The Nuclear Arms Race (And Its Decline)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 พ.ค. 2021
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Don't worry Simon, this video gonna be ... A BLAST !
This channel is going BOOM 💥 this week
I love the cold war too
Mega projects “the laws of physics and the history of physics them” could be a long video might need separate parts to it but can include Einstein Kepler plank avagadro photoelectric effect Doppler effect and maybe dive into quantum mechanics. Like this comment if you like the idea
It's time to change the name of the channel to Cold War projects
The nuclear arms race was like two men standing in a pool of gasoline, one with four matches, the other with six.
Carl Sagan?
And they were lighting those matches.
And another guy with orange kool aid
Let us hope those matches were lit. And also pray either Xi Jinping or Joe Biden drops one of those matches.
Strange game... the only winning move is not to play...
2:05 - Chapter 1 - Out of the ashes
2:55 - Chapter 2 - The bomb
4:05 - Chapter 3 - On your marks
5:30 - Chapter 4 - Ideology
6:30 - Chapter 5 - Hydrogen bombs
8:15 - Mid roll ads
9:30 - Chapter 6 - All change
13:00 - Chapter 7 - A mad time
13:40 - Chapter 8 - The cuban missiles crisis
15:25 - Chapter 9 - Calming times
17:00 - Chapter 10 - The end of the race
18:50 - Chapter 11 - Today
Keeping track of all Simon's channels and topics covered (making sure there is no overlap) should be a MegaProject video on it's own.
Except the Pepsi Harrier
@@Taygetea i swear that thing has shown up on all of his channels except bio/geographics and xplrd.
@@SovereignwindVODs for now....
I lived through most of The Cold War years. I certainly remember the fear which generated from The Cuban Missile Crisis. I never worried about all-out thermonuclear war between the super-powers. I was concerned with just one nut who gets his hands on just one small-yield nuke. I'm still very much concerned about that. Thank you, Simon Whistler, for this chilling yet informative video. -- A USAF vet
Walter, read my post. It's only three spaces above yours and is highly relevant to what you are saying.
@John Barber read my post, it's about a situation that is even more frightening than your scenario. When I first stumbled on to this, it scared the hell out of me.
There were so many close calls due to a few unintentional mishaps. The scariest thing of all of these scenarios is what if WW3 is not ended but delayed........
Maybe now need to re-evaluate it now
@@KKTR3 Yes, now more than ever.
To quote the film Crimson Tide "In the nuclear world. The true enemy is war itself." If you haven't seen it yet. I highly recommend it.
Excellent movie
Say, know anything about horses? 😉
@@seanbrazell6147 What color are they when they're born? 😁
Loved that film. Loved that, essentially, both were equally right and wrong.
I prefer Wargames . . . "The only way to win is not to play".
My dad was in the RAF in the late 50s and 60s. He said once there was a screen around a Vulcan Bomber (indicating a nuclear bomb being loaded or unloaded because secrecy). He said he heard a really loud, metallic clang from behind the curtain and a lot of swearing. To quote him on the whole Cuba missile crisis - Fun times :)
Yep, it's amazing how close we've come to disaster, multiple times.
Would a rundown of the events in Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" make for a decent Biographics video?
We did a rundown of it in my AP US History class in 2013... Definitely video-worthy
Ooh I like this idea
In high school history class (in 1990 or so) they broke the song down into 7 or 8 events for each kid and we had to research our events and then presented our findings.
My section was:
U2, Syngman Rhee, Payola and Kennedy
Chubby Checker, Psycho, Belgians in the Congo
Yes
I grew up during the Cold War years. I was practically a toddler when The Bay Of Pigs happened. I was in highschool when the first SALT talks were going on. In my English class we read an article about it.
Same here, born in 1960 I recall doing "Duck and cover" drills in grade school..
@@569139 As a European born in the mid 80s that "duck and cover" strategy seems so insane to teach to school kids. Did ye actually believe it would ever have to be used? I understand how close the world came to nuclear war but, as a child, was the gravity of the whole situation known to you?
