How Close We've Come to Nuclear War
This is a video about some of the many times we have nearly blown up the world. Head over to
hensonshaving.com/veritasium and enter code 'Veritasium' for 100 free blades with the purchase of a razor. Make sure to add both the razor and the blades to your cart for the code to take effect.
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References:
List of Broken Arrows -- ve42.co/AtomicArchive ve42.co/BrokenArrowsReport
Declassified Goldsboro Report -- ve42.co/Goldsboro
Operation ChromeDome -- ve42.co/OperationChromeDome
CIA website -- ve42.co/CIA
Cataclysmic cargo: The hunt for four missing nuclear bombs after a B-52 crash -- ve42.co/WoPo
THE LAST FLIGHT OF HOBO 28 -- ve42.co/lastflight
The Voice of Larry Messinger is from this documentary -- ve42.co/Messinger
Even Without Detonation, 4 Hydrogen Bombs From ’66 Scar Spanish Village -- ve42.co/NYTPalomares
Decades Later, Sickness Among Airmen After a Hydrogen Bomb Accident -- ve42.co/NYTPalomares2
Picture of ReVelle -- ve42.co/JackReVelle1
Great NPR where the audio of ReVelle is from -- ve42.co/JackReVelle2
CIA Website -- ve42.co/CIA
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Special thanks to our Patreon supporters:
Anton Ragin, Balkrishna Heroor, Bernard McGee, Bill Linder, Burt Humburg, Dave Kircher, Diffbot, Evgeny Skvortsov, Gnare, Jesse Brandsoy, John H. Austin, Jr., john kiehl, Josh Hibschman, Juan Benet, KeyWestr, Lee Redden, Marinus Kuivenhoven, Mario Bottion, MaxPal, Meekay, meg noah, Michael Krugman, Orlando Bassotto, Paul Peijzel, Richard Sundvall, Sam Lutfi, Stephen Wilcox, Tj Steyn, TTST, Ubiquity Ventures
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Directed by Petr Lebedev
Written by Petr Lebedev and Derek Muller
Edited by Peter Nelson
Animated by Fabio Albertelli, Jakub Misiek, Ivy Tello and Mike Radjabov
Filmed by Derek Muller
Produced by Petr Lebedev, Han Evans, and Derek Muller
Additional video/photos supplied by Getty Images and Pond5
Music from Epidemic Sound
Stanislav Petrov's case is still mind-blowing. Billions of people were saved because of the decision of a single man. If it had not happened, I would not have been born
...and we Norwegians are seen as a peaceful folk, except when we almost got us all nuked. :p
"After this incident, Petrov took an early retirement, and later suffered a nervous breakdown." No f-ing kidding. I can't fathom what it must have been like to have made that kind of call.
This is a good acknowledgement that humans are dumb shits.
I like to think that the faulty system explanation was just a later excuse for his superiors and in the moment he thought "Screw it, let's have at least half the planet survive this"
oh shut up
I'm from the small town of Fryazino, a place where Stanislav Petrov lived after the incident. It was great to see you mentioning him! I want to add to what you mentioned, that he had never received any reward for his actions in USSR or Russia, even though he was highly praised in Europe and USA. Quite the opposite, he was moved to another less important position and later had to leave the army, had a mental crisis, and lived a difficult life, being a person who may have singlehandedly saved the world.
And he died in poverty, google for the pictures.
That's really sad. Military leaders who operate with millions of lives in their hands should be able to make rational decisions like Petrov and Vasily. There's always something to be said for following operating procedures but, as we've seen, those can be incredibly otherworldly dangerous when dealing in nukes. Poor guy should have gotten promoted to a higher position of authority or as a diplomat. No clue who he was as a person but if he was anything but terrible he did an amazing thing and deserved better.
Likely because his valor arose through disobedience of a direct order. The soviets couldn’t stand embarrassment
May he rest in peace. His reward is in heaven, for God knows his service. May his memory be eternal! Isn't it interesting that in all these stories, from east and west, it is the subordinates, the lower-ranking, who notice the crucial things, and who stand up for rational behavior. If the decisions had been left to politicians and other powerful people, the penalties would have exceeded that of all other wars ever fought.
Face it. He will only be canonized as a hero when countries are treated like cities today. When there is a world government. Probably in 800 years. Give or take.
Hats off to Vasily Arkhipov and Stanislav Petrov for keeping Fallout just a game and not reality
On the other hand, if those were real missiles heading towards Russia, then they would have lost the chance of retaliating and destroying the US before their own destruction happens.
@@User-jr7vf 5 missiles are not gonna take out Russia’s ability to retaliate.
@@demonfreeman3018 I think they could,if they were nuclear missiles
@@User-jr7vfof course they wouldn’t be enough, have you any idea of the size of Russia? And even it they would land it flat, they would have enough time to fire back from one of the many nuclear subs that can be anywhere, maybe as close from US cost that they could be seen from the beach. There’s no nothing such a winner in a nuclear war.
@@User-jr7vf it takes less than a minute for the ICBM's to launch. The Russian missiles would be on their way to America anyway.
I had heard of Stanislav Petrov's heroism many times, but this is the first time I heard the tiny little follow-up detail that after dismissing the initial one-off missile alert, his systems told him there were FOUR MORE MISSILES INBOUND and he dismissed those too. Absolutely unreal.
He could have easily being responsible for the complete destruction of his homeland, if those were real missiles heading towards Russia.
