Fill of ridiculous historians. We cannot thank you enough for joining us. We're on the road. We wanted to bring you a classic episode. We were hanging out recently with our guest super producer, Matt the Madman Stillo.
Matt the bird Man Still.
Matt Double bird Still, and looking up at the lovely evening that we were strolling along on the corniche, it hit me, the moon has just gone too far.
The moon really insists, It insists upon itself. It's always leering, it's got it's changing up. You know, it's never consistent. Don't kill What is it even for moon?
Who is it good for?
Absolutely?
Gravity? Okay, if we must give credit where credit is due, but I think we could all agree, at least hypothetically, maybe we should take the Moon down.
Knot Yeah, the accent on the hype, because the moon is nothing if not over hyped.
I know, right.
You know, As a child, one of my first dreams was to be the first werewolf astronaut on the Moon. I had this all figured out two you know, to the best of my ability. I learned that were wolves aren't real, and I learned that it's difficult to get to the moon and I still have some resentment, and that's why we agree with Project A one one nine.
What is that?
And all?
Well, the question also becomes did we actually wanted to put on our conspiracy caps?
Did we actually go to the Moon? I would argue yes, I think we both would.
And are astronauts real or are they in the same eliminal space as leprechauns and Santa Claus and werewolves?
Ah? Yes, well I have met astronauts or people who say their astronauts. But perhaps that's a uh, perhaps I've been programmed by space Camp. Oh my gosh, you're rubbing it in once again.
I never got to go to space camp, but you and Matt did. I did write a gyroscope once. Those things are fun, but it was at a mall.
That was basically like being okay, fair enough.
But you were mentioning ben project A one one nine, the secret US plan.
To nuke the Moon.
Yes, take it down to notes, as you said, just.
A true story.
You know, we know, we are aware that there are a lot of drawing board ideas amid the boffins and eggheads of the US military and associated associated institutions. And you know, I wonder how it happened. I wonder if it was like a four to thirty PM on a Friday and everybody wanted to beat trash.
Three martini lunch and.
Then and then someone said, oh yeah, ideas ideas, ideas ideas ideas.
The moon is.
What is the thing that everyone can see? What is a thing we have that we want to like impress people with? Yeah? Nukes, nukes, moon done done.
Yeah.
And that's that's today's classic episode. We hope you enjoy it, folks. We will be back in the future once we get Stateside. In the meantime, tell us what you would do if you had a chance to blow.
Up the movie?
Let's roll that beautiful moon footage. Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, Noel, you're a fan of Mister Show, right, the old sketch comedy series. Not that old, is it's It's you know, it's it's Mitre.
Yeah, god no, it makes me feel Oh that's just probably about twenty years old now, but.
It still holds up.
It really does.
Hey everyone, I'm Ben.
This is Ridiculous History and we are joined, of course with our super producer Casey Pegrim Casey or you.
A fan of mister Show.
It's my favorite show ever?
Is that really?
Oh?
Yeah, I love it.
It's great.
Yeah, it's a very very influential show.
I think he's been sincere.
I think being sincere love this show. Can't can't ease up art, No, you should. You should beep yourself.
But yeah, it's great.
That's Casey on the case.
Wow that passion.
He brought the gabble down on that one. My man, he sure did, he sure did. What does mister Show have to do with this show?
Oh? Good, and I'm so glad you asked.
Well done. I think we should just play the clip.
Let's do it. Thank you very much.
We have an announcement to make on July fourth this year, America will blow up the Moon. We have the technology, The time is now. Science can wait no longer. Children are our future. America can, should, must, and will blow up the moon. And we'll be doing it during a full moon, so we make sure.
We get it all.
So what you just heard was the beginning of a sketch of Mister Show where in two guys from NASA announced, to great fanfare their plan to blow up the moon. Awesome, right, and it seems so ridiculous when when I first saw it, and I imagine when everybody else first saw it, we just assumed that these were brilliant comedy writers, which is true.
Yeah, it is true.
And I don't even know if they were aware of this story, because I don't think it really came out until well after that episode was done, or at least. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that this would not have been widely known information at the time, but yeah, sure enough. A handful of years ago, a physicist by the name of Leonard Rifle did an interview. He kind of spilled the beans on a little something called Project A one one nine, which was a Cold War era plot, not really a plot.
It was more of like a weird nuclear or fireworks display to, yeah, shoot a nuclear missile into the moon to freak out the Russians.
Yeah.
They wrapped it in a couple of slightly more scientific sounding terms. They called it a study of lunar research flights or something that would help in answering quote, some of the mysteries in planetary astronomy and astrogeology.
And freak out the Russians.
