Doomed to Fail - Re-Release: War Games Pt 1: Able Archer 83

Episode Date: September 28, 2026

It's a re-release week! We're tired.Join us this week as we explore the intense geopolitical tensions of the Cold War era through the lens of military exercises and simulations. Today, we unravel the significance of "war games" during Ronald Reagan's presidency, including the pivotal Able Archer 83 exercise. Discover how a NATO simulation inadvertently escalated tensions with the Soviet Union, shedding light on the delicate balance of international security perceptions.We'll also talk about how close we were/are to total annihilation.Don't miss out on this intriguing journey through past events that continue to shape our world today. Listen now!#ColdWar #MilitaryHistory #Podcast Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail]

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortenthall James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. And we are here live on a beautiful Monday morning, Taylor. Hi, how are you? Good. How are you? It's Mother's Day.

Did you call your mom? I did. And I ordered flowers and did all the things. What did you get from my? Mother's Day. What'd you do? I got breakfast in bed. It was McDonald's breakfast, which is delicious. And, oh, I didn't, I didn't really anything to show you, but I got some cute little cards and stuff from the kids. And then I got a box of wine from my husband. He knows you. He knows what you like. He was like, you have everything. You know, and I'm like, that's true. I have everything. And if I want something, I'll buy it.

Taylor, we, you and I, single-handedly need to elevate box wine to the amazing thing that it actually is, that people who are, fancy pants look down on. Well, you know what I do when I have people over is I have some like really beautiful wine bottles that I've saved that are like, sometimes it's beautiful. You know, you're like, I can't believe that this was like $7 and it was also filled with wine. So I will just get a box of wine and then like fill up like four beautiful bottles of wine and just have that on the table.

You know? That's so smart. So smart. I mean, I'm like I said, having me a ton of money. Not like I'm buying really expensive wine in like any case, but it looks really pretty and then I can, you know, use a box of wine. He's a big, like a big jug of whiskey bottle for water on the table when I have people over. That's fun.

They're pretty and they're nice. And like, I'm like, I don't know. It's like buying like a really nice bottle to pour something out of. It's expensive. And I'm like, this one came with whiskey. I love that. But I also am 100% the judge a book by its cover guy because I only look at the bottle when I buy wine. And if I'd like the cover, then.

But I take off. I don't like pretend that it's something else. I take off the label. I'm talking about like a beautiful bottle. Oh. You know, okay, hold on. Can you introduce a show while I go do a visual for you? While we're waiting on a visual, this is doomed to fail.

We are a twice weekly podcast. I'm Farr's joined here by Taylor. Taylor is on her way to go get a beautiful bottle to show me how. Also, this is an audio medium, so you all are not going to see it, but I'll describe the bottle. Okay, so there are two or three bottles. that are clear and like this one is clear but it's like it's really pretty like it looks like diamond D.

fancy. Is that pretty? It's from Trader Joe's. And like this one's just like a beautiful shape. You know, it's not like a regular bottle. And this one this one from Trader's too. Look how beautiful it is. It has all these like flowers on it and stuff. So I I was thinking I would just try and fool people by putting leading the label on. No one would ever fucking know anyway. People would be like, oh, but nobody would know. Oh great. Like no no one no. But I don't know. But I don't do that but I understand why you would think that I would do that because no one fucking knows. Nobody knows. Nobody knows. Um, sweet. Well, um, well, cool. Well, uh, well, uh, how, sorry, how do we get on

wine bottles again? Mother's day. Fancy, fancy thing. Right. Right. Right. Um, no, we're on the same page. We're going to bring back box wine. Box wine is just as good as any other kind of wine. Don't be snobby. Yeah. Like after your second glass of wine, like it even matters at all. Yeah. We don't need to talk about like whether it's from the actual. champagne region of France or not. It doesn't matter. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. So Taylor, Taylor, I think today, also Happy Mother's Day to you. Thank you.

There we go. Thank you. Quite lovely. So I think today is a you go first day. I do. Okay. I'm ready. And if something tells me the research wrapped very recently on this. Well, listen, I have done a lot

of research with this. Let me tell you, my friend. I have read several books. I have this document in front of me that I printed out that is recently declassified and has parts of it redacted. Is this about JFK? No. But it does involve a partially redacted thing. Here's the thing I want to tell you that in case I forget. This is an entire page of this document that is redacted.

The entire page redacted. The whole page is blacked out. At the very bottom, it says despite or perhaps because of its disturbing message. that is blocked out. It tells you that this is disturbing, but you don't get to know what it is. Is the disturbing part in editors take who did read it, or did nobody read it?

No, it's in the actual report. This report is from 1990, from the president's foreign intelligence advisory board, February 15th, 1990. I'm trying to guess what this could be. It's actually also a two-parter. Oh, wow. Okay, we're doing anthology.

Well, it wouldn't be an anthology, whatever. Serial. Okay, got it. So, hold on. So the event, the event is it from 1990. The report that the president commission is from 1990. What happened in, what, so it would have happened in like 88, 89? The Gulf of Tonkin.

No, that's a way earlier. Specifically happened in 83. It happened in 83. I don't know that. Was it, was it a shuttle explosion? No, I'll just tell you. I don't know when the challenge I'm going to

it's um this is a two part series on war games and we'll start with the able archer 83 NATO nuclear war game in 1983 and next week we'll talk about eligible receiver in 97 which is the internet digital war game that Al Gore commissioned in

1997 that was held at Windows on the World and the World Trade Center and by the people who worked at Cantra Fitzgerald who have a different fate that we'll talk about Are you back in your, the world is going to end mode? Have you? If you have been near me in the past two weeks, I have been so jumpy for us. Okay, we're in the car and Florence goes, mom, there's something in the sky.

And I'm not a normal number, I'm not normal these past two weeks. So instead of being like, is it a bird? Is it a plane? I was like, where is it? Tell me where it has to pull over? Because in my head, I'm like, oh, it's a nuclear missile. Today's the day. Why do you think about that stuff?