This must be the hardest decision a human ever had to make, just wow
The one man who died in the Rural Arkansas fuel leak issue actually saved many people. He went into an air duct vent, back into the fuel vapour-laden areas to use the computers and shut down as much as he could of the rocket to minimize damage. There was a documentary on it. Can't remember for the life of me the name of it now but worth reading/watching about.
The man was David Lee Livingston. The documentary might have been _Command and Control_
^ The heroes we need 😉 Hope I remember to watch that next time I have a chance
@@holycrapchrisThat is a name, like the two Russians, that we should all know and celebrate.
@holycrapchris @johnslg240 @pashavres4629 @mrcheddahcheese Yea but the guy who dropped the tool should be remembered even more as the biggest idiot ever, who caused that hero’s death, only behind the safety manager of the location who didn’t think of tying safety harnesses to all tools used inside of the silos.
considering non western safety standards are so much worse, and we see how badly the US screwed up, I call simulation shenanigans.@@ClipsCrazy__
The nuclear bomb animations are ridiculously good. Props to the animators!
this stuffs better than nickelodeon ngl
@@DontReadMyProfilePicture.104ok
My tears are saltier than Veritasium's tears.
YASS
95% of people in this world are idiots @@2bb-2
STAY OFF MY LAWN DEREK
It's nuclear season baby
WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE!
Haha, love your vids and radioactivity.
Mankind owes a debt to Vasili Arkhipov and Stanislav Petrov that can't even be put into words. May you both rest in peace, and THANK YOU.
Damn. So basically we all owe our lives to Vasily Arkhipov. I imagine staying strong to your convictions under pressure like that was insanely difficult - especially when your boss is screaming in your face.
We are most likely lucky he was Russian. If it were an American... Oh dear.
@@ctrl-del630What are you saying? 😂 We all are just as human as our neighbors. Also just wanted to say that everything lies in God's hands so we thank all our existence him.
I’m American and this gave me a good chuckle! Your probably right tho! X|
No, all our lives were almost ended by Vasily Arkhipov.
@@jumpander You are kind of right, but as he did not have a "cowboy" mentality, in other words, a "shoot-first-then-ask-questions" mentality, he prevented a catastrophe.
The Cuban Missile Crisis came even closer than the video suggests. The only reason the Soviet submarine required three people's approval was because Arkhipov was the chief of staff of the brigade and he just happened to be on the right submarine.
Just imagine if Arkhipov had the flu a week earlier or whatever, the world could've been destroyed. I'm always amazed by those "butterfly effect", "step on a prehistoric bug" moments. Change a tiny detail in the past and you get a totally different outcome.
Given the number of nuclear weapons in the world at that time, chances of the world being completely destroyed were pretty high.
@@ironcito1101I’m sure that alternative timeline exists and there’s no KZhead nor this comment to discuss why it has happened.
We came SO CLOSE to Nuclear Armageddon.
@@cz320 if there are many timelines , then there's a string of events where it wasn't a false alarm but somehow KZhead and this comments exist.
Who would imagine that a fallen socket from a ratchet wrench could potentially cause a 9 megaton explosion.
Who would imagine that a fuel tank is built so weak that it gets punctured by a socket?
I'd recommend searching KZhead for the words "Always Never Sandia". It's a 3-part series by Sandia National Labs on nuke weapon safety. The weapons are extremely safe when it comes to possible accidental detonation.
Who would imagine a 9 megaton explosion
idt that explosion was 9 mt, bc the nuclear core (?) didnt explode i think
@@athaya2992 It didn't, hence "potential" 🙂
I am from southeastern Spain, as a matter of fact, my town is less than 50km away from Palomares. It is always said around here that the hydrogen bomb was found by a local fisherman who lived in my town, he was named Francisco or Paco for short, and would forever be nicknamed "Paco el de la bomba". If those bombs were detonated a huge area would be uninhabitable, but instead now there is a summer electronic music festival in a nearby town called Dreambeach Villaricos, where some of the biggest names in the scene have come to perform. I wonder if they knew about the history and the possible radioactive material that was just 10km away.
In my opinion the US should give you Spaniards compensation for as long as the radioactive threat remains in your territory.
The US should clean the place, as they said they would and never did. But being in colaboration with the Fascist dictator of the country, I could expect no less. I mean, which country has not suffered the US?
I'm so grateful for those Stanislav Petro and Vasily Arkhipov. They are heroes. Even if the stories are inaccurate, the incredible pressure on any individual driving something holding nuclear weapons--come to think of it... the fate of the world was granted to so many people--and the fact that nobody pushed the big red button is incredible, especially in the cold-war when there was so much uncertainty.
Why are the stories inaccurate?
@@Dan1elAndrade I have no idea if they were inaccurate. I know that any story involving a hero is sometimes stretched--so I try not to rest my hat on any account. I'm just saying that even the hint of truth is amazing. Objectively we know that that the world wasn't thrown into WWIII, so we know that there were individuals who were facing incredible pressures like Stanislav and Vasily and managed to keep the world alive.
@@p3t3mit It seems like you're waiting to hear the catch, so here it is (as I understand it): Unfortunately, these "heroic" men were not seen as such by the country they worked for. They were both court marshalled and tried for treason, and even after being cleared they still lost all of their security clearance.
They are as bigger war hero than any.
@@inaminayo5327 if true , some filmmaker should definitely go for their biopics .😎🙏🏼
More than 1 "broken arrow" per year between 1950 and 1980? That's just incredibly insane!
