Real Survival Stories - Nuclear Missile Malfunction: Into the Silo…

Episode Date: September 9, 2026

A young technician is called into action when the USA is threatened with nuclear disaster. In September 1980, Greg Devlin receives an emergency call from his commanding officer in the US Air Force. There’s been a potentially catastrophic fuel leak at a missile silo near Damascus, Arkansas. If the fuel ignites, it could conceivably cause the warhead to detonate, triggering a nuclear explosion right in the very heart of America. Greg and his colleagues must do all they can to try to contain the leak. The stakes could not be higher… A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins. Written by Joe Viner | Produced by Ed Baranski | Assistant Producer: Luke Lonergan | Production Assistant: Chris McDonald | Exec produced by Joel Duddell | Sound Supervisor: Matt Peaty | Sound design by Jacob Booth | Assembly edit by Rob Plummer | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Ralph Tittley. For ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started. Or go to noiser.com/subscriptions If you have an amazing survival story of your own that you’d like to put forward for the show, let us know. Drop us an email at [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's September the 18th, 1980, around 6 p.m. In the heart of rural Arkansas, right in the middle of the United States, lies the small, sleepy town of Damascus. With a population of just a few hundred, this is a blink and you miss it sort of place, little more than a gas station, a post office, and a farming supply store. Tonight, a Thursday, Damascus is characteristically quiet. Walking down Main Street, it's easy to forget

that the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union is still simmering, now well into its third decade. For many Americans, the red menace of communist Russia remains a real and present threat. But in a peaceful community like Damascus, it's hard to imagine anything disturbing the status quo or shattering the impregnable sense of safety. Yet, meanwhile, just three miles out of town, a slender gravel access road cuts through the wood. and cattle pastures until it arrives at an unassuming chain-link fence. Beneath coils of razor wire, a white placard hangs at eye level. It's lettering in bold capitals. U.S. Air Force installation, restricted area, authorized personnel only. Beyond the fence, there isn't

much to see at first glance. A 10-acre plot of closely moaned grass and compacted dirt, strewn with antennas, ventilation shafts and encircled by tall floodlights. But below the ground, directly beneath the concrete slab at the center of the enclosure, a cavernous silo plunges 150 feet into the earth. Sheathed within it is the Titan 2 intercontinental ballistic missile, the most powerful nuclear projectile ever built by the United States. Right now, two Air Force technicians are making their way underground, passing through an intricate series of gates and secure metal access doors,

descending deeper and deeper into the silo. 21-year-old Dave Powell and 19-year-old Jeff Plum have been dispatched here to carry out some routine maintenance work on the missile. Both men are tired after a long shift, eager to finish the job. But just when they reached the main chamber of the silo, Airman Powell realizes something. He's forgotten to bring down the torque wrench, one of the tools they need to carry out the work.

So it's like 11 hours in. You're 11 hours in, you're tired. Now we've got to run back up top side and get this and run back down. He said, just to get this job done, I'm just going to use the socket and the ratchet that's here. They'll just have to make do with what they've got. A simple ratchet wrench with a socket attachment. It'll make the job fiddlier, but right now that's more appealing than doing the long trek back up to ground level. The two men get to work.

loosening a fuel cap on the side of the 100-foot missile. Airman Plum places the socket inside the wrench and starts cranking the tool around the cap. So far, so routine. But just when the young technician goes to retract the wrench, the socket slips off the end. Powell throws out a hand to catch it, but it's too late. The three-inch metal cylinder tumbles out of reach, falling through the gap between the work platform and the missile. Now these two guys are watching this thing fall, 66 feet gaining speed,

and they're praying that it falls straight down into what they call the W. The W, twin concrete funnels situated below the missile's thrusters. The best and lightliest scenario is that the socket falls harmlessly into this structure, avoiding the missile entirely. Instead, a stroke of bad luck. The socket hits the frame of a metal thrust mount and ricochets. And when it bounces, it could bounce in a hundred different directions, away from it to the side of it, but on the single time it falls,

it hits that thrust mount, bounces straight in towards the missile, and punctures a hole in this missile. Powell and Plum stare in dumbstruck horror as a jet of pressurized fuel-style. starts spraying violently from the side of the missile. As soon as it makes contact with the air, the fuel turns to vapor, and very quickly, the silo starts to fill with a toxic chemical mist. The two technicians can only watch, helpless, as the missile is slowly enveloped in a thick cloud of highly volatile, highly flammable, vaporized rocket fuel.

