What would World War III look like? What plans existed for fighting it? How would humanity and the planet fare?
What would World War III look like? What plans existed for fighting it? How would humanity and the planet fare?
Stephen 0:00
Im going to start this episode out with a quote.. Its by a man named bertrand russel. He’s one of those people you could could and should spend a lot of time reading about because he’s a downright interesting guy… you know you're dealing with an exceptional person when the first word in their wikipedia is “polymath” Hes going to receive innumerable awards and recognitions in his career including a nobel prize in literature.
“You may reasonably expect a man to walk a tightrope for 10 minutes. It would be unreasonable to do so without accident for 200 years.” Bertrand russel
Of course Russel is describing the state of affairs that existed in this period we know of as the “Cold War” in which you have these two mighty superpowers the US and Soviet Union that seemed destined to come to blows and under normal circumstances probably would… But within Russel’s lifetime the nature of the geopolitical landscape had changed dramatically. This “tightrope” walk is the precarious state of affairs where these two sides sought to keep the other at bay and not slip into a cataclysmic war.
Russel saw this war as inevitable. He had seen in his lifetime two world wars ravage Europe and Asia.
Russel was a pacifist. He got in a lot of trouble for protesting against Britain’s involvement in the First World War. At the outset of the second he was so opposed to fighting that he said “If the Germans come we should treat them as guests.”
But now… things are different.
Thats a frightening but fascinating argument. It shows the moral quagmire that leaders in this period found themselves in. We have the luxury of knowing that this devastating “future war” would never take place.. At least it hasn’t…. Not yet.
In the time period we are talking about people planned… they made detailed, elaborate plans about how to use this ultimate weapon. It wasn’t used thank god but on several occasions it came remarkably close. If that happened.. Because of what we know now… about what these plans were the world could have very easily slipped into the same oblivion that russel so feared.
I don't know what most of you do for a living… but by this point if you live anywhere in the western world I’m going to assume you've had the misfortune of having to attend a company meeting, staff meeting, or maybe a dreaded multi conference. They are usually pretty lame,,, depending on your line of work maybe downright horrible. Usually you get a lot of vague euphemisms, corporate mealy mouthed nonsense. Time at these meetings goes slowly. Although you may spend hundreds of hours at these things in a given year,... looking back its often difficult to pick out anything. I want to talk about a specific company meeting that that was ANYTHING but dull. Although it was full of jargon and insider terminology you or I might not have been familiar with.. If you'd have been there it would have made the hair on the back of your neck stand up. This meeting…. Or series of meetings actually took place in December of 1960 and January of 1961. The location…. A place called Offutt Air Force base. A place about 8 miles south of Omaha Nebraska. The meeting was attended by the Joint Chiefs of staff. For those of you who dont know thats basically the guy that runs the Navy, Army, Marines, and this relatively new service… The Air Force. This meeting was during a period we know as the Cold War. Basically its that period from the end of WW2 to the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. During this time many people… most people I would say.. Believed at some point war between the United States and the Soviet Union would take place. This I think you all get… you have Capitalism and Communism… two diametrically opposed world views. Both believe the other to be evil.. Both seek allies across the world… both will do whatever it takes to win.
This meeting was scary. I would say that of all the conferences in all the board rooms in history this had to be one of the top 5 most frightening ever. As you might expect in a room full of generals the topic was about strategy…. How to fight a war… but not just any war. This was about how to fight a nuclear war. The plan had many moving parts but its goal was something a child could have comprehended. Everything was to take place in an allotted time frame of 24 hours. In that time the United States was to deliver a blow so crippling to her adversaries that they would be unable to continue fighting.. If they were still alive that is. I think everyone of you is familiar with the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of world war two. They killed at minimum 200k people in their immediate aftermath. Hiroshima alone killed 130k people. This attack was to deliver the equivalent of 627,760 Hiroshimas…. And it would all happen in a matter of hours. This was SIOP 62.
I’m your host Stephen Eck… and this is Savage Continent
Intro Music 9:50
It was known as the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP was just an acronym). You might assume that each branch of the armed forces work as a unified team but you would be wrong. The different branches of the military often disagreed about strategies and tactics. If this occurred the president would be the final arbiter of what should be done. Abraham Lincoln would communicate directly with generals in the field via telegraph on a daily basis much to their aggravation. This is because according to the Constitution the President is “Commander in Chief.” When it comes to military matters he has almost absolute control. In this scenario Eisenhower is really flexing his muscle on that account.
