Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 117 - Gerald Bull and the Space Cannon

Episode Date: August 17, 2020

Once upon a time there was a man who loved cannons. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: https://www.nytimes.com/1990/08/26/magazine/the-man-behind-iraq-s-supergun.html https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160317-the-man-who-tried-to-make-a-supergun-for-saddam-hussein https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1991/02/10/who-murdered-gerald-bull/bfce6e11-7dff-4964-864d-29db5e02753b/

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow today. And now, back to the show. Hello and welcome to yet another episode of this podcast that we do. The Lions led by artillery scientists. Oh, that's not the name of our podcast. We're talking about artillery science. Sweet. Nick, if I was going to tell you

about a space program, what comes to mind? The USSR, the United States, maybe like, I don't know fucking france or india or something um space nazis nazis on the moon yeah uh they made a whole series of movies about that um actually the uae just like fired a probe towards mars i think it was which is almost certainly built by slave labor because it it's the UAE. Yeah, it's true.

When you think space programs, do you think Saddam Hussein? Oh, no, I don't. But I like where this is going. Vic, do I have a story for you? Fuck yeah. Well, unfortunately, it takes us a while to get to Saddam Hussein. God damn it. More learning. God damn it. More learning.

It's okay. It's about a guy who is really obsessed with cannons at a level that Wile E. Coyote would admire. Are we talking about just the obsession of that one dude who made his own rockets in the backyard? So this guy, we're talking about a guy named Gerald Bull, and he absolutely would have done that if he was obsessed with

rockets and not cannons are you talking about the flat earther who killed himself with his fucking crazy cartoon rocket that's the obsession I'm thinking of so Gerald Bull would have definitely fucking done that because he was an incredibly smart man and I would argue

that even though that guy was a flat earther like he was an amateur rocket scientist who had fired himself into the air before i think so like he had to be smart even if he was kind of dumb if that makes sense like you can be really really smart about something and dumb about literally everything else yeah i mean you know me like so you know how that works like i'm good at history. I don't know my times tables. It's like that with rockets. Math is awful. You don't need it.

It really does make me believe that 666 is the mark of the beast simply because they strung three numbers together. We're talking about Gerald Bull, a Canadian guy who... I don't know how to say this, except he's a Canadian guy who wanted to fire everything out of a cannon. Everything. He was eventually going to get there.

He does not quite make it that far, thanks to the Mossad, but we'll get there. Spoiler alert, the Mossad's involved. How'd this Canadian guy make it all the way to Saddam's ear? Oh, we'll get to that point. So this episode is about obsession. Saddam has a hairy ear, I already know it. He had. True.

He is dead as hell. He got a fatal dose of, I don't know, rope around the neck. Yeah, the old rope around the neck. It'll do it. Now, this episode's a bit about obsession. And, you know, normally when we talk about obsession, we talk about things like, I don't know, you can really obsess with the gym to the point that, like, you let your social life kind of fall apart because you won't cancel it. Or you really like video games to the point you're damn near addicted.

Gerald Bull was that, but with cannons. I can't relate. I don't think anybody can. And I say that as someone who willingly volunteered to be in a tank. I just don't understand how you end up here i so he his ultimate goal was to be the best artillery scientists on earth which is a branch of science that if i had learned about it sooner i may have paid better attention in science class. Because, I mean, that arguably sounds fucking awesome, right? Right.

So, Gerald Boll was born in 1928 in North Bay, Ontario, Canada. He was the son of an English-speaking father and a French-speaking mother. Now, originally, Boll was born into a pretty well-off family but uh if you notice the date you know it's just around the corner great depression hit and his family was piss poor just like everybody else womp womp sucks uh yep now his mom died when he was three uh and because she had uh about 10 kids and that 10th kid uh it was one too many and she died during childbirth. Also because it was the 20s. Holy fuck.

Also because it was the 20s, healthcare pretty much just, I don't know, probably stuck leeches on her, had to get all the bad humors out or something. A fucking plunger to get the kids out? A sterile plunger. Don't worry, we dipped it in, I don't know, maple syrup. It's Canada. The doctor was also a beaver with a stethoscope. And the town's

fucking barber. The nurse was the ice hockey defenseman. Okay, that's all of Canada right there in that one scene. Sorry, Canada. So all of this caused his father, who is a lawyer and once very successful, to fall into a pit of depression because

yeah, his wife died and now he has to take care of 10 kids. That's the worst part. All 10. My dad drank himself to death with only three. I can't imagine he would do seven more. He'd just kill himself early. Immediately. He'd be ahead of the curve My dad drank himself to death with only three. I can't imagine we do seven more. I don't know how he would handle 10.

He'd just kill himself early. Immediately. He'd be ahead of the curve. He began drinking pretty heavily and abandoned the family. This led Gerald to be brought up by an aunt and an uncle. They were sprinkled around because no other member of the family would take on all 10 kids. Like, look, I'll take one or two,

but yeah. But you're like, yeah, no shit. Who's going to take on 10 kids. I think they had like a family auction. Oh God. Probably all the fail,

like all the family from like the favorite, like aunt and uncle all the way down to like your third cousin once removed name, like Hoyt that you once saw, but he really likes fire or he's like a weird knife guy. Oh yeah. I know. I don't have one of those in my family,

but I know a few of those guys. We all know a weird knife guy. Uh, that's probably who would end up adopting me. Like, nope, no, you fell all the way down to the bottom of,

of the orphan draft. Uh, but this household that his aunt, uncle ran was pretty much loveless. of the orphan draft. Um, but this household that his aunt, uncle ran was pretty much loveless. Like they didn't abuse him. I guess you could say they did, but like, they didn't like hit him.

They didn't like not feed him. They just didn't care about him. They're like, yeah, we'll feed you and put a roof over your head, but you're not getting any parental guidance from us. Oh, so he's just existing.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, but you're not getting any parental guidance from us. Oh, so he's just existing. Yeah, yeah. But that ended because his new parental guardians won the lottery. What? Yeah. So also, what the hell would winning a lottery during the Great Depression look like? We got

they're like fucking checking pockets. We got fish tank rocks. Congratulations. You won this used... Head of lettuce with a bite taken out of it. It's probably a score too. They're like, oh, fuck yeah.

We got this turnip in a sock. The sock is used. Fuck it, I'll take it. Actually, we need the turnip back. Fuck. You can borrow the sock we expected back In 72 hours So After that he got sent off to another house

Because apparently when you win Sweet great depression money you get rid of The extra baggage Sorry kid we're turnip rich Now you gotta get the hell out Hey look here kid you're kind of bringing us down. We're up in the ups-ups now. Yeah. If you notice, we're sadly not homeless anymore. You're going to have to get out. But this had a pretty big impact on Gerald's personality. His temperament was what people

always noted about him. Now, rather than coming up with one, how to describe his temperament was what people always noted about him. Now, rather than coming up with one, uh, uh, how to describe his temperament myself, I will, uh, divert to the New York times who said, quote,

he was a difficult man, prickly and quick to take offense. Now, if you're not a journalist, you would read, you would read this to be as a, he was a bit of an asshole, the short temper.

