter of
minutes or hours.
Most of the doctors are going to be dead
most of the nurses are going to be dead.
Most of the hospitals are going to be destroyed.
Huge number of casualties
and no medical equipment.
They will be a need for antibiotics.
tens of units
of blood per person.
There wont be any electrical power
Vast amounts
of intravenous fluids
to sustain people that have
been burned,just burned.
You couldnt treat all
the burn victims.
And there comes a certain point
the casualties become so high
its pointless to try to make any sense out of it.
The doctor in the Red Cross Hospital
who turns into an automaton,
And that's what desended on the
physicians and nurses
in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Someone would surely claim they had 10 more
that were already hidden somewhere
and then start setting them off
and blast
unless they meet
their demands.
Every other big
city is gonna wonder
-whether they might be a target.
- Pulic panic,
the people fleeing major cities
You could forget about the rules
of search and seizure.
You are gonna have to be searching everywhere
You could forget about civil
liberties when people realize
a whole city
was just destroyed.
Take the Bill of
Rights,you put it on a shelf
and you might
never see it again.
People would be demanding
draconian measures
to make sure that another
city didnt go up.
Some people laughed. / i
Few people cried. / i
Most people were
silent. / i
I remembered the line
from the Hindu Scripture,
the Bhagavad Gita.
Vishnu ...
trying to persuade the prince
he should do his duty
and to impress him,
takes on his multiarmed form
and says:
"Now I am become Death,
the destroyer of worlds. "
Every man,
woman and child / i
lives under a nuclear sword
of Damocles, / i
hanging by the slenderest of threads, / i
capable of being cut
at any moment / i
by accident, or
miscalculation or by madness. / i
. The weapons of war must be abolished / i
before they abolish us. / i
The Cuban Missile Crisis
endanger the very existence
of our nation.
Wecame that close to nuclear war.
Neither the Soviet
nor we, the US
intended to put our nation at risk.
And the next time we may not be so lucky
They kill by the millions.
They kill in numbers that the human imaginations
simply cannot comprehend.
I asked: "Well we have nuclear weapons
to prevent their use. "
we now know that we
live in a world in which,
if we possession,
if any one possesses,
they will be used.
I dont see any good that a nuclear weapon
could be a threat to the world.
In my opinion,
you can forget them.
I think they should
be destroyed.
I think we are
better off without them.
Theres a 183 countries in the world
that do not have nuclear weapons.
Many of these countries could
have nuclear weapons.
They have chosen not to have them.
We have decided to take al
When I became
President
I was then informed that we have
completed six devices
more or less comparable to the
bombs which were actually used at Hiroshima.
I indicated that i would like us
to stop this program
and to become part of the mainstream world again
The only way to eliminate the
threat of nuclear terrorism
is to eliminate all nuclear weapons
in all countries.
We have got to ensure that
never once the terrorists suceed
in detonating a nuclear weapon.
You think about nuclear security
its all about the material
The simple physical fact is that
if you dont have fissile material ...
either highly enriched uranium or
plutonium for example ...
you cannot have
a nuclear weapon.
The focus is all about material.
Stop making new material.
Secure the material where you
know it is around the world
And make sure that you detect
the illicit transfer of material.
And then start getting rid of the material that you have
Today in the world we have about
So that's enough material for
around the order of 50 to100 thousand weapons
to really
create a truely
international system
for these facilities.
International Fuel banks
or International reprocessing centers...
that would be a mauch safer world
We havnt lost an ounce
of gold from Fort Knox.
We shouldnt lose
an ounce of plutonium
or highly enriched uranium.
During the Cold War,
I believed in the value
of nuclear weapons
to detter an attack.
of the Berlin Wall,
there is no excuse any longer
for keeping nuclear weapons
on launch ready laert
We can remove all of the
warheads on our missiles ,
share our safe guards technology
and establish a joint warning center
to ensure Nuclear war
cannot happen by mistake.
When I came into government
in the early '1980s,
the idea that within about10 years,
both sides would have agreed
to have 50% reduction in
their Nuclear weapons
would have sounded absurd.
But we achieved it.
That means a reduction of
more than 5,000 nuclear warheads a piece
We have gone almost 20 years now
without really any demonstrative steps
to nuclear reductions
This has to be a step by step process
That's how we did it
with chemical weapons.
These weapons are now taboo.
The Soviet Union imploded
when I was Sec of State
and we actually got an enforceable treaty
where we goot Belarus,
Kazakhstan and Ukraine
to give up their
nuclear weapons.
All countries in the
world have to sign
a legally
binding,
intrusively verifiable agreement
to rid the world
of nuclear weapons.
The choice we face is
eliminate nuclear weapons
or live in a world with
We can do this
There has to be a
carefully orchestrated process of reductions
The United States and Russia,
with 96% of the worlds nuclear weapons
have to lead the way
We start in a world where
there are 23,000 nuclear weapons.
The very first step is to cut
those arsenals dramatically
in the United States
and Russia.
Once you get down to low hundreds in the world
then you have built up the confidence and the mechanisms
to ensure that you can
verify this process
so that we can
get rid of the last one
- None.
- Should be zero.
I say zero.
- Never
- We'd rather not have them. I think
- None.
- Zero.
No nuclear weapons.
Zero.
- Zero.
- Zero.
No country
should have them.
The ultimate number is none.
Ideally will be zero
- Zero nuclear weapons.
- Zero. Zero.
We have taken important steps forward / i
to increase
nuclear security/ i
and to stop the spread
of nuclear weapons. / i
This starts with the reduction / i
of our own
nuclear arsenals. / i
This legally binding treaty
will be completed this year. / i
The arms control agreements we negotiated
between the United States
and the Soviet Union ...
You think these were
independent initiatives
taken by governments,
but the fact is that
public opinion
had a big role to play in the process
- President Kennedy,
After he passed the limited test ban treaty
and whenever he mentioned
it on the stump afterwards he
got thunderous applause.
And he quote:
"If I had known that it
was so popular,
"I would have done
it a long time ago. "
The elimination of
nuclear weapons
has not yet been agreed to by
political leaders of the world.
It's a revolutionary idea,
but they can be eliminated.
We have to change
our way of thinking.
And if we cant change
our way of thinking,
we wont survive.
Its that simple
I have changed my way of thinking
and millions and millions of other people
are changing their thinking
And, frankly, if you have never
changed your mind about something,
I .. pinch yourself
You maybe dead.