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Enter it now. Bill Cunning in The Great American of Course. Andy Jacobson is a New York Times best selling author. She's written, among other things, many many books, including The First Platoon and Area fifty one. She's spent I would think years interviewing all the relevant players about a nuclear war exchange, and when I got the book about three
weeks ago, it's amazing the research that was done. Some of the topicies include the build up, How we Got here, Part two, the First twenty four minutes of Nuclear War. Part three is the next twenty four minutes of nuclear war and the final twenty four minutes and Annie Jacobson, Welcome to the Bill Cunningham show. The book is Nuclear War a Scenario? And you go through the beginning of about almost eighty years ago when Americas set off the
first nuclear explosion. Plus you have the six scenarios under which America was very very close to a nuclear exchange with that point through the USSR. At this point, can you describe to the American people the first twenty four minutes of nuclear war and what occurs in those time period and does it make a difference between North Korea and USSR or Iran? So what are the first twenty four minutes?
Well, you've hit upon the basic issue and the most terrifying issue of all of this, which is timing and speed and urgency of it all. Once nuclear war begins, it does not stop. And that is why I chose the ticking clocks in the area, which happened in seconds
and minutes, not hours and weeks. Nuclear war essentially begins in the first fraction of a second that our satellite system, very advanced technological system made by Lockheed parked over our nuclear armed adversaries attacks the hot rocket exhaust on a nuclear launch. So if you just imagine, if your listeners imagine how this all begins. This is not a scenario like nine to eleven where someone whispers in the president's ears, sir,
we've been hit by the terrorists. This is it happens before the missile lands in America, and that is why a system of events begins to happen, whereby the president must launch a counter attack, ideally before the first missile hits the United States. I mean, the peril only ratchets up from there.
In fact, you reference the fact that other than an asteroid strike the Earth which destroyed the dinosaurs and I allowed the mammals to arise about one hundred and forty million years ago. This is the one of the triggers for the war. Let's go over the first. Give me the top one or two circumstances when America was this close to a nuclear exchange with the USSR.
Well, there's been many situations that have been misunderstanding or miscalculations. And yes, I referenced them in the book to indicate that it's not just you know, actual adversary attacking, but
that nuclear war could be started by a miscalculation. And I referenced a story that was told to me by a former Secretary of Defense when he himself was told in error that there were thousands of then Soviet missiles coming at the United States, only to learn a few minutes later that it was that it was a false alarm. But I think the focus really in the book for me is on taking the reader through the hypothetical situation of how it would unfold in the future, could happen tomorrow.
A quote from former Stratcom commander General Keeler to me kind of lives at the heart and soul of the story. He said to me when we were discussing an exchange between Russia and the United States and a full scale nuclear weapons exchange, he said to me, Annie, the world could end in the next couple of hours.
Let's go over you talk about our satellites parked over a nuclear powered enemies of ours. Let's assume the Russian satellite killers don't work. I can only imagine if the Russian satellite killers work and we're not warned. But let's say we're warned. Take us through the scenario of the first twenty four minutes, and right now this is in Germain, and Joe Biden or Donald Trump, Because it could happen at any time. But Joe Biden. Shall we say it isn't playing with a full deck of the present time?
In fact, in the morning one or two o'clock in the morning. There was a question asked the other day by Fox News about who makes who picks up the phone at three o'clock in the morning. Maybe you don't have time to pick up the phone. Explain the football carried by by the assistance to the President. Take us through the first twenty four minutes the first scenario, the satellite picks up the exhaust from the nuclear weapon. Take us through the first twenty four minutes.
