Angry Planet - Dissecting Today’s Apocalyptic Nuclear Culture

Episode Date: November 15, 2018

From Roadside Picnic to Fallout, the stories a culture tells about can tell you a lot about the culture. On this bonus episode of War College, Matthew and Jake Hanrahan of the Popular Front podcast sit down to puzzle out what’s going on these days with nuclear culture.You can listen to War College on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is warcollegepodcast.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/; and on Twitter: @War_College.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. The idea of everything needs to be wrecked and destroyed and needs to be rebuilt from the ashes, I think is quite prevalent in kind of fringe culture or extremist subcultures. I think that really says something about the society we're in right now, you know. You're listening to War College.

A weekly podcast that brings you the stories from behind the front lines. Here are your hosts, Matthew Galt and Jason Fields. Hello and welcome to War College. I am Matthew Galt. This is a bonus episode of the show, a little special treat. A few weeks ago, I sat down with Jake Hanrahan of the Popular Front podcast, which is an excellent show that focuses on the niche and geeky details of modern war. Jake Hanrahan hosts it, and it's great. If you like War College, you'll love Popular.

front. What you're about to hear is a conversation between me and Hanrahan, where we take a deep dive into nuclear pop culture. This is one of my favorite topics, and Jake gave me the space to really geek out. That said, I may have made a few mistakes. It happens in off-the-cuff conversations. First of all, Stanis LaLam is a fantastic science fiction author, but he did not write Roadside Picnic. That was Arcotti and Boris Strogotsky. I'm sorry if I butcher that pronunciation, which I almost surely did. Also, do not listen to me when it comes to North Korean nuclear capabilities. I know a little, but the fine folks at arms controlwank.com know a lot more.

It's a complicated topic with new information coming in daily, and if you want the closest thing to the objective truth, you need to look to them at arms controlwank.com. And without further ado, here's something a little different. Well, let me ask you this. How old are you? I'm 28. I'm a baby. Oh my God, you're so much younger than I am. That's, and I always felt like I was young. Well, let me ask you this.

Like, growing up, were you afraid of nukes? No, not even. It was not even, uh, it wasn't even there, you know? There was never, the only thing, the only time I ever was interested in stuff to do with nukes is when I was watching teenage mutant ninja turtles on TV when I was a kid, you know? And it's like, the turtles fell in the nuke, nuclear waste or whatever in the sewers. So I was just like, oh, that's really cool. And on Simpsons, where, you know, Homer gets the neon stick caught in his back, you know, that was the only kind of, the only introduction I ever had to nukes, you know,

or anything to do with nuclear or atomic or whatever. So that blows me away. So were you alive when the Berlin Wall came down? Or, like, just? So I was born in January 1990. I mean, it's even a little bit odd for me because I was born in 83. So I remember some of this stuff, but I do remember it being a bigger deal for my parents. You know, the reason I want to talk about this is because I feel like nuclear pop culture is coming back in a big way, just a couple different things I've seen.

And I don't think we know how to talk about it anymore. Yeah, well, I think for you guys, it's a lot different as well, right? For Americans, I could be wrong, but I think for Americans it was a lot more of a threat, right, with the Cold War and, you know, in Russia and America facing off. Well, yeah, but I mean, what do you think was going to happen if the Soviets came through the folder gap? Yeah, that's true. It's true. But I don't think it was so much, you know, like I could be wrong, but I don't think Brits were as focused on, you know, this is how to get under your table in school if the nuke actually goes off and all that stuff. See, I think it's funny that you say that because

I think all the best stuff, all the best movies and documentaries and things about nuclear war, fictional and, you know, true, have all been British. There you go. I need to go and have a bit more of a look into the British nuclear culture. You've seen thread. right? Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. I see, I mean, that's the, that's the clat. Like, you ask, you, you go around a table and you ask people, like, what's the scariest nuclear war movie? Someone's going to mention threads.