That was the main thing.
They were like, you know what we should do, We should just make a clearly visible nuclear explosion on the moon because Russia can see it, and you know that'd be cool. Yeah, that was their planning phase. Carl Sagan was in on it. He was a wee young type when this was happening. I think he was still in school at the time. This was in nineteen fifty eight, and as you said, Noel, this did not come out
until two thousand. The documents detailing the project were secret for a little less than forty five years, and even today the US government does not recognize this. They don't officially admit it because it sounds so ridiculous.
Yeah, and that Mister Show probably was in like what the late nineties, Oh wow, casey.
Yeah, it's like mid mid to late nineties.
They didn't know.
Wow, total parallel thinking.
Good job Bob oden Kirk and David Cross and the team of writers who made that show possible.
Yeah. You know the way people say headlines today, you can't tell if it's like the Onion or not. Yeah, there's been numerous times where Mister Show is like eerily predicted the future.
You were going, you were doubling down on Mister Show, my friend.
Now we got a second installment of Casey on the case, right, so so blessed today.
I know we're doubling up, right, We're case Rich, We're Casey Rich. My grinch heart just grew three sizes.
I can see it in the little frame and just burst out in your chest.
Yeah.
Still pretty dark though. Doctor Leonard Rifle was I believe seventy three when he gave this interview in two thousands, that's correct. Yeah, And he says himself that despite their stated aims on paper quote, it was clear that the main name of the proposed detonation was a pr exercise and a show of one upsmanship. The Air Force wanted a mushroom cloud so large it would be visible on Earth because the US, according to their own estimations, was lagging behind in.
The space race.
Was he like from chap equitic or something?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he was a it just want to, you know, spice up the voice a little bit.
Like believable way I like it?
No, I was there with you.
And so this whole idea of what upsmanship though, Ben, this was a theme. This is kind of what the Cold War was all about, right, because it was like we got nukes, you got nukes. Who's gonna do what first, you know, we're going to develop a nuclear submarine. We're going to develop a nuclear submarine. I think I read in one of these thinking the Vice article by Harry Cheetle that at one point the US was considering developing
a nuclear power spaceship. And the thing was, we weren't doing so hot in the space race because Sputnik was a thing, right, and we had not yet gone to the Moon, and so we were desperately kind of trying to scrabble for purchase and showing our might over the Russians in some way.
What better way to do that than to shoot a missile at the Moon.
It must have got crazy in that pitch media i've been, you know what it does sound like it was. It was something along those lines of people just stuck.
In a room.
So this this research conduct the team that we're talking about, by the way, there were ten people in it that were led by Leonard Rifle at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, and what they were tasked was studying was the potential visibility of the explosion and he benefits to science and as well implications for the lunar surface.
Now, Carl Sagan was just kind of in the camp of the benefits to science segment. I believe he was looking at the way dust particles would they know. Maybe that was more about how it would look, maybe a combination of the two.
I think it was.
Yeah, because you're spot on. He was attempting to build a mathematical projection of how a dust cloud in space around the Moon would work, and whether that would obscure the visibility of the explosion. That was one of the big questions. So it was both the implication for the surface of the Moon.
And the visibility.
Initially they said, let's use a hydrogen bomb, but the problem was from the Air Force perspective that a hydrogen bomb was going to be too heavy to be useful. So then they tried to use a small lightweight warhead that had a one point seven kiloton yield.
This is when they had developed intercontinental ballistic missiles, right.
Yeah, ICBMs, So hitting the Moon with with the right type of missile is not as tough.
It's just the big question is will it be visible?
No, I mean there is no doubt from reading these interviews with Rifle that this was within the realm of possibility to accomplish. There was, of course that slightly nagging concern of what if there's a malfunction and the rocket kind of crashes back into Earth or like slingshots off the moon or something like that. Right, yeah, certainly rife with potential problems.
But what happened next?
So at this point they're still evaluating this and they think they've come up with a plan. So just for contrast, this warhead that they decide to use, the W twenty five, it is a very low yield one point seven kilotons, I said, for comparison, Little Boy, the bomb that was dropped over Hiroshima in nineteen forty five was between thirteen and eighteen kilotons, So this is not as big as
bombs we've already dropped here on planet Earth. They thought, okay, we can hit it at the dark side of the moon, the hidden side of the moon. The dust cloud from the explosion will be lit up by the sun and you can see that from Earth. And due to, as you said, the development of ICBMs, they believe that they could make this launch feasible by next year, by nineteen forty nine.
How big is the moon, man? How big is the moon? I?
Have a feeling. Wait, how big is it?