Besides, what if a terrorist group gets their hands on one of these missing nuclear bombs?
@@KougaJ7 wdym, the US has nukes and is the biggest exporter of terrorism globally by a gigantic margin
I assume most of them lie deep in the Pacific
Many of the bombs have only a couple of decades of potential use before they degrade beyond risk from their own radiation. Iirc we are passed the point for the missing ones, but I'd have too look into it again.@@KougaJ7
Homer Simpson had a sign "Days since the last nuclear accident .... 3 days"
My great-grandfather was the first man put in charge of the US nuclear arms. I haven’t watched the entire video yet if you might mention it, but late in his career a live nuclear weapon was lost near Japan, and he was sent undercover to locate the bomb and determine whether or not it had been found by the Japanese or not. It was eventually found 80 miles offshore in deep mud and was not recovered. (To my knowledge)
GREAT GRANDFATHER? How quickly does your family reproduce?
So in theory somewhere near Japan there is buried live nuclear bomb? *Horrifying*
casually dropping classified information.
@@yuvrajmishra1873it's all declassified now. you can check US national archive online or offline if you go there. people call it the golden treasury for thrill seekers in books.
Now we're waiting for the CIA to break into our home.
Derek, you are making a change. With every video, in a different domain, contributing to making the world a better place in your own special way. I extend my most sincere congratulations!
My favorite near miss is the one where someone mistook a bear scaling a fence for a person in Wisconsin, raised the alarm, the alarm turned out to be miswired and went directly to telling the airbase to scramble and launch, then one guy floored it to stop the jets from taking off because of a phone call, as once the jets took off they were to go radio silent.
Sheeeesh, that's a crazy chain of events.
can't they still receive messages once they go radio silent?
I looked a couple weeks ago at all the near misses in the french wikipedia. There's a similar event in the french nuclear forces in the 60ies, where a false alarm triggered a mirage F4 (nuclear supersonic bomber) to strike the USSR. When he got radioed to come back, nothing happened, as the procedure was to shut off radio. The pilot came back for one specific reason, the refueler plane was absent at the refueling point, which promped him to come back.
Is there a reason jets go radio silent? Or it's just something to spice up your story?
@@adriendebosse6941 What is the reason for radio silence? That seems way too reckless to me. All you got is 5 minutes of take off time and if you can't call it off within that time world is ending. Lol.
You know your life is going good when Veritasium uploads four videos in the span of less than 2 months
Same
2 of them talk about Nuke
You know it's good when your body has not been vaporized by a nuclear explosion 😅
this is a pretty sad comment.. how it got so many upvotes is beyond me.. its good content but go outside my guy.
@@AndrewBrowner you talking like you know what this guy does in his day to day 😂 what the
Love your channel and this video! Just a quick feedback - The border referenced a few times (1:42, 10:54), is not that the border of Soviet Union. Back then that was Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was neither part of Soviet Union nor Warsaw pact. Warsaw pact borders were relatively close, but Soviet Union border was not that close as mentioned in the video.
this mistake pissed me up as well :)
For an American person, everything beyond NATO countries was Soviet Union
Yeah I noticed the discrepancy between the narration and what was being shown on the map - well short of Soviet territory.
@@tinyawka You just called every American ignorant. 😁
@@YourD3estinY In a way, he/she is right. It's not like we were taught much about things on the other side of the iron curtain in school. This was quite intentional - it's one thing to fight against an enemy, but communism is an idea and it's hard to fight ideas once they catch hold. Today the idea of people rising up and throwing off our capitalist overlords seems unrealistic at best, but it was a genuine concern back in the day. So most of us who grew up in that era basically learned about western Europe but everything east of West Germany was basically "the Soviet Union." I mean, sure there were different countries there, but it was the USSR calling the shots so it didn't really matter. It's come to bite us in the ass in the end though. The word "socialism" has such a bad connotation here that we can't even get decent health care.
Probably the best educational content on YT. Have been for years now. Still getting better.
The scary part is these are the incidents that we know about. Edit: Glad you brought up Vasily Arkhipov - he literally saved the world. The PBS special "Secrets of the Dead" about him was especially good.
Arguably I would say he was the most important man in the XX century
@@eduardonegrao8364 And the US and Russian governments are the least important in the XX century for creating the scenario? Vasily Arkhipov, isn't a hero. We have 2* parties who are the ones who are to blame for the constant near death of millions.
@@maskettaman1488 You're mistaking Arkhipov with Petrov. Arkhipov was a submarine flotilla commander, he definitely had the authority to launch that T5 torpedo they had onboard. What Derek and most people around here don't seem to realize is that a T5 torpedo was just a torpedo with a nuclear warhead, it wasn't made to attack cities and kill thousands... it was meant to sink large warships and other submarines, like any other torpedo... it was not a first strike weapon by any stretch of the imagination.
@@aleeph4919 Yes, he's a hero unless you deny history.
Not only was Vasili Arkhipov a man who prevented nuclear Armageddon, he wasnt even part of the crew. Any other mission, he wouldn't have been there. Any other mission, it would have only needed 2 men to turn the key. But because he was an executive officer, the captain and political officer needed his approval as well. He was incredibly courageous in that single moment. A moment between life and annihilation. I doubt most people would be able to say no in that situation. Stanislav Petrov is another incredibly brave man.