So it happens incredibly quickly. There are three command bunkers in the United States. Ones underneath the Pentagon, the other is beneath Stratcom in Nebraska, and then there's another one inside Shyenne Mountain, and together with the Nora D officials
at Peterson Air Force Base. The minute that launch is detected, data begins to spin down from that satellite system one tenth of the way to the Moon, by the way down to these command testers, down to places like the Aerospace Data Facility in Colorado, a facility that was classified until ten years ago. It's very existence. We didn't even
know about. The data goes there, and there begins the interpretation of data by these massive computer systems together with people to determine the trajectory of the ballistic missile launch. And as soon as that information is clear, which is by the way, one hundred about one hundred seconds into it, the officials will know that weapon is headed towards the east coast of the United States. If that's where it's been, that's where it's coming. And so then you can just
imagine how it all begins this sequence of events. Now the president must be told. The NORAD commander is the guy who's going to brief the president. But first another element of the Events department is working to get secondary confirmation that is required before the President launches a counter attack, which he must make before the missile comes in. In the next twenty four minutes, you can see the urgency involved.
I hope readers will read this because I take them through seconds and minutes, play by play, the various different situations in these different bunkers, all working toward the next big moment, which is telling the president he must launch a counter attack. That happens secondary confirmation comes in at about nine minutes. We have long range radars in Alaska
that will confirm the missile. And then the president has a sixth minute window to decide which weapons to use in a counter attack against the person that was foolhardy enough to launch against the United States.
So Annie Jacobson, author of Nuclear War, the first step is depicting the launch of the missiles from North Korea or Russia or Iran. And that's done under two minutes. And then after that two minutes is done, and then nine minutes kick in as far as okay, it's coming toward Washington, New York, Cincinnati, Los Angeles, whatever. Then after that nine minutes, the president has six minutes to make the decision. So we're talking about something in the range
of under twenty minutes. We all could be dead twenty minute absolutely.
And here's an interesting here's an interesting decision tree problem. So when I was reporting this, I would exactly as you just relate. I would learn about this, and you gather the information from the different players. And then I got to the point where the president and I thought to myself, in wait a minute, I know from previous books I've reported that the Secret Service has a mission to protect the life of the President of the United States.
So at that nine or ten minutes, Defense Department Stratcom knows the nuclear incoming. A nuclear weapon is headed toward Washington, DC. The Secret Service is going to have a different agenda than Stratcom. Stratcom is going to want to get the president's order for a counter attack. But the Secret Service is going to move the President out of the White House because that is their duty. And so I interviewed
the Director of the Secret Service. I interviewed members of what's called the HAT Team, the counter assault team, who would be in charge of moving the president, to try and decide the most realistic scenario that would unfold in this moment. And guess what I realized. The people who would win in that argument are the ones with the weapons. Cat Team carries right long long guns and they are
going to say, mister President, we are moving you. And so then you have a problem with Stratcom saying sir, we need the launch codes. Secret Services now moving the President trying to get into a nuclear bonker. You have decision trees unfolding, and now you're setting things up for a series of mistakes and miscalculations. That's what I learned that's what I report in the book.
I guess the fear in your book is that that's a mistake. And of course, if North Korea launches five nukes at US, that's completely different than Russia launching five hundred or one thousand nukes. And describe the second the next twenty four minutes, because I don't know if a president middle of the night could make a six minute decision to kill one hundred million Russians or to kill twenty five million North Koreans or fifty million Iranians. What
does the president go through? And before we get to the president, what happens with the president's unavailable? What if for some reason he's unavailable, he's somewhere and the person that must make the decision can't make it, the president. What happens then?
So for starters, the football which contains the nuclear codes is with the president twenty four seven, three sixty five.
And in my interview with lumer Letti, who was the President's lead security on his detail during Clinton, he told me a story once when President Clinton tried to get into an elevator and he was visiting the Syrian president Assad, and assad guys wouldn't let the military aid with the football into the elevator, and it was a standoff because lumer Letti told me, we are never going to let the president be separate from the football, and so the
football is always with the president if the president is available. As one issue, but a more important issue, I believe is the lack of information that most presidents have on their responsibility to launch nuclear war. That does not come from Annie Jacobson's imagination. That is told to me by Secretary of Defense former Leon Panetta, who before he was SECDAC was the director of the CIA, and before that
he was President Clinton's chief of staff. And Panetta told me that most presidents are underinformed about nuclear war, a fact that was confirmed by another Secretary of Defense, Bill Perry. They just simply don't want to know. They prefer to believe that nuclear war will never happen. And that again is another major thread in my book.