The United States has been very fortunate in that it has not suffered any meaningful attack on its territory in its short history. You have a few brief incursions in the war of 1812, maybe a few skirmishes on the southern border. There was Pearl Harbor of Course but remember Hawaii was not a state at that time. Americans have grown used to a level of security that most people in the world have not known. You don't need to be a historian to know that large scale invasions and occupations are the order of the day in most of the world. How many times have places like France, Germany, Russia, China or any number of states in the middle east been overrun through the centuries. Many historians have asserted that it has been our geographical isolation that has led to our democratic form of government. Lets face it. Liberal democracies are great when barbarians are at the gates. Sometimes you need an authoritarian leader who can lay down the law.
The insecurity that Americans were feeling after WW2 must have been unsetting in the extreme. Wars,(unless you count our Civil War) were always something that happened somewhere many thousands of miles away… to people who spoke another language or worshiped another God. Now however one could look up into the sky and realistically fear that just one single plane.. Just a dot in the sky could drop an object so tiny it would be almost invisible. In a moment, however, your reality would be forever changed. The world would instantly become a nightmarish charnel house to rival the worst scenes of the last war. It could happen at any time. If everyone in the government was doing their job there would at least be a warning though. Planes only travel so fast. You'd have 7 or 8 hours. At least you could find a safe space to hide.
Back then it would have been super hard for the Soviet Union to drop an atomic bomb on the US mainland. By 1949 they had successfully tested a fission bomb but the only plain they had to deliver one was literally a carbon copy… down to the last bolt and nut of an american B29 that crashed in their territory. Sure they could hit US allies in Europe but flying to the US was a one way suicide mission for their pilots since they didnt have the fuel to return home (if… and its a big if… they could deliver their payload at all before being shot down by US fighters). In time the Soviets would build the bombers (so it was believed) and later... Intercontinental Ballistic missiles would come into the game. Instead of 7 or 8 hours the Soviets could hit the U.S. in ½ hour. By the time an ICBM showed up on radar it would be a mere 15 minutes from its target. Now there would be no warning. For the first time a major world power could wipe the other from the surface of the earth before the other side could get out of bed..
Think about that. How destabilizing could that be. Before, if Either the US or Soviet Union tried some sort of sneak attack, the other side would know all about it before anyone got killed. Sure you might suffer a devastating attack. Who knows?? Maybe half the people in your country might die but… That would be foolish of them. You'd have enough time to retaliate.. Your opponent would have only hours to savor victory before your bombers hit his territory. No one would win. Just make sure you have enough bombs and planes hit back. That should keep that idea out of his head. But now?? All bets are off.
I've often wondered about those western movies where two gunslingers stare each other down on some dusty street. Invariably the bad guy goes for his guy but the good guy is so quick on the draw that the bad guy is shot or at least gets the gun shot out of his hands. Would that ever happen in real life? I kindly doubt it.
Then there is the size and scale of these things.. They are mind boggling. By the mid 1950s your typical warhead on the nose cone of one of these missiles might be the equivalent of 2, 3 or 4 megatons or million tons of TNT. Just as a point of reference all the bombs dropped in WWII put together would only equal 3.25 megatons. Now you can accurately place all that in a radius of about 2 miles of some poor guys house in the other side of the world.
Its crazy if you were just 60 years old in this era you remembered a time when two bicycle repairman seemed to work a “miracle” by getting some rickety cloth and wood contraption off the ground for 80 feet. Now, super refined petrochemicals mix with liquid oxygen, can propel a 200,000 lb rocket clear out of the earths atmosphere in 5 minutes… from there a capsule containing a thermonuclear gift basket would travel to the other side of the planet in low earth orbit guided by nothing but inertia. When it finally came barreling down to earth again it would be traveling at nearly 20,000 miles an hour. Nonetheless a complex series of electrical impulses would occur at a specific, predetermined altitude.. Conventional explosives would cause atoms to split and others to fuse. Briefly a miniature sun or star would appear on the surface of the planet. Beautiful to behold… unless you are anywhere near it.