I mean the case was basically "we may be about to be hit by nuclear bombs, should we respond by firing nuclear bombs?" and the guy said "no". What if they were indeed about to be hit by nuclear bombs and the guy did say "no"? Don't know how to express this, but I feel like launching nuclear weapons, with or without the excuse of responding to an attack is always a loss for everyone involved, even for the attacker. I'm way oversimplifying this, but saying "no" to a nuclear bomb launch would seem pretty straight forward.
There's just simply no wrapping your head around that 😅
@@littlefrank90 I agree. Even when faced with a nuclear strike, I can see exactly zero reason why you would retaliate except to be a monster and kill as many innocent lives as possible before you die. No different than a serial murderer in that case
@@Gakulon the entire reason for operation Chrome Dome was to retaliate almost immediately. So there was a lot of incentive even for Petrov to act just like how the Americans would in the exact same situation. It's not that he would be a monster if he had said yes, but the entire setup from both the US and USSR which had called for it
I got tears in my eyes at the end of the video. it was wonderful and makes us greatful for the contributions of Vasili Arkhipov and Stanislav Petrov that can't even be put into words.
Veritasium is so well executed in every way. Most importantly to me is when it comes to clarity, context and accuracy of information. There's nothing left for the viewer to be unsure about or any ambiguity that's confusing. It's a dying art. Some would argue a dead art.
Generally agree. One small quibble: at 4:45 I'm sure there weren't 29 US Army ships involved in the search. Pretty sure they were US Navy 😅
The story of how the missing bomb off of Spain was found is incredibly cool. The naval scientist John P Craven worked on finding both that bomb and the USS Thresher using Bayesian search theory, one of the techniques used while searching for the remains of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. edit: I got Berenstain Beared, and for some reason thought that MH370 was found. It was not.
Dang, I gotta read more of that stuff, cool!
they never found flight 370 tho ...
Another cool fact is that at that time Spain was researching to develop its own nuclear weapons (with the support of France) but the project was stuck, when the leading scientist had access to the H bomb in Palomares he gather enough information about the detonation mechanism to continue to develop the project. The US pressured the Spanish goverment to give up and gave them blueprints for a high powered conventional bomb in exchange of abandoning the project.
@@thehen101 yo geez, chill my guy
When did they find 370?
Seen a bunch of these near miss stories before. This should be part of every high schooler's education. Understanding nuclear weapons is a civic duty.
Problem is We are letting mad people run this world
with democrats they will never be happy till they nuke themselves
@@nytro8027 ?
@@nytro8027 it...went...well...?
@@nytro8027 everyone would explode. 😂
My god! Heard a lot about your channel. You did so much of detailed research and such superb animations. Hats off to you. Your channel is mind-blowing.
Thank you so much for using your popular channel to cover this important topic that has been covered up (at worst) or swept under the rug (at best) for so many decades.
Now we need a Veritasium episode on the best methods for reducing anxiety.😨
did you mean to say "introducing anxiety"?
@@NocturnalCoder lol.... That's what this episode's alternate title should be
Agreed
Shaving can reduce anxiety.
you just need to realize that you have been manipulated by fear, nuke videos are propaganda and just regular explosives, nukes dont exist and the only reason nuclear war has not occurred is simply because they dont exist. russia, north korea, iran are not a threat to the US military. now you can sleep easy like the rest of us that know the truth.
Not only is it insane that we’ve lost these things, its nuts that we just had these bombs flying around fuggin’ EVERYWHERE.
Politicians, dude. Those damn politicians.
These things are still everywhere on hidden submarines
@@Stierenkloot if some accident happens in a sub it might be in ocean middle of nowhere.. but image 4 H-bombs flying on head, that can land anywhere ☠
@@J_F_G AFAIK it was physicists and mathematicians who were working on these policies. von Newmann in particular is pretty famous for his role in this.
Yeah. It's called MAD or "Mutually Assured Destruction." I know some people like to paint Communists as "for the people" egalitarians but trust me, as someone who lived during the last half of the Cold War, they are pure evil. I know. I know. It's the entitled younger generations who have lived as the US being the sole superpower who think America is evil but that's the viewpoint of the entitled and weak.
This channel is a true gem in my subscriptions list!
Ive learnt so much in the few weeks discovering this channel than i have in recent months..very telling. Good job
The Palomares incident is something my dad told me about when I was a kid. He must've been about six or so and every summer he went to a town about 30 kms away. According to him, the nuke was found thanks to a local fisherman and, apparently, the boats had to follow the fisherman, who couldn't give them any indications, since he sailed by feel, so what he did was he just sailed the way he had on the day he saw the bomb fall at the same speed. Followed by a couple American ships, according to legend, in a little fishing boat
There should be statues commemorating the Russian officers who kept their calm and thought critically in literally THE most stressful situation anyone can be in!! They are not just national heroes, they are global heroes! 👏👏
True. But their own governments threw them under the bus for not starting armageddon.
What you know is just the tip of the iceberg
@@cheesebusinessEnlighten us
@@overtimeseed do I look like a person who knows the whole iceberg?
@@cheesebusiness Certainly not much to look at I'll give you that much
This is one of the most valuable video on KZhead and Internet. This deserves to billion views.
This is the Video of the year! Thank you...seriously!
It's always interesting when you look into the declining numbers of nuclear weapons in the world. The old tech is decommissioned because those 5 nukes can now be achieved with a single, smaller one. So while we do technically have less nuclear weapons, it's partly because the newer, more powerful weapons made the old ones obsolete.