The Moon's actually only six seven hundred and eighty six miles in circumference, whereas the Earth is twenty four nine hundred and one miles. So the reason I'm asking this, Yeah, it's all very silly questions, but you know, I would think couldn't this like cause problems with like the tides and stuff? I mean, it isn't the Moon responsible for regulating the tides? And if you damaged it or I don't know, I mean, I guess the nuclear blast wouldn't blow up the Moon.
That's a misnomer. It would ouse a big old crater.
I looked into this.
Okay, So first off, we know that they just wanted to make a visual splash.
They just wanted to scare the Moon a little bit.
Right, right, But if they attempted to actually blow it up, it would take much much, much more than the nuclear armaments that we currently possess, or especially that we possess then people have estimated the first off, to blow up the Moon, you would need six hundred thousand of the largest atomic weapons ever built, the Sarbamba, the Soviet RDS two twenty hydrogen bomb. It's the most powerful explosive that's ever been detonated ever by humankind back in nineteen sixty one.
We'd need six hundred thousand of those. Not only would we need six hundred thousand, we couldn't shoot them from Earth. We would have to dig into the moon, distribute them evenly, and then detonate them, which would take centuries. Nobody's going to do that. That is a scale of international cooperation that has never existed, or.
Like something like some kind of a fictional supervillain might consider doing.
Yeah, it's like a doctor Doom thing.
But this did remind me of something we were talking about off air that we thought you would enjoy, fellow ridiculous historians. The author Neil Stevenson in the book Seven Eves takes a hard sci fi look at what would happen if the Moon actually exploded, and he does it in a way that is not a spoiler for the book, for the plot of the book. Rather, so, I think we're okay to read this, but if you consider these
things spoilers, then this is your official warning. Noel, can you help me out with a spoiler countdown?
Three A, two A one A spoiler time.
Okay, So the first sentence of Neil Stevenson's seventies is the Moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason. That's how the novel starts. But what people quickly find is that when the Moon blows up, pieces of it remain and they start falling toward Earth. So in the story seventives, the Moon breaks up into about seven more or less equal size pieces, and for a while they
just orbit Earth. But then two of the pieces collide and that causes a fragment that makes future collisions more likely, and it keeps repeating at an exponentially growing rate until Earth is under this constant bombardment from meteorites and they wipe out almost all life. The sky is a blaze d it's intense. So it's not a good idea for us to blow up the Moon, just in case anyone
was on the fence about that. But one thing I thought that that was interesting too is the idea that just detonating a nuclear device, even a relatively small one, on the Moon, could have effects on certain aspects of it. Right, I don't believe that single missile deployed from Project A one one nine would be powerful enough to alter orbit, or maybe I'm just being hopeful. I hope it wouldn't me too, Ben, me too.
But Ben, did you read that the Russians had a counterplan to blow up the Moon.
I'm just gonna keep calling it blowing up the moons. It just sounds way more.
It's way more fun detonating a nuclear device on the surface of the Moon.
Well, what's the what's the Russian equivalent? What were they kicking rounds?
Well?
Ben, the Russians plan, according to a cool article in the New York Post, called USA and USSR plan to nuke the Moon out of existence.
That's a little hyperbolic there, I like it.
Theirs was called Project E four, and their idea was to hit the Moon with their own missile. But there were, you know, same pitfalls as our issue, and this this fear that the missile could like boomerang off the Moon and you know, come back and hit the hit the Earth, or that it could you know, malfunction in mid flight and fall down on the heartland Missouri or something like that.
Who knows.
This is just the dumbest or Moscow Cold war competition.
Ever, No, it's it's it's as you would like to put it, cartoonish, Ben, Yeah, really, it's like some seriously Leney Tunes bananas business.
Now, in the USSR's defense, they sort of eased into it. I'm saying that because this was part of a series of proposals, all of which bore the code name E Project. E one was just like, here's how we're going to reach the moon. E two and E three were like, okay, once we reach it, here's how we send a probe to the dark side of the moon to take some photos. And then E four was like, here's how, stay with me,
we launch a nuke at the moon. And who knows, maybe it was another room of ten people just walking around going yeah, yeah, that's great, that's great.
Okay, it proves good. But you know what we should do you know what I mean.
I do know what you mean, Ben, I do know what you mean.
And you know, it'd be pretty cool to go outside and have like a moment with the family. We're like kind of like watching an eclipse, you know, where you watch the mushroom cloud appearing on the moon. That'd be pretty intense. But I think you would really instill some national pride in US. You know that we're smart country who does smart things.
While we for good reasons, Yeah, while we were still able to think those things right.