Well, I've read it. I've read several books on this so far this past two weeks. Okay. So I thought the paranoia led you to the research, but the research led you to the paranoia. Indeed. Got it. Okay. So I'm here because of Dan Carlin. Because when I saw him, and since I saw him, he did release an episode with author Annie Jacobson who wrote a book called Nuclear War a scenario. and in the book, she goes through from talking to a ton of people in the government and reading all this declassified stuff, what would happen if nuclear war was launched and how quickly the world would end? And she goes like a minute by minute in a scenario that she creates that could very well happen.

You know, like it's fiction, but it could actually happen based on like the real people that she's talked to. I also read the book 1983 Reagan, Antipoff and the World of the Brink by Taylor Downing. and I read this Soviet war-scar-declassified doc from 1990. And I also have been to Hiroshima recently. So that also was a bit part of it too, I think, because I saw a lot of like pictures and stories of like nuclear, just like aftermath. And what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki is nothing compared to what we can do to each other now. Yeah, I was watching, it was probably an old episode. I don't know how I ended up down this rabbit hole on YouTube,

but it was like last night, and I ended up down the John Oliver episode on nuclear armaments. And we're doing this now, I just did that. But it was basically, he was talking about how we have so many of these things, and we lose track of them. Yep.

And they're all on outdated technology. Wait, am I stepping on your episode? No, I'm going to mention all of that, but that's all true. It's so scary, and it's scary because it's, it's out of control. And so I'll probably say this later. Well, let me say this.

Well, I'll say this later that basically a nuclear war is not winnable. A nuclear war doesn't end in days or weeks or months. It ends an hour. You know, like there's no, it's not World War III. It's like an hour and human civilization will never be the same. well they do they there is that saying that I don't know how we're going to fight world war three but we know that world war four will be fought with sticks and stones thousand percent yep they say that in like all these books because that's exactly right like there's just there's no way that we don't completely annihilate everyone on the planet in very terrible ways um and we're thinking about that right now in like the 2020s but um in the 80s it was also like really huge and

like really looming over everything because it was a Cold War, right? So it's like basically like someone tribes that two cowboys in a saloon with guns pointed at each other's head. You know, like that's what we're looking at. Like we are, everyone's going to die. This, this paper that I read from the president's foreign intelligence advisory board has a quote from Mikhail Gorbachev in 1986. And he says, quote, never perhaps in the post-war decades has a situation in the war. world been as explosive and hence more difficult and unfavorable as in the first half of the 1980s. So we were just like chilling being babies, but like we were very close to dying.

We didn't know. We're just chilling. Just being babies. Being babies. And that's the first page of this is him saying that. So I, so some things I learned about nuclear war, specifically from Annie Jacobson's book about like the way that the U.S. would respond to being attacked. So if the president can't just like choose a first strike nuclear war,

he can't wake up and decide to do that, you know. But the reason the president has, as we know, like the ability to make that decision for a counterattack in nuclear war is simply because there is not enough fucking time to have a quorum. There's not enough time. There's six minutes, basically. And that from launch to having to make a decision of what you want to do next to retaliate. I don't understand why the president can't launch an offensive. I think he can't just do by myself. He has to talk to other people about it.

Okay, got it. But I'm actually not sure. But I'm pretty sure that's the way it goes. But I know the reason that he's the only one who can do the counter attack is because of the time. So if you're doing like a first strike, I don't know. I was going to look that up, but I missed it. I'm going to look at up right now. Sorry.

Like I can't see a. situation where anybody would do that ever again, given how things turned out. But it seems like a word thing. So here's, here's, that's a good question. So here's the deal. In a nuclear, from the Arms Control Association, the president should have, so the Congress has the ability to declare war, not the president, right? Right. So Congress can declare war and they can decide if it's going to be nuclear.

And then if the president really wants to do a first strike, he needs to have the unanimous consent of the vice president and the secretary of defense. In a in a reactive strike, the president gets advice from the secretary of defense and advice from the vice president and other people. But ultimately, he's a person to make the decision because there isn't enough time to ask everybody. Sorry, how much time is there again? About six minutes. From Russia? Yeah, it doesn't get here in six minutes, but you've got six minutes to decide if you want to launch a counter a strike. Yeah, it's insane.

And so there are a few things about the nuclear codes. There's not just like one button, but he has obviously like the codes that he needs to give to someone so that they know that it's real and that they really are going to do this. So he carries a little card in his pocket at all times that have nuclear codes in them. And a Secret Service agent carries a thing called the football, which is like a briefcase. And he is with the president at all times. And the football is a locked briefcase. Inside of it is like a menu of options for nuclear war. And so the president opens up the menu, looks through it with secretary defense on the phone, probably, maybe the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff on the phone.

And he has about six minutes to decide what to do next based on like the menu of things that he has to do. It's kind of badass. It is crazy. So in the book that, in the Annie Jacobson book, she's pretty much like, no president is prepared to do this, you know? Yeah, like, you're just not. Then, like, when you do, you're like,

you don't know if it's the right thing and you never will. You know, it's like such a crazy thing to even like wrap your brain around that you're supposed to do this. Can we discuss that? Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Why wouldn't ever be the wrong thing? if it's counterattack. Here's what you're deciding.

So in the scenario in James' book, or in a scenario that someone launches a missile from North Korea, for example, North Korea, the missile is coming towards the United States. It takes like, you know it's going to be here in like 20 minutes. So you have to decide if you're going to go and counterattack. If you counterattack North Korea, the missiles have to go over Russia.

there isn't enough time or there aren't missiles that are good enough to not have to go through Russia. They have to go over Russia. So if they go over Russia and Russia gets freaked out because in the scenario that she poses, Russia gets freaked out and they start doing a strike as well because they like want to be involved. But what you're deciding is like, or if Russia sends the nuclear bomb over here, if you're like, okay, in 20 minutes, the United States is no longer going to exist. They're going to destroy five of our big cities. They're going to destroy our nuclear power plants.

They also have the ability to do a nuclear detonation in space that will knock out all of our electricity forever. And that would knock out cars. That would knock out planes. That would knock out obviously like the internet, regular electricity, heating, air conditioning, everything that we'd use to survive. That they would, that could shut that all off in the United States. So that's coming. Do I make the decision to kill millions of Russians who did not make that decision? Do I do that?