I was fucking porcupine. That's what came to mind. Yeah, his mother was a great northern Canadian porcupine headshot. I don't fucking know. I don't even know if those are in Canada. I'm going to go with yes. No, welcome to the Canadian flora and fauna podcast. Now, there's another problem with that because he had no love in his life for the most part.

So he tried to fill that hole in his heart with friends. But the problem was nobody really liked him because he was kind of, like I said, a short-tempered asshole. But he really wanted to be liked by his peers. but like he really wanted to be liked by his peers and if like his peers didn't immediately like think he was cool he would react like 180 degrees of anger like hey you guys want to hang out tonight like oh no gerald we're good it's like fuck you anyway i'll fucking put you in a fucking cannon yeah oh there goes gerald off on his bullshit. One of these days I'll build a cannon big enough for all of you. Now, rather than deal with Gerald as he grew up, his aunt and uncle eventually just sent him off to an

all-boys Jesuit school, which if people aren't aware, that's a religious school. It's like an offshoot of Catholicism. Or it's like a school of Catholicism. So like, not a fun school to be in. No. But despite being a miserable, short-tempered prick, George did really well in school, probably because he had none of those distractions that his friends or family. And he graduated early in 1946.

He could have gone pretty much anywhere, like for a university that he wanted. And he began attending Queen's University in the hopes of eventually getting into officer's training school and getting into the Canadian military. Now, someone who worked for the University of Toronto saw his work and wrote to him asking if he'd like to be enrolled in their medical program. Because college was different

back then, apparently. I guess. Imagine just getting a letter in the mail like hello would you like to go to doctor school sir don't you want to take a look at like my resume no no no don't worry about that we we we heard that you're a short-tempered asshole and nobody likes you it sounds like you'd be a great doctor with amazing bedside manner. Turns out we can't read your resume, so you're great as a doctor. It turns out your aunt bribed me with two turnips.

I'm not sure where she got them. He turned it down because he wanted into their new program for aeronautical engineering, which was kind of like a new science at the time. The department was so new that they had very little entry criteria other than kind of like knowing a guy who at the time. The department was so new that they had very little entry criteria

other than knowing a guy who knew a guy to net you an in-person interview, which is exactly what Gerald did. And he leveraged that to get an interview and impress them enough to get into the program despite the fact he's only 16 years old. Jesus Christ. despite the fact he's only 16 years old. Jesus Christ. Though the jump from that fancy prep school into university was kind of a big one for Gerald, and he struggled quite a bit. All of his classmates and instructors

did not think he was that impressive at all, despite the fact their department head had given him this very coveted spot in the program. One professor noted that the entire time he studied, he kept waiting to see some of that brilliance that the entire time he studied, he kept waiting to see some of that brilliance that everybody had told him about, but it never came. Which, burn.

Nice. Instead, he studied his ass off just to be average. And he graduated in 1948. So, like, good on him. I mean, C's get cannons, so whatever. Yeah. You can't go wrong with average. Yeah, he will probably be the most high-achieving C-grade aeronautical engineer to come from the University of Toronto.

In all of the worst ways. So, like, shout out to Toronto. Still got it. But, like, everybody noted that even though his grades and academic work was kind of shoddy, he always had, like, more passion about what he was studying than anyone else. Which is something. I mean, enthusiasm will certainly get you far, but it probably shouldn't have gotten you this far.

Because his passion and enthusiasm for the work got him another position that he was almost certainly not qualified for. Butt ladling. Nope. He did not get the coveted, I don't know, foreign exchange program in the Tokyo Imperial Palace. But now that would be a weird turn if he did. Japan has a space program built on butt ladles.

turn if he did. Japan has a space program built on butt ladles. Now, Toretto opened a new institute for aerodynamics under Dr. Gordon Peterson. And Dr. Peterson gave Gerald the position of being

in his department despite hundreds of people that were much more qualified than him interviewing for. And he only had 12 positions he he gave it to gerald um he saw something in him he did and that was despite his lack of academic acumen he made up for it by like a never ceasing supply of high energy passion for aeronautical work, which is something. I hope that is an excuse I can put on my resume one day. He's not

so good at his job, but god damn does he love it. He kind of sucks, but you know what? He puts a smile on every day. He comes to work on time. He's like the human equivalent of a golden retriever. He's not the brightest dude on earth, but he'll never be sad.

You'll throw the ball, or you'll fake throwing the ball, and he'll go off running. But once you see that he faked it, he'll be like, oh, you're going to throw the ball now? He doesn't even slow down. Now, working with Dr. Peterson, he and another student developed a supersonic wind tunnel used for testing

supersonic aircraft missiles and other things that you need to make go really, really fast in a tunnel. Sounds pretty sweet. Yeah, that's pretty cool. And while these are considered pretty much standard equipment now for aeronautical labs, back in the 1940s, these were considered

incredibly rare and hard to build, and there's only a few of them in the entire world. Now, Peterson thought that so much of this tunnel, that he was going to make it a centerpiece of his new institute's grand opening.

There's a little problem, though. He left a lot of that up to Gerald to figure out, because you have 48 hours to finish this because like the Canadian Air Force representatives coming and everything like you have to make sure it looks good. Remember

how I said that Gerald really is only enthusiastic about his job and not so good at it. Right. Yeah well he pulled an all nighter to get it working correctly and he worked on it for so long that he literally just fell asleep next to it without testing it. i can fuck yeah i get that uh yeah that's big us energy right there um now the canadian air marshal showed up which is the guy in charge of the entire canadian

air force because he wanted to witness this thing starting up because this would be a pretty big coup for Canadian science because look what we built, right? Dr. Peterson pressed the button to get it started and absolutely nothing happened. So in frustration, he punched the button, which then caused the wind tunnel to immediately turn on. That's awesome. I can imagine he's like,

Gerald, what happened here like uh sir have you tried hitting it out of frustration you know like you like you teach me uh that worked uh but bull finished his phd in in the 1950s um and he was and still is at the time of recording this the youngest person in that school's history to finish their PhD at 22 years old, which is pretty fucking impressive for being a guy who, again, is not that good at his job. You know, kind of average.

Yeah, he's busting C's the whole time, but setting records. That's fucking awesome. I aspire to get to this guy's limits of success, despite being kind of below average. Now, he was again selected by Peterson to work in the Canadian Armament and Research Program Establishment, or CARD, because it's a government in uh institution has to have a supervillain acronym uh now while there he worked in the canadian velvet glove missile program which has to be the worst name ever given to a weapon uh because it's like smooth i guess so because it was the first canadian built homing anti-aircraft missile.

