What is Mutual Assured Destruction?

We are going to mention once again. The Discovery Channel are awesome. Parent company is releasing two television shows on Thanksgiving night. Don't confuse people, Chuck. They're gonna be on the Science Channel well on Thursday, November twenty six, which is Thanksgiving. That's a dead dead turkeys that day, The Road to Punkin Chunkin and Punkin Chunkin Right. The Road to Punkin Chunking comes on eight pm Eastern Time on the Science Channel, followed by the Real punkin Chunking at

nine pm Eastern. I would follow it up with a show called The Road from Punkin Film Right Going back home after punkin chunking in Delaware. No less, So that's that right? Sure? Alrighty so Chuck, Yes, Josh, Um, this I have like a little this seems vaguely familiar. We're talking about mutual assured destruction. Okay, well, how does that seem familiar? Because I did it with Candice many many moons ago on Stuffy miss in history class, back when

it was called factor fiction. Dude, that was another lifetime, wasn't it. It really was. I have so many more gray hairs now, and like my posture is much more stooped the Seattle slump I do. Actually, nice one, Chuck. We've talked about this, I think here there we've mentioned it. Remember we did a podcast on how easy is it is steal a nuclear bomb? We concluded that if the Jamaicans are buying it and you steal it en route

to Maka, you can probably get away with it. Um. This podcast is specifically on a Cold War strategic doctrine called mutual issued destruction, which was abbreviated as MAD appropriately enough. Yeah, it's funny. It's like it's scary as I'll get out, but it's also comforting in the same breath, it's weird.

Well yeah, because I mean, if you think about it, you and I grew up we were Cold War babies, and we grew up with the express knowledge that at any moment nuclear wark breakout and if that happened, everyone on the planet was debt. And like, that's how we were raised, like kids that were born like what in like mid eighties today, which is just nuts to me that there's people walking around that are sentient that we're

born in the mid eighties. But kids that were born in the mid eighties and after did not grow up with that specter looming over him, and I imagine are completely different people personality wise than like you and I. Well, that's like everyone else on our staff almost agreed. Do you ever think about that? I did not. There are a few old folks like us, although I'm much older than you. Obviously. You definitely point out checks wearing right now a Jeane jacket with a sharpie marker used to

to do the Journey logo on the back. It's pretty pretty cool. Check you burnout. Um, So Chuck, as I was saying, we grew up as as Cold War kids, um, and every once in a while you have to stop and think, why didn't the US and the USS are blow one another up? Are you asking me that? Yeah, well, let's talk about the Cold world, because the answer is the end of the podcast, all right, So let's save that, all right, The Cold War, Josh, I had a couple

of really scary moments. If you want to talk about those, I do. The Cuban missile crisis was a pretty tense a couple of weeks. Probably the first one in nine two, President Kennedy threatened to strike once he found out that Russia had moved or I guess the Soviet Union had moved missiles to Cuba, and we're pointing them at his face.

And Cuba seems like a world away, but it's really just ninety miles off the southern coast of Florida, a short boat ride, right, And so if you have nuclear, long range nuclear warheads pointed at the US, they can hit their mark, probably as far as Kansas City, let's say, and they could definitely hit temperature. That was a scary

couple of weeks. Sure it was because there was a standoff. Basically, we were saying, hey, we're gonna nuke you if you don't remove these missiles and the Soviet Union said, oh yeah, well we'll nuke you back. And actually you can, actually you can. You can point to this is perhaps the beginning of the mad doctrine. And the other scary one was in weird Chuck, This actually happened like several times. This is probably the worst. That's some bad communication going on.

What happened was, Uh, nora Ad got some information that the Soviet Union had launched two thousand, two hundred and twenty nuclear missiles our way. So chuck, Yeah, UM in nora Ad, which is like our the command center for our missile system defense deep in Shyenne Mountain in Colorado. UM, on some computer screen, some guys computer screen that that tracks UM Soviet missile movement. All of a sudden, it was just peppered with missiles that were coming this way.

And and UM National Security Director of Brasniski. Nice jobs that, right, I think it's right. I can't remember a lot of continants. And it's not that I can't remember, it's that I've never heard it. Prasinski, We're going with Prasinski. Um, he was alerted. It's pretty early in the morning, right, yeah,

two am. He was alerted and woken up and they're like, hey, there's a Soviet missile strike and all out missile strike, twenty missiles coming our way, sir, and he is picking up the phone to call President Carter, who I don't know what Carter would have done. Carter wasn't exactly um, the most militant president we've ever had. Great guy, great statesmen,

great diplomat. He might have pooped his pants and gone back to bed, you know, maybe so um, but the terrible um he he never got that phone call because Brazinski was informed that, oh wait, it's a computer glitch. They whacked the side of the monitor and it all corrected. That said. What shocked me was it was a seven minute window that we had to decide what to do. Well, it's a long way from the Soviet Union to the US,