Or do I let them win? So my argument is, of course you would do that. Well, the thing is, the thing is you would do that because you would want to level the playing field for whatever comes next, right? If you don't do that and then that was all the setup to an actual ground invasion, then they are way better situated than you would be to counter ground invasion. That's my logic. Well, they're not going to come on the ground after that because it's going to be covered. We're going to be covered in nuclear fall. out. They're not going to walk into the United States. They're going to leave it to kill each other and die.

But you're right. No one's going to not do that. But that's the mutually assured destruction part of it. It's like, we're all going to die. No one's going to be the one to be like, you know what? Let's let the North Koreans just have it. It's over. Hey, didn't that just happen like two months ago where like, I remember like the news broke and there was like an emergency meeting of like the National Security Council on like, and nobody knew what happened. but they were like, yeah, they think that they literally put a nuke in space that it's like just ready to go. Yeah, and there's a lot of them up there. That's actually not the scare. That's the nukees in space don't scare me as much as hold on.

Let me get here. They don't scare me as much as the nuclear submarines. There are about 720 warheads of the United States has nuclear warheads on their Ohio class submarines, which are the, the nuclear submarines. that the United States has, but it is harder to see a nuclear submarine in the ocean than it is to see like a grapefruit in space. They cannot see them. So these, there are nuclear subs parked all around the world and we don't know where they are and they don't know where ours are. So if North Korea or Russia wants to launch a nuclear attack from a submarine, they could just pop up in like fucking San Francisco Bay. We would never know they were on their way. They could pop up

launch a missile and disappear. And that'd be it. I'm sure you're going to... That's way scarier to me than the ones in space. But the ones in space, also, we can't shoot those down. We think we can, but we can't. I have a ton of thoughts.

But I'm stepping on your story, so you talk and then we'll discuss. We can talk more about that. So that's one thing that I know is like the president having the nuclear codes and the football. The last time the football was open was on 9-11. just in case there was something bigger coming. We had, we like had options.

There's also a thing called the Doomsday plane that is a plane that is not. So older planes would be okay in the case of like the nuclear detonation above, above the United States that gets rid of all of the electronic communication. Older planes would be okay because they're not based on electronics as much as current planes are, right? Which is one thing that makes us feel safe about planes and the computers run them. But if electricity goes away, then like, you're fucked if you're on a plane during that hour, but you're fucked anyways. It doesn't matter. But older planes would be okay. So there's an older plane, there's a doomsday plane that can

circle America for like a day and give orders to whoever still left to take orders. So that exists as well if it did come to that. So this is also the only time that I feel sympathy towards Ronald Reagan, because usually I'm like, fuck that guy, you know, because of the economy and all that stuff. But Ronald Reagan, he, you remember when he launched the Star Wars program? You don't remember. I mean, you weren't like, you were a baby, but you know what that is? No.

So Ronald Reagan saw some shit. Oh, GPS, right? It was GPS. He did. He did launch GPS. I'll tell you why in a little bit. But the Star Wars program was essentially a program to be able to shoot down nuclear weapons from space.

So they would put something in space, like satellites. And there are satellites up there. that they can see if a nuclear bomb is launched within a fraction of a second. They cannot see the bomb itself. They only see the tail, like the fire coming out of it. And then once that cools off when it's in like the second half or like a second half of its launch, they can't see it anymore. They can only see it when it's like actively on fire. But once it's like once that part is done and it's just like kind of coasting to its destination, they can no longer see it.

Which is why our air defense missiles have like a 20% success. rate. Like there's a very small chance that they were able to actually shoot down a nuclear missile. But Ronald Reagan saw a plan for something that ended up calling Star Wars because it sounds very futuristic, where you could have essentially a base in space that could shoot down any missile that was coming across the world or potentially have like a barrier across the United States. So like you couldn't bomb the U.S. None of this actually was able to happen, but he announced it like really prematurely on on the news and the people were pissed and it made Russia really anxious. But he saw stuff like they put him in like the situation room and they locked the door and they did like

an exercise where they were like this is the Russia sending all of their nukes over to the united states and he saw that map that like we see in movies where it shows the united states and it's like one red dot one red dot and then it's over like the united states is just gone and so that's what he's like having to live with is like i need to make some decisions then this is a very very real threat happening right now you know yeah it's got to be rough yeah And especially if you're dope like Ronald Reagan, you don't like ready for this. He was very funny. I will give Reagan humor, humor points.

You know, he's not, he's not, this is a big deal. So it's in the 1980s. It's the Cold War. We have these weapons that are impossible to stop. And once one person, one country uses it, the other ones will. And everyone will die. The United States and the USS, have Soviet Union have

nuclear missiles North Korea does NATO does the United States all across the Midwest of the United States there are nuclear silos with like ready to launch in any moment like they exist all over we are ready to have them

go real quick I don't I don't buy the whole we can't shoot them down thing I mean we built the technology for the Iron Dome in Israel and they just knocked down 120 Iranian missiles. Like, there's no way we didn't do it for ourselves.

We just probably don't know about it. No, I don't know. I don't know. Because I believe this investigative reporter who wrote this book this year about it, about how not great our system is. Yeah. But, I mean, I don't know. I hope you're right.

I hope there's a real. I'm going logically. I'm just saying about it from a logical perspective. Like, why on Earth would we build it for, well, obviously, we build up for Israel because they're going to be attacked constantly. But like, but I think it's different. No, I think it's different if it's like small bombs versus like a nuclear bomb coming

from across the world because you can't see it in a different way. Yeah. You know? Because I imagine that like a bomb coming from relatively close, you're able to see the entire time. But a bomb that has to like go into the strategy. and like cross the world in 30 minutes, it's going to be going so high and so fast that it's going to be,

it's like a bullet shooting a bullet, you know? Right. Like nearly impossible. Yeah, maybe. I hope I'm wrong. I'd love to have to be proven wrong, but it's very scary. So if the submarines shoot their missiles, everyone shoots their missiles, if you don't die immediately, and we're not talking.

nuclear bombs anymore. We're talking hydrogen bombs, which are like a thousand times the bombs that hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In a case where like, it is a bomb where the nuclear bomb that hit Hiroshima is the detonator for a bigger bomb. It's like huge. If you don't die immediately, and if you do, you're lucky. If you don't die immediately, you're going to die in the fire because there's going to be raging fires all over. You're going to die from the radiation. You're going to die from the nuclear winter. That's going to lower the temperature on Earth by like 40 degrees because of the smoke.