You know, British director, Mick Jackson. And I don't think, like, the way that movie was made is very interesting, too, because it's like a, it's a long story. But, you know, what else are we doing here, right? So there's a guy named Peter Watkins, who's an amazing British film. maker. And I think our audiences in particular would really like something he directed in the 60s called The Battle of Caladden, which is about, you know, the Battle of Caledon. And the way he did it was very interesting and gross. I think it's on YouTube. But anyway, he makes this documentary, a faux documentary in the 60s. It's black and white called The War Game. It's very sparse. It's 20

minutes long. And it's about what will happen to a small British town in the event of nuclear war. And he did his research and he talked to a lot of people. And it's fictional and it looks, but it looks like a documentary. And it's very dry and matter of fact. And there's a British narrator kind of intoning over all of it. Even as the scenes get more grotesque and horrifying. And it was so controversial.

at the time that the BBC suppressed it for years. They showed it in theaters a few times. I don't think they didn't air it on TV until just recently, in fact, and then just sat on it. They were worried that, I mean, because it was one of these things where the information that they were giving in the, that Watkins was giving in the show was basically, the home secretary is lying to you. If nukes come, we're probably fucked.

It doesn't matter how much tape you've put over. your windows or if you've got a bomb cellar. It's going to be terrible for everybody. So they didn't want the political climate at the time. They didn't want that getting out. Do you know what I've just remembered actually? I have, I don't know if you've seen this. It's an animation. It's called when, when the wind blows or where the wind blows or something. Oh, man. Yeah. It's like, you remember that, right? I've just remembered actually. I've seen that. And it's like British animation where I think, I think their town gets hit with a nuke or something and it's like this old couple from up north. It's just an old company. Yeah, it's just an old company. Yeah, it's just

an old couple basically slowly dying of radiation poison in their home. And that, I mean, that's a really good one too. And that speaks to what I really like about the way Britain has processed this information, is that it's not, there's no power fantasies and there's no bullshit. It's just, this is what's going to happen and it's going to be awful. These are the effects of these weapons, period. whereas in America we do things like make the teenage mutant ninja turtles. Yeah, but it's definitely a lot more fun to see that, you know what I mean?

In fact, I remember when I was covering the Scottish independence referendum and the nuclear situation came up quite a lot actually because, you know, they have nukes based up there or rather Britain has based them up there. And, you know, I remember a lot of the kids saying, oh, well, what if one goes off? that's kind of, you know, I'm, you know, my house is wrecked. And then one guy, I remember he was saying, well, look, if it's in London and it goes off, we're all fucked. You know, like there is no, it doesn't matter if it's in Scotland or, you know, or Dover, it's still going to get you. Yeah, I think that. And that's interesting you say that, because that speaks to kind of the general level of ignorance, I think, of most people today around these weapons. And, you know, suddenly they're in the news again. North Korea is a nuclear power. Iran certainly has nuclear ambitions. and America's pulling out of the INF Treaty. And, you know, the doomsday scientists keep moving that minute hand closer to midnight.

It's all on our minds again. And we don't have a good language to talk about it. And I think pop culture really helped us a lot post-World War II up and through the Cold War process some of this. You know, of course you've got like the trauma movies, Newcomb High and the silly stuff. but you also get great things like where the wind blows and threads and the war game. Yeah, and I think Stalker as well, you know, the Soviet film Stalker, I think, is incredible. Oh, yeah, of course. Is this Stanislaw Lim, Roadside Picnic, I think, is the book?

That's right, that's it, Roadside Picnic, yeah, it's based on Roadside Picnic. In fact, last year I did a little film in Chernobyl, and there was this amazing situation that didn't make it into the film because, you know, as a Vice News HBO thing, there was this really interesting thing that happened where we're in what is basically the zone, you know, like the infected area, and we're with this amazing guide. He basically just said, like, you can kind of go here, there, whatever, as long as you're quick. And as we're going around, we actually bump into two people that have snuck into the zone, like via the unofficial routes, like snuck over the fence or whatever. And the guy is standing there and he just said, look, stalkers, you know, and I had lost my mind,

stalker, I love the film, I love the game. And I was like, what do you mean stalkers? He said, yeah, what we call them, these are real stalkers. And anyway, to cut a long story short, what it is, there's a whole kind of subculture around that where people actually sneak into the zone to spend a few days there. They'll sleep out, they'll camp, and they'll just collect things. And sometimes they sell it online. And this is kind of insane because it's radioactive, you know, some of it is still radioactive.