Yeah, their aggregated potential for doomsday probably still increased manifold.
My thought exactly
Yes, i'm also curious. There real metric should be "nuclear firepower" (in kT TNT or sth). Not "count of missiles"
Older weapons are also primarily decommissioned because the tritium in the fusion warhead has a relatively short half-life of 12.3 years. They intentionally add a huge excess of tritium during production, but after several decades, the amount decays to a low enough concentration to risk a misfire in the core, so the whole thing has to be taken apart.
Not really, newer nukes have less fallout, and smaller precise blasts They are less powerful per say
How SEAMLESSLY you finished talking about atomic bombs and how we could all die any moment and then GLEEFULLY started talking about shaving. A real rollercoaster of emotions, Derek.
close shave😉
As Capitalistic as it get. Even the dooms day info video has a commercial. Buy before you die
@@aleeph4919 these videos don't make themselves though...
Would you prefer it if the sponsor offered doomsday / prepper supplies to his audience?
@@aleeph4919alrighty than give me your money , I ain't giving you anything
Thank you for your awesome work, love your vids!
I'm so glad you took this firm stance, Derek. Thanks for more great content. Veritasium is the best educational channel around, youtube or not.
Not to discount your premise - which I agree with. But you did gloss over a couple of points. Admirable points, if you ask me. The teams that developed these weapons not only did amazing work to make them go boom, but added redundancy after redundancy to make sure they didn't go off. The fact that dozen of mishaps have happened and on both sides, none went to full detonation should be a solid gold star for the engineers and scientists that tried their very best to rein in the madness that they were tasked with. And not to mention the people that stand between overwhelming death, and the full use of it, like Vasily Arkhipov. Countless analysts and technicians that are quite literally the salvation of a technology that just wants to do harm.
I'd like to mention that for example the "unsymmetrical explosion safety" isn't all that effective, and could still lead to a fizzle(nuclear reaction with less than expected yield) - still a nuclear explosion, just not *as* large as a "full" one. All explosives can only be made so safe - At some point, you *have* to have a small amount of energy trigger a large one. And most of the dangers discussed in the video originate from the people - Even a perfectly accident-safe bomb should explode when commanded, and we unfortunately can't engineer better humans to eliminate this failure mode.
Correct. And that Petrov "saved millions of lives" is simply incorrect. He did not have launch authority. The agency above him that he did not inform of a strike detection - did not have launch authority. THEIR superiors did not have launch authority. There were numerous levels above him that would be required. And protocol, one of which was believed to be *proof of detonation* before M.A.D. Obviously there never was proof nor implication of detonation. Petrov was great. He did what great men do. Which was simply be rational, with a new-ish relatively untested detection system. To say that he saved the world by not being irrational, AND due to the layer above him to not be irrational, AND due to the layer above that, AND due to the layer above that, is story telling, irresponsibly paraded as "history".
Airplanes are also built to incredible safety standards with layers and layers of redundancy and checks. Yet there are still planes falling from the sky from time to time.
Maybe you know more than me, but the incidents mentioned in the video seem to have the laws of physics responsible for not going nuclear. It is (fortunately) very hard to create a nuclear explosion. The fact that they didn't go off doesn't seem like intentional design - just that it's hard enough to get them to go off in ideal circumstances. Still we may be unlucky.
@@SlipperyTeeth See also Operation Plumbbob, where the goal was to test safety(among a lot of other things). The Pascal-A test for example was an asymmetrical explosion with an expected yield
Stanislav Petrov should have a statue with the full story in the capitol of every country that has a nuclear arsenal. Heck, in every capitol city, because there probably hasn't been a person in the history whose actions saved the world from ending.
Been sayin this for years
Vasili arkopov too
@@seandeshields6759 absolutely!
Petrov did an excellent job during the incident. But the Soviet Union would not have launched a retaliatory strike on warning from a satellite, even if it was believed to be true.
This is such a cool story. My grandfather was stationed in Spain and went out in the search party looking for it. Awesome video
thank you for all your educational videos, Veritasium!
"Humanity invented the nuclear bomb. No mouse in the world would think of building a mousetrap." - Albert Einstein
"I have made nuclear weapons possible and an acoustic fridge. I am far more proud of the acoustic fridge." - Also Albert Einstein.
I was surprised you didn’t mention the close call during exercise Able Archer in 1983. I was a part of Able Archer and worked in the HQ of the 59th Ordnance Brigade. This exercise was suspected by Russia to be a cover for a nuclear attack by the US. There are a few videos about this, and even a German television series based on Able Archer, “Deutchland ‘83”.
Perhaps the reason he didn't mention it was because it's already been adequately covered elsewhere. It wouldn't have been as interesting a video if it was just a listicle of the most famous close calls.
Honestly, Deutschland 83 is really underated, Same with 86 and 89
@@jesusramirezromo2037 , agree about ‘86, I still need to watch ‘89. I was there ‘82-‘84 and worked on the Pershing II deployment.
@@artyb27 , the title of the video is “All The Times……….”
1983 was an interesting year. Soviets shot down a passenger jet, Stanislav Petrov's call to not launch, and then Able Archer.
Thank you for saying this. For the sake of our sanity we forget most of the time, but it is an horrific issue.
Thank you for making this video.
This definitely blew my mind, I had no idea there had been so many accidents over the time of the cold war... This is so incredibly difficult to believe that people actually authorized all that.