And everything's on fire because of the smoke and the radiation and the air. And we're pretty much blown, going to be blown back to nothing like you were saying. In the book, it's 57 minutes and it's over. She actually ends her book. I think I mean, I definitely recommend it, but also I'm spoiling it. But she ends it talking about. about go Blackie, go Blackie teppy, go Blackley Tepe in Turkey, you know, the underground city.

Oh yeah. Because she's like, that's what we would have to do for thousands of years. Taylor. Live in an underground city. What if that's what we did? I know. I think that's also what she's saying. What if that's what we did?

We've already done this before. The only part of it is like the reason why it doesn't scare me at all. is I'm like, somebody would have to start it. And like, who would start it? Like, the only person on earth I can think of would be like Kim Jong-un because he doesn't know that there's a world outside of his. It has to be something like that. Like, I don't see.

She calls him a mad king in her book. But yeah, exactly. Like, someone who really doesn't understand or is so like in this space, you know, where you think that there's no other chance, choice but this, or you don't care, or I don't know. That's the only thing. That's the only thing. That's the mutually assured destruction.

That's how people are agreeing that this will never happen because no one would do that to the entire human civilization. Yeah, no, we talk about in the context of Russia, but I mean, I get it. Putin's like not a good guy. But even him, like, he's got to be like Spartan cutting enough to know not to do. You know what I mean? Like, totally.

Totally. Totally, totally, totally. But yeah, okay, that's a good question. That gets us into what's happening in the 80s as well. So Reagan is spending a lot of money on these space programs, on war programs. He's buying ships. He's buying things. Obviously, there's a ton of spies back and forth telling each other things. So the USSR sees the United States bulking up their arsenals, like, doing that for sure.

You know? So they have this really, really intense paranoia that the United States is going to do that. And that's like the mindset that they have is that the United States is fucking crazy enough to do this. So that's what people, that's what the Russian government is thinking. And I'll tell you why. So. Oh, another thing that I learned is the term megadeth refers to nuclear weapons. And Dave Mustaine, who is the leader of the band Megadeth, was in.

like a real depressive state and he heard Senator Alan Cranston say, quote, the arsenal of megadeth can't be rid rid of no matter what the peace treaties come to in regards to nuclear weapons. And that's where he got the name of the band. That's cool. That's cool origin story. Yeah.

So, Reagan, Ronald Reagan is president, blah, blah, blah. He was the president of SAG. He was governor of California. And then he was shot. So after he was shot and, and obviously lived.

There's a lot more thought about like, you know, that line of succession and like who else has the codes and things like that. So the United States is thinking about these things and they're doing these scenarios. Like they're called war games. They're just like, if this happened, then this happens. And everybody goes through and asking like it's happening and you do like what you would do. So it's like super intense like work summit for like three days where you actually have to pretend that the world is in nuclear war. You know?

well it's not just it's not just like they're actually moving submarines around and stuff right there okay correct they're doing everything except actually doing it you know but you're acting like it's real right um so in russia and it's like 83 there's a new leader uri andapov and i googled him to see what he looked like and it's impossible because there's also an nchl player named nick andropov and he comes up first which is hilarious but anderpav is old old. So the USSR has gone from like older leader to older leader and he will die in the cold war and he'll be replaced by Gorbachev. Everybody seems to be at least in the U.S. side pretty excited about Gorbachev because he was like the young guy, which is so funny because I just like don't think of him as like the young Sprightly guy, but he was compared to all the prior leaders. So. I mean, he was probably our age back then.

He probably was. But like, but but I remember me old because I was a baby. And so. in um so he's new and him and riggin will have a couple talks we'll have one famous one in rakevick where they do bring down the number of nuclear weapons but it's still always going to be a little bit tense like i mean obviously it's always going to be tense between us um so it's but everybody's getting prepped for like what might what might happen so in 1982 the u.s did a war game called the ibe league's 82 and these names are just like random military names so abel archer 83 is just able Archer just like words that they used to name things. And that was when Reagan saw the map. It got really, really stressed out.

So he was like, you know, seeing a map of the United States being destroyed like in a matter of minutes, like everybody, the whole thing. The USSR did a war game called Operation Ryan, Ryan, and Ryan, R-Y-A-N, like the name, but in Russian it means like nuclear war, whatever, that's a acronym. And we learned about Operation Ryan from Oleg, Gordi, And did you talk about Gordievsky when you talked about Robert Hanson? I don't think so. Because Robert Hanson was up in this too. He's pretty much like the USSR is Robert Hansen. Okay.

Makes sense. The big spy on the other side who came over here. And he tells the United States that the Soviets think all the time about an imminent nuclear war. They're always thinking about it. They are always worried about this happening. and they're like really, really, really, really paranoid. And also, like, you watched Chernobyl, the show, right? I saw one episode.

So in that, I think they do a really good job of showing that, like, the culture in Soviet Russia, and not that saying that that that isn't the culture here in America and our government or even, like, anywhere, is, like, you want to please your boss no matter what. So you cannot tell them that, like, you don't have the information. You cannot tell them that you don't, that you don't, that you, like, didn't do the thing. So you just make shit up. And so like in Chernobyl, they're like, they like do not solve the problem.

Everything is terrible. But they're like, everything's fine. And then everybody stands up and like we're on a board, like a boardroom table and claps for each other. And they're like, great job comrades, you know. But like nothing actually happened. But they like need to tell their bosses that something did happen. Otherwise they're all going to get like killed or go sent to a gulag.