Then they turn to each other, their faces stricken, behind their helmet's clear visors. If that fuel ignites and the resulting explosion causes the W53 warhead inside the missile to detonate, it would trigger the deadliest nuclear catastrophe ever to occur on U.S. soil. The small side of that W53 had the power of Hiroshima, but the black part on the back end made it 600 times as powerful, or three times more powerful than every bomb dropped in World War II. Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice?

Welcome to real survival stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. People suddenly forced to fight for their lives. In this episode, we meet Airman Greg Devlin, a 21-year-old fuel technician in the US military. Stationed at Little Rock Air Force Base, it's the job of Greg and his fellow fuel techs to sort about any fuel-related issues on board the military fleet of Titan 2 missiles, stored in silos throughout central Arkansas. On September 18, 1980, Greg receives an emergency call from his commanding officer, informing

him of a potentially catastrophic fuel leak at one of the missile sites just outside the town of Damascus. He said, we need volunteers for this mission out there. And he said, it's bad. It's real bad. We don't even know what's going to happen. That's how bad this is. It's never happened before in history.

You know, this is uncharted territory here. As word of the accident and its possible implications spread through the upper echelons of the military, Greg and his colleagues will head to the silo to try to contain the leak. The stakes could not be higher. If the fuel spilling out of the missile ignites, it could conceivably cause the warhead inside the missile's nose cone to detonate, triggering a massive nuclear explosion right in the very heart of the USA.

The vapor panel has the main gauge in the center is a lira, L-I-R-A-L-R-A-L-R-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A. This needle was pegged all the way, all the way to the end of the gauge. I mean, that's explosion level. The missile will explode. I'm John Hopkins. From the Nois-A-P-R-R-R-E-R-R-E-R-E-R-E-ROLES. It's around 8 p.m., on Thursday, September the 18th, 1980. Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas.

Inside a briefing room, a group of young Air Force technicians sits in fraught silence as their commanding officer, Tech Sergeant Mike Hansen, delivers a grave pronouncement. There has been a serious fuel leak at one of the Titan 2 missile sites, and he needs volunteers to go and assess the situation in order to determine the next best course of action. Among those anxiously listening is 21-year-old airman Greg Devlin. He finished the sentence with, if you don't want to go, you don't have to. And my thought, and honestly, everyone that was there, and I can't speak for everybody, but I'm just telling you all the guys that went out that night said, you know, who else is going to do it?

You need fuel tax? Of course we're going to go. I mean, it's bad, but, you know, of course we're going. Following the briefing, Greg and his fellow fuel techs load up a couple of pickup trucks with the gear they'll need. The mood among the group is subdued. but stoic, business-like. They have a job to do, and there is no one in the military more qualified than they are to get it done. But just as Greg is climbing into the back of one of the vehicles,

his colleague, a 22-year-old fellow fuel tech named Dave Livingston, confides his true feelings. We were real close to leaving, and Dave Livingston, he's in the backseat there with the driver-side backseat, the doors open, and he's really getting ready to scoot over so I could get it. in next to him. He said, man, I have a bad vibe. He said, somebody's going to die out here tonight. This September on the Noiser Podcast Network, on Jane Austen stories, Dame Julie Andrews, continues to bring Austin's beloved classic Emma to life. On short history of, we're in medieval

England for the fascinating story of the peasants' revolt, and 25 years on from 9-11, were on the ground in New York City. On real survival stories, we're on a lucky, winery in northwest America and venturing into a missile silo in the dead of night as the US is threatened with nuclear disaster. And in Sherlock Holmes short stories, get two episodes each week as Hugh Bonneville explores Conan Doyle's great novel, A Study in Scarlet. Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus. I'm Julie Andrews and it is my great pleasure to return to Jane Austen stories. This time I'll be reading another beloved classic Emma. Join me as we step into the village of Highbury, home to the

handsome and clever Emma Woodhouse. But as new visitors arrive and quiet mysteries unfold, what will our strong-willed heroine learn, both of the secrets of others and of her own heart's desires? Listen to Jane Austen's stories now wherever you get your Podcasts. Temperamentally, Greg Devlin is suited to life in the Air Force. He is tough, scrappy, and never shies away from a fight, even when the odds are stacked against him. I come from a family of fighters.