Now, if that sounds kind of cool, it wasn't because it was kind of spotty and was eventually discontinued because it wasn't that reliable. But it worked technically, which is the best kind of working. I mean, it's a missile. Yeah, he did make a missile that every once in a while homed onto a target uh and this is where uh his obsession with canon started now gerald wanted to build another wind tunnel for testing because that's how you test for aerodynamics to make sure your design works is you put it in the wind tunnel and measure like the drag that's on the design i'm not an aeronautical scientist but that i from my

understanding that's how modeling works oh yeah i i got like a fan so i mean it's kind of that just really really big um yeah in science but same same But the wind tunnel was rejected because they cost a lot of money at the time and took a long time to build. So that is when someone came up with a Wiley Coyote low-cost option for testing aerodynamics. That is shooting giant models of these things out of an even bigger cannon and measuring how it flew through the air. That's fucking awesome. Now, as awesome as that sounds and let me be

completely clear here it is awesome it's not never awesome shooting something out of a cannon um and it's not as crazy as it sounds it was sound science for the day and it required all tons of measurements and math to get right which which included like a huge pictures or like a boards behind the cannon when it fired. So you can measure it as it flew through the air. And I'm very unqualified busters. Shit. Yeah,

pretty much. And I'm very unqualified to even attempt to fully explain this, but it worked. You can look up the videos on YouTube. Uh, people use this all the time. The new scientist lab coat into the cannon i hope so uh you got to on your way out you gotta fire you half your

shit out of a cannon um though you know the and the thing is is uh bull was legitimately a groundbreaking scientist in this uh one of the things that he helped come up with though he himself would eventually like give himself all the credit was what is now known as a sabot, which is an outer casing that went around an object, in this case being the model of a velvet glove missile, so it would fit down a cannon like a shell would. So when it fires these, this outer coating for this thing generally called pedals, uh, or Sabo, Sabo or whatever would come off and allow the thing that is much smaller than they can and to fly out. Um,

you might recognize this, uh, kind of science as what we currently use an anti tank shells in a main battle tank, uh, because you use a rod known as a Sabo shell or a Sabo round to puncture enemy armor. But it's so small that it doesn't

fit into the barrel of a cannon, so you have to cover it in these petals so it glides down the barrel correctly. After it leaves the barrel, these petals fly off letting the much smaller object fly through the air at incredible speeds. He did that with missile models and he eventually wanted to do it with an entire model plane.

Which he did. That's fucking awesome. Yes, these cannons were fucking huge. They were naval guns. Huh? Yeah, they were like repurposed British naval guns. He had access to that? Yeah, he worked for the government. Holy shit.

I mean, he was- I thought he had like fucking like barrels that he was welding together. He's like, this is a cannon. Well, good news. Uh, he does do that later, but we'll, we'll get to that point. Cause he does eventually build the largest functioning cannon in human history. Is there pictures and videos of this? I think so. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, that's awesome and he would attempt to build an even bigger one which is the space program but we'll get there we'll get there okay uh now he came up with an idea to get canada in the space race in the late 1950s oh i thought he's like put canada inside the cannon. Cannon and bin. Canada. So the U.S. and the USSR were locked in a space-related pissing contest,

if everybody's unaware. His idea was building a cannon big enough to fire an entire satellite into orbit. Jesus Christ. Now that sounds kind of crazy, and I need to be clear, it's crazy. But back in the 1950s, satellites were not very big. Sputnik, the first

satellite in orbit, was about the size of a beach ball. So like the idea I didn't know that. Yeah, I mean it looks much bigger whenever you see pictures of it, but then you'll see like a picture of Soviet scientists standing next to it, like, oh, it's just a little guy.

Soviet scientists playing fucking beach volleyball with it? Hacking up Sputnik. Yeah. Now, Bull never came close to developing a gun that could fire something into space. But it was his theory,

and he needed a lot of government money in order to make it a reality. But this unfortunately happened at the same time that Canada had drastically cut the budget for his program that did exist, let alone some sweet new space cannon division. I was really

hoping Canada just kept shelling money at this guy. Just keep giving money to the cannon guy. Now remember how money to the Canada guy. Now, remember how I pointed out a long time ago, and by a long time ago, I mean like 10 minutes ago, that Bull had a habit of having a bit of a problem with being rejected. Yeah. Well, when his idea got shot down,

he got pissed and leaked a fake story to the press that Canada and the U.S. were working together to put a satellite into orbit to rival Sputnik. If that wasn't crazy enough, he said that their plan was to attach one of his cannons to the nose of an American-made Redstone missile, send the missile as high as it could go, and then the cannon would fire

into their imaginary satellite into orbit. Fuck, that would be cool. That is some shit straight from an Acme cartoon and no it has never been done or attempted also this was not a play when he comes up with this shit no he's just really into cannons

he's never seen a problem that could not be solved with the proper application of cannon fire so he's kind of like Napoleon in a way I'd hate to be like his girlfriend and then break up with him and then he spreads some crazy fucking rumor out of this world

with a cannon. And the tabloids just take it. Gerald, you want me to do what? Just crawl in the cannon. Just crawl in the cannon. Real slow. Yeah, that's some straight Acme cartoon type

idea, man. Now, this is very obviously untrue. Nobody had a plan like this, to include Canada or the US. Also, because... But he had a plan. Yeah, that's part of the problem. He was the canon guy, so everybody immediately knew it had

to have come from him. No one else would possibly think of that. No, it must have been the other canon guy. Yeah. So once it traced back to him, all of his superiors got in trouble for

reasons, and then he resigned because he didn't want to deal with them being mad at him. Also because at that point, everybody thought he was kind of nuts. Fuck yeah, dude. But you know what? He comes with some off the wall cool ideas. Now, Bull was part of a few other

projects that unfortunately never ended up with him firing something into space via cannon fire. But one of the projects he was working on was Project Harp. Now, before anybody goes on, no, it's not the same one all those weather controlling conspiracy theories talk about. That's Harp with Now, before anybody goes on, no, it's not the same one all those weather controlling conspiracy theories talk about. That's Harp with two A's or something, and that's up in Alaska or

something. His project, Harp, was designing and building the world's longest functioning cannon. Now, if you're wondering, how did he do that? Well, someone in Europe had got a hold of him and gave him the plans for the notorious Nazi Paris gun for the basis of his research. Watch. Yeah, but the problem was, no matter how big he built a cannon, rocket science was the name of the game,

and it was way cheaper and easier to do now. The reason why people used cannons back in the day was because rockets were inherently hard expensive and dangerous uh like nobody nobody really had a handle on them quite yet and rocket science was kind of like some backyard hobbyists and nazi war criminals lighting shit on fire and seeing what would happen so So fast forward to this, everybody's like, why is that guy building a giant fucking cannon in the Caribbean? Just use a rocket.

So again, he was put out of a job. I hope he was renting a place and he was doing it behind the renter's back. That's not a giant. Yeah. It's like hiding a dog when you're renting a place that doesn't allow animals. No,

that's not my giant one-mile-long cannon. I don't know what you're talking about. It was there when I moved in. He tried to put a fucking tablecloth over it. Gerald, did you pay your pet cannon deposit? Now, that's when he realized that his time with the government was done. So he set up his own company. It was called, imaginatively...