The temptation to strike first??? It must have been unreal….Even scarier… put yourself in the position of the leaders.. President of US… USSR Gen Sec.. You know where the other guy is for the most part.. You know where he lives. If hit first.. And you plan on it… you can evacuate yourself and everyone important to you to some some random place the other side would never dream of attacking… Some cabin in the middle of nowhere.. A deep abandoned mine.. anywhere …. When you give your launch orders you know with almost complete confidence that your adversary will have no time to get away.. By the time you get to this point moscow moscow will have dozens of huge weapons trained on it… so will Washington. No one will build bunkers strong enough to withstand a direct hit from these types of weapons.. The only hope??? Fly away… but can you get the chopper off the ground and at least 30 miles away that fast?? Oh yeah.. And also direct a war in that time as well?? Not possible.
World leaders can be some pretty self centered people… I think we all can agree. Maybe they would sacrifice 100 million of their own people's lives if it guaranteed their safety and those the family…. Nuclear war?? Eh it was bound to happen anyway. We will strike the enemy he will get pretty demolished but he wont have much to hit back with. At least its happening on OUR terms. They will get the worst of and we will win. Coincidentally, at least when it came to conducting war the United States and Soviet Union were very similar. Power flowed from the top. Everything depended on the mentality of the President or General Secretary. If the wrong person found himself in the highest office in the land everyone might pay the price. This person needn't be a bad person per se. Maybe they might just be paranoid or insecure. Maybe they style themselves as rational. No one wants to go through a devastating war but what if you run the numbers… play out the war games and come to the conclusion that attacking first is objectively your best option. What if you conclude that your opponent is also a rational actor and attacking first is THEIR best option?
BUT what if you believed by striking first.. Without warning you could catch the enemy totally unprepared.. Maybe no one on your side will die at all…. Hell.. you'd save hundreds of millions of lives… Maybe history would see past your treachery. This is whats known as a “first strike” capability… It would be the dread of any war planner. If the other guy had it… and they knew they had it you and everyone you know is dead meat. Cant let that happen.
Perhaps you know you are behind in the arms race and the other side is fixing to wipe you out totally at some opportune moment. Want to even the score?? Hit first.. Maybe the other guy gets a blow in but if you can knock out say 80% of his missiles, bombers and subs before they can throw anything in your direction at all. If you're lucky some of your missiles might take out him personally or at least his leadership. He cant organize his revenge in the chaos of that.
Hitting first has another huge advantage that often gets overlooked.. EMP… Electromagnetic Pulse. Detonate maybe half dozen warheads high over your enemy territory.. Like edge of space kind of high.. You can disable every electronic device.. Telephones, radios… hell even light switches… its all gone. Picture a nationwide power outage… just minutes before communication becomes absolutely vital. Your opponent is literally back in the Dark Ages right at the moment he can afford it he least. There was a US nuclear test.. “Starfish Prime '' in the central Pacific in 1962… a 1.4 mt warhead was detonated 250 miles over a place called Johnson Atoll. The power grid was knocked out 900 miles away in Hawaii. All telephone service was down. Imagine the confusion this would cause. How would a successful counter strike even be coordinated when no one can communicate?? These are all things to think about..
Its a total mind game. No wonder both sides will employ think tanks with mathematicians, social scientists, historians and even psychologists.
You have to take them all seriously. Fighting world war III is horrible… but losing it ….Unimaginable.
Stephen 27:22
Before we go on… just a disclaimer. In this episode we are going to discuss the dynamics of this particular plan, we will talk about the people that orchestrated it. But we will also get into the science of how they work and what effects a war like this would have on the population and even the environment. If that's not your bag then I get it. Maybe scrub ahead to the end or try out episode 2. From there on out it's all history. I feel I need to do a deep dive on what these things are and what they mean or none of the rest of this series will really make sense. However… I can't sugar coat it. This is a dark subject matter… but then maybe thats something you people need to hear now and then. Keep in mind this is all very real. This isn't some sci fi post apocalyptic fantasy. These things are as real now as they were back when Eisenhower was president. And they work. In fact they probably work better now than they did back then. They do exactly what we have designed them to do. Society shouldnt be allowed to pretend they belong to another era.