Hopefully with the new cold war we can have many more such situations.
Americans... and they 'smart' ideas
@@oXogon80why would you want that?
Pun intended?
@@marcoperin2135 Definitely not, just realized 😂
I love how the first story, describing bombs falling from a plane after taking off from North Carolina that had a fuel mishap, was a DIFFERENT near miss than the Goldsboro incident I was expecting!
Currently living in GBoro...what were you expecting? Genuinely curious.
@@MattH-wg7ou When NC was mentioned I thought it would be the GBoro story. Learned something! 😏 There are so many of these incidents. Madness.
@@MattH-wg7ouThis... 5:27
@@ntl5983 oh yea, thats crazy that TWO B52 Broken Arrows have taken off from Goldsboro!
Thank you for this timely and chilling reminder about humanity's vulnerability to an accidental nuclear war.
Always a great channel thank you for existing
On the one hand, it's awesome that Petrov and Arkhipov both almost single-handedly prevented the destruction of at least 2 continents. On the other hand, can we _please_ stop putting ourselves in situations where the destruction of 2 continents is even an option? Please?
I have noted your complaint. I'll pass on the word to the president.
я принял к сведению вашу жалобу. Я передам слово президенту.
hm
In 1959 I joined the Canadian Airforce Reserve and was trained as a Fighter Control radar Operator (Fighter COP) watching for Russian bombers coming over the Arctic. I was a teenager having a whale of a time . Only looking back did I realize how many time we came within a whisker of blowing each other up. Then in 1962 along came the Cuban missile crisis and with the help of Commander Arkipov we thought we had dodged the bullet ... again. The assumption was that the Russian missiles in Cuba were not yet operational. With the collapse of the Soviet Union the world got access to formerly classified Soviet documents ... that clearly indicated there were operational missiles in Cuba. Had the Russian sub fired that missile heaven only knows how much of the east coast of the US would have been reduced to radioactive glass let alone how much of the world we know would still be here.
Great content as always
On thay Goldsboro incident, the accidental exposion was much closer than you made it seem. Both bombs had 3 of their 4 switches armed, and they were starting to conduct the arming sequence. The scarier part in this incident is that the switch esin the bombs that didn't activate were different between the two. So for two entirely separate reasons, both bombs didn't detonate.
I’m not sure if I should be shocked and surprised of the haphazard handling of nuclear weapons, or just expect it.
If you're not sure which one to be, that kind of tells you what your answer should be
I disagree with the word "haphazard". There are processes in place for all the contingencies that they've imagined. That's not to say they've imagined every conceivable event, however. It looks "haphazard" because we're on the outside and we can make those armchair assessments on topics we know little about. Given the cost of aircraft and the weapons themselves, no one just says "Ah, yeah, we just dunked a B-52 with a load of multi-megaton warheads. Oh well, screw it, we'll worry about it later". And honestly, I'm more concerned about whackos like Kim Jong Un and his cohorts than I am about the Russians starting world war 3. The Russians are smart enough to know the consequences of their actions. KJU is a wildcard and may well press the button out of spite. I'm pretty confident that every nuclear nation is more worried about his ilk than anything else.
@@JCWren KJU isn't a wacko, he's an authoritarian dictator. His actions are completely rational from his position. No nuclear armed nation has ever been invaded, which makes nukes desirable to any country fearful of regime change imposed from without. He's a monster, but he isn't crazy. All of the saber rattling they do is deliberate (and often motivated by food shortages with the aim of coercing international aid). It reminds me of the "madman" strategy during the cold war, where the US deliberately fostered the perception that the US was reckless and willing to blow up the world. Nukes aren't any good as a deterrent if no one believes that you will use them.
@@JCWren I think Kim likes his rich cushy life too much and will throw a whole load of bluster around with some sabre rattling thrown in as an attempt to look strong to his own people. But right now I bet he's looking at big strong Russia coming begging for ancient stocks of unserviced scrap lying in North Korean armouries since the 60's cos Big Vladdy the baddie is now into day 565 of his 3 day war ...and I bet he's thinking that hanging out with Denis Rodmans probably more fun than kicking s*** off and sitting in a bunker for a couple of years at the end of a huge long table talking to your own generals that are probably plotting your inevitably close death. But then we seem to be heading towards lots of nations having what can only be described as cartoonish dictators popping up similar to what was around with WW2....creating a perfect stoichiometric mix for a really big bang to kick off WW3
@@EnkiduShamesh You're quite right about a lot of things but KJU is far from a crazy dictator, that's just the ludicrous propaganda we're fed here in the West, he's not even the head of state in the DPRK lol Also the US nearly nuked Korea and Vietnam so they are actually that reckless madman.
13:40 AKA was interrogated(tortured) mercilessly and made to step down or risk the death of himself and his family.
One can expect a performer to walk a tightrope for 30 minutes in reasonable safety. But it is insanity to expect the performer to walk the tightrope continuously for years. We had been extremely lucky.
Imagine being Vasily Arkhipov in that situation and resisting the pressure from the other commanders on the submarine. "A genius is the man who can do the average thing when everyone else around him is losing their mind" - Napoleon
My basic training instructor was walking a security perimeter around the silo in Arkansas when it blew up. He spent 6 months in the military hospital and changed jobs after that.
what a day to post this video 💀💀💀
For real, this guy
Minor, 9/11 is insignificant to the rest of the world.
why’s that
@@Calstar_sept 11
I love that you phrased these incidents as what they all were - lucky. The biggest mistake we could ever make is seeing this as proof that we can handle these weapons rather than proof they should never have existed to begin with.