You know, like it's not good. So there's things that like the USSR wants to want to. wants proof that the United States is mobilizing for something. So they're doing things like asking their spies in D.C. to spy on like the U.S. War Department buildings and be like, how late are the lights on at night? You know, if the lights are on past 1 a.m., it means that they're working really, really late and they're probably planning a nuclear war.

But also, like, it's probably just a fucking janitor taking out the trash, you know? They didn't think about things like that. But they report back on that. And then they'd get like, great job. Great job, comrade fires. Thank you for letting us know that they were open to 1 a.m. You know. I think to our credit, Taylor, our generation is breaking that whole thing of like just confirmation bias.

I mean, I say I don't know all the time. I know. I tell my team that all the time. I'm like, if you don't know the answer, whatever, so you don't know. We'll figure it out later. You know, like, don't lie about it. That's crazy. But yeah, no, they're definitely doing that in the USSR and in their spy game.

And they were like, so they're really, really heightened. Everyone's really nervous. At the end of Operation Ryan, they have like the USSR leaders like press the button to send the nukes. And they even paused and they were like, are you sure this is fake? You know, like just want to make sure. Like I don't want to touch a fake button that says nuclear war. You know, like they're like, I just want to make sure that like I'm not actually doing this. So tensions are high in the United States.

but they're like 10 times higher in Russia because all this other shit going on because they're like in the middle of their communist stuff. Right. And everyone's stressed out and starving, you know. So then a couple of things happen that like really, really, really make things worse. So have you heard of the time that the USSR

shot down the Korean Airlines Flight Zero, Zero, Seven? No. So at September 1st, 1983, there's a Korean airline passenger flight that from JFK in New York to Seoul Korea, it has to make a stop at Anchorage, Alaska to refuel. So the flight is, and this is just like every plane crash we've talked about, there's a Swiss cheese model of like what is going on?

You know, like if the holes line up, then something disastrous happens. And so flight KAL-007 had an extraordinarily competent flight crew. They'd flown for hundreds of hours. They were just like the one we learned of in the past, like some of the best of the best of the Korean airline pilots. There were 22 children on board. There were some United States Congress people on board. They were going to a thing in Seoul. And there was another KAL flight that was about 15 minutes behind them, which is KAL-015.

So another plan is right behind them going on the same route. And the way that it worked in 1983 is that someone would manually put in the codes of where they needed to go. And they would put in like several codes along the route to show, to prove where they were. So they had check in points that like weren't like actual places. They're like, okay, we're here. We're over this area. Over this area. And we know based on the coordinates that we put in at the beginning that were in these places.

And something happened where the person who did it did it incorrectly probably. That's probably what happened, but we'll never actually know what happened. But because of the coordinates being put in incorrectly in the beginning when they left Anchorage, they were off course right away. So they should have been flying this like straight shot that went from Anchorage over Japan to Korea and never all over international waters until they were in Japanese and then South Korean waters, never going over the USSR and Soviet air. they started to slowly move off course. So by the end, there were hundreds of miles off course, and they didn't know. There was no, like, landmark. There was over the ocean, you know, so no one was paying any attention. The, like, no one was, like, worried who was on the flight. Everyone's asleep. It's the middle of the night. And there, for some reason, they only ever heard from the co-pilot.

So the pilot was probably, like, walking around first class and talking to people. Like, it was such a regular flight that like no one was really worried about anything. So the copa it would be like, yeah, we're here, we're checking in. Everything's fine. The flight behind them was like where we were supposed to be. And they were where they were supposed to be. But zero seven was getting further and further north over Soviet territory. So there was no communication with them.

No back and forth. No, you're in the wrong spot because they didn't, they thought they were in the right spot. So no one ever told them they were going in the wrong direction, they were moving the wrong way. So the captains of the Korean Airlines just didn't know. So then the Russians, they see it coming in and they cannot tell what kind of plane it is. So they're like, it might be a it could be a bomber. It could be a U.S. reconnaissance plane. It could be anything. It could be a passenger plane. We don't know. So they send a jet up to see what kind of plane it is. And that's where things get murky because the pilot was like they didn't have their lights on.

so I couldn't really tell. I couldn't get close enough to, like, read it and see what kind of plane it was. In one of the, like, official things afterwards, they got the pilot to say that he confirmed that it was not a passenger jet. And they got him to record himself saying that to ground control. And someone held an electric razor next to him. So it sounded like he was still on the plane. And they put that into evidence because they wanted to be like, we didn't do it some purpose.

But, like, we'll never really know what happened. But either way, the Russian. I don't know I'm saying Russian and it was USSR all the things but you know what I mean the pilot got underneath the Korean airline flight and shot it from below he shot the tail off so they did have a little bit of recording from the cockpit

saying that like we're descending unbelievably quickly you know and like they knew that like the air pressure had gone down so some people obviously got sucked out of the back other people would have frozen to death instantly and then it's spiraled as it fell and it broke apart in midair

and then two pieces slammed to the ocean. Obviously everyone died. There were 22 children on board. Some body parts were found. Shoes were used to identify people. But it was horrible. And it was obviously the Soviet Union

shooting down a passenger jet. That's not crazy. Yeah, that's awful. Like, unbelievable. That's what I think happened. I mean, it could have happened with the Malaysian airline. But then I also, maybe I'm making this up,

but I remember hearing that there was a plane that crashed like a pasture plane that crashed in Iran, taken off from Iran, and they confirmed it or they suspected that it was actually like the military shot it down because there was this one author or writer that was on the plane. This might happen more than we think. Yeah, I think that's exactly right.

Honestly, yeah, I think it might happen more than we think. but this one was obviously a huge deal because a lot of innocent people were killed. And it brings to mind, like, this is a small scale attack on, you know, a perceived threat. But if one person is confused, so like maybe the person who put in the coordinates on the Korean Air Flight was the person who was confused, maybe it was a co-pilot because the pilot wasn't there to help him, which is something that my friend Ben told him. me about when he was a friend Ben who's a pilot he was telling me that like there's something recently like a recent-ish law that like you can override the captain like you can be like listen captain like you're wrong because for a while you weren't allowed to do that really and if you

weren't allowed to do that then like there were plane crashes you know right like so there's like when one person is confused then everyone's confused if they think they're going one direction and they're not like they don't know then like anything can happen because they were so close to be out of Soviet airspace but they just like didn't make it you know and it's and they didn't know they didn't know what they did wrong you know to be shot down yeah so that so that happens in early 1983 three weeks later um there's this huge the huge one that i think we've all also heard about is the day when stanislav petrov saved the world have you heard about this yep yep So, yep, Petrov was on duty at the Okonuclear Warning System Command Center in the USSR on September 26th.