Back to our meeting. We have the Joint Chiefs of Staff.. Some outside experts that I’ll get into a bit later and our main figure… our presenter… Thomas Power. Power is a war hero…
Distinguished flying cross, Silver Star, 2 Legions of Merit, 2 Air medals. Hes flown over Nazi Germany.. He's flown over Japan.. He’s faced death. Again and again. After bombing Tokyo and 65 other major japanese cities he and his crew left their planes with the smell of charred flesh on their clothing. He is the protege of Curtis Lemay… a man whose nickname is “Iron Arse.” Lemay was a legend in the Air Force he pioneered the “box formation” when bombing targets in Nazi Germany… He was behind the obliteration of every major Japanese city in 1944/5. I could talk a long time about this guy but I think these quotes sum him up pretty well.
“If you kill enough of them. They stop fighting.” “Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time. I suppose if we had lost the war I would have been tried as a war criminal ``''There are no innocent civilians, so it doesn't bother me so much to be killing innocent bystanders.” Finally… “If we maintain our faith in God, love of country and superior global air power, the future looks good.”
Power runs something called “Strategic Air Command.” It's sort of a subsidiary of the Air Force that Eisenhower wants in charge of all nuclear war planning. At the end of 1945 the US had 2 bombs.. By 1947… 10. The number would grow and grow until by 1960 there were nearly 20k. Originally they were kept away from the military.. Kind of a lock and key situation. President Truman dictated where they went, who got them and most importantly if they were to be used. That last part never went away… but only technically. If there was an attack and the president was out of reach then commanders were authorized to use any weapons in their possession. And by that point there was every weapon you could conceive of. From monster ICBMS and giant gravity bombs as big as 25 megatons to tiny atomic artillery shells and even a bazooka that lauched a half kiloton warhead half a mile called the “Davy Crockett.” There were atomic torpedoes, atomic depth charges, atomic surface to air missiles, atomic air to ground missiles, atomic air to air missiles.. There were even atomic landmines… now that would be a nasty surprise. All the services had these weapons and all had their own ideas on how to use them. In the event of war the Navy wanted to put its submarine launched and carrier launched missiles in one place, the army might want to put its battlefield nukes somewhere else, the air force had its priorities.. When there were a few dozen this wasn't such a big deal but when you have that much material in that many hands.. If war starts unexpectedly it could be a huge mess. You might have a bunch of targets getting hit way too many times.. Other targets might get totally overlooked.. And if your call to action gives you only minutes to respond?? There is literally no time to sit and strategize. You need a plan that you can kick into gear. Every man needs to know exactly what to do. There is no time for thinking… no dithering… no questioning… no moral reasoning.
Stephen 38:05
Power, the Commander and Chief of Strategic Air Command and His Superior, Curtis Lemay… Commander in Chief of the Air Force firmly believed that war should be brief decisive and exceedingly violent. Anything less prolongs the suffering and death. Look at the examples of the trench warfare of WWI… the way the Axis Powers had to be slowly ground to bits by the allies. These 2 wars devastated 2 successive generations. If you look back at human history its the long wars that have been the most costly. Thats the idea They were long.. Tens of thousands of people died every day for years on end. What if you could eliminate that by such an amazing show of force that no opposing power would dare mess with you? Or if they did what if you could wallop them so hard that it would be over before anyone knew it. Surely this was the most humanitarian way to fight a war right?? Looking back in all of human history the long wars have typically been the most costly. This was the idea behind the SIOP. 186 Civ and military personnel worked almost non-stop for 4 months.. Completed dec 14th 1960. Their goal was….if nuclear war was called for what would be the response of the US military. Everything had to be pre programmed…
Kaplan, Fred Wizards of Armageddon pg. 269.
This is an immense amount of firepower. Its so absolutely incredible that no CGI movie could ever do it proper justice. Let's break down some terminology. A kiloton is the equivalent of 1,000 tons of TNT. A megaton is 1,000 kilotons or 1 million tons of tnt. The bomb that destroyed Hiroshima was 12.5 kilotons. What does that even look like. A stick of dynamite is 8 ounces. It is about 8 inches long and 1.25 inches in diameter. A kiloton of dynamite would be 4 million of these sticks. A megaton would be 4 billion.
You take 1 kiloton of dynamite that would be a cube 227 feet high and 227 feet wide. Thats a 20 story cube.. Impressive.