Oh, please be a sweet name. The Space Research Corporation. God damn it. It's please be a sweet name. the Space Research Corporation. God damn it. It's not even a good name. No, it's not. The company was based both in Canada and Vermont, and he also eventually incorporated another office in Belgium under independent control,

which will become important later. He then gave himself the title of International Artillery Consultant, which is a title I fucking want. I'm just your normal, friendly, mom-and-pop international artillery consultant. You're the only one in the game. He definitely was. So I can only go to one guy.

Most other people just called themselves arms dealers. He had to give himself a good name. Now, once in that company, he began to develop himself a good name. Now once in that company he began to develop his own gun designs and more importantly he came up with a really effective way to make old out-of-date artillery like bring it into the modern age like he he modified it pretty cost effectively and quickly to fire further and more accurately using a simple new shell design. So countries who couldn't afford to completely revamp their entire artillery stock could just switch it out for these bull shells, and then everything would work better.

For the simple fact of using this new shell, the range could be extended for as much as 30 miles. Jesus Christ. Which Israel used tens of thousands of them to fuck up the Arab armies during the Yom Kippur War. Which like, now, you can have your opinions on the state of Israel, but this would end up kind of being a trend where he would work with a lot of governments who did a lot of fucked up things because nobody else would work with them.

This was just the start. He's the only world's artillery consultant. Yeah. Now, his artillery was so successful that he was granted American citizenship via an act of Congress. Jesus. Which has to be the most American thing I have ever heard. Yeah, this Canadian arms consultant sold a whole bunch of weapons to Israel, which they used to kill brown people, so we should give him citizenship.

That guy's good in my book. Yep. Now, Bull had no qualms with working with anyone. He didn't ever seem to be a political guy. The only thing that I could ever find him saying about politics or politicians in any way

is that he saw Canadian politicians as being pussies because they wouldn't let him fire shit in the space of a cannon. He wasn't a hardcore anti-communist he wasn't a communist he just was a guy who really liked selling cannons to people but unfortunately most countries that needed arms could just go to other countries for dealing not some weird guy that sold cannons but the countries that end up going to him pretty much universally being ones that nobody else want to do business with

um this being like i don't know like fascist spain uh fascist argentina uh which he was uh apparently uh like introduced to a lot of like south american despots through like margaret thatcher's son what uh and he also ended up dealing with like chile uh china taiwan and iran uh But you can make your own judgments about all of those countries. But he really knocked the ball out of the shit bag park when he completely revamped the entire artillery stock of apartheid South Africa in the 1970s, which was then used in Angola against civilians, irregular guerrillas, and the Cuban military. Jesus. Yep. He did that. One weird

guy. He did a lot. The 1970s is when South Africa finally got so bad that even the US stopped doing business with them. Because in 1977, President Carter decided that maybe giving weapons to a white nationalist government was really bad, actually, and made that illegal. And remember that Bull's companies

were headquartered in the US and Canada, which is illegal in Canada as well, and Belgium. But Bull ignored it and kept selling weapons in South Africa for a few years afterwards. But it required some unique ways to get around these embargoes and blockades that wouldn't raise any weird flags. Fucking hire Nicolas Cage? That probably would have been a lot slicker uh because spoiler alert nicholas cage didn't go to prison gerald bulls is gonna eventually go to prison so in 1977 the south

african government armaments division known as armsor secretly bought a 20 stake in space research corporation out of quebec uh which as you could bet is very illegal. But they then purchased a license from Bull to manufacture the GC-45, which was a new piece of artillery that Bull had designed in South Africa. Again, this is illegal. By 1983,

South Africans were marketing Bull's gun under the new name, the G5, as the pride of their new, quote, homegrown arms industry, which it was not. It was Bull's design made in the US and Canada. All of this was incredibly illegal. And Bull knew it was only a matter of time before he got caught. But he knew that when he got caught, arms dealers of the day really just kind of got slapped on the wrist and you were given a fine. Uh,

and it wouldn't really outweigh his profits that he was making. And it should be clear. He's making money hand over fist while he does this. Uh, Oh yeah. I can imagine. Yeah. So when the whole plot got uncovered and he was thrown into us federal prison

for six months, he was pretty surprised. Six months. That's it. Yeah. I mean, that's all you can really hope for an arms dealer in the day. But also

doing six months for being an international arms smuggler for a horrible, oppressive apartheid government and making millions upon millions of dollars is not really that steep of a punishment. But after that, there's a problem. Nobody really wanted to do business with him and he really

couldn't do business anymore because the u.s would look at everything he was doing with like a fine tooth comb like he's smuggling weapons again uh so he went bankrupt he then moved uh into his office uh in belgium to continue his work building cannons for the worst people on earth and this is when he became friends with saddam Hussein, the president of Iraq. This is where things get kind of interesting. Saddam was locked in the Iran Iraq war. Uh, I'm not going to go into that too much because we already did that for about

seven goddamn hours. Go listen to the series. Uh, good series. Yeah. But he was finding his supply of Soviet artillery running kind of low. Uh, and they were really slow getting him replacement parts.

And other countries that were supplying Iraq with weapons weren't making enough because he was a really horrible military leader and was losing tons and tons of vehicles and equipment pretty much every day. It's almost like he was burning through them like a man who had no idea how to run a military. it's almost like he was burning through them like a man who had no idea how to run a military. Bull first came in contact with Saddam in 1981. Now, Iraq had heard about all of the work he had done in South Africa and wanted him to do that same work to furnish the Iraqi military with more cannons and advanced artillery shells to make up for all their losses. Now, Iraq received their first order of 200 GC-45 guns in 1905. The guns were manufactured under license by Austria's state munitions company,

Vost Alpine. Illegal. To circumvent the Austrian embargo on the sale of arms to belligerents, they were shipped to Jordan, a close ally of Iraq, supplied a false end user certificate declaring that the guns were for its own army. Now, it should be pointed out that

the Austrian government, well aware of the subterfuge, simply turned a blind eye. Yeah, we don't really give a fuck about this shit. I'm not listening. La la la la la la. The artillery barrels were then delivered to a port in Akba in southern Jordan and driven straight into Iraq.

Hmm. Bull also built two prototype pieces of artillery for Iraq, one of which was a monster. The El Fah gun was a 210mm self-propelled gun that was built in Europe and smuggled to Iraq in pieces.

Huh? Yep. It was designed to fire an artillery round 35 miles as well as be equipped with chemical and biological weapons. Again. Oh, that's not good. Illegal. Jesus Christ. Yep. Literally everything this guy is doing is out of an office in Belgium

and he is doing it very openly. Yep. Thankfully for him, this guy is doing is I have an office in Belgium and he is doing it very openly. Uh, yep. Thankfully for him, uh, Belgium doesn't really care if tons of people of color get murdered by weapons shipped out of their country. What up King Leopold?