My father and uncles are golden gloves, fighters and champions. My grandfather was pro that had 93 flyweight fights from 31 to 39. And so from a young age, I was always taught, don't take any crap off anybody. You know, don't start any fights ever. finish them if they started with you. Greg grew up in small town Ohio. His father was an ex-marine who owned a gas station, and Greg used to work the pumps for pocket money.

Bright and industrious, he did well in school, but ultimately decided to join the Air Force instead of going to college. He completed basic training in Texas, after which he was required to choose between one of three job offers. I had no memory of what the first two offers were, Because when I got to the third offer, it said, Titan 2 nuclear missile fuel systems specialist. And I'm 17, and I want to do something important in the world. And I said, well, Titan 2 nuclear missiles, I didn't even know what a Titan 2 missile was.

But to me, it sounded important. I said, yeah, I'll do that. Since the start of the Cold War in the 1940s, the United States has been locked in a frenzied arms race with the Soviet Union. By 1980, each superpower has amassed a stash of weapons great enough to destroy the world several times over. And in America's vast arsenal, no missile is larger or more destructive than the Titan II. First built in the early 1960s, when Cold War tensions were at their feverish peak, the Titan II missile. is over 100 feet in length and weighs about 150 tons, roughly as heavy as the Statue of Liberty.

It is fitted with a W53 thermonuclear warhead, a device capable of unleashing an explosion with a yield of 9 megatons, or around 600 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Simply put, a Titan 2 is the most powerful nuclear missile ever built in the United States. As of 1980, the US military has, 54 of them. The main point of these weapons is as a deterrent to ward off any would-be Soviet aggression, but they still have to be ready, primed to launch at the push of a button. And keeping them in this permanent state of readiness requires work, constant round-the-clock maintenance and monitoring,

with dedicated teams whose job is to keep the missiles ticking over in their silos. After finishing his training, Greg is shipped off to Little Rock Air Force Base, where he joins a specialist group of technicians responsible for everything fuel-related on board the Titan 2. So it's called PTS, Propelant Transfer System. That's our group. And we are the people that put the fuels on board the Titan 2 missile. What we worked with was called UDMH, which is unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine. So that's the fuel. It's extremely toxic. It's cancer causing. It's explosive. It's dangerous in every aspect. Working in close proximity to this hazardous liquid,

Greg and his colleagues in the PTS team carry out their work in full body protective gear, known as Refco. Rocket fuel handler's cover-all outfit. Picture a white hazmat suit with an oxygen tank strapped to the back. It has a detachable helmet, has a metal ring around the top, and then you pull the two pins on the side, and you can pop the helmet off.

if you have to get out of that quickly so you can breathe. It has a one-hour backpack. They call it an ECU, environmental control unit. So it has blended liquid air in it, and it lasts for an hour or 12 minutes. They call it a one-hour pack, and typically they cut you off at one hour. You've got to be back and undress.

One hour and 12 minutes. That's how long Refco suits are designed to keep the technicians safe. But there are some scenarios that no amount. of protective gear can defend against. Inside the missile, that W53 nuclear warhead, sits above two gigantic tanks. One contains rocket fuel, the other contains liquid oxidizer. When these two highly reactive substances come into contact

inside the missile's combustion chamber, the Titan 2 is launched. If they were to ever come into contact outside of the missile's engine, it would cause a massive explosion and fire. To stop this from happening, the two propellants are never handled at the same time. But even that might not be enough to prevent disaster. Because the rocket fuel alone is so violently combustible it can ignite spontaneously, simply upon contact with oxygen in the air.

If there are enough fumes, and a technician waves their hand too quickly, the fuel could ignite. Whether or not the ensuing explosion would trigger the nuclear weapon itself, no one can say for sure. But as more and more gallons of fuel spill into the silo, that is the fear gripping the military's chain of command. They simply don't know what might happen. It's around 10 p.m. A reflective silence presides over Greg and his colleagues

as they drive north towards Damascus. Each man left to mull on what exactly it is they're walking into. It's real quiet going out there too. There's not conversation in a truck. everybody's like, how bad is this going to be when we get there? The truck pulls off the highway onto an unmarked gravel access road. They bump along for a few miles, a ribbon of asphalt unspooling in the headlights until eventually the security fence of the missile complex looms from the darkness.