even by way of Alaska. Seven minutes. S Yeah, you have to make up your mind in seven minutes whether or not you're going to destroy the world. Basically, I'm saying, you would think that it would be less than seven minutes. Okay, so so, and I'm telling you like that was probably the worst case. But that happened many times during the course of the Cold War. And from what I understand, the Soviets had similar incidents too, right, yeah, so we

have these incidents, we have the human missile crisis. Why didn't either side pull the trigger? Because of the doctrine, the mad doctrine basically, which indicates that everyone will die. So the uh, you know, we blow everybody up on both sides, So let's not do that, right, And the U s SR In the United States could actually very quickly from seven and nineteen forty one, both nations were

building up their nuclear arsenals, which is called nuclear proliferation. Right, I think I got that out, um in the nuclear proliferation Do you take that one for the rest of the podcast. Okay, okay, okay, um? And uh they so each side had this arsenal and we're keeping up in step with one another. You know what. That's called nuclear parity, which is ideally what you want. Strangely, yes, in this case,

you definitely do. So both sides had more than enough nuclear missiles to wipe out not just the other side, but the tire planet. Several times over. That's a really important point. Several times over. Why would you need a nuclear arsenal that could wipe out the world, the planet several times over. Now, maybe if they destroyed some of our weaponry with their strikes, that's part of it. But another part of it is because if one side adds

a missile, you gotta add a missile. Well if you if you're seeking nuclear parity, which is really important, um, then you there can't be. It can't be out of whack. How did they did they release all this information to each other? Was it? No? It was intelligence guesses that kind of stuff, Like all of a sudden, there's like a metal hole in the ground in Wyoming that wasn't there before. The Soviets probably assumed, well, they have a new nuclear warhead there. They didn't I m each other

and say built new messile. L o O click you're going to say that. I knew you were going to say that. So both sides are building up their arsenal. And early on, Chuck Um, I was reading another article on game theory which will see plays into this, written by our steem colleague and might be ff Tom sheeve Um, and he talks about how early on, apparently Eisenhower, who is uh what, the second president to have the bomb, but really the first president to manage like an amassed

nuclear arsenal. He yeah, he stopped worrying. Um. He looked at them as like any other type of weapon, because he was a military man. Um. But luckily there was a game theorist named Thomas Shelling, who had the ear of Eisenhower, managed to convince him that no, no, no, these things are way way more powerful and destructive than anything else in our arsenal. They exist in this in this vacuum that has to be kept separate, and therefore

they should be viewed only as deterrence. And he managed to change Eisenhower's view, and from that point on it was the presence of a nuclear arsenal was a weapon in and of itself. It was the preventative and not only to nuclear war. But the point that did you write this one, uh, The point that you made, which I found interesting was that it also was a deterrent to conventional war. Excellent point, because conventional war they're really after. After the arms race, there was no such thing as

conventional war. No, and um, not between the U S and the U S s R. Right, or a guaranteed conventional war. It might start out that way, but it would escalate and all of a sudden the button is pushed at some point, right, because our nuclear arsenal did exist and say, a vacuum outside of the rest of our arsenal. But once you exhausted the rest of the arsenal,

then the inevitable conclusion was that that nuclear arsenal being deployed. Right, or even if you didn't exhaust it, even if you just said you just got man, let's just end this game exactly. Um. So, as a result, the US and the USS are just fought a Cold war. They never directly engaged with another, but they fought one another through proxy wars in places like Nicaragua in Afghanistan. Right, um got a lot of good movies out of the Cold War, definitely Rambo three and a good some good James Bond

movies in that time. I liked it when the Rooskies were the villain. It was you like the James Bond movies of the Cold Well, okay, yeah, maybe the early ones. I'm thinking like Timothy Dalton there, yeah, I mean, trust me, Roger Moore is kind of a laughable Bond. Now that I'm older and looked back, You're crazy. Roger Moore is the best team because we grew up with him. But looking back, I mean, come on, Roger Moore was kind of a dufe maybe, but that was I think that

was his director that he was working with. I kind of like Pierce bros And and and he was good. He was okay, I'm pretty hip on the Daniel Craig. He's all right, Well that's the only direction they could take. That really left blonde. No, just uh more realistic butt kicking with fists and that kind of thing. You don't think Moonraker was realistic, you know, he was constantly like winking at the camp. Yeah, it's like Jonathan Strickland is James Bond. I guess good one. Alright, so sorry about

the sidetrack. Yeah, what happened was we created a detent. It wasn't like, Okay, we all have the same amount of weapons, so we're BFFs now and it's all good. It was a day tome, meaning it was sort of