Sorry for all the questions, it's just that you and I grew up in such vastly different ways that I still can't really wrap my head around the fact that people were (rightly) scared on nuclear apocalypse.
@@GerryBolger as a child I did not know what to think.. as I look back I see it was insane to think that it would haved saved anyone... Thank god it never came to that!! I served US Army 1978-1981 near Nuremberg, by then T realized that any nuclear exchange would be horrific beyond comprehension......
Video 5 of asking for a video on the Pennsylvania T1. The T1 was supposedly the fastest steam locomotive in history and it took over 20 years of development
I’d love it too, but I think that video might be better-saved for when the T1 project progresses further. Would be a great way to raise attention for it.
@@GintaPPE1000 you’re right
Looking at world politics nowadays im not convinced the cold war is over
It ended, but the west has been forced i to new one through chinas unprecedented growth in its economic and military power.
It only went under the ice. Strong evidenced suggests it still continues under Putin
Not over but delayed.......
It never really ended, only to those who moronically are optimistic or willfully ignorant of human history.
15:20 and USA agreed to remove missiles from Turkey. The whole crises was about those. US did it first, not USSR (bring nukes close to enemy). USSR was made to keep quiet about the withdrawal of weapons from Turkey. It was worth saying Simon :)
We really need to just change the name of this channel to “Cold War Projects” already
Mega seems to have become moderate in size.
yeah it does branch out from "simon looking at planes and ships"
You're not wrong.
@@megaprojects9649 more like megaton projects
The fact that we survived the Cold War is a happy accident.
@Scott Reynolds you'll get them in october of 2077
@@skyboy4341 (ಠ_ಠ)
@Scott Reynolds sorry wrong universe all you would get is horrific turbo cancer.
Thank God for the Xmen. 😋
After the many, MANY close calls that could have resulted in one. I for one thank Truman for this...
All hail Vasili Arkhipov, the unsung hero of the Cuban Missile crisis...
Why?
@@drgunnwilliams5185 If it wasn't for him as commander of the Soviet fleet talking down an agitated captain of a nuclear armed submarine, WW3 would've started in Cuba......
This video feels like a summary of the near-entirety of Megaprojects
Let’s face it. It was bound to happen. We have broken the 4th wall and went full meta talking about the Mega Project that began all Mega Projects.
Winnie, is that you?
@@clem719 I have people headed to your location.
Am disappointed that Simon didn't remind us you can't hug your kids with Nuclear Arms. Well, more than once.
you...
Actually you can! It just requires a lot of engineering, several different tools and someone that is way, way too obsessed with mechs and transformers.
@@bradbrandon2506 And at least that way, they'll glow in the dark so it's harder to misplace them!
@@bradhobbs6196 Well any practical engineer would give sufficient lead shielding.
It's as much terrifying as it is fascinating to me that humanity wields the power to extinct itself by the press of a button.
I consider myself quite the idiot, despite technically being in the "top 1%" intellectually. So for me, the fact that these unfathomably powerful weapons are in the hands of people almost certainly dumber than I am is the most terrifying thought.
@@treble8921 as long as they understand the basic phrase
I cant rule over people if everyone is ded where fine
@@piglin469 Unless someone who has that power and is about to die (or lose and be captured) decides that the world doesn't need to exist after they die.
@@treble8921 don't put thoughts like that into my head it makes me paranoid
Would be interesting for you to cover SDI (aka Reagan's Star Wars program) in one or more videos (objectively of course).
That's a great idea, sad how little is known about that "Star Wars!" The 747 with the laser in the nose is amazing.
megaprojects should cover the NASA Crawler sometime
Can you do the Eurofighter Typhoon please?
I think only Airbus can. It's proprietary tech.
The real key to ending the Cuban Missile Crisis was the U.S. agreeing to remove *their* intermediate range nuclear missiles from Turkey; which was not really acknowledged by the U.S. gov't until a few administrations later.
That's an important fact that Simon left out. America had missiles close to the USSR.
The fact that nations which share such absolute hatred for one another, like Israel, Pakistan & India, have nuclear weapons - terrifies me.
Mega Project suggestions: Benban Solar Park, Aswan High Dam, Bar Lev Line and Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.