The truck parks outside the main gates, and they radio back to base. They're here. Now what's the plan? But no order comes. Senior Command is still trying to figure out how to handle this unprecedented situation. For now, all the PTSD team can do is wait. It seemed like we're waiting for hours now as we just wanted to go either send us in, what do you want us to do, send us in or send us home. You know, to just sit out here and wait seem helpless.

Like, what are we doing? Either let's get in or not. Greg stands by the truck, surveying the darkness beyond the fence. It's an eerie scene. The night air is hazy with smoke coiling from the ventilation ducts and tinged with the distinct chemical odor of hydrazine, one of the main ingredients in the rocket fuel. Finally, word comes through from mission command. In pairs, the technicians are to enter the silo

and take a reading from the vapor detector panel located in one of the interior control rooms. That will tell them how much fuel has leaked up to this point and what the chances are of an explosion. It's decided that Greg and his colleague Rex Huckel will go first. But before they even step inside the complex, there's a problem. Over the last couple of hours, the missile combat crew, the team in charge of the site, has evacuated the command center,

which means there's no one to open the main gates or any of the interior doors. The fuel techs are going to have to break in. We had a three-foot-long crowbar and three-foot-long bolt cutters, and a handheld hydraulic pump. And what they wanted us to do was break through the steel-framed door at the portal entry where you would step into the code control area. After using bolt cutters to break through the outer fence,

Greg and Rex, kitted out in their bulky refco suits, head toward the silo. They forced their way past the portal entry, then head down a set of steps to the next obstacle, a 6,000-pound steel and concrete, door. To open this, they'll need to use a hydraulic hand pump. A confusing contraption made up of various tubes and valves, and which neither Greg nor Rex has ever operated before. So they hand us this thing

and no instructions, there's only two lines, so it's a 50-50 coin toss when you hook this thing up. Will it be trying to lock the door, move the pin tighter in the hole, or is it going to be used to unlock? You don't know. With precious time ticking away, they line up the device as best they can and start pumping. Ten minutes pass. Nothing seems to be happening. We're pumping this door, and I'm looking at Rex. I say, is the pin moving?

Is it moving at all in any direction? Because we're pumping, but the pin's not moving. Well, come to find out, we actually had it hooked up 50-50 coin toss backwards. It's a sucker punch. they've been wasting time. They reconfigure the pump and start again. But with only an hour of oxygen in their tanks, the fuel techs have been told to leave themselves

at least 30 minutes to get back to safety. So we were right coming up on that 30-minute mark, and Sergeant Hanson radio's, hey, you guys are right at the 30-minute mark, come back. Rewing their mistake, Greg and Rex leave the pump in place for the next pair. Then they turn around and start making their way back to ground level, wading through cloud, of toxic vapor.

After regrouping with the rest of the team by the perimeter fence, the two men take off their helmets and unzip their coveralls. Then they watch as the next pair of technicians, Dave Livingston and Jeff Kennedy set off towards the smoldering silo. It's half an hour later. The PTS team waits around the main entry gate, listening for updates on the radio. Greg and Rex are gearing up to go back inside the complex. Rex and I are halfway suited up.

Rex is sitting on the back of the pickup truck, which is facing the gate, the entry gate. Over to the left is the hole cut out of the fence where we had come in and out of. And I'm standing up because on the radio I can hear Kennedy and Livingston coming back. Kennedy's voice crackles through the radio. It sounds like they made it through to the control room

where the vapor detector panel is located. Greg listens carefully as Kennedy describes what he saw on the panel's gauge. The vapor panel has the main gauge in the center is a lira, L-I-R-A. When there's no fumes out there, obviously the needle's on zero, as it climbed, right about three-quarters the way up is a line straight across there, okay? There's a marker there, and it's 18,000 parts per million. This needle was pegged all the way, all the way to the end of the gauge.

It went to 24,000 parts per million. I mean, that's explosion level. The missile will explode. Where some see heroes and others see egos. Bloomberg sees the era of billionaire athletes. A fad to some? The future of money to others. We see crypto's trillion-dollar swings.

The end of jobs? Or the end of human struggle? We see the endless funds fueling the AI hype. While others follow the noise, we follow the money. Learn more at Bloomberg.com. I'm Julie Andrews, and it is my great pleasure to return to Jane Austen stories. This time I'll be reading another beloved classic Emma. Join me as we step into the village of Highbury, home to the handsome and clever Emma Woodhouse.