Well, the Vice article makes a really good point about how like, in the same way, we're experimenting with drones so much and everyone's just so hot for the new technology that we have now militaristically that the generals and the folks in charge of the time were really into exploring the power of nuclear energy.
Yeah.
I think that's a great point too. You know, everybody's so so excited about this new technology. I mean, look at all the ridiculous things that we are attempting to do with drones, both in the commercial and private and public service sphere. But you know what's most disturbing to me about this story with Project A one one nine, it's not that it didn't happen. It's that the head scientist isn't sure why it never came to fruition. That's
in the Vice article as well. He says he was horrified that such a gesture to sway public opinion was ever considered. And we've, you know, on a couple of different shows here at Houstuff Works, you and I both have dove headfirst into very strange plans by Uncle Sam to do one ridiculous thing or another.
What was it.
There was the bat bomb, there was the cybercat spy, there was the what they called the gay bomb. They had some terrible ideas.
Yeah, it's true.
I mean there's certainly been a lot of hair brain schemes throughout Militi history, and this was one that I was not personally aware of. It one of the hair brainbyests.
Well, let's say that you are listening to this episode and you have you.
Have been sold on the idea.
You respectfully disagree with your pals here at ridiculous history, and you say, you know what, I've thought about it, and we should blow up the Moon. We should at least try our best to knock the crap out of it a couple of times with some nukes.
I mean, the Moon's got to come and look at that face. It's got the most punishable face. It only just pushes. It's just pushing. I like how we're anti moon out?
Yeah, man, the Moon? You ever seen the mighty boosh? I have you know the Moon? It's like, I'm the Moon. He's kind of an idiot.
Well, I you know, I didn't deserve to get nuked. Though it does not deserve to get nuked. No one does. And that's why for those of us who support the plan to blow up the Moon, today may be a
tough day. This might be a tough episode because you see, not only did the project never come to fruition, but it will probably not happen for the immediate to mid future because in nineteen sixty seven, the United Nations Outer Space Treaty banned the use of nukes in space, making any study of nuking the Moon illegal.
Nukes in space.
The heady days of the fifties to the early sixties, that's true.
So now we know why there is still a moon. That's great, that's a great point.
It's all the trash I've been talking about the moon. I'm kind of glad to have it.
That is nice.
I love it.
And we recently had a blood moon as we recorded this episode.
Did you catch that?
Did you do any weird pagan rituals that night? Then?
Nan, just the normal, normal, normal rituals. And so that is our story of the moon.
I know it's a little light, but you know what it was. It was self contained. We hit all the boxes. We talked about blowing up the moon. You guys, you got to hear mister show clip. What more do you want from us? How about a little listener now?
Okay, so our first one comes from Kimia in and Kamira wrote to us and said, howdy, I enjoyed the podcast by I tend to skip around to random episodes. Only started listening earlier this year, so there's still a lot of backlog.
For me too. I think we only started making this earlier this year.
Has it been that long?
I don't know how long it's been that short? Casey, how long have we been doing this show?
How long have we been sitting in this room?
Let's see the first episode came out October twenty fourth, twenty seventeen.
Whoa, so it's been a minute. It's almost a year, look at us.
Well anyway, so Kimira says, I just listened to your recent Napoleon Bunnies episode. The bunny story was totally hilarious and I had to relate it to several of my friends. But Os is super charmed with the anecdote about Napoleon's maybe crush on the Czar and people shipping them. Since you said you were curious and thick about the two of them, I went splunk and sure enough something came up.
Although several of them were in languages other than English, it does seem it's much more popular to ship Napoleon with Arthur Wellesley. Though fick writers do love them, some hate shipping. Anyhow, Here are the fix I did find when Napoleon Alexander that were in English, not that I
have read them fullier can vouchul quality haha. And she posted one of these fan fiction links, and then she posted a sequel, and then she posted another another fan fiction and says in this one quote, Napoleon Bonaparte works at Thomas Jefferson's strip club and falls for his coworker Arthur Wellesley, though it says it contained some Napoleon alex stuff as well. I loved your episode on the history of Mooning, which I listened to earlier tonight. Thanks again
for producing such an enjoyable podcast, Kamira. Thank you for checking out the show and doing that research for us. I will you know, I'm going to go out and live and say this stuff probably isn't my thing, but I am going to read through to see if there is one that is safe for work, and if it is. We'll go ahead and post it on ridiculous historians.
What do you think have you.
Seen that Ben? A NOL fanfit this floating right out there?
I have not. I have not.
Did you write it pretty steamy?
Did you write it?
No?
Maybe there's not?
Though, right, there's not.
I'm not gonna say, oh man, the tension.
Okay, who's next?