a what's the best description, an uneasy truce. Yeah. Yeah, so, um, basically, the US and the USSR had our weapons and we're keeping an eye on one another, and anytime one added a new missile or some new capability, the other scrambled to catch up and vice versa, and we just basically went to sleep with one eye open for the next several decades. Right. Uh So, Josh, what two things have to take place in order to achieve this uh weird stability. Well,

the weird stability the very fact that it existed. It's not it wasn't an organic Um, it wasn't organically created by the presence of nuclear weapons. Right. Um. Henry Kissinger, who was Secretary of State throughout much of the Cold War, Um, he actually was a huge fan of game theory. He took a lot of game theory classes when he was an underclassman at Harvard, and he kept in touch with game theory and hung out with game theorists, and he actually was one of the people who was responsible for

applying game theory to nuclear strategy. Yeah, and other people kind of caught on and saw that there was a lot of merit and validity to to viewing um, nuclear strategy through game theory. Right. Um, So the two things really are having that I'll answer my own question that what's key is a to have the weapons to begin with.

And then, as Robert McNamara points out, the Defense Secretary in nineteen sixties was that you have to believe that the other guys actually has the cojones to pull the trigger, right, And apparently both the US and the USS are like to leak false information about how crazy their leaders were. Do you remember how we were brought up viewing like the Russians like they were all nuts, right, and they would just push the button at any second. Yeah, they

wanted American blood. Apparently that was planted by the Russians, because you have to believe that the other guy is willing to strike and and not just create a first strike, but definitely a counter strike as well. Right, sure, So if you are assured that if you launch a first strike that the next the other sides going to launch a retaliatory strike, what you've just done by launching that first strike is committed suicide. Pretty much. The basis of

mutual assured destruction is that nobody wants to die, right Okay? Yeah, yeah, okay? And uh also at the time, I mean, at first, the way the nuclear warheads um developed over the years is pretty cool because, like you pointed out, at first, it was just a big, huge, dopey bomb that would just blow up everything. Yeah, have you seen pictures of Fat Boy and Little Man. They really do they do? The money would drop out of the back of a plane. Yeah, did you know they weren't the same type of bomb.

Fat Man, which was dropped on Nagasaki was plutonium and a Little Boy, which was dropped on Hiroshima was uranium. Interesting, I didn't know that, and they were. They were working on both of these. So basically we split the atom in the like for the late thirties and all of a sudden, we're just working on any kind of atomic

bomb we want nuts. So over the years though that it became very precise and much more strategic, so you could, um, let's say, send your nuclear warheads to specific military targets at first, obviously to wipe out, you know, some of that capability. Hold on, you're talking about escalation. Let's talk

about the nuclear proliferation. It wasn't just a ladder of escalation. Well, hold on, let's talk about where the nukes were, right, and so at the height of the Cold War, it wasn't just missile silos and wyoming and you know this Ukraine, it was um, there was the European theater, Eastern and Western we had nuclear warheads all over the place there um at any given time, both the Soviets and the US had aircraft in the air at any point in

time with nuclear with nukes, right, we had nuclear submarines all over the globe, so lancey and air both sides had it covered. Right. So okay, we're the world is completely covered with thermonuclear devices, very high tech delivery systems specific and both sides have enough to wipe the other one off the planet several times. We're at a day time, right, So what happens if somebody does launch a first strike because it's no longer a holocaust where we're just shooting

missiles anymore, we have the capability to launch precise surgical strike. Well, there will be a counter strike, there is. But this is where the ladder of escalation you were talking about comes in. Well, yeah, you like in it to a chess game, there's a strike than a counter strike, and then you know increasing levels of of strikes as they climb up the ladder. Right now, So basically, yeah, it's like trading punches, right, right, So you start out, you start out soft, and I hit you. I don't you

bring it all from the beginning. Then I'm really glad you weren't at the helm of the United States or the uss are during the Cold War. But let's say let's say we were evenly matched, right, and I punch you, you punched me a little harder, I punch you a little harder, and then uh, it keeps going on until finally one of us like, okay, stop. But what we've done is we've escalated the damage we're doing to one another. But there's something very important that that's easily overlooked in

that trade of punches. There's a moment that comes after each punch where someone might quit, where somebody has the options to quit right or trade another punch. And if you trade another punch, you're gonna escalate. Right. So if in the case of nuclear arms that are real precise at this point, they take out a few of our military bases, we take a few of their's are out, and all of a sudden, one of the leaders steps back and says, wait a minute, we're gonna annihilate everybody.