Excellent video, thank you!
The story of Vasily Arkhipov gives me shivers every time I hear it. If a different man had been on the submarine - or if Arkhipov had cowed to his fellow commanders - none of us would be here.
Most of us would be here. At no point has humanity ever had enough nukes to kill every human. Even if they were launched in a coordinated manner with the sole purpose of killing as many people as possible - and that wouldn't be the case. Most of them would be aimed at other nukes. A huge number of nukes would be destroyed without ever getting used. A relatively small fraction would be aimed at high value military targets and a few would be aimed at the biggest population centers. Lots of people would die, for sure. There would be a lot of fallout and it probably would strongly affect weather patterns. But most of humanity wouldn't see a single nuclear explosion and many would hardly even feel affected. In the long term, most likely the superpowers that be would be less super afterwards but I'm not even convinced they'd cease to be superpowers altogether. Nuclear bombs are overhyped - as are the dangers of anything else nuclear, like nuclear power generation. It's obviously great that we never had a nuclear war, and if we'd had one, the world would be a drastically different place today - but most of us would still be here.
@@wurfyywhat about hydrogen bombs
@@wurfyy well what you mean to say is that humanity would not go extinct BUT it's true, none of us would be here as history would change too much and different people would've been born instead of us. I believe that's what he meant
@@pokejinwwi Doesn't affect the equation in any way.
@@Cube_Box That's a ridiculous argument to make. By that logic we should all be grateful for both world wars because without them other people would have been born instead of us.
My grandpa walked uphill both ways with nuclear bombs dropping left and right just to get to school.
You're Japanese?
Thankyou Vasily Arkhipov. From millions and billions 🙏
And thankyou Stanislav Petrov. Again, from millions and billions 🙏
Thanks veritasium, this is eye opening
7:50 This operation is also the origin of the term "Glomar response", which refers to a "neither confirm nor deny" response to a request for information (in particular FOIA requests in the US). When asked for details of this operation and whether it was connected to the submarine by journalist , the response was "We can neither confirm nor deny the existence of the information requested but, hypothetically, if such data were to exist, the subject matter would be classified, and could not be disclosed."
I have found no record of it on the internet but in1974 or early 1975 in the middle of the night, while I was stationed in Minot ND, the officers in control of the missiles were ordered to complete their preparations to launch and the B-52s began to roll out to the flightline. We were literally one more turn of a switch from the end of the world. From what we were told, the Russians had tested two of their missiles at the same time and our computers interpreted that as a first strike, not a test. I assume they changed the code after that. Rumor had it that some of the officers had what we now call PTSD because of this incident.
Either you are making this up, or you are releasing classified information online
@@peelysl It has been 50 years and no one told us we had to keep this secret. Are you some kind of expert on the subject or a math teacher?
Wasn't it always called PTSD?
@@Disorder2312PTSD has gone by many names from shell shock to battle fatigue
@@Disorder2312 I didn't know so I asked Bard. The term "posttraumatic stress disorder" (PTSD) was first used in the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III) published by the American Psychiatric Association in 1980. However, the symptoms of PTSD have been recognized for centuries, and it has been known by many different names over time. In the First World War, it was called "shell shock" because it was thought to be caused by the concussive force of exploding shells. In the Second World War, it was called "battle fatigue" or "operational exhaustion." And in the Vietnam War, it was called "post-Vietnam syndrome."
15:05 That segue into the ad was brilliant 🤣🏆
Probably your best video ever. The truth is too often hidden from us.
A great book about this is "Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety" by Eric Schlosser. Great audiobook too!
Sounds great I would love to read or listen it.. Is this available for free?? May be on KZhead or livrobox.... ( I am broke that too in economical poor country)
@@Samir12357Check 1lib or Google Podcast
Ok there's a ton of great content. Thanks for the title. Podcasts are epic
Love how a video can go in 1 sec from blowing up the world to shaving
Capitalism yo..
The connecting link was that both were a close shave! LOL
Saving/shaving... so easy to confuse.
To avoid nuclear disaster, you have to just shave 🪒 your face. 😉
The connecting link is that your facial hairs are fucked either way
For the first time in my life I actually bought a product based on a youtuber recommendation and I've been using the Henson razor for about half a year now. It does cause more skin irritation than a normal 4 or 5 blade quality razor. It is also incredibly expensive, but that's a one-time cost. It's the only razor I'll ever need and the blades are cheap so I think it was well worth it and I'm sticking to it. So yes, I'll give it five stars but I'm not sure it's so different from any other old razors out there.
Thank you very much for this video
The Titan II silo story really hits close to home for me. My dad was a mechanic in just that type of silo during the Vietnam War era. His was just outside of Tucson, AZ, fairly close to the Titan Missile Museum (but not that specific silo). To my knowledge he never had any tool mishaps, and certainly nothing of the magnitude of the incident in the video. But I've thought a lot about how intense of a job that must have been, turning a wrench just a few feet from a rocket the size of a small building, tipped with one of the most destructive weapons ever devised. And the guys he ate lunch with would be the ones to turn keys and push buttons in the first salvos of WWIII, had everything gone terribly sideways. I never found out if he was one of the two people needed to open up the safe with the launch keys.
saluton!