Nobody seems to really give a shit what this guy does. No, no. And that's kind of like the fast and loose days of like the 70s and 80s when it came to proxy wars in the international stage like nobody gave a fuck no and it i think a lot of it is because and this is important a lot of the people that he was supplying weapons to were also the same people most of the Western world were supplying weapons to. Remember, France, the US, the UK

were all supplying weapons to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war as well. They did it through people like Bol. The only problem is they couldn't deal with Bol anymore because he was kind of an idiot and got arrested. I thought it was just because he was kind of an asshole. I mean, they're working with Saddam

Hussein. They're fine with working assholes. Oh, that's true. You're right. My fault. The problem was, like, he wasn't their guy. Because he was doing stuff that they didn't agree with. Or not so much that they didn't agree with, but, like, they couldn't make money off of it. Which is important.

Or make money off of oil, which is what they're doing in Iraq. Because Saddam really had no money by the end of the war. But, yeah, like, he was kind of like a loose cannon. Get it? Fuck. Goddamn. You're welcome. Now, the Alpha is one of the biggest

pieces of self-propelled artillery on Earth, but it never entered mass production because that exact reason it was kind of huge and hard to produce but because he did that and he never really seemed to turn down any crazy request from saddam with like say build a giant piece of artillery uh the means that they loved him and to be fair his shells were very very successful for saddam and saddam eventually grew to like him personally which eventually got him a direct line to the dictator uh which if you remember the

series a red phone probably he definitely had a speed dial uh situation he's sliding into saddam's dms left and right daddy yo saddam what you doing Now just gassing the Kurds Why Um The problem was is this might surprise you Nick Saddam was kind of fucking Nuts This meant that he would throw

Obscene amounts of money and like R&D Supplies At anything if he liked you Like he wasn't a guy that was really based on competence as much as like, do I like you or not? Circle yes or no. No, you disappear. Yes, I throw money at you until you disappoint me. This is when Bull finally decided to shoot his shot. He told Saddam that people respected his military power because, oh, great leader, you're Saddam Hussein. But nobody would respect Iraq as a country

until they had a space program. This is where you got me. And Saddam is like, This is awesome. You know what, Gerald? Strange canon guy from Canada? You're right. And Gerald is like,

Guess what? I know just the guy to develop your space program. It's me. You think he just sits at the table and starts throwing out wild ass ideas until something sticks? I mean, it's Saddam Hussein. It only takes like two or three wild ideas. And I mean, Bull isn't a dumb guy. So he probably at this point knew how to manipulate Saddam.

I mean, bull isn't a dumb guy. So like, he probably at this point knew how to manipulate Saddam. So, which is like, it's how you flatter any despot. And that is like raise his prestige level. Right.

Like, so not like, obviously everybody respects your military strength. I mean, look at you, but like, if you really want that chef's kiss on the sovereign stage, you launch shit into space.

Cause what is a space program other than a giant nationalist pissing contest i mean like sure science was greatly uh expanded by the space race there's no doubting that but we planted a fucking american flag on the moon for a reason like because it's like hey hey look at us look what we can do that's all that is and that's like you know like and someone like saddam who is wearing a military uniform literally all the time despite not ever being in the military would absolutely love that uh and then that's how project babylon started the absolute dumbest space program the world has ever seen.

Hold on, we're talking about the world? God, yes. North Korea's space program has been far more successful. These are the episodes that I'm here for. But working in Iraq was really

hard. It's hot? You're in the middle of a war and all. Oh, that too. It's hardly a great spot to do space stuff. You have to dodge airstrikes and material shortages. And finding material suitable for this was pretty much impossible in Iraq. So you'd have to do his work via other countries and then, like always, smuggle it piece by piece into Iraq.

Unfortunately, Bull did this with all the slick spycraft of a Nigerian phone print scam. This project was managed by Bull's Corporation, involved not one but three different guns. Now, there was a prototype which is like kind of a a proof of concept then there's a mid-sized tester which would prove the concept with explosives which is 330 millimeters wide and then there is a one meter wide super gun itself

which is nuts uh now again since he's building a clandestine space cannon for Saddam Hussein, he can't just go to people and be like, I need you to build a space cannon for me, but I need you to make sure it's in a whole bunch of different pieces so I can easily smuggle it illegally through customs, right? So he went to British Steelworks and Sheffield Forgemasters and Walter Summers.

These are all like they're mostly working like oil pipeline manufacturing. And they all say that they were first contacted by Space Research, which claimed to be working as an agent for the Iraqi Ministry of Industry and Resources. The company called the tubes that it wanted to be built, quote, petroleum industry products, which sure, that's what they did. But there's a problem with this. There is no such thing as the Iraqi Ministry for Industry and Resources. And the telephone number on the documents that went out to these companies to procure parts was actually, if you called it, would go to the Iraqi industry for military industrialization, which is the main armaments division for Iraqis government. Yeah. For the Iraqi government.

Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. So you named off stuff I'm sure was illegal. It's very illegal. And also it speaks volumes for how bad Bull is when he could have just like given his own phone number or something. Just the home line? Yeah.

Or like he could have very easily given like the Iraq Ministry of Petroleum's number, which was the thing. And he was building, you know, fake petroleum parts. Why not just do that? Nope. Nope. I'm just going to give him the number for the main arms manufacturing bureau that should give him the slip the old razzle dazzle but thankfully uh well maybe not so thankfully the people that got these orders were not stupid and immediately thought all this is

suspicious as hell at least one of the companies approached by bull in 1988 was so suspicious of the order that executives at the Birmingham-based Walter Summers cannot understand why the 330mm steel tubes that they had been contracted to build were designed to cope with a pressure 12 times higher than that was normally found in the petroleum industry. Whoops.

The company's managing director informed a local member of parliament who immediately contacted MI6. Holy shit. Yeah, like, yep, this is probably a cannon of some kind. But nothing was done to stop the shipment. Not surprised. Yeah, MI6 is not good at their job.

His notification had no effect whatsoever. had no effect whatsoever. Although all military exports to Iraq were banned under the British law at the time, Summers was told it didn't need an export license for the steel tubes because they're for petroleum parts. Despite the fact that this petroleum industry provider was like, this is not for the petroleum industry. Also because the UK had supplied petroleum industry materials to Iraq for literally years before this.

But sure, whatever. Yeah, what would they know about petroleum stuff? Even though MI6 and everybody else knew the company that they were shipping tubes to was ran by a notorious arms smuggler who worked closely with Iraq, nobody did anything. No red flags there. Let it go through. Yeah. So there's probably another much more likely scenario. Okay.

And I'm, I'm diving into a bit of a conspiracy theory here. So, so bear with me. Is this yours? Yeah, this is all me. The U S and the UK were both supporting Iraq and their war against Iran and

find it much easier to just fake being bumbling idiots and letting weapons slip through than actually crack down on anything. There is much more evidence that supports this because when the British government finally did decide to do something and raid the areas where the pieces of the guns were being held, they happened to time it

the day after they were shipped out. Damn, what are the odds? Even though they had the shipping documents, it's like, oh, what did you know? Literally months ahead of time. Yeah, literally months ahead of time. Again, MI6 had been tracking this for weeks.