I would love to see a video about the RDS-1 program. You did a Manhattan Project, time for Soviet knock-off video!
Suggestion: Bruce Nuclear Power Development. Lots of unique/interesting attributes and just a massive facility in Canada.
You forgot to mention that America also had to remove their missiles from turkey.
Simon's other channels are becoming more and more like Business Blaze by the day. I love the commentary.
*Allegedly
You legend!
Off to the basement with you!
Dresden and Tokyo had similar casualties in one conventional bombing raid.
But how many bombs were used for that, compared to the one used against those cities.
@@speedy01247 I sure it did matter to the people killed, they are just as dead.
Well, perhaps the Germans shouldn't have started bombing Britain...they started it, we finished it, and whining on behalf of the bullies who got righteously put down reeks of 1960's Left-wing revisionism.
"As the last Soviet soldiers limped out of Afghanistan, the Soviet Union was already circling the drain."
There is something oddly familiar yet also foreboding about this.
Agreed history shows that Afghanistan is a death trap. A lot has been written about how Field Marshal paulus and the German sixth army we're lost at Stalingrad. The British had the equivalent of that happening twice in Afghanistan. You cannot win the hearts and minds of a heartless mindless people. I truly wish that the defense department would actually write history books for all of their War libraries
@@davidboysel4509 I'd be satisfied if they just read them
"The beauty of nuclear weapons is nobody wants to use them first" ~Simon 2021
As much as I hate to say it MAD works, just think of how many people would have died in WWIII and WWIV and so forth.
MAD worked*
past tense. The possibility of some kind of chaos actor who has no interests on this earth that would not be afraid of setting off nukes if they could get hold of them and ending the world is SIGNIFICANTLY higher than in the era of the Soviet Union.
@@moritamikamikara3879 I'm not discounting that possibility and the risks associated with it. but the US DEFCON status being 5 now and it was 2 during the Cuban missile crisis begs to differ with you.
Setting off a handful of nukes also would not end the world. I do not know the worlds security with their nuclear weapons, but It would probably take more than just a couple of guys storming a missile silo to launch just one missile much less enough to destroy the world.
@@moritamikamikara3879 It's HIGHLY unlikely at BEST that any "chaos actor" would be able to hit a target with a single (or small amount of) nuclear weapon(s), EVEN if they manage to successfully launch a loaded ICBM .
With the defense capabilities of today's superpowers -- both airborne and stationary -- nukes in the air are far less threatening today than they were in the Cold War era. Although a massive launch of nukes from multiple superpowers would certainly constitute MAD, the threat of a single nuclear warhead is almost moot to many places around the world. A poor country/regime with nuclear capabilities is less frightening to the world at large than most people believe. Still terrifying on a local scale, but not likely to threaten apocalypse.
Awesome video Simon. Thanks for all the combination of knowledge and entertainment your channels bring.
He didn’t mention the fact that Kennedy also agreed to remove missile silos from Turkey..
Would love a video on the P-51 mustang!!
The P-51 was actually a very quick and dirty project, and somewhat of a failure until a pilot suggested replacing the Allison engine with the Merlin. The rest as they say is History.
@@larrybremer4930 not at all lmao
That would be a loud and shaky video.
To be accurate the Uranium gun type bomb dropped on Hiroshima was called 'Little Boy' and was quite different from the 'Fat Man' Plutonium implosion bomb which was dropped on Nagasaki. 5:20
Keep these coming ! I love your different channels
Great video as usual!! Keep them coming!
Love your videos so much! You’ve made love history. Especially the Cold War era even greater! Thanks for the great videos for me and my fellow nerds lol.
I still remember watching ‘The Day After’ and being so terrified afterwards 😕
th-cam.com/video/Iyy9n8r16hs/w-d-xo.html
Watch the BBC production "Threads" and "The Day After" won't scare you quite so much. "Threads" is the most accurate nuclear war movie ever made, and one of the most horrifying movies in history. It's a real gut-twister and not for the faint-hearted or those with a weak stomach.