And I just found that really interesting. And I thought, wow, like the subculture, or sorry, rather the pop culture has actually influenced these people to sneak in into a way, it's still quite a dangerous zone in some areas to kind of, I don't know, reenact this fantasy of the kind of stalker universe, you know? How old were they? They were young, man. They were really, they were quite young.

Actually, I've got a photo of them being escorted away. Like, they got arrested and stuff. And they were like early 20s, you know, probably or maybe my age. Do you think they keyed into it from the video game? I think so. I spoke to, you know, our fixer and Dima is great. Dima Colchinski and he said to us, yeah, like, this is quite a big thing. You know, they sometimes they sneak in.

He showed us pictures. They sneak in dressed up in the, not the gilly suit, the Gawker suit. The main character wears often in Stalker, the game. And they'll sneak in and, you know, do little photo shoots and stuff like that just to be like, hey, you know, we're in the zone sort of thing, which kind of absurd really when you think about it because, you know, it is, it's a bit hyped up. You know, there isn't fucking radioactive werewolves or any of that nonsense. But there are certain areas that you don't really want to be sleeping overnight there, you know.

I mean, it might not do anything to you, but I wouldn't want to risk it. Shout out to the first stalker video game. If anyone hasn't played it, it holds up really well. It's really good. I think Stalker's Shadow of Chernobyl is the first one. And then everything else after that is kind of you can take a pass on. Really good, yeah. Yeah, that was one of the first games I remember really getting.

lost in, and you're in this big wilderness that you don't understand. There's invisible things that can kill you at a moment's notice, and it's still beautiful at the same time, and lonely and desperate. And you know, you contrast that with what they've got going on with fallout right now. You know, it's a night and day difference, how these two different cultures have processed, you know, the fear of nuclear Armageddon. Yeah, it's a great game. The atmosphere in that is, it's just, it's just, it's, it's,

I don't know, man. It's really ahead of its time, I think. It was very spooky, you know, like a genuinely spooky game, to be honest. Yeah, that was, that's one of the first games I remember really getting lost in, and you're in this big wilderness that you don't understand. There's invisible things that can kill you at a moment's notice, and it's still beautiful at the same time, and lonely and desperate. And you know, you contrast that with what they've got going on with Fallout right now. you know, it's a night and day difference, how these two different cultures have processed,

you know, the fear of nuclear Armageddon. I've actually never played Fallout. What's, I vaguely know, but we'll remind me, what's the storyline and what's the setting there? Okay, so Fallout, there was a war in the Fallout nerds are going to come down on me. I think it is like 2050, 2050-5, I think is when the war happens. But the timeline branches in the past basically,

no, they didn't invent miniaturization, So everything looks like what the 1950s imagined the future was going to be, that world of tomorrow look, you know, that retro future thing. So there was a great war between China and America. Nobody knows who threw the first bombs. And then depending on which game you're playing, the player is emerging into the wasteland, several hundred years after the bombs have dropped. and there's new cultures that have arisen kind of in the wastes of what I would what I think of as American baby boomer like 1950s nostalgia like that world has been irradiated and laid waste and there's monsters living in the ruins both human and you know mutant um and the there's kind of there's a controversy kind of brewing around it right now because the first few games that came out in the mid-90s uh you know you know know, after the wall had fallen, I guess during that, you know, that the end of that end of history period that didn't really, and that didn't really pan out. We're very good, we're very interesting

and like thoughtful commentaries about power and the use of nuclear weapons and, you know, what the dangers of nationalism are. And they were, they're really well designed. And they, those still hold up, fallout one and two. And then Bethesda, this big game studio purchased it. No, sorry. Bethesda, you know, they make Skyrim, et cetera. This big game studio, they purchased it, and they've kind of turned it, they've stripped out some of the story elements,

and every game that they've made with the license has gotten a little bit more away from that kind of anti-war, anti-nuclear spirit, which is kind of culminating in this new game that's about to come out in the middle of November called Fallout 76. That actually has a mechanic in the game where you can steal ICBM launch codes and throw nukes back and forth at each other.