Now, they did eventually get caught, but with a little bit of luck and a lot of either intelligence agency incompetence or complicity, Bull got the pieces that he needed for his first step. He was able to smug enough large bore pipes, bore mechanisms, and other cannon goodies that were not anything to do with petroleum extraction and slap together the small test cannon, which was the Baby Babylon. which was dubbed Baby Babylon. But the problem was that this cannon was so large it could not just be shipped in one giant piece

unless some customs agent noticed, wow, there's a rather large cannon-shaped object you seem to be smuggling there, sir. Large barrel. Yeah. So it had to be cut into various sections and then put back together once in Iraq. I don't know if I would trust that cannon

after it gets put back together. in Iraq. I don't know if I would trust that canon after it gets put back together. It's going to have problems because it turns out you can't just cut a canon into pieces and put it back together. I don't think you would handle the same amount of pressure they thought it would. You'd think the canon science guy would know that. But I mean, also also this is why this is

the test one so like i get it it's science you know it's a process of failure um fuck it let's go but if you're thinking in your head this is like a giant howitzer it wasn't like it it wasn't mobile it couldn't be rapidly reloaded it It was effectively like a giant breach-loading cannon that could not be moved in any way. It was put in one fixed position and elevated on a hillside. So, like, think less, I don't know, howitzer or even, like, the Paris gun, which he knew how to build already,

and think giant tube that you fired shit out of. Like, call it, I mean... That's kind of what i've been thinking the whole time it was a cannon i mean by definition it was a cannon but it was so big that they literally had to use the earth to prop it up because any kind of leg stabilizers wouldn't have worked so it's a giant tube on a hillside. Not exactly a weapon of mass destruction. I've been thinking the whole time, like, backyard oil drums put together. Kind of like that. Because, like, it was a proof of concept for a bigger, much, much bigger Big Babylon cannon.

But the Big Babylon would have been much of the same in that it would have been a giant immovable cannon. Because Bull wanted to fire shit into space. He wasn't trying to build a giant artillery piece for like bombarding an enemy city or something. So it really had to only point up. So they eventually tested Baby Babylon, which did not work great. Like you said,

one of the problems with segmenting the barrel and putting it back together led to pressure escaping it as the projectile fired. And, I mean, the projectile did go pretty far. But, like, not... If you were building a cannon for testing, and hypothetically you're trying to send something into space, like, you want it to go pretty goddamn far. I fuck up bottle rockets, so. Well, the test didn't even really break any records.

Like, it didn't go further than, like, a regular piece of artillery. So, like, yeah, you're not going to point the LFOG gun into the air and launch something into space. So, like, this is pretty disappointing. So here's what he needs to do. He needs to build the cannon out of the country right build a bigger cannon to shoot that cannon back into Iraq

it's cannons all the way down baby yeah that's no middle man you don't gotta fucking cut it you don't gotta play with the whole oil petroleum bullshit no cannons let's go it's important to point out here that pretty much everybody in Bull's life that wasn't

named Saddam Hussein kept telling them Saddam Hussein's gonna use that to blow something up but Bull told everybody that would listen that there's no way that Project Babylon could have been used in any military capacity and you would have been dumb to do so because remember this thing is huge

you could not move the gun once it was in place there was no way that this hypothetical big babylon cannon could be moved at all it only pointed in one direction it fired very slowly and it could not be rapidly reloaded and And remember, when you fired this thing, like counter battery exists, scouting exists, you could immediately like scramble jets to destroy this thing. Oh, fuck. It's not going to run away.

And there's another small detail when it came to firing. So, you know, it's kind of horrible. It's not so hard nowadays with computers and everything. But, like, back in the day, counter-battery was a bit of a science. It still is now. But you had to calculate very specifically

where something came from. This would be much, much easier with Big Babylon. And that's because the recoil force of the gun would have told 27 tons, the equivalent of a nuclear explosion, and would have registered as tons, the equivalent of a nuclear explosion, and would have registered as a major seismic event around the world.

But there's a problem with this. Please tell me that this thing fired off. I'm going to have to let you down on that one. It did not fire. God damn it. But he also forgot who he was dealing with. Saddam Hussein,

who was a cartoon supervillain. Now, I have no doubt that Saddam really did want a space program. I have no doubt about that because why wouldn't he? He'd probably launch a rocket with his face on it. But not the reason

that Bull probably thought they did. He didn't really care about a satellite because a defector pointed out that Saddam Hussein definitely wanted to turn it into some kind of weapon system, but in the dumbest possible way because, again, he is Saddam Hussein. This is almost like some Dr. Evil type shit where he ransoms the world. That's exactly what I was thinking. Hussein Kamal al-Majid an Iraqi general Saddam's son-in-law and also the former head of the

Ministry of Armaments said that during the time Project Babylon so he was in charge of Project Babylon when he defected in 1995 so and then his dumb ass eventually ended up going back and being murdered

but that's not about her it's still a little not so fun fact. So when he defected in 1995, he told a New York Times journalist, quote, it was meant for a long range attack and also to blind enemy satellites. Our scientists were seriously working on that. It was designed to explode a shell in space that would have sprayed a sticky material onto spy satellites and blinded it. Fucking maple syrup. Fucking space jizz.

Yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the skeet gun. Nice. See? Dumb as hell. That's so fucking dumb. If you had the ability to fire something into orbit to do that, just fire an ICBM, you absolute dumbass. Don't use a cannon.

There's a reason why Elon Musk isn't firing SpaceX rockets or SpaceX capsules into space with a cannon. He might now because he's an idiot, but it's much easier to use rockets. Because cannons are a very, very obsolete idea when it comes to launching things into the sky. There's a reason why intercontinental ballistic missiles with nukes on top aren't fired out of a fucking howitzer.

I feel like that'd be problematic. And also, it's important to point out by now, ICBMs, space programs, satellites, and people have landed on the moon all using rocket technology by now. Still, holes like

fired out of a cannon. Guys fixated on cannons, man. I mean, someone had landed on the moon literally decades before using science and computing levels that are less than our cell phone and this guy is still like no cannons fine fucking idiot now unfortunately for bull it wasn't just journalists and parts of the british manufacturing sector that was catching on to him, you know, building a secret space cannon. The British government eventually decided to get off their ass and seized his British holdings, which included a lot of the parts for Big Babylon while it was sitting on the dock, which forced him into bankruptcy again. which forced him into bankruptcy again.

I imagine the British government did the old dad noise, getting up like, all right, let me go ahead and start getting back to work. And that was the last time they did that. But in the 1990s, things got worse for him, mostly because things deteriorated between Israel and Iraq. Though to be fair, even in the best of times, they weren't great, and the two of them fought two different wars against one another.