@@patrickscalia5088 I watched 'Threads' when it was shown here in my high school, and still remember the last scene vividly.
@@padawanmage71 Without doubt one of the toughest movies to watch in history. For a movie that shows relatively little gore, Threads is one of the most horrific movies ever. The story is brilliant. From the constant dread that suffuses the entire movie to attack and post-attack scenes that are gut-wrenching as they are horrifying, its a magnificent if extremely shocking and depressing movies ever.
For anyone who has a specific interest in apocalyptic fiction, there is one book that is sort of the print equivalent of Threads in being the most authentic depiction of a nuclear war and its aftermath. "The book is called "War Day," by Whitley Streiber and Jim Kunetka. It's extremely well written by two renowned authors. A very close relative to me was a navigator/weapons officer on a SAC B52 (meaning he was the one responsible for targeting and lauching nuclear rockets and dropping the hydrogen bombs) at the time War Day was published and I offered it to him to read. He took it and was doing a little reading before bed. I looked in on him a couple hours later, and he was still reading it and had turned white as a sheet. The section of the book he was reading right then was the scene where one of the characters is riding a city bus when the pattern of warheads detonated over NYC. The next day he said to me "They got it right." I asked "Got what right?" And he replied "everything." It's as horrifying as Threads and every bit as realistic.
In addition to that, some of the descriptions of NYC immediately after the attack are so close to descriptions of NYC in the days and weeks following 9/11 that it's downright eerie. Note, War Day was published in 1984, a full 17 years before 9/11 occurred.
Close second for best novel about a nuclear war is "The Last Ship" by William Brinkley. In that book the crew of the guided missile destroyer is in the Mediterranean sea looking for survivors. They do find a few survivors here and there and the description of the condition of those people is again utterly horrific.
If what you want is a hyper-realistic depiction of nuclear war then you won't find anything better than the two books I just named.
And yes, "The Last Ship" is also the name of that utterly stupid, shitpile of a TV series. And yes, the shitpile TV series is purportedly based on the novel by Brinkley, but aside from the name and the setting of naval personnel in a ship sailing the seas after an apocalyptic event, the series uses very little else from the original story. The TV series is garbage, the novel is brilliant.
Well done Son! Well done Simon. I've been following you for a couple of years now, and you just GROW....man!! This, one of your finest posts. Cheers, love, light, peace and humanity.....for all.
great learning man. Thank you for knowledge.
You know what would be a fascinating vídeo, one on TH-cam itself because this website is soo fucking massive it's kinda scary all the infrastructure that has to be in place to keep it running
Once again the beard of knowledge never fails to impress. Awesome video!
Love the videos like this!
Great video!
I would love to see a comparison series about the Falcon 9 and the Atlas V rockets.
This! #Legend
Do a video about the Chrysler T-1 Nuclear tank!!
5:23 Fat Man hit Nagasaki, not Hiroshima (picture and broader statement are correct).
Sydney Opera House or Sydney Harbour Bridge for a video suggestion! Plenty of engineering challenges!
Another vote for the Opera house
I don't 👎
The song 9:27 is Haendel - Sarabande for those who wondering
Hey Simon, you should do a video on Bagger 288. It was the heaviest land vehicle in the world from 1978 until 1995. A perfect mega project!!
I really enjoyed this one, I hope more things like this happen more often (Where we all agree we need to chill out and just go about our lives peacefully)
Nicely done.
Very watchable as ever Simon. Ideas - Forth rail bridge, Brooklyn Bridge, Times Square, Blue Riband winners, Production car race to hit 300mph,
The first time I saw a nuclear weapon I walked up to it and put my hand on it. After a minute the sergeant giving me the tour stepped up next to me and said "everyone does that".
@Demarquez Jones I think you misunderstood his name.
@Demarquez Jones you're boring. I'd touch it too.
I would love to make racists afraid again. Unfortunately the left is still pretty bold. Now please tell us more about how minorities are too stupid to figure out how to get a free state-issued voter ID. Or reduce testing standards because you think minorities are too stupid to keep up (looking at you, california.) You know what "critical race theory" is? Its literally *institutionalized racism*. And YOURE THE ONES INSTITUTIONALIZING IT.