It was very bizarre. I was actually at an event where they revealed the game to journalists and let journalists play it for a little bit. We played it for three hours, and then at the very end of the event, they capped it all off by detonating a nuke in the game world. And it was really strange for me to be in that room because this is something. that I've researched for a long time, independent of video games, you know, like, yeah, I'm fairly familiar with America's political history of nuclear weapons, et cetera, et cetera, and I'm watching all these games journalists watch this nuke go off in a video game, and they cheer, and they clap, and it felt a little chilling and off-putting to me.

Yeah, yeah, even, like, Fukushima wasn't that long ago. Yeah, exactly, and it's doubly creepy, because where the event was held was, was the Greenbrier Hotel in West Virginia, which is where Congress's fallout shelter is based. We actually took a tour of the Fallout Shelter. It was pretty fascinating. But it was a place up the highway from Washington where they would evacuate Congress

in the event of nuclear war. This big, luxurious hotel with a Fallout shelter underneath it. So we're right above the fallout shelter, and I'm watching this nuke go off in a video game, thinking about how far, how abstract this terror has become, even as it's rearing its ugly head again. That's the kind of thing in like 10 years you'll be looking back and just thinking,

fucking how we're really stupid to do that, if something happens, you know, as if it's already something of the past. Yeah, exactly. It's not like, it's not as if, I'm kind of torn too because I think that trivializing these things can't help us deal with the fear of them, right,

turning the nukes just into another part of the game takes maybe will allow people to process that fear and that anxiety. I could see that, but I also feel like it's not an intentional commentary by the people that are making the game, and that maybe changes it a little bit. I don't know, I'm torn. Yeah.

I think though in general there's been a new, I think in the culture we have now, nuclear war, nuclear apocalypse, is kind of almost trendy in a weird way, especially on the fringes. Now, I say that because in relation to what you're saying, I think people almost just, you know, oh, it's cool again, kind of.

And I say that because if you look at these weird militant Nazi groups, like Atomofen Division, for example, you know, atomic warfare, and people are, why do they pick that name, atomwaffen or being like an atomic weapon in German? And I think because it very much, it's in that whole black pill culture, the nihilism, the everything is so bad we need

to just fucking wreck everything. Everything needs to be destroyed before we can come out of it. And that's, you know, that's where you'll see a lot of these nihilists, even like Anaco nihilists, not even the far right guys, are just kind of, you know, talking about nuclear war and oh yeah, we need a reset, we need everything to be destroyed and stuff like that. And it's almost, I think it's a bit of, I don't know, when society was how it was, perhaps in the Cold War,

perhaps, you know, it was a real fear. And now it's almost like some people actually want it to happen, you know? Maybe they don't, but the concept of it, the idea of everything needs to be wrecked and destroyed and needs to be rebuilt from the ashes, I think is quite prevalent in kind of fringe culture or extremist subcultures. I think that really says something about the society we're in right now, you know, without sounding too much like a meme, I do actually think that, you know, I think it's quite, it says something. No, I think you've actually hit on something. There's like, there's an apocalyptic strain running through Western society right now. Yeah, and I do it myself, actually, you know, like I'll see some outrageous situation. I saw something the other day.

I still don't even know if it was real, but it was like, it was on the popular front Discord actually, some guys sent it. And I think Lena Dunham is making a film with JJ Abrams about Syrian refugees or something. And I was like, fucking hell, we need a nuclear apocalypse. And it's weird. Like, why am I saying that? I don't want that. It's horrific.