So KAL was shot down on September 1st, September 26th. The system saw five missiles coming toward the USSR. And this is also something that was in the N.A. Jacobson book, The Nuclear War, a scenario, is that, which is true, is that are, like, reconnaissance and technology available, to see what's incoming is like pretty good. But the Russians, even today, is not that great. And they can see five missiles when there are zero. They could see a thousand missiles when there are 10,000. You know, like, it's just like not great what they can see.

It's like harder than it sounds to be able to see what's coming towards you. And in this case, Petrov's systems were telling him that there were five nuclear missiles coming toward the USSR from the United States. And he just felt like. that feels weird, you know, like we've had no warning. We've had no, even though this KAL thing just happened, he's like, we've had no warning. There's nothing on the ground telling me that this was going to happen.

And also five is a very, very small number. So if the U.S. attacks Russia, he was always told that it would be like balls to the wall, everything, you know. So he just in his heart, he felt that it was wrong. He did not tell his boss he waited and it was wrong. It was a sun glare off of a cloud. So if he would have told someone, they would have counterattacked. And we'd all be dead.

Yeah. So he ended up being given a different job, but never really, like, given any praise or retaliation for what he did. But he saved the world in one way or another. There's also things happening. Like there's some terrorism in Beirut. The U.S. is taking Granada. There's all sorts of things going on in the world. The Russians are looking for the U.S.

U.S. to be aggressive, especially after these last couple things that have happened. And they're also obsessed with like, 1983 is another 1941. We were at the brink of war. So they're thinking that. And that's what this, this declassified thing that I read was, the basic conclusion is that like after this all happened, like after in retrospect, in the 80s and in the 80s, they were like, it wasn't that big of a deal. Like everyone was doing war games, no big deal. But what this paper says, is that Soviets were like legitimately afraid and legitimately believe that at any moment the U.S. would do this. And so that puts him at like a just an unbelievably paranoid state.

So which brings us to able to. Can I ask something? Yes, please. Please. Do we do we know if the Soviets thought that like Ronald Reagan was a rational. actor or not, you know, because I think that like, when you look at like, um, okay, if, like, just not even being political, I think anybody would, if you were looking between Trump and Biden, you'd be like, yeah, Trump would launch before Biden would.

Yes. Like, there's some personalities that are just a lot more obvious, like, why you have that perception of them. Did they assume Reagan had like a death wish or like, do we know? I don't know. I'm sure someone knows. I'm not sure. But they do see Reagan investing a lot of money in the military, you know.

So I think that they see that as like, like, we are building the Ohio class nuclear submarines at this time, you know? So like they know that we're doing that. So I think that that is enough to make them nervous, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if that means that like they think the person could physically press the button or not, but they do see us like, we're not like opening the gates and, you know,

making borsed. We're like buying guns, you know? Right. Yeah. So that brings us to the war game, Abel Archer 83, which is a NATO war game, which is like the NATO allies versus the countries in the Warsaw pact. And it involves a lot of people all over the world kind of coming together. and like you said, like doing the, you know, they're moving things around. They are in bunkers. They are doing a simulation of what it would happen in this attack. So it's in November 1983. It's a five-day game played in Brussels at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers of Europe, shape headquarters, in Kesto, Belgium. Margaret Thatcher probably participated. Ronald Reagan did not. The, like the Secretary of Defense and,

and other higher ups in the U.S. were like, let's just not involve the president in this one. You know, like in some cases they did involve him, but they're like, we don't need to involve him at every single one because we really only need him at the end, you know? Right. So someone like played him. So the scenario that they had was supposing that it's 9083.

And in February, so this is fake. This is a scenario that they had. In February, there was a dramatic change in leadership in the USSR. They sent aid to Iran. The U.S. Navy increased their stance around the world, the number of ships that they had. By June, things start to escalate in Europe and Eastern Europe. In August, there's protests in Yugoslavia. They leave the Soviet bloc.

The Warsaw Pact people get together. They invade Yugoslavia, Finland, Norway, attack NATO, attack Greece, attack West Germany. So that's what they're supposing has happened up to this. Then Abel Archer 23 is in real time. so it's November in the year where all of this has happened. The NATO stations follow a script. They're talking to each other and reporting on the crisis. Those real people, there's real paper.

They're in these rooms that have like a map of Europe and there's pinned all over the map. And they're like, you know, the Soviets are coming here. They're coming down through, you know, through the, like through Norway. They're coming up through Greece. Like they're starting to attack Europe. On day two, they suppose that the Warsaw Pact, countries like the USSR started using chemical weapons. So NATO did as well within 24 hours.

They retaliated back. Some of the members of the Air Force who were in Germany, like physically had to move to West Germany, get into bunkers and wear gas masks for like a day, like pretending that like they were under chemical attack. So it's supposed to be like super uncomfortable, you know, because in that case, if I say to you, like, Farras, imagine that we're being attacked by a chemical weapon, you'd be like, okay, I'm imagining it. But I'm like, Fars, you have to go into your bathroom, close the doors, put on a gas mask and sit there in the dark for 12 hours.

Like, you're going to feel different after that, you know? Right, right. And that's what they're testing too. Like, the human reaction. Like, it's one thing to say it, but you have to like really feel that. And even though you know it's just a game, like, you're still going to be like, this fucking sucks. I am hyped, you know. So people keep adapting trying to figure out what to do.