A megaton would be a cube 2,270 feet high and wide. The highest building in the US is the Freedom tower in New York that is 1776 feet high… of course its not nearly that wide so picture that much TNT stacked up on a giant cube. Thats what a megaton would be.
Nuclear bombs have 2 categories… fission and fusion. A fission bomb derives its power by slamming together Uranium or Plutonium with such force that these atoms split and become lighter elements Like Krypton or Barium. During the since these lighter elements contain fewer combined neutrons than the original fissile element ’the left over neutrons fly off with incredible force. They in turn hit other Uranium or Plutonium atoms and the process repeats itself. Its tricky because you have to use conventional explosives to trigger this car crash of atoms and the force of that explosion can blow the bomb apart before “critical mass” can occur. Fission bombs are powerful but they are limited by the amount of fissile material in the bomb. If you want a bigger explosion you need to build a bigger and bigger bomb. At some point they get too cumbersome to be of any use. The largest ever tested was 800 kilotons. Big… but a mere fire cracker compared to the next type of bomb.
A fusion or hydrogen bomb is really 2 bombs in 1. At the top of the bomb you have a typical fission bomb. Usually it has a uranium or plutonium core surrounded by the high explosives needed to bring it to the critical mass it needs. At the bottom of the bomb you have a mixture of 2 isotopes of Hydrogen duterium and tritium… one has one neutron and the other has two. The goal is to get these to combine and become helium. Helium normally has 2 protons and 2 neutrons. That blasts one neutron off and does so with a force so incredible that it leaves fission in the dust. But again…. Its tricky because if the shockwave from your original fission reaction hits your deuterium and tritium then… yeah you'll get the fission detonation but you'll miss out on the real thing you are after. I know I’m probably oversimplifying a bit but the gamma rays from the original explosion bounce off a Berillium casing...and back into the fuel of the bomb.. The hydrogen isotopes. Everything inside is also cased in styrofoam… this is important because it needs turn into a plasma that is hot enough to create the temperatures needed to force these isotopes together. Normally, your protons have such a powerful positive charge that they wont come within a country mile of each other…. But if you heat them to many tens of millions of degrees all bets are off and they are willing to come together and thus create other elements. This of course is what happens at the center of our sun. This is how mass is turned into pure energy. A hydrogen bomb is basically taking a little piece of the sun and placing it very briefly on the surface of the earth. What's insane is the miniscule size of matter actually turned into energy in these detonations. Believe it or not the Hiroshima bomb only turned a couple grams of matter into energy. Thats the equivalent of half a penny. The largest bomb ever created… the “Tsar Bomba” which was possibly 4,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb only turned 5 pounds of matter into energy. I often joke with students, picking the smallest in the class saying if their body weight were turned into pure energy they could wipe out most life on earth.. At least in the northern hemisphere. Just that reaction by itself.
Now if you were to take all the megatonnage SIOP 62 envisioned dropping in a matter of hours and you were to put all those dynamite sticks in one place??
Your cube would be 8.83 miles high and wide or 46,640 feet. 3 miles higher than Mt Everest and a mile higher than the cruising altitude of a 737.
But what does that all mean.. What does it do?? Lynn Eden in her book “World on Fire” describes what a single… relatively small bomb of 300 kilotons would do if it were detonated over the Pentagon in Washington DC.
Eden, Lynn World On Fire pg. 16-17
But thats all just the beginning… the opening seconds of the attack. What transpires in the minutes and hours afterwards is totally unaccounted for when we use terms like megaton and kiloton. That's all blast… Light and heat are what make a nuclear weapon a nuclear weapon. Usually, when a fire occurs it starts in a single place and spreads wherever it can find new fuel. When a fire burns through an area it moves on. This is a line fire.. A nuclear fire is another animal entirely. Within seconds things spontaneously combust…. I mean everything. The blast basically breaks everything apart.. Exposing everything that might be flammable. Next step.. All that material burns… and so much burns at once that the develops into something only witnessed several times in human history. It happened in Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo and maybe two other ww2 cities. Eden goes on to describe how this works.
Eden, Lynn World On Fire pg. 25-26
Unfortunately, since bombs were almost always tested in secluded open areas things like light, heat, blast were easy to observe and record with sensors. These tests all had a purpose. They weren't done for fun although we like to think they were. However, not being able to drop them in built up areas robbed researchers of the critical data they would need to figure out just how destructive these fires were… so that aspect was just ignored.