But as new visitors arrive and quiet mysteries unfold, what will our strong-willed heroine learn, both of the secrets of others and of her own heart's desires. Listen to Jane Austen's stories now wherever you get your podcasts. It's 3 o'clock in the morning. Greg stands at the entry gate of the missile complex. He is halfway suited up, holding onto the steel mesh fence and peering out towards the silo. Somewhere in the hazy, fume-choked night, Jeff Kennedy and Dave Livingston are making their way back towards the entry gate. Word has come through from Kennedy that the vapor gauge is reaching around 24,000

parts per million, an unprecedented level. Essentially, there is now enough vaporized fuel around the missile for it to blow at any second. It could be a stray spark, a static discharge, even a hot surface could cause the fuel to ignite and trigger an explosion. Could that explosion, in turn, cause the nuclear warhead to detonate? Nobody can say for certain. But if it were to, the blast would unleash the power of 600 Hiroshima's on rural Arkansas, potentially wiping the entire state off the map, and poisoning vast swathes of Middle America with masses of radioactive fallout.

Greg squints his eyes, trying to catch sight of his colleagues. It's quiet, as if the breath of every man here is being held on a collective inhale. And then disaster strikes. Oh my gosh. It was the loudest bang I ever heard in my life. It broke my left ear drum. The first thing to hit me, it felt like a Mack truck or a heavy-duty 10-ton truck. Just hit me at 50 miles an hour.

I, boom. But it was wind. The first thing to hit me was the wind. The force of the blast knocks Greg flat onto his back. In a fraction of a millisecond, the dark silo has erupted into a giant ball of blinding light and excoriating heat. A ring of fire shoots outward, then up, 300 feet into the air, coiling and reshaping into an immense, fiery sphere. It billows black smoke and illuminates the surrounding farmland with an infernal red glow. The superheated air rapidly expands, creating a concussive shockwave that rips branches from trees

and sends every person in the vicinity hurtling backwards like crash test dummies. Greg can feel the gravel scraping the skin from his body as he careens on his back down the access road. I'm sliding backwards so fast. I mean, I only had one thought in my mind. I know I'm going to die. I just hope it doesn't hurt. That's the thought. My left eye was cracked open just lightly.

I didn't open it. It's cracked open. And I'm sliding. I can see what looks like lava going past me at a thousand miles an hour. And I went, oh, God. Oh, God. I mean, I know I'm going to die. The missile's rocket fuel will burn through skin and tissue.

Just breathing its vapors can kill. Right now, the air around the silo is ablaze with deadly vapor from thousands of gallons of leaked fuel. As he slides, Greg's hands are up by his face, and through his cracked eyelid, he can see that the skin of his left hand has been completely stripped off, revealing the muscles and tendons.

I'm sliding, sliding, sliding, sliding, and I feel like I'm going to slam into something behind me because I'm going so fast, but I was on the access road, and there was no equipment behind me there. So there's nothing I would slam into. So I slide six. They feed back up the asphalt road.

Finally, Greg skids to a juddering halt. The vapor thick air congeals around him, settling on his skin in a toxic film. Lying on his back, he blinks up at the night sky. It's filled with a million burning embers, twisting and darting like fireflies. I'm burned badly. I have all the wind knocked out of me.

I'm stunned. I'm dazed, I'm confused. As soon as I stop, I'm on the ground, and two inches from my ear, I hear a woman scream bloody murder. This is a long-winded scream to run. Greg instinctively turns his head towards the voice. There's nobody there, just a desolate expanse of burning grass. But the message is as clear as day. Run.

And I went, oh my God, lady. I mean, it gives me chills telling you that story right now. I'm not kidding. It gives me goosebumps. Like, ah, go. Like, go. And it brought me to my senses. With that disembodied voice reverberating in his bones,

Greg hauls himself to his feet and starts to run. His refco suit is zipped to his waist, and the top half sags heavily by his side as he staggers across the scorched ground. Pieces of silo rain down from the sky like meteors, great hulking chunks of steel and concrete that shriek overhead and lodged themselves in the dirt around him. So I get five steps, 15 feet max, five steps away from where I was laying, and it felt like an earthquake behind me like, this massive freaking concrete. The earth shakes as a slab of concrete the size of a school bus slams into the ground just a few feet behind him, right in the spot where he was just lying.