But what I mean is like, oh my God, like, things really this bad. you know, whatever. And to be clear, of course, I'm not saying don't make films about Syrian refugees, you know, obviously, of course not. But what I'm saying is, like, Lena Dunham and JJ Abrams making it. Like, for God's sake, like, get a Syrian filmmaker to make it. Get some Syrian activists to be the main people that are a part of. It's not Lena Dunham.

I think a lot about what everyone's limits are in terms of feeling politically powerless. And you push people to a certain extent. feel that power isn't being distributed equitably or correctly. And on a long enough timeline, they will push back. And I think that there's a, there's a despair in the current moment, because nobody has any hopeful stories. Nobody has any vision for the, like, you know, to start using, you know, pretentious words. Neoliberalism has failed. That dream, such as it was, is being devoured by reactionary forces. all over the planet. And some people feel that the only way to take care of those problems is to

just, you know, blow everything up and start again. It's that, it's that anarchic drive for destruction that allows for creativity afterwards. Yeah. And I think it's also like the ultimate defeatist thing, right, as in, we're not defeatist, but we all know like, oh, what could end the world, you know, asteroid or nukes, you know, the only way we're all going to kill ourselves, really is probably nukes. And I guess that, you know, it's the ultimate human creation in that sense that it can end us as well. Yeah, it's really funny to, now thinking about Fallout 76 again is they just released a live action advertisement for the game that is people playing, it's live action, people dressed

up as the characters from the game, playing in an apocalyptic wasteland with huge smiles on their faces, while the Beach Boys, wouldn't it be nice, plays in the background? And then the last image is a nuke going off while all these characters like stand in a line, arm and arm smiling at the waist that they've created. What is the message? Is that having a, I mean, for me, I think, is that a sly dig at the absolute wreckage that is normal society now, you know? Is that, is that look what you did. You know, with it, that's kind of a more literal version of it.

I think it's that anxiety, it's that anxiety bubbling to the surface. Do you think, yeah? Yeah, you know, it's like, I don't think it's a conscious, like the art department for whatever marketing firm they contracted to make the ad for that game wasn't thinking that consciously when they made it. I don't think. If they were, I think things would be a lot darker and weirder than they already are. Yeah, I think that, you know, art and culture are the stuff that's underneath, especially speculative fiction, like any kind of video game or any kind of genre of fiction. It's the stuff underneath the surface of the society bubbling up. and reflecting people's fears and dreams. And it's a lot of fears right now.

There is, there is. And I think with like the idea of nuclear apocalypse, it's the one thing you can't fight against. You know, if someone invades, you can take up arms, you can try whatever, you can set bombs, you can be, you know, what I mean, there's some, it might be futile, but there might be some way to fight back. Nuclear war, there's nothing you can do.

You know, if that lands on your heads, you know, everybody's gone. You won't know, you won't know anything about it. And I think, you know, I think you're right with that. because there is a lot going on. You know, I know technically we live in one of the safest times in terms of conflict and whatever, but the perception isn't that for everybody, for most people. And if the perception isn't that, then it's not that, I think,

because mentally it has the strain, you know, always it kind of leans on you. And I think culturally we're in a real bad place. You know, for example, you can see kind of fascism is on the rise and it really is. And I don't really think there's, I think the society or the culture we've created, I don't think there's really an option. So I think what's going on now? It's like the culture has got to the point where there's complete hopelessness for the people that, you know, I don't know, we're trying to push against, you know, the tide of whatever's coming.

And I guess like nuclear apocalypse is the ultimate kind of hopeless situation because like I said, you cannot fight against it. Right. It's like you brought up the black pill earlier. And what's the final like line of any in-sell manifesto is, what is it like just lay down and fucking die. They have a, they have an abbreviation for it. I can't remember, man. I don't know. But yeah, I know, I know what you mean. They, they have so many different slang words and abbreviations and stuff, but yeah.

It's something to the effect of you just, just lay down and wait for death or just lay down and die, right? And so I guess it makes it, like, if you look at Fallout 76, and there's also, there's a show on in America right now called American Horror Story Apocalypse that's also dealing with a post-nuclear world. when there's no dream, no vision, no hope, and the explosions are going to come anyway, you know, what do you do in the aftermath? The only thing you can do is just revel in it, I guess.