Stephen 1:06:12
Then there is fallout. From the very beginning scientists knew that physical materials exposed to the direct effects of these weapons became toxic to be around. They are “radioactive” the nucleus of these atoms wants to “give up” further energy. This happens in the form of gamma rays or alpha or beta particles… This is a bit wonky so i wont get too far into it. Just know that everything that gets sucked up into that iconic mushroom cloud is pretty much cursed. Once it falls to earth its extremely dangerous to life. Now most of this radioactivity goes away rapidly There are certain isotopes produced such as strontium 90 or Cesium 135 that can stick around for decades. Believe it or not you probably have trace amounts of them in your body right now from nuclear tests conducted in the 50s and 60s. Fallout can travel from thousands of miles… Usually it falls to earth several hours after a detonation but some of it can remain in the stratosphere for years. When this became common knowledge after the disastrous “Castle Bravo” test in the South Pacific there was a near mania for building “fallout shelters.” A fallout shelter is not a bomb shelter… it won't protect you from heat, blast, fire or any of the obvious effects of a nuclear weapon… These safe spaces were designed to keep people safe from the “toxic snow” that would be falling outside. The first hours after it starts would be the most deadly. Most of the radioactivity dissipates quickly but it really wouldn't be safe to be outside for at least a week… maybe two. Just being inside wouldn't be enough to keep you safe. Gamma rays would go right through most walls and make you very sick in a just a day or two. An agonizing death might occur inside a week. Radiation sickness is no joke. Google it up.
What protects well would be several inches of lead… maybe a foot or two of concrete… but several feet of soil does a great job as well. Since these rays travel in straight lines being below ground level with a concrete roof or a roof covered in soil would do the trick just fine. These fallout shelters popped up all over North America, Europe and Asia. Governments would often stock public shelters with enough food and water to keep a specified number of people alive for this time. You can still see the signs on old buildings in some areas.. Three upside down triangles… signifying SHELTER, FOOD and Water, and First aid. NYC alone had something like 18k of them. More often people would build them in their basements and back yards. Amway even sold prefabricated ones to bury in your yard.
Stephen 1:15:39
At this point you must be thinking to yourself “how can this get any worse??” Oh…. it gets much much darker. There's the climate.. All the dust from the explosions and especially the the fires that would follow would be thrown high into the stratosphere. During the time period we are looking at it wasn't very well understood but by the 1980s scientists were well aware that this dust and soot would dramatically affect the amount of sunlight reaching earth at least in the Northern Hemisphere and probably the south as well. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists would write about it in 1984 article:
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists April 1984 p. 25
Now that's downright apocalyptic. You are in this world where even at high noon its almost this weird twilight effect. When night proper arrives it would be like the world is a giant cave and there is no light whatsoever. Crop failure in the aftermath of an attack would be near total. Keep in mind that the world only has enough food on hand at any given time to last about a month. If that gets cut for any reason people are going to starve.
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists April 1984 p. 85
Now some scientists hold that it wouldn't be quite as bad as expected but even the lower estimates would suggest an ecological catastrophe. By one estimate 97% of humans on the planet would die within a year or two.
So…. Even if Thomas Powers devastating attack on the USSR went off without a hitch he would be unwittingly dooming survivors everywhere to a slow.. Perhaps crueler death.
Now remember how I mentioned how the different services did not always work together, and that often the president sometimes will step in if there is a dispute?? This time is no different. Dwight Eisenhower, unlike his predecessor, has a LOT of military experience. He was the Overall commander of Allied forces in Europe in WW2. This Single Integrated Operational Plan was his idea… nonetheless some of the tension and rivalries that existed coming into this will come into play.
Kaplan, Fred Wizards of Armageddon pg. 270
So that begs the question… how did it come to this?? How could anyone think this level of overkill was at all justified?? How could any rational person believe this type of wholesale carnage to be necessary for National survival? Next time we will learn how the united states went from a stockpile of just 2 cumbersome fission bombs that had little or no chance of halting the inexorable soviet advance into a prostrate post war western europe to what can be best be referred to as a nuclear hyperpower with a nuclear arsenal 10 times larger than its nearest rival? It's the birth of the nuclear age… next time on Savage Continent.
Outro Music 134:22