Greg commands his body to keep moving. But he's only made it a few more meters down the road when a savage impact jolts through the back of his leg. It felt like a major league baseball player took a baseball bat home run swing and he crushed, shatters my ankles, severs the Achilles 10, And when that foot hit the ground, it buckled because the ankle was shattered, and I went down. Greg crumples. Unable to stand on his broken ankle, he curls into a ball, shuts his eyes, and with flaming rubble raining down around him, waits for the inevitable.

I'm hearing chunks of concrete as big as cars and trucks hit the ground around me, because that's the pieces of stuff and bigger, stuff they found around us. boom boom boom and i'm like i'm in a fetal position on my left side with my hands over my head like it would make any daggone difference Greg braces for impact he listens teeth clenched as the pieces of concrete raining down get gradually smaller from fragments to shards until finally all that's left is a shower of gravel skittering across the surface of the road still Greg lies there arms up over his head as the sound and fury of the explosion gives way to a deathly quiet. I've never heard silence like that in my life. For three or four seconds, no birds chirping, no crickets, no buddy's screaming, yelling, nothing. It was just like pure dead silence for four seconds.

And then guys are screaming, oh, God, help me, help me. You know, they're screaming and they've been burned, and Rex had a shattered kneecap, and, you know, guys kind of scattered in different directions. It looks like a battlefield, a cratered, smoldering hellscape, littered with detritus and strewn with injured men. Dazed, Greg peers around through the haze of smoke and settling dust. As mighty as that explosion was, it may only have been a precursor. At this stage, the nuclear warhead can't have detonated, or there would be no survivors.

But if indeed the Titan II's nuclear bomb remained, intact somewhere. The question is, where did it land? That's when Greg turns his head and sees a bulky, cylindrical object silhouetted against the burning field beside him. The front side of it is pointed. You could make out a shadow. The shadow looked like the point, looked like the nose cone and the warhead of the missile. So I turn over and look, and I went, oh my God, this Titan 2 is laying right next to me, man. Greg stares, terrified, mere inches from one of the most powerful weapons of mass destruction ever built on U.S. soil. But after a few moments, his vision adjusts to the gloom. It is just another piece of concrete. Relief, for now. Greg rolls onto his back, suddenly assailed

by volleys of excruciating pain. He tries to get up, but his shattered ankle makes it impossible to stand. His left ear drum was ruptured in the blast. The world has a muffled, muted quality, but from somewhere close by, he can hear the dull thudding of approaching footsteps. A moment later, Greg is looking up into the bloodied face of one of his senior officers, Colonel Morris. He comes over, reaches under my legs with one arm and my back with another.

He's carrying me like an infant, picks me up, and he starts running up. the access road. With Greg's full weight in his arms, Colonel Morris's endurance and tenacity is remarkable. He's running into rocks at as big as coffee tables. I mean, he runs with me for, I know he ran with me for 40 yards, and I'm going, I'm looking at him. I'm looking at him in the face as he's running with me,

and blood is pouring down his face. And I was stunned. I was like, this is like superhuman strength here. This guy's carrying me so far. There's good reason for Colonel Morris's haste. Before the explosion, a military support crew assembled at the foot of the access road. But they're not sticking around for long. As soon as that missile exploded, everybody at the end of the road, ambulance drivers included, all took off.

They all thought a nuclear bomb has just went off. Right now, Colonel Morris, Morris is doing everything he can to reach the end of the road before the last ambulances leave and abandon the men here to their fate. But after a while, the colonel's stamina falters. Finally gets about 40 yards in and he's like, oh, Devlin, I got to put you down. If I don't make it to the end of the road, they will leave us. In Toronto, every arrival is a statement, and nothing says it better than this.

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This September on the Noiser podcast network. On Jane Austen's stories, Dame Julie Andrews continues to bring Austin's beloved classic Emma to life. On short history of, we're in medieval England for the fascinating story of the Peasants Revolt, and 25 years on from 9-11 were on the ground in New York City. On real survival stories, we're on a luscious winery in Northwest America, and venturing into a missile silo in the dead of night, as the U.S. is threatened with nuclear disaster. And in Sherlock Holmes short stories, get two episodes each week as Hugh Bonneville explores

Conan Doyle's great novel, A Study in Scarlet. Get all of these shows and more early and add free on Noiser Plus. Greg lies sprawled on his back by the side of the access road, his skin charred and peeling, covered head to toe in foul-smelling black soot. Unable to move, he waits, helpless, not knowing whether or not Colonel Morris has reached help in time. The minutes stretch out. Until at last, he hears the sound of truck tires on gravel.