Yeah, maybe there is, you know, I certainly know with like Atomoffend the vision, for example, whilst none of them actually really want this kind of, you know, this world that they kind of envision where everything, society gets broken down and there's chaos, and they're the kind of, the guys running around the post-apocalyptic landscape, doing all their terrible shit. They don't really want that.

But I can kind of understand where this idea comes from. It's like, man, everything is so boring, everything is so magnolia, that, you know, will take that warfare. You know, I think a lot of that, you know, you see a lot of young lads that go and join YPG and whatever in Syria. Now, I know a lot of them do go and fight for very political reasons, but definitely there are a lot of them I've spoken to who were also joining because they're just like, I can't stand this life in the West.

Not because anything's particularly awful, but just the mundane, the banal. it, you know, and a lot of them just kind of handle it, I think. And, hey, war is a, you know, war is certainly a different, a different vibe. I think in the West, your, everyone wants to feel like they're part of something. Everyone wants life to have some kind of meaning. Even if it's, even if it's as simple as working at a suicide hotline and helping people, even if it's, you know, even if it's that simple. And I think that in the West, you have to come up with your own meeting. And that's a scary thing. That's really hard for people to do. And it's a lot easier to

glom on to one of these ideologies and just run with it, even if it is for a good cause. Yeah, yeah. It's, you know what, that's that's right. Because if there was this nuclear apocalypse and certain people survive, you would absolutely have to find a tribe or a militia to be a part of to survive, right? And you would, that would give you a community. Maybe there's something behind that, you know, there's people, I think that's a lot of it. People are dying for a community to be a part of, you know, we're so involved in the kind of the phones and whatever now and nothing, you know, it's just for a, just trying to have a conversation with a friend without them looking at their phone these days can be a problem, which is absolutely insane. And I think

people just want to be a part of a group that's bigger than themselves, if you know what I mean. There needs to be, we've come a very long way away from kind of a collective community. Well, I think that's why, like, these fascist and reactionary movements are part of why these fascist and reactionary movements are building steam all across the world is because they offer a community to be a part of. I think it's just gotten too comfortable. And I think a lot of people rely on the kind of sneering, laughing at other people tactics, still thinking, oh, this will change things.

And it's like, no, that will just make people angry and push people away from you, you know, just because they don't get it or they're not in your group, you shouldn't just start laughing and sneering at them all the time. Obviously, if they're like Nazis or fascists, like fuck them. but there are certain people that end up you know kind of sliding to that side because they just think well these guys don't want me because I don't think correctly or I'm not in their group you know

and I think a lot of it comes down to you know we're talking about nuclear war in pop culture I think leftist politics kind of was the subculture and now it's becoming the pop culture and I think that's why as well that's quite a dangerous thing to happen you know you know like fucking hell I saw ben and jerrys are doing like a resist pecan ice cream today

which is like it's just the maddest thing, you know. It's like the ultimate capitalist dream of kind of co-opting leftist politics. Like, who'd have thought, right? Who'd have thought? Maybe we do need the nuke. Maybe we do need the nuke, you know? Maybe that's what it is. If you're cool and you'll live long enough, the machine's going to eat you and co-opt you. It's just, I mean, that's just what the machine does. It's true. Hey, here's something I want to ask you, because you know a lot about this. Is there any truth to those, um, every so often you'll hear these stories or rumors, I haven't looked into it, but you see like, oh, some guy in Eastern Europe was trying to sell like atomic

isotopes and nuclear warheads and stuff like that. Are those true, those stories? No. Those are largely, there's a really great, I think CJ Chivers did. He's great. A really great piece. It was either of the New York or the New York Times. That was all, was kind of one big debunking of that. I'll have to send it to you. But he just, he did, he like chased one of those rumors down relentlessly. And just there's not, there was nothing at the bottom of it. And it's like, people need to not worry about that part of things so much. Like, because it's really complicated and hard to make a nuclear weapon. And even if you were to get the proper material and turn it into, you know, people are afraid of a dirty bomb. Like a bomb that is going to spread radioactive material through the air is not going to be anywhere near as effective as the more complicated.

like suitcase nuke. That's more frightening, but also so much harder to do. Like the scientific knowledge requires to build something like that. You know, like how long has it taken North Korea and Iran and the rest of the nuclear powers to put all of that together? It doesn't happen overnight. And a lot of these groups that you would think of that would want to do something like that just don't have, they don't have the brain power.