And they're also obviously talking to each other on like the radio. Every time they, before they say something, they say exercise, exercise, and then the thing that they're going to say. So that if it is intercepted, which they know that it will be by the real life Soviets, they will know that this is a war game. So they say that. But like Soviets are like, well, wouldn't they just say that? wouldn't they just pretend it's a war game and have it be real?

And then you're like, well, fuck. Like everyone's fucked if that's what it's going to happen. You know what I mean? Like if someone's like, don't mind us. We're doing this scenario. And they're like, oh, sure you are. But also it could probably be real. Then like what are you supposed to do?

You know? Yeah, especially during this time when you're on pins and needles anyways. You're always, it's like they're doing the confirmation bias thing of. Yes. Here's why it's not what they say it is. Exactly. And it is so much of that. So they also can see, like you said, like there are ships moving in the seas and like things physically happening that are really happening. But they're happening in response to something that is not real as an exercise. So the KGB is seeing that and they start panicking. They remember Operation Ryan. They remember all the paranoia. They remember how they think that the U.S. is going to strike first. And there are spies. everywhere, you know, making shit up, saying what their bosses want to say.

Maybe they heard bad intel in the first place. So there's like, so much of it is rumor anyway. And so they're like confirming like, yeah, things are happening. Like, we don't know what's going on. And so on the next day of Abel Archer, they

the KGB in real life tells its people, tells everyone in the military to expect a surprise attack. So everything was up to DefCon 2 on our side. The people were acting like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and making decisions. But in real life, Ronald Reagan is leaving D.C. to go to Japan for a summit. So the Russians also see this and they're like, is he getting the hell out of Dodge? You know, like, is he leaving the United States because he knows that they're about to launch a nuclear attack

on Russia. And so they start thinking that things are real. And then towards the end of Able Archer, they changed the code. that they were using, like the NATO side did. I don't really know why, but because they changed the codes, the Soviets were like, this is proof that it's real. Like, this is really happening. And so they were like, they started mobilizing and getting things together to try to preemptively attack the United States before we could actually do the thing that they

thought that we were doing. So it was like on the brink of them responding to something that like didn't exist. So that's the answer to the question of why would anybody? launch first. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Because you're like confused and it's weird. And like once one person does it, it's kind of over, you know?

Right. So also during this time, Antropov, the leader of the USSR is very, very sick. He is in a home and like a nursing home essentially. But they're not telling people that he's there. But they are like kind of relying on him, but he's still like very, very sick. And he will die. He'll die early in 84. But one person who, on the day that the NATO war game, Abel Archer, is almost over, the USSR is approved to launch.

They're like ready to go. And so there were a couple people in Russia who were able to kind of have some rational decisions. There was one man who had a calculator that was like thinking, that was working on like different like, like, ideas and presumptions and he was like the US wouldn't do this you know he was like using a lot of data and intel and being like it doesn't make sense like why this would happen um he like decoded some numbers and he was like I don't think this is real and like trying to like you know say that out loud there was a spy at NATO and he was like everything's fine here you know he was like I would let you know if like something weird was happening but like nothing weird is happening you know like no one

and like the regular offices were freaking out or anything um and then another person was like we shouldn't retaliate by getting ready because then they're going to see us getting ready and everyone's going to be scared. So he was like, we should just like take a breath. So a couple rational people kind of calmed down the leadership in the USSR and they ended up not retaliating. And then Abel Archer ended and then they realized that it was just a game. But they were very, very close to that first strike, which is crazy. It's terrifying. Yeah, it's terrifying.

And then so, um, so they do. it like pretty much every year. And they do these war games all the time. And I think that like the big thing that is that could, you know, doom everyone is really if someone misinterprets something. And then there's also like, I get that you also might be like, well, wouldn't you hide a real attack behind a war game? And you're like, yeah, probably. You know, so they're just like, everyone's just going to be holding that gun to each other's head forever. I don't know why, because if you initiate the attack, it's over anyways. I know.

No, I know. There are no winners in a nuclear war. I'm saying, I'm saying why would anybody even put on the auspices of I'm doing this like in a fake way when they're going to know when something is inbound to their country that it's real? But they might, but also like. will they because they've seen where like people think it's real and it isn't you know

I guess like there's just a bunch of like it's not as like it's not as easy as it seems like I think I thought before during all I was reading that would be easy to be like oh there's a bomb coming at us and it's like harder than it looks and subjects to a lot of mistakes you know there's a lot more people involved in this than than machines which is like terrifying because people make mistakes but also machines make mistakes and also just like will we just all die in a robot war with like the nukes nuke each other and then and then add on the complexity of like AI yeah exactly trying to interpret what another AI model is doing and then what data was that fed off

was that fed the data of this exercise where it wasn't and then maybe that that model doesn't know and yep and then that'll be it and it'll be just like up to that to that like those computers to decide like the level of threat and like be like okay well I did all my modeling seems right and then launch you know yeah it's very scary and it was very close to to being real because no one was talking to each other and everyone was scared and everyone was like trying to you know show their might and do all their things but um yeah it's a very um you know, big responsibility for the presidents and everyone in the world to make sure that that doesn't fucking happen, which is what the conclusion in the Hiroshima Peace Museum wasn't like,

I thought it would be more like World War II related, really, but the conclusion was like, never do this again. Like never do this again. Like a nuclear bomb kills everyone and everything indiscriminately. And if we do it again, we will destroy. the world, you know? Yeah. So they are very rightly committed to total nuclear disarmament, which is now my life's cause because after reading all this, I'm like, oh my God, like if we have one, we have, you know, a thousand and we are and we lose them. And they're, you know, huddering around the ocean. And like, I remember there was that Russian nuclear sub, but like, everyone on it died, it got like lost in the ocean a couple years ago. I think it was Kersk.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. People are just out there. You know that that's how the Titanic was discovered, right? By a nuclear sub. No, it was, it was Bob Ballard was hired by the U.S. government to find this submarine. There was a nuclear submarine that sank forever ago and they could never figure it out. And they're like, you can do it. And then, like, you can do your Titanic thing. We first got to find this one.

We'll fund the whole thing, but find this first. And that's how, that's what happened. That's fun. Yeah, because they're impossible to find. You can find the Titanic before you can find them because they're moving. The Titanic is not moving anymore. Well, no, that thing, that thing sunk. The, the, the, I think it was, I think it was.