But during the Iran-Iraq war, Israel launched a covert strike against a nuclear plant in Iraq because they were worried that it was eventually going to be used to enrich uranium that could be used for a bomb, which, I mean, it's arguable but probable. But, yeah, Israel did that twice, actually. I think it was called like Scorched Sword or something like that. I don't know.

We did an episode on it way back in the day. It worked. They like damaged the nuclear plant to the point that Iraq couldn't use it. And it was also the first military attack on a nuclear facility. Yeah. Ignoring the fact that the reactor type being built was actually purpose built to not produce material for a bomb and if they managed to do so

anyway it would have taken decades but anyway israel blew that shit up pissed iraq off um but ever since then israel was kind of like iraq's gonna do something to get us back for that and it's only a matter of time. They're going to do something. We blew up their nuclear ambitions. Like, they're going to give us something back. But Israel didn't really see this new super space cannon thing as a threat exactly, but they weren't fans of it.

They probably saw Gerald himself as a threat, though, not so much as cannon. He had been working on improving Iraq's ballistic missile program as well. And their scud missiles, which, lo and behold, Iraq would eventually use to attack Israel during the Gulf War and attempt to drag them into the war. And they worked. They made it all the way to Israel. So, like, Bull got them back. So like bull got,

got, got them back. Uh, but yeah, I, they were more concerned about like the science and what was in bull's head than the super gun. A lot of people say it was the super gun that made Israel nervous. It wasn't even,

they realized like couldn't really do much of that. And we could just blow it. Like we bombed a whole nuclear plant. What's stopping us from blowing up this cannon. But I mean, bull, bull i mean if anything i'd be more worried about the sticky stuff coming out because i don't like feeling icky you gotta worry about the space cum yeah fellas is it gay to come on a satellite gotta ask uh now um yeah he was doing a lot of... Because he was a cannon guy, but he was an aeronautical engineer. So he could definitely do some missile magic too, which he did. I mean, Iraq had a pretty hefty scud infrastructure.

And a lot of it was based on his changes and modifications that he made. Not to mention everything he did with Iraqq's artillery how disgruntled was he with the scud missiles when he couldn't put them in cannons i think he was probably okay because like it consider this all like a side hustle he he kept doing things that saddam wanted like revamping their artillery revamping their missiles but in in doing so, he wouldn't then praise, so therefore, Saddam would pour money into his fucking space cannon. He's like, I'll work on your missiles. I'm gonna bitch and complain

the whole time until I get to build a space cannon. Oh, yeah. Under his breath, he's like, you fucking scud missiles would be fucking sweet in a fucking cannon. Yeah. You know what would make that tank weight cooler? They're out of cannon. Also, Bull had, again, even though he got arrested,

he was smart enough to make his way around embargoes and stuff. So, like, Israel was worried about, like, what he might bring to Iraq next. And that was when Bull started to notice that his apartment in Brussels was getting broken into. Nobody ever stole anything, though. And it happened, like, multiple times. Like, oh, somebody broke my apartment again. Like, they just rummaged through shit. I bet he didn't really have anything in there.

Oh, he did. Like, he lived in there. Like, he did not live in Iraq. He only went there for testing and then he'd leave again because he didn't want to live in Iraq. He just noticed, like, oh, somebody rummaged through my shit

and left again. Weird. Like, no... I figured him and Saddam would have that weird relationship like the interview where James Franco had with yeah, that's what I kind of pictured.

Same, but different. Yeah. No damage was ever done. His lock wasn't punched. They didn't go through the window. His door was just jimmied open like a professional. Nick, that's what we call a red flag especially like when you're in a business that he is in like how many people just didn't lock the door uh well i mean they went through

all the shit they weren't like gentle about it like they tossed his apartment and like how many people had gerard or gerald bull pissed? How many intelligence agencies had he pissed off? That definitely make people disappear all the time. I'd be like, hmm, I need to move. Yeah. Now, Bull may have been a goddamn genius when it came to my new favorite field of science, that being cannons. But he wasn't smart enough to know what kind of world he was now working in he had sadly gone from like it to harken back to lord of war um

he went from he went from the gray zone of this is kind of illegal but nobody's really gonna arrest me to straight up black market arms dealing so like he is dabbling in a world that he cannot comprehend quite well enough, especially Lord of war vibe. Yeah. Lord of war, but dumber. He's Lord of war.

Vitaly ran the whole thing. Um, I mean, anybody else in his, in his position would have been like, I need to move. I need to do something. Someone's onto me.

Someone wants something to do with me. I cannot come back to this apartment or just change the apartment number outside the door they won't know the next day like the fucking spooks from the cia or the masada i was like weird i could have swore this is apartment 320 yesterday weird i guess I'll have to move on a three in a giant gap with a shadow two and zero he just flips the six upside down into a nine yeah Bold did not take a single step

to change his apartment change his routine or protect himself in any way now Nick stupid you probably know where this is going so on March 22nd 1990 in any way. Now, Nick, you probably know where this is going. So, on March 22nd, 1990,

Bull was shot three times in the back and twice in the back of the head as he entered his apartment. There were no witnesses, and the shooter used a silenced weapon. Yeah, he tragically, he killed himself after meeting with Jeffrey Epstein. He tied himself up and then he shot himself the last letter he sent out said i have information that will lead to the arrest of hillary clinton yeah now this was very obviously a fucking hit job

um and it was not a robbery by any means. This couldn't even be categorized as a botched robbery because Bull was carrying a suitcase with $20,000 in cash and it was not taken. What? If I was the hitman on that, I'm taking it. Take it as a bonus.

Yeah. Gerald Bull had done what we say in the businesses. He fucked around and he found out oh yes after Iraq got stomped into the sand during the Gulf War they surrendered most of Project Babylon to NATO authorities who deemed it a weapon of mass

destruction I thought they were just going to deem it like the fuck is this a giant chute sweet water slide bro yeah like, the fuck is this, a giant chute? Sweet water slide, bro. Yeah, like, what the fuck is this? Now, our dearly departed insane cannon guy might be dead. Also, I should point out that pretty much everybody

assumes that this was the Mossad. Now, there's not 100% evidence going back to this. Like, there wasn't like a calling card left on his corpse like the Mossad was here. But this shit was the Mossad. Israel was the only one who had a problem with what was going

on. So, like, they did that shit. The Mossad wasn't here and normally when like an intelligence yeah new phone who dis now normally when like an intelligence agency disappears someone and it's not the Mossad

or sometimes like the CIA because the CIA is also like hilariously incompetent at their job sometimes most of the time like they have conflicts with multiple people there are multiple countries so like no it could have been anybody uh this is pretty much only israel like nobody else cared like the uk just bankrupted them and figured that was enough and the u.s hadn't given a shit about them in years do you think israel is just

in a bunch of meetings they're like no we didn't do that but they're over there pointing at themselves and like doing the old yeah we did fuck yeah i know i fucking would fucking some massad agents like no we had nothing to do with that uh excuse me um mr massad agent what's that medal for oh i carried on an assassination in belgium fuck uh heroism uh but yeah uh so yeah in Belgium. Fuck! Heroism. But, yeah. So, yeah, the NATO authorities took over Project Babylon and brought it back to the West. And you can actually see it. Yeah, you can see