So what's left to them is to try to build a dirty bomb that would just kind of spread the nuclear material around. That would be really terrible in the immediate area very briefly. And then most of the materials very heavy will settle on the ground very quickly. And you'll need a crew in there that's in hazmat suits to clean it up, but it's not going to do any devastating damage. And that's even if they were able to get the material, which is not going to happen. he said hoping that there's not a terrible duke next week yeah yeah but there's still that fear you know of like we don't quite understand it you know like i said earlier when i went in i did this film in schnoble last year i went under there there's a big containment um this massive massive dome they put

over the top of it and i went in there and you know we went in and we had to wear all these kind of hazmat suit looking things and get washed you know there to wash it down and all sorts of stuff like this. And for like a week afterwards, I got home, every headache I had, I was like, oh my God, you know, the atomic radiation has got to me. And it's like, well, obviously not. It hasn't. You know what I mean? But it is one of those kind of silent things I think because we don't really understand it. A lot of people fear it, you know, which I think goes into this idea of, oh my God, Iran's got the nukes. This has the nukes. But like, how, how credible is that? I mean, I know Iran has these things. But I mean, how credible is it that these countries actually

have a ready to fire nuke? That's, I mean, also, that's not very credible either. You're right. Like Iran is not, like they don't have, to my knowledge, they don't have a nuclear working nuclear program at the moment. People that are much smarter than I am say they could get it going and it would be ready in a few years. People I know, those same people are afraid of North Korea, though. That's the state that they're actually worried about. And he's probably not denuclearizing, you know, no matter what. what, no matter what he's saying. Like I saw that stupid video where they're like, oh yeah, he's just destroyed a bunker. And then I think someone open source kind of researcher figured out that

that hasn't been used for decades or something like that. It was just some kind of cave that they blew up. You know what I mean? Well, they're really great at putting on a show, but, you know, until you, unless they want to open up the country and let a whole bunch of UN weapons inspectors go in there and start looking for everything, which probably isn't going to happen. You know, we don't, like, there's no incentive for him to get rid of the weapon once he's, got it. There's none. And do you think he has it? What is he got? I think he's got, I don't, I don't want to say, because I'm not, I'm not 100% sure. Yes, he has a weapon. I think it could reach the West Coast of America. But I don't want to, like, he has a shitty ICBM, basically. But the threat, the threat has literally, for the start of the year, I remember it was holding the world for a while, you know. yeah, and you know, we had the, we're a year away from the false alarm in Hawaii, where everyone on their, everyone on their cell phones in Hawaii got a text message saying,

like, saying that there was a nuclear alert. Turns out it was, it was a terrible mistake in the alert system and that nothing was coming. But, you know, there was that, that flash. And everyone's right back to where they were in the 50s. And all they can do is duck and cover and tell their loved ones goodbye. Thankfully, it got cleared up very quickly, but we don't understand these weapons and we're afraid of them and we don't know what to do about them. They're here, you know, and they're going to be here for a long time. And so we should probably study up and learn and do what we can to at least understand them. That's the better way to get over the fear is to learn as much as possible and break through it. Have you seen that documentary? I think it's called Oncolo. And it's about where they, I think it's in Sweden or Norway or somewhere.