Oh, it was sunk. Yeah, yeah. But it's on the, but it's on the ocean floor just like hanging out ready to kill someone. Yeah. Well, so. Well, when you say nuclear submarine, it means like two, two things. One is like their nuclear powered versus like they actually are possessed nuclear armaments. Absolutely.

Yes. Yes. That's a good distinction. Yeah. And so in that case, I know that it was nuclear-powered. So what they were trying to get a sense of was like, is a reactor leaching into the ocean? Is it still secure? And frankly, it probably doesn't even matter if it's leaching into the ocean when it's like three miles down.

But I think it's more like a, like, are these things safe enough at that depth? It probably matters in the long run, you know? Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I'm, you know, also just like to your point, like the, your question about like, you know, who would be. who would launch this first?

Like, I think the conclusion from this report that I read and from, like, Reagan's memoirs and talking about the time is like, after this was over, the United States was genuinely surprised at how paranoid the Russians were. Like, yeah. We didn't realize that they were on a hair trigger because we weren't,

you know, like we weren't as, like, worried as they were. and their, you know, culture of telling you what they wanted to hear and, like, being like very, very, you know, like, just like always, like really, really hyped up and like ready to go, you know, like made people kind of just like agree that it's supposed to be happening. I don't know if that makes sense. They were like riling each other up. So that, I think that can be a problem too. When you have a lot of people who are making these decisions who are all in the same, you know. Headspace.

Well, I do. I don't, I'm trying not to follow the news because I'm trying not to live a weird and paranoid life. But I do kind of get the sense that like we're edging closer to the world being on a hair trigger. Yeah. With things. I mean, it just feels like there's a lot of moving pieces right now. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's very, very scary.

And then like, there was a movie called On the Beach. I think there's two of them. there's a um a there's one in the that was made in 19509 um and there's one later oh in 2000 um but essentially for both of them and i guess made a of a novel um is that the world goes into nuclear war and everyone dies and the last people alive are in australia and everyone is like dying of cancer because everything on the earth has been destroyed from the nuclear radiation and all the things and, you know, the nuclear winter. And the last, and they're like, the last scenes are like in Australia and they're like

getting these pills from the government to die by suicide because everyone's just like dying of cancer. And it's so terrible. And then like, that's it. The human race is over. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think in any of those situations, it is always better to be as close to the thing.

Yeah. Yeah. And then there was also a TV movie in the 80s. about a post nuclear attack that actually aired on ABC November 20th,

1983, so a few weeks after Able Archery 83 ended, and it was called the day after. I'm not going to watch it because it sounds terrible, John Lithgow's in it, Steve Gutenberg's in it, but it is about what happens after

it's saying that like Kansas is, in this case, like hit by a nuclear bomb and then it has like the what happens afterwards. And that show really affected Reagan as well. And that led to him having more talks with Gorbachev because he was like,

we can't do this, you know, like seeing it. And I have a book that I read in elementary school for no reason. And I bought it to have because it had profound effect on me called After the Bomb. And it's a book that was written in the 60s about Los Angeles accidentally being nuked by the Russians and what people do kind of after and during it. And it is horrifying. And I don't know why they gave that to children. That is horrible.

Yeah. I literally have it here at my house to have my house to have my kids read it, but it's scary as fuck. And like, you know, if you imagine like all of our infrastructure just going down, you know, like one thing I remember from the after the bomb book is like the kid is like the kids happen to be playing in a bomb shelter when it goes off. So like they're okay, but like their parents are not okay. And he like brings his mom to a hospital and the nurse, he's like, a doctor, and he's like, a doctor need a doctor. And the nurse looks at him and she goes, doctors died too. Like there are no doctors. Like that's the and that's a thing that happened in Hiroshima too.

they were like doctors would work until they were dead because there were no other doctors. Yeah. You couldn't do anything anyway, you know? That's why I'm like, just be as close to it as possible. Yeah. Because you, there's something you just don't want to survive and it feels like that's probably one of those. That's one of them. You don't want to be in it.

It sounds it will be absolutely terrible. And then we'll have to go underground and then in the future archaeologists will dig us up and be like, I wonder what that was about. And then we'll do it again. I do like the idea of like. being at a scholastic book fair and you hand a kid like a curious George and then also this like nuclear Holocaust book. I know. Enjoy here you a little to me. I know it's pretty intense.

And then you said this is a series. So we're going to do another one next week. Yes. Next week we're going to talk about the 1997 game eligible receiver 97. It was a war game that Al Gore commissioned people at Cantra Fitzgerald, the accounting firm to do. with people in the government to say what would happen if there was a cyber attack on the United States. And we'll talk a little bit about that. And then what happened a couple years after that in the same building that they did not expect as well, which was 9-11.

Like Canada Feist Earl, most people there died. Wow. But a couple years before that, they were like worried about this threat. And they, you know, there was another threat like looming, which is kind of a big deal. So talk about that next week. And then after that, I'm going to talk about like puppies. yeah let's change I'm not okay

I will never complain for puppy content that's awesome well thanks for that was fun that was really interesting it was also weird that I literally just watched the nuclear thing last night I know it's like in the light geist

yeah yeah but do we have any anything you want to read off before we wrap a lot of people gave me shit about how I was wrong about the unexamined life of Socrates. So I get it now.

Me and your husband were the ones. That's all. And also our friend Morgan said that if you look up business fail and spell it correctly on overcast, we are 17th in life. Oh, nice. Nice. That's exciting. Oh, and also I made a website, but it can't get the DNS to work. We have to talk about it. Like the DNS didn't, it failed like twice.

And then I put in a TXT record and now I'm waiting for that. but I don't know that's going to work. So we'll talk about it later. But I made a website. Very exciting. Very exciting. Once we have a URL to share, we will. In the meantime, you can still write to us at Dumafell pod at gmail.com.

Follow us on the social at Dumafell pod. And we'll join you in a few days with another story. Thanks, Fars. Thanks, Taylor. Thanks.