Colonel Morris is back, with a few other guys heading towards the silo to look for survivors. Despite his injuries, Greg wants others to be prioritized before him, but the colonel won't hear of it. Colonel Morris says, take Devlin to the hospital now. I said, no, no, don't take me. Get those guys. Get everybody. We'll lead together. And Colonel Morris said, Devlin, you're too bad off.

You're so badly burned, I got to get you to the hospital. little now. It takes some time, but Greg eventually accepts. He is loaded into the back of a pickup truck and driven to the end of the access road. There he is placed in a larger truck along with fellow PTSD member Buddy Boylan. Spotting some large jugs of water in the flatbed of the pickup truck, Greg asks Buddy for a favor. I said, buddy, pour the water on my face.

I was worried about hydrazine. If it's liquid hydrazine and it gets anywhere on your body, it mixes with the moisture in your skin and becomes an acid that just keeps eating you. So buddy takes this big jug of water, man, he's pouring it on me, ice water. It feels like heaven, man. It's like, oh, my God, man. So for sure, I know that it's being neutralized. When the jug is empty, the pain soon returns. The journey to the hospital passes for Greg in agonizing.

discomfort. When they finally get there and he is loaded onto a gurney, the pain is so intense, the medical staff are concerned Greg might lose consciousness. So they get me inside the hospital, and I'm hyperventilating. I'm in so much raging pain from the fire. And this nurse comes over, Mr. Duffin, if you don't calm down, you're going to pass out. I said, I can't calm down. I'm in so much pain. And 30 seconds later, somebody takes a syringe. There's a woman, stabs me in the leg, the thigh with it, and pushes that into me instantly. Before she even got the needle out of me, all the pain in my body was gone. I went, oh my God, I love you.

Greg has suffered a combination of chemical and fire burns to his face, neck, and back. He has lost all the skin on one hand, ruptured his left eardrum, and severed his Achilles' tendon. Over the course of the next ten days, he is treated for his injuries with regular rounds of morphine, to dull the pain. He is joined in the hospital by other wounded airmen, all suffering similar injuries, burns and broken bones. One PTSD technician, airman Dave Livingston, tragically dies from the trauma he sustained in the explosion. He was 22 years old. While Greg and his colleagues recover outside of the hospital, an inquiry begins into what went wrong and how. Amid feverish press interest and concern for public safety, the Air Force is anxious to control the narrative.

The media were trying to get to us in the hospital, and the Air Force wanted us back so the media couldn't get to us. You know, the hospital officials basically were keeping them away from us, but the Air Force wanted us back so we couldn't talk to the media. In the weeks following the explosion, facing scrutiny from all quarters, the Air Force remains tight-lipped, refusing to confirm whether there had even been a nuclear warhead on the site at all. But as anyone who was there that night knows, the fact of the matter is, things could have been so much worse. When the fuel exploded, the warhead thankfully didn't go off. It is eventually recovered from a roadside ditch, a quarter of a mile away from the silo, still intact.

The Air Force will later say that it never could have detonated. But many experts will disagree with that claim. In any case, following the accident, at Damascus, thorny questions are raised about the way the military stores these super-powerful nuclear missiles. Some will say they shouldn't be kept so close to populated areas. Others will point out that a culture of shortcuts and lax workplace practices had been able to take root over the years leading to the accident. For their part, the Air Force does not admit to any systemic fault. Instead, its official explanation is simple human error, but all this stemmed from a

young technician who forgot to bring the right tool. If the error would have been something in the system, then they said, oh my gosh, this could happen. We got 54 these around the U.S., 18 in Arkansas, 18 in Kansas, 18 in Arizona. If that same thing happens, we could have a catastrophic event out there too. But it wasn't. It was whose fault was it? Oh, him, that guy, Dave Powell.