Next? We have a quick one from Rex Wesley R. Great name.
He just says, had to chime in on some listener mail you got about accents. As someone who was raised in both Georgia and California, I was usually told I had one when I was in California, but when I was in Georgia, I would get grief for not having one. I have not lived in the South for many years now and have lost it until I have had some drinks. So kind of along the same lines what we talked about, then, it seems to come out out with a vengeance.
Thanks for the show, Rex, Yeah, I saw that as well. Thank you so much, Rex, And I imagine that you are not alone in that experience there.
I've seen.
I've got some friends who sound pretty neutral in their American accents, but if they have a couple of drinks or a couple of glasses of wine. They sound like Boston townies like that.
Okay, I had to bring this one up because I think you've seen this too, BIM. But this is really interesting. It's called thoughts on the Malleure Wildlife Refuge. I mean, I'm still flummx on the pronunciation of that. Now I'm gonna say Mallear the Malleur Wildlife Refuge episode plus a little blink one of you too, says, Hey, guys, love the podcast.
And many others that you have your hands in.
If you can make it all the way to the end of this email, you shall find a funny nugget regarding an episode from one of your other shows.
Way way point of order.
I thought we were reading short ones.
I'm gonna summon I'm gonna summarize this one. It's mainly because it's like some bullet point.
I think this is a great one.
I think it's very interesting.
It says I just finished your episode on the Wildlife Refuge and felt compelled to immediately write you.
I imagine you've gotten some thoughts about this.
We have indeed got some thoughts on this one, but I'd like to throw my two cents in because I believe, in the absolute core of my being in the importance of preservation of all protected land in the US, and I suppose because of this, I felt this episode surprisingly problematic and scary. I will try not to make this too long, but a couple of points that are burning behind my eyeballs. Once a way to remove protections is found, this opens up a disastrous can of worms that could
spiral out of control, especially under this administration. First, it's as innocent seeming as letting cow's grays, and the next thing you know, someone's figured out how to get oil out of Yosemite. Secondly, preserving the biodiversity of ecosystems surrounding farm land is essential to being able to farm that land. I hate to be a cliche, but it is quite literally a delicate balance, and once that is disrupted, that domino effect would absolutely lead to problems with the plants
and animals that farmers rely on. What's the solution? Sustainable and responsible farming practices. Use the land responsibily rather than barrel through and then ask for more.
Look at Easter Island, for example.
The running theory is that the people on that island used up every last resource they had, and then they pretty much all died or left because they couldn't sustain themselves anymore.
Bad plan. Those are really the points that I wanted to get to.
I think this is really interesting and something we did not really discuss in the episode the idea of the benefits.
We discussed some of the sure pitfalls.
Of some of this preservation, but not so much maintaining that biodiversity.
I think that ecosystem point is essential, and I'm really glad we got that on air. I think this is also worth it. Elise, I think you have a great story about Tom DeLong.
You want to do that one? Ben?
Sure?
Yeah, Okay, So Alise, you say about five years ago, I just moved to LA I went to one of their last concerts as the former Blink one two. A Palma was their agent at the time. So after the show, a handful of us went to the green room for post show business stuff or whatever it is they do. We PLoP down for a BS sesh. It's cool phrase in Tom's dressing room and I saw the stack of space books and the TV was just playing loops of space videos. At some point, knowing Tom's affinity for aliens.
I began to ask about what was on the TV and was immediately met with a chorus of no no, no no no no.
No no no no no no no no no no from everyone there who knew him.
They said, do not get him started on space.
So at least goes on to say she managed to avoid that. But Tom DeLong was a really nice guy and a little bit weird, but overall very endearing. So this was a great letter with some important points, some amusing anecdotes, and to explain for anybody who hasn't checked out our other shows, stuff they don't want you to know. We recently did an episode on Tom DeLong, who has quit Blink one eight two to pursue his beliefs about unidentified aerial phenomenon full time time. That sounds about right.
It does sound about right, and it also sounds like the other guys in Blink one and E too. We're kind of being bullies to poor Tom, So you know, let that boy have his space.
Yeah, and this concludes our listener mail, but not our show. Let us know what other strange, secret, hopefully hilarious cold war plans you have happened across in your neck of the Global Woods. It doesn't have to be just us stuff. We would love to hear weird plan from Australia, New Zealand wherever. You can make these suggestions on Ridiculous Historians, our Facebook page, on our Instagram, on our Twitter. You can email us directly where we are ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com.
As always, we'd like to thank our super producer Casey Pegram, Alex Williams, who composed our theme. Christopher hasiotis our researcher extraordinari, and we'd like to thank you.
See you next time.
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