"Make Racists Afraid Again" - You have to define 'Racist', because from what I see, the people calling everybody racists are the biggest racists.
Good video 👍
War may never disappear entirely.
But I still hope nuclear weapons will. Their existence is insane in all aspects.
No one, however responsible and righteous, should be allowed to possess them.
Great job!
I'd love for one of your channels to cover the September 18-19, 1980 accident at Missile Complex 374-7 in Arkansas. The nuclear warhead was blown out of the silo and completely out of the missile compound itself. There are so much more juicy tidbits in this story!
Thanks
5:20 - Fat Man was dropped on Nagasaki, not Hiroshima. Otherwise, great work as usual.
Bad editing would be my guess.
Mutually Assured Destruction, MAD, the most accurate abbreviation i ever heard, the entire idea is just MAD,
Can't say for sure, but it may have worked as a deterrent.
Would be cool if you made a ‘Historics’ channel where you discuss events like Berlin Wall, Molotov Ribbentrop or Assassination of Franz Ferdinand 😁
Business Blaze is starting to come out in his other channels and it's magnificent. Cheers
Nuclear weapons have saved tens of millions of lives ... if not hundreds of millions .... "Nuclear weapons ended the utility of industrialized war". General sir Rupert Smith.
Hi there. Was up in Tummel Village on holiday for a few days and drove home via loch lomond..........was really nice but the drive was a wee bit hairy at times. Maybe that could give you an idea for something. Love ur vids m8
It was my understanding that Russia NEVER had the upper hand. Not even with sputnik. Our missiles/bombs were always smaller and more advanced. They had Sputnik, but no warhead. They didn't want to sound weak so they lied about keeping up with the US. Sure they had icbms. But the US was so far ahead in numbers and tech we were basically in a race with ourselves.
Mate, these introductions are getting better and better 💪
As someone who experienced the Cuban missile crisis at age 7 and someone who remembers the fear to this day I have to say the reality is that nothing has changed.
More things changed, more things stay the same...
So you are saying DEFCON 2 is about the same as DEFCON 5?
I always have the commissioner Gordon line in my head at the end of Batman Begins when he speaks about escalation and I immediately understand how we got to this point
Simon should've put as the background music "Hammer to Fall" by Queen since it was basically written about the Cold War. After all, back then we really all were "Just waiting for the Hammer to Fall".
Did you know, "Hello everybody welcome to another episode of Megaprojects" is the third most used phrase on TH-cam after "Like Share and Subscribe" and "This video is Sponsored by Squarespace".
Interestingly enough those phrases are most used by one singular person. One of these days we'll get Simon recognized by Guiness
I assumed "This video sponsored by Raid:Shadow Legends" would be number one.
Also “Check out my other channel...”
I wish you had a channel talking about how you do all of the channels you have
Please do the A-10 warthog. Its a monster of a plain.
Wow how big is that 'plain' ?????
Does it have vast sandy areas : ) that can fly ? Im a little confused : ) !!!!!!
Aye Aye Aye New Episode!!!!
We never were close to nuclear war. Crossing that line would not have led to nuclear war. It would have been a small short war.
"A mad time" ahhh, Simon, I see what you did there!
Do a video on underground nuclear testing
I wonder if videos about a "race" do poorly because the algorithm mistakes the word for its homonym?
Since you did a video about Air Force One, how about a video about NAOC?
Historians write about the precise point in human history where conflicting politics brewed into chaos and mass destruction long before the first world war and the bitter rivalries fostered between left and right with ordinary people trapped in the middle despite six hundred years of non stop conflict in Europe we never learned. Domination under one single ethos was the golden key.
You kind of forgot a HUGE issue with the Cuban Missile Crisis. Russia putting missiles in Cuba was in retaliation for the US putting missiles in Turkey. The US agreed to remove the missiles, though this was not announced to media.