And there's basically a place where they bury, I think like nuclear artifacts or nuclear waste or something. And I remember watching it years ago. And they were just saying, yeah, we just bury it and hope that within a thousand years or something, there's some of the better way of getting rid of the nuclear waste. I think that was it. I can't exactly remember. But it was the same as when I was in Chernobyl. they had these huge tubes made out of concrete

and they were saying, yeah, what we do is we're slowly taking apart the, I figure what they call it now, it was like the worst hit area where the actual reactor exploded, reactor six or something. And they say what we do is we just put it into these tubes,

fill it with concrete and all sorts of other stuff. And that will be good for like a thousand years and then or 100 years or whatever. And then by then, you know, hopefully there's some other way to deal with it. I just thought, wow, that's insane, you know. Just sweep it under the rug, you know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, just let the future people deal with that and hope, you know, it doesn't get hit by anything in the meantime. But I'm sure it's way more scientific than that. I probably sound like an absolute idiot. But to me, you know, to a normal person like me, if it looks kind of like, well, that doesn't seem like a great idea, I can kind of understand where people's fear comes from. Well, yeah, I mean, it's a lot of it's that old tech, you know, that old 19, that old Cold War style stuff that's kind of breaking down and has to be dealt with somehow. You know, you've got Yucca Mountain out here in the States, just this giant mountain filled with nuclear waste, right? So, yeah, that's a whole other separate problem.

What is that? Yucca Mountain. Yeah, it's a nuclear waste repository that is in Nevada. And it is the place where, you know, since 1987, they've been dropping all the new, like the discarded nuke stuff in America. It's this giant mountain out in the middle of the desert that's like them sweeping it under the rug, basically. Like, that's where they store it. And similar kind of thing. You know, these big huge, like these big huge lead-line concrete, you know, waste disposal facilities.

And you hope it doesn't get into the, you hope it's designed well enough that doesn't get into the groundwater or that there's not a debt, you know, there's not a, a, an earthquake that shifts things around, you know. but we got to put this stuff somewhere. Yeah. Well, here's, I got one more question for you. The last question I'll ask you. So this is going to sound really stupid. But, you know, like I was saying at the start, I liked watching Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles as a kid.

And you often see these things where, I don't know, nuclear waste touches whatever, and it turns someone into something and staying deformities and that. How possible is it that nuclear, you know, interaction with nuclear waste or atomic matter or whatever? could cause some kind of strange, weird hybrid creature or, you know, whatever. Like, how much basis and truth do any of those stories have? Zero.

There's no Ninja Turtles coming. Fuck. The best you can hope for is that a... See, that doesn't even work because that's like Lamarckian biology and that's not real. Now, like there's like the best you can hope for is that something gets altered. It's, it's radiated just enough that it gets a mutation that allows that mutation to be, um, to, to keep it alive longer, you know, and, and that it passes on its genes, but because it was something that happened to it at, like, no, it's not going to happen.

It's just not going to happen. But I think didn't some kids, though, ended up kind of born, I think they were born, deformed. I think in Pakistan or somewhere like that because of some kind of nuclear. a leak somewhere. Yeah, and that happens in, uh, that happens around the exclusion zone in Chernobyl, too. Uh, but I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's birth defects, not superpowers, you know, it's not, it's not, it's not something that's going to make them, uh, it's not something that's going to make it easier for them to survive and pass on their genetic code to a new generation. Well, do you want to, I don't know, man, do you want to sum it up? I don't want to go past too far past your

time. No, I think this is, I think this is good. I think we covered it. Uh, actually went, I think pretty well. I really, I had a good time doing this. Yeah, I think it was really interesting, actually. I think it's a little bit different for both of us, but why not mix up now and then? Yeah, no, absolutely. You know, when you're putting out a show a week,

you've got to do some strange things every now and then. Yeah, yeah. And if it fails, whatever. Yeah, fuck it. Yeah. All right, man. All right, Jake, it was great to talk to you. Yeah, great talk to you, mate, as well.

Thank you very much. That is it for this bonus episode of War College. Thank you so much for listening. If you liked it, you know what to do. More importantly, if you want more geek and niche discussion, like these, check out Jake Hanrahan's excellent popular front podcast. It's on iTunes. It's on SoundCloud. Follow him on Twitter at Jake underscore Handrahan. I'll see you next week when we'll have a discussion about Saudi Arabia and the role of political Islam.

Stay safe until that.