We have to stop. You win, right exactly. Um, And what's crazy is it's like the fact that there would even be a retaliatory strike is all based on saving face, which is kind of disgusting in and of itself. But um, yeah, both sides had this kind of agreement. I can't remember it was called where it's It's like in the ladder

of escalation. First to start with like say nuclear silo, and then you the next the next wrong on the ladder is you know, actual troops, right, and then the next wrong after that is like maybe a rural area. Then after that it is like a city, and it keeps you going and I aming each other between give up. Yet both sides knew what was coming next. It was part of the ladder of escalation. Yeah, luckily we never engaged in that. Luckily there was no instant messaging back

then too. I know it would have been fun or it could have saved us that well, I guess we we were saved. But chuck, um, I know you recognize the ladder of escalation because your favorite movie or one of them had this factor heavily into four games. What did we talk about this one in the Steel Nuclear Bomber? Was it another one we've talked about at least one other time. Yeah, it's a great movie. What are we up to? Like ten thousand and ninety podcast? So far?

I think so. We've mentioned four games in about half of the I would say, uh, in three Matthew young Matthew Broderick, although he still looks exactly the same thing, it really does, doesn't He doesn't age. Sarah Jessica Parker has an aged either. Yeah, but if you look at square pegs her versus Sex in the City her, there was quite a difference. Okay, although I still don't find her very attractive. To be honest, I'm gonna hear from the ladies on that one. And Sara Jessica Parker, Dude,

if she listen to the show, they'd be great. You're really hot, Sarah Jessica Parker. Yeah. Josh and war Games, Uh, Matthew Broderick um hacks into the Norad system and to play some games, and what he chooses to play is thermonuclear war and the computer constantly at the end of the movie, you know, it's like the only way to win is not to play, which is actually correct, and that is right on the money. It's um. It's also akin to uh, an actual game theory exercise called the

prisoners Dilemma. Yeah, that's cool, tell us about that, Josh, Well, the prisoners Lemma. Let's say you have two accomplices in a crime that are separated. Let's say to you and me, all right, so Chuck, you're being interrogated in room A. Josh did it. That's well, we're both in trouble, right, Um, Well, I'm in trouble and you're not right. But let's say we're we're actually buddies and we like each other outside of the podcast be and we we've committed a jewel heist.

So we've been caught, but nobody said anything yet. You're an interrogation room A. I'm an interrogation room beat. The problem is I have no idea what you're doing. You have no idea what I'm doing. If you implicate me, I go to jail. You go free. If I implicate you, you go to jail. I go free. We both implicate each other, we both go to jail. What's the best option here to not say a word? Not say a word, and then either one of us is implicated and we

both go free. That's a classic TV and movie thing too. In the you always split them up, and you and you always go into the one room and say your partners in there singing like a bird. Yeah, Willie. Yeah, see Rocky's gonna fixture saying, and then all of a sudden they get that prisoner too or that criminal to uh rat out the other guy because they think that they're being read at, which is stupid. Man. They should just keep your here's the lesson to our younger viewers.

Keep your mouth shut. Yeah, that's good. That's always good. Never wrat people out. All right, So if you want to read more about mutual assured destruction, frankly, I think that I wrote this a little flowery, but it was one of my my UM favorite ones. It was just interesting. You can type in mutual assured destruction on the cite will also bring up UM Tom Sheaves game theory article, which is definitely worth reading as well. Uh and you will type that into the handy search bar, which means

that it's time for listener mail. Indeed, Josh, I'm gonna call this our first genuine unicorn email, all right, sort of what about the ones where people send a pictures of unicorns? It's not genuine? Okay, that's falsome. Hi, Chuck and Josh, you mentioned that you wanted some unicorn stories, and I couldn't resist sending me this one. It might be a good lead into a podcast on traditional medicines.

This alam makes sense in a minute. I just got back from a trip to Vietnam, and as a part of my trip, I went into the hill country and northern Vietnam called Sapa. This is where many minority tribes are residing, and part of their way of life is selling their wares to tourists and offering homestays. Kind of cool um. After a day hike, a group of us ended up at a family home and they served us a delicious dinner of traditional food and something they called

happy water. I liked some of them. Some made rice wine. You can imagine why it's called nappy water. Got us a little giggly to begin with, and what really got us going was seeing the lady of the house nonchalantly walk out of the kitchen with a cow's horn stuck to her forehead as if she were a unicorn. When we finally contained ourselves, we all felt like sleps because our guide explained that this was a traditional way of

getting rid of headaches. You put on the you put the horn in the fire, you brand it to your forehead, and then after a short time, you take it off for the next two weeks you have to run. Uh, you have the round red mark on your forehead. Maybe it hurt more than the headache and therefore took remind uf of it. I'm not sure, doesn't that sounds like anyway? This is my semi unicorn story. Thanks for the great

podcast from Ang. It was a Canadian listening in Indonesia and say Vietnam again Vietnam and am well, thanks Ang for that. UM. Actually, yes, that is definitely the closest thing to an actual unicorn UM listener mail we've gotten so far. Indeed, if you have any Cold War stories or any unicorn stories, or your name is Ang or contains those letters in that same arrangement, send us an email. You can send it to Stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of

other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the how stuff works dot com home page. M