a huge portion of Project... It's a baby Babylon, that mid-sized one that he built, at the Royal Armories Museum at Fort Nelson, Hampshire in the UK. I thought it'd be like a fucking Raging Waters or something as a slide. You could also see

two giant sections of Big Babylon that had been bolted together in the same place. Those were the parts that Bull had ordered for Big Babylon and had been seized by the customs authorities after he was dead. Now, unfortunately, they just kind of look like

giant metal pipes. That's why I assumed not all of them. Giant fucking petroleum pipeline pieces. If they were rated for 12 times the amount of pressure and nobody looked at them twice. But, if you put on

your Gerald Bull bull glasses you can too dream big my glasses are just two cannons have you thought about perhaps firing your glasses out of a cannon now nick how you feeling about this ira space program? It's fucking awesome. I love it. I thought, it's kind of a toss-up now, like, who had the more, like, doomsday fucking Dr. Evil-ass programs. I think I have to give the points to Gerald Bull simply because there is no goddamn way

this shit was ever going to work. Never in a million years! Could you imagine if it didn't? Yeah, he would be laughing as like, he'd finally figure, he would discover his centripetal energy, like the never-ending energy machine. Yeah.

Because it would just be a really big cannon firing smaller cannons out like a Russian nesting doll in circles around the Earth, finally developing perpetual energy. You'd put freaking cannons on sharks. I said centripetal energy like a complete

dumbass. Ignore that. Now, Nick, we do a thing on the show called Questions from the Legion. This week's Question of the Legion is very topical for the date that we're recording, which is August 4th, but it won't be topical by the time this comes out, so bear with us.

And that is, what do we think about the atomic bombings of Japan during World War II, which today is the anniversary of one of them? What do we think about it? Yeah, like, there's a lot of arguments in historical circles about if the atomic bombings were

a war crime, which which yes we could say they were a war crime i don't think there's a lot of arguments there or if they are necessary um now my opinion is i think people are flawed in their assumption that everything in history is either good or bad. Sometimes things are just, like there is no good option. And to see why that is the case, you need to look at Operation Downfall, which was, I believe it was called Operation Downfall. I didn't research this.

I never research the questions from the Legion in case anybody was wondering. But Operation Downfall, which was the Allied invasion of mainland Japan. It was huge. It would have killed literally millions of people, and it still would have involved nuclear weapons.

Obviously, nuclear weapons are horrible. They shouldn't exist. And the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were awful. They killed hundreds of thousands of peopleoshima and Nagasaki were awful. They killed hundreds of thousands of people. And they irradiated the cities. But Operation Downfall would have been a hundred times worse.

Oh, yeah. Like, so much worse. For everybody. For everybody. Like, millions of Japanese would have died. Like, several million. I think they were preparing for like a million casualties within the first week on the Allied side. It would have been the worst invasion of the entire war. The Soviets would have invaded the north of Japan, possibly creating a future North-South Japan type thing, like North and South Korea.

Maybe facilitating a later Japanese Civil War, like the Korean Civil War. It would have been all bad. I'm not saying this is a good choice. I'm not saying nuking anybody is a good choice. I'm just saying sometimes there isn't a good choice. I mean, sometimes two things can, in fact, be bad at the same time,

and you have to pick the least bad thing. And now, here I am standing nuclear bombing somebody thanks a lot Truman um no I mean it was obviously a war crime like just like firebombing Tokyo was a war crime firebombing Dresden

was a war crime but they facilitate I mean you can't say the same thing for Dresden. Because Dresden absolutely didn't need to happen. I don't think anybody needs to be firebombed. But the strategic bombing of Japan absolutely brought the war to a close much sooner.

The Japanese were on their last foot and were in fact talking about surrendering. But due to internal Japanese politics, if you really want to look into it, the army and the navy were fighting one another over surrendering but due to internal japanese politics if you really want to look into it um like the the army and the navy were fighting one another over surrendering they were oh yeah they fucking hated each other yeah they were arguing with the emperor about surrendering they wanted to continue fighting while the emperor was like this sucks we need to stop fighting not saying hirohito is a good guy he also probably deserved to hang at the end of the war no probably about it, really.

Wasn't there a plot to kill the Emperor? So the plot is really interesting. And this is flying off topic, but I really don't care because it's a question from Legion. So he recorded a surrender recording to be played over Japanese radio.

To be played for the people of Japan. The elements of the army and less so the navy thought that this could not go out. There was a lot of different reasons over it. One being we need to fight to death. We need to fight over every inch of

Japanese soil. And the other part of it was the emperor's voice was simply too pure for commoners to hear and this was was not a good thing to do um and it was true that it was unheard of for the emperor to address japanese commoners uh most people outside of the imperial inner circle had never heard hirohito's voice before um which and like he spoke a different kind of japanese like a much more formal type of japanese as well so like and he did some like word games in his uh surrender speech and everything

so but anyway a a soft coup was kind of launched to kidnap the emperor and make sure that the radio broadcast did not go out. It didn't work. But it did postpone the surrender, leading to, I believe, another nuclear weapon to go off. I can't remember the exact time frame, but it did fuck them in the end. But the fact of the matter is, the emperor wanted to surrender, and the military wanted to continue to fight,

which is a problem. Because by the end of the war, Japan was always kind of a military dictatorship, but not so much. Their government's super confusing during this era, but I believe it was the Showa era. Japanese history in general to me is just

fuck. Confusing as all hell. Don't quote me because i might be wrong on some of that because again this is not research this is just coming from memory but like they weren't going to surrender immediately uh but they probably were going to surrender after the first bomb so maybe the second bomb was mostly unnecessary i am going to say that largely falls onto the shoulders of the japanese military not the united states military um for not surrendering when they should have um but you know we nuked them that's something that's not like we're the only people in human history have ever used a nuclear weapon against somebody else that's something we've never fully

atoned for uh so that's something we need to process as a nation i i don't think downfall would have been better i think would have fucking ruined the like it would have nuked japan twice i think i think they planned two or more bombs um plus ground fighting in the nuclear wasteland that japan would have become it was it was ridiculous it was an absolutely batshit fucking fucking plan, which we'll eventually do an entire episode on because it's insane. That's going to be a good one. I'm going to like that one. Long story short,

nuking Japan is a line of contrast. That's all I got. Would you like to add anything before we go, Nick? No, that was pretty good. It was long-winded. I liked it. Long-winded is is the only wind i got sometimes unfortunately i apologize for flying off the handle uh as i as i tend to do

uh but everybody thank you for joining us nick thank you for joining me on this cannon race and until next time you know normally i say until next time don't do xyz but you know what until next time build a fucking space cannon go build a space cannon like what could go wrong right i feel like i need to legally say don't build a space cannon yeah until next time later