The SALT Treaty was the equivalent of a modern military removing Flintlock weapons as their main battle rifle sure they have removed Antiquated nuclear devices from their stockpiles but they have not destroyed any of their modern nuclear capabilities
Whistley boi! The beard is coming on 👍
Would love to see a video on the Iowa class battleship. Still awesome that all 4 built are still afloat almost 80 years later
Fun fact: the hotline between the USA and USSR was *not* a telephone line, but used teletypes. The idea was that if you had to write your message down, you'd take the time to be clear, concise and avoid heated exchanges.
Thank you ,
Hey Simon, how ‘bout a video on the Warsaw Radio Mast?
Also, overlooking platforms like the MX Peacekeeper, and SS-18, and how that impacted treaty talks is a pretty big omission.
Heerawnsheemah and knawgiirsocky was hella big plowshun
In North Carolina 1961, an american B-52 crashed and dropped 2 atom boms on american soil without detonating. So lucky..
I think to distill the Cold War arms buildup to a "penis measuring contest" is overly crass given the context of scientific progression, well documented fears presented by both sides at the time etc. In cases of hindsight it's worth remembering for those at the time a very real "fog of war" existed.
Bull. The 'fog of war' concept of cold war was present for the you and me of the time, but not for these governments. The well documented fears do not justify the ignorance of reasonable consideration, which both were capable of.
Yes, early on (50's) it very much was a penis measuring contest, be it very much based from ideological political fear, but at the time neither knew that they would end up in a serious future MAD situation. Decades later on they knew full well that they were operating within the MAD definition, so not only did ideological fear no longer exist, the only real fear was in an accidental first strike, yet they kept building them, which means it was definitely a numbers penis contest. In both cases early fears turned into 'its what we do' justification.
I grew up in during the Cold War. In grade school, (late 60's) we watched Public Service Civil Defense films once a month telling us what to do if we were attacked by nuclear weapons. They even had a little ditty set to music, "Duck And Cover." That put real fear in the hearts of us 6th graders.
Actually, "Detente" is most usefully defined as "no war, no peace.
man u changed a lot nice beard and keep it up simon
Fun fact, the hotline between Washington and Moscow is not actually a phone. It is basically an text messaging system. This would allow both leaders to consider their words before they were sent.
Probably to avoid hilarious interactions such as those on the film "Dr Strangelove"
This is going to come across as extremely unpopular, but IMO, the existence of nukes has prevented any further World Wars from breaking out, since 1945.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as horrific as they were, prevented the actual invasion of the islands of Japan, by all three major Allied powers. And also prevented a war that would have easily stretched on for another year or two, and probably would have resulted in the deaths of MILLIONS. Measured against the few hundred thousand victims of the two Atomic Bombs... there's really no argument as to which outcome was by far the better outcome.
But beyond that, nuclear weapons equality, between both the Soviet Union, and the United States, pretty much erased even the saltiest possibility that there would be a third world war, between the world's two remaining superpowers. Without World War Three, tens of millions of people (both soldiers and civilians) lived, when they otherwise would have died. If nuclear bombs never existed, it is almost a dead-certainty that the "Berlin Airlift," or some similar event, would have triggered all out war between the USA and the USSR.
Without nukes, we would probably be on approximately World War number SEVEN by now! And the total human population of the Earth would be less than a fraction of what it is today. Think of how many people you know, and love. And now think of all, or at least some, of those people being dead... or having never existed at all! That's what several more World Wars would have done to our global population!!
We have nukes to thank for that worst-case scenario never playing out. It happens to be the one thing that prevents all-out war between America, and the Chinese, right now. So nukes, in their own twisted way, continue to protect us... simply by EXISTING!
Should they exist? Of course not.
Do they exist? Yes, there's no denying that.
Do they present a horrific possible end to the Human Race? Absolutely.
Have they prevented all-out war between global superpowers, that would have slaughtered millions upon millions of people, from breaking out, despite ridiculous international tension? I can't think of any other plausible reason WW3, or any other World Wars, have never happened in the past 70 years!
Quote “ A tenacious band of warriors armed with little more then Ak-47 and rockets launcher could be more than a match for…
Soviet Union 1989 and United State 2021
Can you do a video on the the SCUD missile?
Have you done a video on the Cannikin Project? 😃