The problem with relying on luck, is that we need to be lucky every time... We can only be unlucky once.
Huge fan of your work 🖖
Brilliant idea for a video! Thanks a lot. 😊 After watching it, update! Brilliant video. I loved it. More please…
"Hey, do you not have enough to be anxious about in the world? Watch this." Seriously, my mouth was hanging open for this entire video. Holy crap.
"It's on arm." The scariest three words imaginable when dealing with a damaged hydrogen bomb.
Nicely done!
One of your best videos!
My Grandpa was a Major in the Airforce, he flew B52s in operation Chrome Dome. He unfortunately died the year I was born and never really talked about his 200+ missions he flew. My Grandmother says she still remembers how scary those times where, the worst was when Kennedy was assassinated, my Grandpa was actually in the air on mission at the time so she had no contact with him, she had 3 children at the time and thought we where in WW3!
Damn. What a time to be alive. That must've been a humbling job doing those nonstop flights.
@@flexincloudsthey chose old men as they never used to sleep
Most likely the dumbest thing I've heard today - ugh @@warrenarnold
Omg, well he's a hero in my books.
@@Jezee213 people have to sleep - duh
4:37 They just don't do journalism like they used to these days 😂
Masterwork history of Nakamura and the blue LED. I notice the channel over the years has similarly worked in improving the communication of the science alongside the human story. Key points made, not blurred, and the science never oversimplified. This is not an easy task. If there’s a better history of science communicator in the world now, I don’t know it. Well done Nakamura, and we’ll done Veritasium.
When you talked about the Palomares incident, i remembered some very famous images in spain where Franco's fascist minister, Manuel Fraga, entered the beach to "prove there was no radiation". Nowadays, spain is still claiming the US to take the contaminated sand off the beach.
This was really well done! Probably some of the best animation and editing I’ve seen, which really helps make the narrative even better.
How is it possible to keep creating such exceptional content for so many years!? Thank you making KZhead useful!
While I do agree Veritasium content is great, this topic has been covered on other channels extensively. Most notably, Lemmino did an amazing job at it a few years ago and I feel like the production value of Lemmino is even greater than that of Veritasium.
Thank you Vasili Arhkipov!
Lately I've been leaning towards the philosophy in life that bad things can/will happen and life is short so I should do what I want. I think this just pushed me over the edge.
These videos just keep getting better and more fun to watch. New animations and the perfect narration can never be beaten.
Petrov suffering a nervous breakdown is... extremely forgivable. I don't think any man can handle the fate of the entire world having rested in their hands
What is there to forgive? Having a nervous breakdown doesn't make you a bad person, such a dumb thing to say.
I can imagin the nervous breakdown might have to do with him, rather than being made a global hero, being sent on retirement as if he had done something wrong. It's the military, you know.
One killing way of doing a con-warhead video. Peaceful and calm. Great logic, background and conclusions. Very good, important people should watch this or meet you and your team❤
Great video. Hey sobering thought. Just watched Threads 1984 so this hit extra hard
Crazy how many times we came close to total disaster. Makes you wonder about all the things you don’t know about.
Ecclesiastes ch1 v18 "For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief." ... or the expression "ignorance is bliss". Sometimes it's best not to know.
it just makes "ignorance is bliss" quote even more meaningful.
@@GregGBM7 Ignorance is bliss to the ignorant (and a lot of the times even not). To the rest it can be torture.
There's your explanation for the Fermi paradox. Somewhere on the path to interstellar travel technology, there is the technology to build weapons powerful enough to destroy that civilization. Before they reach the point where they could travel to other worlds, they destroy themselves through some freak accident.
There are many such possible accidents, some involving accidents with weapons, some not. The more advanced a civilization gets, the fewer individuals working together you need to create a deliberate or accidental doomsday event. 20 years ago creating a world ending bioweapon needed a lab with 10s or hundreds of millions of dollars worth of equipment. Today it needs a lab with a few hundred thousand dollars worth of equipment. In 10 years a grad student with the right set of knowledge will be able to do it using a few thousand dollars worth of crap from Home Depot. Every step toward increasing advancement makes a Fermi Paradox "filter event" more likely. Unfortunately *not* becoming more advanced dooms your species to eventual single planet extinction, even if you're lucky enough to exist for a long time. It's a catch-22. The goal, therefore, is to survive long enough to begin the process of interstellar colonization, and to then spread out rapidly enough to mitigate the multi-star system catastrophes that will surely eventually start to pop up. If you have a million star systems, at some point one of them will spawn The Borg or a Dalek or The Zerg or an AI resembling the one from "I have no mouth but I must scream", so you have to have spread far enough that regional disasters like that can't wipe everyone out. However, we're likely to need digital intelligence of some kind - manufactured AGI, evolved AGI, or human consciousness transferred into computers - in order to crack even sublight interstellar colonization. Any type of digital intelligence magnifies the possibility of a vast number of either Small Filter or Great Filter events. This probably means that any civilization has to be extremely lucky (or receive outside assistance) to survive to become an interstellar power. Or just to survive at all. It's not hopeless that human civilization will survive... but it's low enough probability that any given civilization survives that we need to recognize that we all need to actively work toward our survival. The more of us working toward civilization surviving to that interstellar tipping point, the more filter events we'll manage to avert before they become dangerous, and the less we'll have to depend on luck to save us.
Great video. Everyone needs to see this.
This needs to be seen by many more people. Like!