Wow, So if the president, here's the question. If the president does not make that decision, either he's incapable of making it, he is stuttering, he is hesitating, I can't do it. What happens then, at the end of the six minutes, you got the three steps to launch and then you got nine minutes evaluating, Okay, where's it going, how many are coming? Then the President must be notified.
I can't imagine the six minutes in the middle of the night, woke up at three o'clock in the morning, that president is going to make that do what happened to president is frozen and can't make the decision.
The decision does get made. The decision does get made in the scenario that I propose, because you have a Stratcom commander and you have a number of defense officials who are doing what is known in circles as jamming the president. They insist for a counter launch order. And when that counter launch order happens, that's when we move into the next twenty four minutes. And then you see
other problems with technology. As I take the reader through and again confirmed with me by cabinet members, presidential advisors, all kinds of problems unfold with the technology. And what ultimately happens in the scenario that I write is that Russia misinterprets nuclear missiles coming for them that are in fact going for North Korea. And that's because the usicbms do not have enough range to target North Korea. Directly they must overfly Russia. That's a little bit of a
spoiler alert. But I hope people will read nuclear war scenario win their jaw down so they can understand that this is a critical issue. It's a time of peril, and people understanding about this is a way to get presidents to pay attention to it.
Any Jacobson, you seem to be implying that it's more likely a mistake than I can't imagine Vladimir Putin or Kim John Onhn or a Shijao Peing saying, Okay, we're going to exchange nuclear weapons with America. Isn't it more likely to be a mistake.
Well, that's for readers to decide. In my scenario, I use mad king logic, which was conveyed to me by the thermonuclear weapons designer Richard Garwin, a founder of Animal and also an advisor to all of the presidents on nuclear weapons since Eisenhower, and Garwin told me he's now in his nineties that what he fears most is mad king logic, that there would be a leader with a nuclear arsenal who would not really care about what happened to the rest of the world, and he used the
phrase a play mois le deluge after me the flood, and that is what really made me make the decision to set the stage for the nuclear launch the way I do in my book.
I saw a movie about twenty or thirty years ago with a Bush forty one look alike. It was watching a football game in Kansas City and Ben Affleck was the hero, and that had a small indication of what would happen to little Kansas City if a nuclear detection of nuclear bomb happened. What would America look like if five hundred to one thousand thermonuclear by bombs and missiles struck us? What would America look like?
The end of my book details nuclear Winter. That is a situation where five billion people, not just Americans, five billion people around the world are dead. And again that's sourced from scientific facts with people who wrote the original Nuclear Winter treatise back in the eighties and the sense work for decades to update that using computer models. So, after all the soot gets lost it into the air from the megafires of nuclear exchange, this sun's rates get
blocked out, and agriculture fails. We return to our hunter gatherer state. That is the sad reality of nuclear war. But I will leave you with a.
Ray of hope.
Read the book and realize that you can make a difference by having a conversation about all of this. Thank you to have a conversation before we can't.
Nuclear war a scenario by Annie Jacobson. It's about four hundred pages long and it's it's a scenario. It's possible. But when I look at the world today, many think it's likely. I pray to God not But Annie Jacobson, once again, we've only scratched the surface. But the scenario is in the book Nuclear War. And once again, thank you for coming on the Bill Cunningham Show. Thank you Annie Jacobson very much. Thank you. That's a cheerful thought.
Uh five, three, seven, four, nine, seven thousand. We become hunter gatherers again. Only the strong survive. Maybe in South America. On news radio seven hundred ww Wumbia several eight has the lowest prises