It's because he didn't use a torque. wrench. And I had to tell you this. That couldn't be farther from the truth. Greg says that even if a torque wrench was used, the accident could just as easily have happened, as that tool also had parts that could have fallen off. And the truth, Greg argues, goes deeper still. By 1980, the Titan 2 missile, once the pride of America's nuclear arsenal had become outdated. Designed and built nearly 20 years ago, the entire fleet is now an operational relic, a product of a different era, with aging systems and components. Of course, human error did play a part in the accident at Damascus,

but many argue that focusing on one technician's mistake only obscures deeper problems within the Titan II program. Indeed, within seven years, the Titan II system will be decommissioned entirely, with the old missiles repurposed as space launch vehicles or packed off to museums. The Air Force has also since stopped using liquid rocket fuel, replacing it with safer, less volatile alternatives. Liquid fuels are extremely dangerous compared to solid rocket fuels. And I can't really speak on solid rocket fuels. All I know is they've gotten rid of the liquid propellant missiles, these monster missiles,

like the Titan 2, and now all of our missiles are solid rocket, which are way more stable. After the accident, Greg and his fellow fuel technicians are awarded the airman's medal for bravery. But despite this honor, Greg says that everything changes in the wake of Damascus. The whole PTSD team is treated differently by the upper command, as if their very presence is an unwelcome reminder of how close they all came to catastrophe. It isn't long before Greg leaves the Air Force. He goes to work for NASA as a fuel technician at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where he still lives today. In the years since, he has tried to move on from the events of September 1980, but it's not easy.

He suffers from long-term health problems as a result of his injuries, including issues that may stem from the inhalation of fumes. Today, almost half a century on from the accident, Greg still advocates for more risk. recognition of the lasting side effects of exposure to hydrazine. The amount they were allowing us to inhale on a daily basis was 50 times more than today's standard. I'm not crying about any of this. What I'm saying, though, is there are guys that we are losing to cancer that is directly tied to that,

that they should be getting the veterans' benefits tied to that. When Greg looks back on the accident today, he says he struck not by what happened, But by what could have happened? Is there a possibility of an accidental explosion? Yeah, sure. Even if the odds are a billion to one, we still have the one. And if that warhead would have went off and the radioactive fallout,

they predicted it could have killed up to 10 million Americans. Nobody cares about the Cold War. That's in the past. Nobody cares about Titan missiles. Yep, they're gone. We don't have liquid propelling anymore. So it's easy to forget the event, forget the Cold War. The good thing about podcasts like yours and people that still discuss it and they tell stories is it doesn't let the world completely forget about it.

Next time on Real Survival Stories, we meet John Graham, who at 48 years old has already lived more lives than most. Formerly of the U.S. Foreign Service and the U.S. State Department, John is now working as a lecturer aboard a cruise ship, the MS. Princeton Dam. But on the night of his first talk, four days into the cruise, a fire tears through the commercial liner, and more than 500 people are forced overboard. To make matters worse, a typhoon is on its way, and John and his fellow survivors must face down the storm with nothing but a metal dinghy between them and the roiling deep. As the hours ticked by, seasickness and hypothermia aren't their only concern. For John and his companions, time is running out. The real factor that's important is light. The odds on us being found by a Coast Guard cutter are small enough with a bit of daylight left in the storm.

But we don't have any lights, no flares, no radio, of course. And it's going to be dark in 45 minutes or an hour. Once it gets dark, we're dead. That's next time on real survival stories. Listen right now without ads and without waiting by joining Noiser Plus. This family is on the brink of civil war on subter. September 18th, Mobland. The hit original series is back on Paramount Plus.

We are the Harrogans. Don't know the net? And Google us. From the underworld of Guy Ritchie. Do you want to step up the ladder? I want combat dead. Starring Tom Hardy, Pierce Brosnan, and Helen Mirren. Do I have to do everything myself?

You want to want! I'll give you a... Mobland, new season hits September 18th on Paramount Plus. This September on the Noiser Podcast Network. Jane Austen's stories, Dame Julie Andrews, continues to bring Austin's beloved classic Emma to life. On short history of, we're in medieval England for the fascinating story of the Peasants' Revolt, and 25 years on from 9-11 were on the ground in New York City. On real survival stories, we're on a luscious winery in Northwest America,

and venturing into a missile silo in the dead of night, as the U.S. is threatened with nuclear disaster. And in Sherlock Holmes short stories, get two episodes each week as Hugh Bonneville explores Conan Doyle's great novel, A Study in Scarlet. Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus.