"I dont believe it." "It makes no sense." ""There is something so strange."" ""Perhaps you could suggest some fantastic explanation. "" ""Could'nt it be this sort of thing"" "He turned the drawing round." ""Yes," she said, "That is what I mean."" "This was the first explanation of the splitting the atom." "Robert Oppenheimer said:" ""Impossible."" "But within 15 minutes he decided it was real." "He realised it would release some great amount of energy," "That you could generate power and make bombs." "Within one week, on Oppenheimer's black board" "There was a drawing of the bomb." "Enrico Fermi stood in his office and looked out of Manhattan." "He kept his hand to the size of a tennis balll." ""A little bomb like that" He said" ""And it would all disappear."" "Countdown To Zero" "There is no doubt in my mind if the terrorists had acquired a nuclear weapon," "They would not have hasitated to use it." "sol guess the question is:" "Could They Ever Get One?" "Al-Qaida is determined to acquire nuclear weapons and use them if they get them." "In the early 90's they tried to buy highly enriched uranium in Sudan" "They got scammed" "Just prior to the 9/11 attacks we do know that Osama bin Laden and his lieutinent Zawahiri sat down with two Pakistani nuclear scientists and discussed nuclear weapons." "Before releasing sarin gas in the Tokyo subway the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo attempted to acquire a nuclear bomb in Russia." "They bought a sheet farm in Australia to mine uranium to build their own bomb." "The objective of Al-Qaeda is:" "is to kill 4 million Americans including two million children" "This is in his calculations, the..which is required to balance the scales of justice." "He takes various incidents from Shatila to the war in Iraq, and counts up the bodycount and says" ""Thats how many people we owe: 4 million. "" "You are not going to get 4 million people killed by hijacking airplanes and crashing them into buildings." "Actually, I am not that worried about nuclear weapons." "Its not one of my main worries." "Isnt everyone worried about nuclear weapons?" "There are all concerned nuclear war?" "Thats a stupid answer, no" "I don't know." "Its never been something that I actually had to think in my everyday life." "It might get on your conscience and maybe then disappears" "I do not think anybody is going to use in this day and age it is ridiculous to even think about it." "What can you do?" "Nothing." "At the end of the day a small button and there is going to be a big mess at the end of that" "Somebody is going to make a mistake one day and we are all going to suffer for it." "There are three ways to acquire a nuclear weapon:" "You could steal a bomb," "You could buy a bomb and you could build a bomb." "Of all the things I've learned after 9/11, about terrorism iintent the most startling discovery for me personally was realising they were trying to build a bomb." "The hardest part of making a nuclear bomb is getting the material, highly enriched uranium or plutonium." "Many countries have these materials, and often they are poorly guarded" "But if I were a terrorist intending to build a nuclear bomb, and i wanted to blow up a major city" "I would look to the countries of the former Soviet Union." "There have been many cases involving the theft of highly enriched uranium or plutonium." "And every time there has been a black market ceasure of stolen HEU or plutonium andthey were able to track to its source" "It came from Russia." "There was a case at a Russian naval base in the early 1990s." "One of the naval personel told a relative of his where the highly enriched uranium at this place was" "This relative walked through a gapping hole and a security fence walked upto what you and i would consider to be a tool shaft snapped the lock with an iron bar." "He set off no alarm." "It was not detected at all." "The Russian military prosecutor in that case said, quote:" ""Potatoes were guarded better "." "At a facility called Luch, where they fabricate fuel made from highly enriched uranium, there was a worker there who knew that as long as the output was within about 3 percent of the input they figured it was normal loses to waste and they didnt bother to investigate." "So he kept stealing small amounts of highly enriched uranium day after day, over a long period of time." "Eventually he stole a kilogram and a half of 90% of highly enriched uranium" "He set off no alarms." "Noone noticed." "He had friends who were making their living stealing car batteries." "And they said:" ""Maybe the guy in Moscow who buys or is still in car batteries" ""will Buy your stolen uranium . "" "So they went down to the train station together, and the police came in and arrested the car battery thieves and he got arrested along with them Thats the only way he was ever caught ." "We have cases in which people from the Russian nuclear arsenal were sellling material and they were captured" "We have cases in which people from Russian nuclear labs were selling materials they was captured." "Almost all of those cases until the material was seized and had never been noticed to have been missing." "All the black market seizures that I am ware of were serendepetous" "They were caught by luck." "So we dont know weather it is the iceberg or the tip of the iceberg." "Once you have managed to acquire highly enriched uranium, you need to smuggle it out of the country" "Georgia is located along Russia's southern border" "and things like highly enriched uranium could be smuggled from such a place" "by Azerbaijan, Iraq, Iran," "Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and so on so forth." "The Georgians invented a so called man of Turkish nationality who said he was a Muslim and representing a serious organization." "Oleg Khintsagov believed he was selling highly enriched uranium to make an atomic weapon to terrorists" "If a truck driver can get hold of it, a small time husler who just wants to become a rich guy imagine what professionals could have done" "Real professionals with an ideology, with an agenda with brains" "Once you have moved the highly enriched uranium, you could use any number of ports in the Middle East or the Mediterranean to ship the HEU to your destination." "smuggling highly enriched Uranium into the United States, is pretty straight forward" "lead pipe will shield the HEU." "The detector would have be within a few inches to pick up any radiation." "And then hide it amongst everyday goods" "A hundred pounds of highly enriched uranium is smaller than a football." "It would fit in a 6 pack beer cans" "100 000 shipping containers go to the united states everyday" "Every way the drugs come to new york city would be the same way you would imagine highly enriched uranium coming." "If you have any doubt about the ability of al-Qaeda to bring highly enriched uranium into the U.S." "They could always hide it a bale of marijuana." "Terrorism is just one threat the deliberate threat." "There is also the unintentional threat of a nuclear detonation by accident,by error or by misjudgment." "We like to think that the U.S. military or other military who are controlling nuclear weapons are perfect organizations , they will never fail ." "We expect them to have 100% reliability." "But even the well-disciplined, very professional U.S military made serious serious mistakes with nuclear weapons." "Anatomicbombbreaksloose from a mounting shakle  in a B-47 jet over Florence, South Carolina,  causinga sensationalfreakaccident." "AB-52bomberwas loadedwith nuclearweaponsbymistake" "AnAmericanairplaneflew1500 miles across the nation we are told,  withsixnuclearwarheadsonaboard." "Andnobodyknew." "not the aircraft crew,  notthecommandersonground." "we have had B-52's explode in the air during refueling mission causing 4 thermonuclear weapons to fall onto the Spain territory and into the Mediterranean." "AB-52bomber carrying nuclear weapons  crashednearU.S Air Force space in Greenland,  scatteringdeadlyplutonium over the icecap." "In 1960, a BOMARC air defence missile exploded, melting a nuclear warhead." "In 1968, the USS Scorpion sank 400 miles southwest of Azores." "Nuclear weapons on board were never found." "A B-47 bomber disappeared over the Mediterranean." "Nuclear weapons on board were never located." "In 1959, an aircraft crashed near Whidbey Island, Washington." "The nuclear debt charges were not recovered." "Skyhawk's strike aircraft carrying a nuclear weapon rolled off an aircraft carrier in the Sea of Japan" "The weapon was never recovered." "There are many ways in which efforts to make a system more reliable actually backfire and make it less reliable" "Sometimes we had a redundant system." "and backup systems so that if one fails, another can take its place." "But complexity is the enemy of reliability." "Because as you add system is making more complex because its harder to understand all the potential interactions." "Its that unlikely bizzare interaction where one person interacts with another in a way that wasnt anticipated or one backup system interacts with another in ways that you cant figure out ahead of time and therefore cant plan around" "Those are what cause the problems" "In 1961, a B-52 broke apart in midair over Goldsboro, North Carolina causing two nuclear bombs to fall" "One parachute functioned properly, and that bomb survived with minor damage" "The other parachute failed to open When that bomb hit five of six safety devices malfuntioned" "A single switch prevented a nuclear explosion." "When i worked in the Pentagon i believed that the likelyhood of a nuclear weapons accident in the United States occuring was very low" "I still believe that" "But low probablity events happen they happen all the time." "There's a first time in history for every event." "Eventually those low probablity events will occur" "No!" "That supposed to happen?" "Like there is probably every country in the world today" "How many countries do i think have nuclear weapons?" " List them?" " China." "I dont think i suckup for this." " UK. may be" "America i'm guessing" "Oh." "Oh." "Us Oh I .. that was a given" " France." " Germany?" " Australia?" " Canada?" "I do not think Canada" " No, not Japan." " There's more." "I know there's more." "Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia." "All other countries." "They are not telling us." "They have them" " Afghanistan?" " North Korea?" " North Korea." "Do they?" "Ok, North Korea." "Who knows?" "Who knows exactly? I think that's it.Yeah" "After the United States detonated." "the first atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert nuclear technology began to spread and other countries began to acquire their own nuclear bombs." "Great credit is due for this mighty British achievement for it seems that by the possession of such deadly weapons peace can be maintained in this troubled world" "At Reggane, deep in the Sahara" "France goes forward with the detonation ofherfirst atomic bomb." "TheexplosioncarriesFrance a step forward  towardsthedreamofGeneral.deGaulle  towards national glory restored ." "Thisisagiaganticsuccess of Mao Tse-Tung's thought." "Our nations first nuclear test surpassesthelevelsof the first nuclear tests  of the United States, Britain and France." "Theircriminalintenttoblockandprevent our nations peoplefromnuclearweapons havebeenthoroughlysmashed" "Pakistan,whichhasoften went to war with India,  mightnowhavetojoin the once select nuclear community  inselfdefense and warned:" ""numbersinthenuclearclub will notstopatsix"" "One Prime Minister of Pakistan said" "Pakistan would build a nuclear weapon even if it meant that the people would have to eat grass" ""We will make the bomb even if we have to eat grass. "" "InKarachi,they poured into the streets  pulling the symbol of the power they were celebrating." "Thebombhasbecomea source of national pride." "thought there was a jubilation in the streets of Pakistan." "The first time we achieved something which places us in the ranks of very very few countries of the world." "We were proud of our scientists, we were proud of our capabilities, we were proud of our strength." "The people thought that :" ""Now let India do anything to Pakistan." ""Let's see what they do."" "I had North Korean officials say to me a lesson they took away from the toppling of Saddam Hussein was that" "Saddam was ousted because he didnt have a bomb" "They were not going to let the same thing happen to Kim Jong-Il." "Therefore,they needed to have a bomb." "North Korea has feared of disappearing into what the communists used to call the "dustbin of history,"" "like all their other communist friends and they see the nukes as the one thing that makes them the country that is taken seriously by the U.S and the other big players in the neighbourhood" "Every country has enemies." "Every country can use self defense as a rationale for acquiring nuclear weapons." "But if every country does so it is a much more dangerous world." "Whenweseesomethingthat is technically sweet,  youdoit ." "That is the way it was the atomic bomb." "Thefatherof theatomicbomb , Robert Oppenheimer  gavesomefrankanswersto some important questions in 1947." "I have been asked whether in the years to come will it be pssible to kill 40 million American people  inthe20 largest American towns  by the use of atomic bombs  in a single night." "Iamafraidthattheanswerto that question is yes." "I have been asked whether there is hope for the naions security" "Inkeepingsecretssomeofthe knowledge  whichhasgoneintothemakingofthebombs." "I am afraid there is no such hope" "A nuclear weapon in a sense is the most simple configuration of nuclear material that you can imagine You just bring together certain quantity of fissile material highly enriched uranium or plutonium and if you do it right it will explode." "The design of the first atomic bomb was a very deep secret" "In fact that was a time when people didnt even know whether a bomb was possible." "Now the making of the atom bomb has become much easier." "Those who say that building a nuclear weapon is easy" "They are very wrong" "Those who say building a crude device is very difficult" "They are more wrong" "Do you agree with that statement?" "I wont comment on that statement" " Okay, Alright" "People from the U.S Nuclear laboratory were testified to a classified section to the Congress and they said it would be possible make a nuclear bomb with all parts being Commercially available except from the actual nuclear material" "Senator Biden asked the heads of the three weapons labs:" "Is it possible?"Is it really possible that the terrorists could do this? "" "They said "yes."" "They said:"This is something that we test our graduate students from time to time." ""We take two students who havnt been prepared for doing this"" "We tell them: "See if you can make a bomb that would work. "" ""And on the whole most of them passed this test"" "Biden said: "Prove it"" "And so they went and made a nuclear bomb, with everything other than the nuclear material, from commercial parts." "They actually brought it in to the classified hearing room in the Senate." "Typically, an implosion bomb would have something like a 25 kg of uranium,which is about the size of a grapefruit." "If, lets say, between 70 and a 100 kg of HEU is available, then the design is not a major factor." "It would not be very efficient." "it would not use all the uranium that was used in it." "and yet it would be enough to level a city" "During my 10 years as prime minister, what i really noticed was that it was actually the threat of the proliferation, the fact that these weapons could fall into other peoples hands" "That was the thing that troubled me, that kept me awake at night." "Inthecapital,Islamabad, word hit the streets in early afternoon:" "Another nuclear device  tested successfully." "As  Pakistan celebrated,  thepublichailedAQKhan  as the father of the Islamic bomb." "In 1974, AQ Khan was working at a company that was developing a brand new process of enriching uranium" "He stole their designs and took the list of all the suppliers." "At the end of the day he is not really a master scientist but he is a master smuggler and a master organizer." "He knows how to get the pieces out of the countries and how to find stuff and buy stuff" "There was this whole plan to start an operation setup by the intelligence services, by the army and by Dr. Khan" "Restrictions were placed Sanctions were placed." "But somehow the pakistanis got around that and the formal help actually came from India's enemy" " China" "China gave a blueprint of a nuclear bomb to Pakistan." "Around early 1980s," "Khan makes contact with the Iranians, who were very interested in getting a bomb but clearly dont have the scientific or industrial capacity to do it themselves" "And thus he starts on a a commercial enterprise." "Khan has got a full marketing regime laid out brochures and videos tapes that offers nuclear wares" "It extremely lucrative business" "He had extensive contacts, networks, and he didnt much care about who the ultimate client was going to be" "He contacted Iran North Korea, Libya, but he didnt just give them the technologies" "He also took the bomb designs that the Pakistanis had and threw those in as a sweetner" "He gave them 24/7 technology support ." "Got a problem?" "Call 1-800-AQKHAN." "It was a full service operation" "The U.S. intelligence began to focus on AQ Khan in the late 1990s." "The homerun was in December 2003 with Libya." "The CIA and British Intelligence essentially caught the Khan network red handed" "Selling a full scale nuclear weapon to Libya." "If it wasnt for AQ Khan," "Libya never would have got the centrifuges but that they have thankfully today given up" "If it wasnt for AQ Khan, there wouldnt be an Iranian nuclear program" "Iran is the tip of the spear" "It's the big problem that we have to solve." "They promised not to build nuclear weapons, but the problem is that the very same centrifugals very same factory that can enrich uranium to low quantities for nuclear fuel can enrich it to high quantities for nuclear weapons." "So the question is:" "Do you trust Iran?" "By their own admission they have deceived inspectors about their nuclear activities for 17 years." "Without question Iran is trying to get a nuclear bomb." "They have made that very clear, despite their promises that they are only pursuing civil and peaceful objectives for their nuclear program." "They are really good They are trying to bring things in that can be used for their nuclear program" "The Iranians have worked very hard to hiding and disguising their facilities" "Many of their facilities are in crowded urban areas underground, extremely well protected from any sort of aerial bombing" "If Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons capability the impact is across the whole of the the region" "We will get a whole set of other countries deciding they have got to acquire nuclear weapons capability" "Syria, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt ... the rivals of the Iranian Shite state would match their capabilities and would go from the Middle East with one nuclear armed nation Israel to one with three, four or five nuclear armed nations" "They are surrounded by very unstable regimes and countries ." "If Iran acquires everything it needs, without doubt pieces of that become more readily available to terrorist organizations like Hamas." "The risk that you have today with regimes like Iran or North Korea is they are prepared to start trading that nuclear weapons capability and technology." "The Pakistanis had the nuclear know how." "they didnt have a delivery system." "The North Koreans had the missile, and didnt have the nuclear know how" "So there was a natural convergence of interests here" "The North Koreans have a long track record of selling military technology and missiles to the Syrians,to the Iranians, to the Iraqis, Pakistanis." "They dont really have any other exports." "Daily life is very real" "Food is in short supply you drive around the capital,Pyongyang, at night and its basically dark." "There is a famous satellite photo that shows the Korean peninsula." "and in the south, we see all these lights, and then its just black" "we are still dealing with his years of unchecked activities and contacts and its really a genie out of the bottle that cannot be easily put back" "We spend billions of dollars putting in radiation detectors but highly enriched uranium is easily shielded" "If you are depending on portal monitors to defend a city against a nuclear detonation," "You have done far too much too late" "Nuclear weapons dont have to be exactly on target." "Close is good enough." "If a terrorist thinks that the portal monitor might detect weapon, they set it off in the port." "highly enriched uranium is easy to smuggle the radiation is very weak." "The detectors that we are putting in place now would have no chance of detecting" "HEU in a cargo container." "The signature of highly enriched uranium is so slight that they would have to set the monitors very high to detect it,and so they are getting thousands of false alarms every day." "Toilets, will set it off china" "Ceramics, stones like granites, lot of biological materials like tobacco, some algae, televisions ,the old style televisions, kitty litter,lot of chemical products, and well other stuff also" "You wants to smuggle a bomb into the United States?" "Ship it in a truck with a kitty litter" "No one would ever find it" "They are great for really radioactive stuff, like cesium or something that might be used in a "dirty bomb."" "But for the stuff that you would use to make a nuclear bomb that would incenerate the heart of a major city they are not gonna detect that." "Robert Oppenheimer in 1946, he appeared in a closed door session of the Senate, and one of the senators asked him if nuclear terrorism was a potential threat." "He said "Of course"" ""Terrorists could bring a bomb into New York City" ""And destroy the city."" "Somebody asked him :" ""How would you stop it?"" "He said:" ""With a screwdriver," ""To open up every container that comes into this city. "" "Once you have smuggled the highly enriched uranium into the U.S.you would need a place to build the bomb." "The bomb could be built right in the target city." "The hard part was what we did in 1945." "The hard part is doing it the first time." "This is no longer a conceptual challenge There is no trick." "There is no magic that needs to be figured out" "It's really just an engineering challenge" "It's definitely not rocket science." "The rocket science is more difficult." "you can make a very simple weapon, a so called gun type weapon which was the one used in Hiroshima" "It was so simple we didnt even test it before we dropped it" "It is essentially just a gun barrel." "with a target and you can projectile, and you propel the projectile into the target." "you will need an artillary gun to fire a one piece of HEU in the other, which would be bolted onto the muscle of the gun" "The military sells these things as surplus, but they sell them to save it" "You would have to make the gun capable of shooting again and you would want to test fire the gun to make sure that that it fired the projectile at the right speed." "This is the only thing that you would need to do off-site." "you would need a group of people ... lets say,between 15 to 20 to 25, who would be knowledgable in particular aspects of weapons designs of explosives." "Two or three people to do the machining, two or three people to work on the gun two or three people to work on electronics," "People who are experts in ballistics" "People who know something about nuclear physics." "you just need the machinist and metallar just to make the pieces into the right shapes and make sure they fit together" "Ordinary explosives and detonators maybe some electronic equipment." "You can go online and easily find the blade for $ 10,000." "you could find the furnace for about $ 50,000." "And you can even find the surplus recoilless rifle probably also for $ 10,000." "More than 90% of the effort in the Manhattan Project was making the nuclear material to make the nuclear bomb." "If you can get hold of that nuclear material, then it doesnt take a Manhattan Project to make a bomb." "If the circumstances are right, acquiring a complete bomb may be easier than building one" "In Algeria, in 1961, officers within the French millitary rebelled and tried to seize a nuclear weapon." "As the rebels closed in the weapon was detonated in a degraded explosion to prevent it from falling into the hands of the rebelling officers." "The Japanese death terror cult, Aum Shinrikyo, attemted to buy a nuclear bomb from the Soviet Union." "They had a lot of resources," "We are talking well over billion dollars of assets." "and secondly they had tremendous access." "At one point, the group had more members in Russia in the former Soviet Union than they had in Japan" "In 1994, a senior leader made eight trips to Russia" "His personal notebook included a shopping list for buying a nuclear warhead for $ 15 million." "A perfectly secure nuclear weapon is also a perfectly unusable one" "So here one has this paradox between security and usability" "Where is the worlds most dangerous place right now?" "mu money it is Pakistan." "you have got an unstable government, plus enough material for up to a 100 nuclear weapons, plus Osama bin Laden in the country." "What we have seen over the last two or three years has been a spiral that has been going downwards" "Destabilization,the spread of the Taliban, the spread of radicalism, the collapse of the economy." "So could there be a cornals coup in Pakistan by Islamic radicals within the military and then could nuclear weapons be at risk?" "What happens if that country destablises?" "What happens if the army splits?" "Who gets the weapons?" "Who gets the material for the weapons?" "Who gets the scientists who know how to build the weapons?" "There is no such thing as perfect command and control over the nuclear weapons, even in the sophasticated of the arsenals." "from the levels of the presidents gone down there are human weaknesses, technical problems deficiencies and vulnerabilities." "I was the launch officer for Minuteman missiles." "and I spent three years in Montana in a hole in an undergorund launch control centre" "I was one of the guys responsible for for getting these missiles off ground in one minute. we didnt call them "Minuteman missiles" for nothing." "When I was serving in the Air Force as the launch officer, there was a device in the launch control centre into which 12 digits had to be dialed in in order to unlock the missiles for firing" "This had been installed under Robert McNamara over the objections of the Strategic Air Command" "Since they couldnt prevent the panel from being installed the StrategicAir Command in Omaha had set these codes to zero and we all knew it." "That was the secret unlock code for firing our missiles:" "12 zeros." "In fact, in our launch check list we had to ensure that the unlock code was set to al zeros before we completed the launch sequence." "This changed in 1977 when they started using actual codes." "But until then, I and one other crew member could have actually formatted a launch order a completely valid launch order and transmitted it to the entire American stratergic arsenal." "Looks like we are in a shooting war" "Oh hell.Oh the russians have got it?" "i think:" "Thats what i have been told  just came in on the red phone." "My orders are toseal this base tight and thats what i mean to do, seal it tight" "Now I want you to transmit Plan R" ""R" for "Robert" to the wing." " Plan "R",for "Robert"." " Is it that bad, sir?" "looks like its pretty hairy" " Yes, sir." "I remember watching "Dr. Strangelove"" "and thinking they had it all wrong." "You dont need to be a general." "We were only lieutenants, but we could have started" "World War III just as easily as Gal." "Jack Ripper." "We could have triggered implementation of the U.S. nuclear war plan involving thousands and thousands of nuclear weapons fired at the Soviet Union and China." "Standby Message followed" "Alpha,Tango,Golf,Reamer." "The life of a watch officer is really Pavlovian." "You have been trained and conditioned so thoroughly you kind of march up a long step into a very well rehearsed script thats written by check lists." "Step1 :" "Allkeysinserted." "Roger" "We would jump up unlock our safe take out codes" "Check the codes against the mesage and then proceed through a launch check list that takes about one minute to carry an armour" "Lets enable the missiles." "Key program activated." "All  in flight." "BF all." "Unlock code inserted." "Standby..." "Unlock code inserted." "enable Its enabled." "At the end of that process to turn the keys and launch upto 50 missiles at Soviet Union and / or China." "Today, the position of United States and Russia is exactly the same as it was during the Cold War." "So if the orders came down,during now 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall," "It would take about two minutes to launch all of the US nuclear ballistic missiles their tunnels in central U.S." "out of their tubes in the midwest" "It would time for the Russians to do the same thing and then it would take another 10 to 12 minutes for everything else thats on launch ready alert to be fired" "So that within 15 minutes all the forces on the launch ready alert would be in the air in their flight to the other side of the planet." "2000 bombs strategic nuclear weapons, very high yield." "And they could kill over a 100 million Russians and Americans within 30 minutes." "When we are working on nuclear apps control i found myself in a briefing in the Pentagon with a colonel we had a short exchange about this and in this context of this exchange he said:" ""But I do not understand what would be such a big deal"" ""If there was a nuclear exchange"" ""Only about 500 million people would die." ""Life would go on afterwards."" "And I can remember having a feeling like Woody Allen and recall" ""I'm sorry i have got an appointment back on planet earth"" "I dont think that anyone really knows how many nuclear weapons there are on the planet today." " I have a ..." " Does anyone know? May be thousands,i dont know Far more than I know." "6000." "I do not know. 15 000." " 20 000." " 50 000?" " 100 000." " 500 000." "There is enough firepower on a US nuclear sub to annihilate probably half the planet." "I have heard people say that we have enough nuclear weapons to create a new sun." "I think couple to eliminate this city." "Do you know how many are there?" "We estimate that there are about 23 000 nuclear weapons in the world still." "The good news is there used to be 60 000." "So we have cut those arsenals by more than half." "But we, the United States, still has about 1,500 hydrogen bombs on missiles poised for launch in 50 minutes or less." "The really bad news is that the Russians have the same." "If the Russians fired missiles at the United States the first warning would come from satellites, and they could detect the flame from the booster rocket within seconds," "easily within a minute." "Suddenly, this early warning hub in the United States would become very frenzy to try figure out whether this is a false alam or whether this is a real attack and determine this in 60 seconds." "The President would receive a briefing from the duty officer at Strategic Command Headquaters" "That briefing of the President of his response options and their consequences has to be delievered in as little as 30 seconds" "The president normally would have no more than 12 minutes to make a decision, and maybe its little as 10 seconds." "I knew that if the Soviets did launch an attack, that it would take 26 minutes for an ICBM to leave russian soil and land in Washington or New York." "And I had that much time to decide how to respond." "And the timeline was very short" "We had just a few minutes to make a decision how to respond at what level of intensity." "Somewhere before the 10th minute the order to execute would be issued" "The Strategic Air Command probably would be airbourne by then just as a precaution." "There might be a Presidential evacuation so that the president would survive an attack on Washington" "But I know of cases in which the President chose not to be evacuated" "And roughly by the 28th minute, at the latest, those of us not evacuated would be dead." "For us it was a kind of suicide duty" "Any missile landing within half a mile of our location would probably have killed us" "If we had survived the attack, we were supposed to go to a randezvous farm" "Our air will only 24 hours," "So we go out through an escape which was filled with sand" "We would have to release the bolts on cover and let the sand fall through and then crawl up the tube" "Our tube came up the parking lot so we would have to break through asphalt to get out" "The randevous point be 50 or 100 kms away and we would have to walk." "Disnt really matter though" "Everyone knew that the radiation would kill us quickly anyway and you would never make it to the rendezvous" "In 1995, Pete Sampras won the U.S. Open and Wimbledon." "George Clooney made his first big movie" "A bomb destroyed the federal building in Oklahoma city" "OJ Simpson was acquitted of murder." "And we also came close to an accidental nuclear missiles launch." "On January 25, 1995, the United States launched a rocket from Norway to study the northern hights" "We told the Russians that we were gonna launch that rocket but somebody must have forgot how to pass word on it" "When they picked up the 4 stages of this rocket they initially interpreted this as 4 warheads from a U.S nuclear submarine which we often station off the coast of Norway possibly directed at Moscow." "That fit exactly the characteristics of the beginning of a nuclear strike" "One missile, coming over exploding in the atmosphere and sending out an electromagnetic pulse that would fry all the electronics radar surveillance, Computers in the country to be attacked, followed by an onslought of nuclear weapons" "And for the first in the nuclear age, the Russians actually opened up the nuclear football" "They went to President Yeltsin, they opened up the command and launch codes, the button, put on the desk and said:" ""We are under attack."" "Boris Yeltsin was basically given 5 minutes to decide what to do." "Fortunately, Yeltsin wasnt drunk and he didnt believe what the military was telling him." "He said:" ""There must be some mistake."" "Both the U.S. and Russia guide their nuclear response with a doctrine called "Launch on Warning"" "It is the policy if you believe that you are under attack you are supposed to launch the missiles." "you dont wait for them to land." "According to Russian military doctrine" "Boris Yeltsin should have launched all out nuclear attack on the United States that morning." "We do not know what happened in the Kremlin." "All we know is that he didnt." "There have been a no. of false alarms during the Cold War." "We have had ocassions where the rising moon was interpreted to be a Russian ICBMs attack." "A flock of geese was thought to be bombers." "A training tape was slipped into a computer at our command and control headquarters at NORAD" "Everyone involved thought there was an actual attack underway." "A tape was inserted into the early warning hub in Colorado that simulated a large scale Soviet nuclear attack." "And no one realised that it was just a training tape until the U.S had gone into this sort of frenzy check list procedure to prepare for nuclear war." "Airborne command posts, actually,in some cases, took off." "The Presidents dooms day plane actually left its base in preparation for an incoming Soviet strike." "Senator Charles Percy happened to be there at the time and said there was absolute panic." "Another false alarm was caused by a computer chip malfuntion that generated indications of large scale Soviet attack" "We raised the alert levels." "Crews took launch codes out of their safes." "Inserted the keys into the launch switches." "Zbigniew Brzezinski was woken up in the middle of the night with the assured instruction that a nuclear attack is underway and that he had to go wakeup President Carter." "There was 8 minutes worth of nuclear launch preparations that were triggered by malfunctioning computer chip that costs less than a dollar." "And having missiles on hair trigger is an accident waiting to happen." "As Fermi said about the physics:" ""What isnt forbidden is compulsory,"" "it will eventually happen." "There is nothing that makes the launch of nuclear weapons impossible" "If the probability isnt zero, it will happen." "Right now the world has a policy that is based heavily on technology you keep something secret and you call it a day" "But secrecy has half life." "Things leak out" "Centrifuges happen to be the technology that is going to change the game." "They are going to democratize the process of building nuclear weapons." "Uranium exists everywhere on Earth." "Its more common than tin." "99.3% of all uranium is uranium 238, isotope that can not be used for nuclear weapons." "except 0.7% that you need to separate out" "A centrifuge Its basically a tube." "It spins the uranium in gas form and pushes the heavier atoms towards the wall." "and the lighter atoms from the center." "And you can skin off the light atoms" "You do this over and over again." "Many dozens of times, and eventually you purify it to a level that you can use it as a bomb" "The common risk in them is they are very complicated." "Technologies that take countries decades to build and the highest achievements." "But the fact is, is that the centrifuges are 1950's technology." "And this is 2010." "Enriching uranium is still beyond the reach of the individual." "It is a logistics feat, requiring thousands of centrifuges working for months or years." "But highly enriched uranium is now within the grasp of nearly any country." "And once you have the HEU making a crude bomb is easy" "We're not just  dicussing limits  ona further increase of nuclear weapons." "Weseekinsteadto reduce their numbers." "We seek total elimination  one day ofnuclearweaponsfrom the face of the earth." "HappyNewYear,man ." "HappyNewYear." "Iloveyouall ." "In the first millionth of a second , the fireball is 500 feet across" "Within 10 seconds, it would grow to over 1 mile" "The temperature would rise to 20 million degrees Fahrenhiet hotter than the surface of the sun" "The blast would generate winds in excess of 650 miles an hour" "Forces of that magnitude can destroy anything that people can build." "Strongest Buildings would be reduced to rubble." "Tens of square blocks would just be melted, would just be evaporated" "Everything would be vaporized:" "the buildings,the cars, the trees,the people, the upper level of earth itself" "There were 76 000 buildings in Hiroshima." "70 000 of them were destroyed." "The hospitals,the fire stations the communications equipment;" "the military installations." "Everything just flattened." "In the first 5 to 6 miles, virtually everyone in that 5 mile radius is going to die." "Somewhere between 34 million people dead immediately in the first 5 miles" "If you are lucky enough to be 8 or 9 miles away from the blast, then you would experience it as blast effects Windows being shattered" "It would shatter every window and turn it to hundreds of missiles flying outwards from the center of the explosion, at speeds more than 100 miles per hour" "After the blast, Its the firestorm that would combust everything" "Everything flammable would burn paper, cardboard, cloth, heating oil, gasoline." "Everything would burn." "Whole blocks would catch fire." "Hundreds of thousands of fires would turn into a giant firestorm 11 miles across." "Everything catches fire There just will be no air to breathe." "All the oxygen would be consumed and everyone would die." "It is useless to talk about the way you die because you are burned to death or because you have been blown to bits by the blast" "Anyone looking in the direction of the nuclear explosion they will be blinded." "The lungs would be ruptured by the pressure or the eardrums would be ruptured by the pressure." "crush injuries from buildings falling, broken bones thrown in the air against the buildings" "Hundreds of thousands, possibly millions would die from the fallout." "The body does have a repair rate for radiation but the doses are so heavy and coming so quickly that it would overwhelm the body's repair mechanism" "The 450 to 70 RAD dose kills you because of white cells or blood cells or you will go into seasures or immediate coma and you will die within a matter of minutes or hours." "Most of the doctors are going to be dead most of the nurses are going to be dead." "Most of the hospitals are going to be destroyed." "Huge number of casualties and no medical equipment." "They will be a need for antibiotics." "tens of units of blood per person." "There wont be any electrical power" "Vast amounts of intravenous fluids to sustain people that have been burned,just burned." "You couldnt treat all the burn victims." "And there comes a certain point the casualties become so high its pointless to try to make any sense out of it." "The doctor in the Red Cross Hospital who turns into an automaton," "And that's what desended on the physicians and nurses in Hiroshima and Nagasaki." "Someone would surely claim they had 10 more that were already hidden somewhere and then start setting them off and blast unless they meet their demands." "Every other big city is gonna wonder" "whether they might be a target." " Pulic panic, the people fleeing major cities" "You could forget about the rules of search and seizure." "You are gonna have to be searching everywhere" "You could forget about civil liberties when people realize a whole city was just destroyed." "Take the Bill of Rights,you put it on a shelf and you might never see it again." "People would be demanding draconian measures to make sure that another city didnt go up." "Somepeoplelaughed." "Fewpeoplecried." "Most people were  silent." "I remembered the line from the Hindu Scripture, the Bhagavad Gita." "Vishnu ... trying to persuade the prince" "he should do his duty and to impress him, takes on his multiarmed form and says:" ""Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. "" "Everyman, woman and child  livesunderanuclearsword of Damocles,  hanging by the slenderest of threads,  capableofbeingcut  at any moment  byaccident,or  miscalculation or by madness." "." "The weapons of war must be abolished  before they abolish us." "The Cuban Missile Crisis endanger the very existence of our nation." "Wecame that close to nuclear war." "Neither the Soviet nor we, the US intended to put our nation at risk." "And the next time we may not be so lucky" "They kill by the millions." "They kill in numbers that the human imaginations simply cannot comprehend." "I asked: "Well we have nuclear weapons to prevent their use. "" "we now know that we live in a world in which, if we possession, if any one possesses, they will be used." "I dont see any good that a nuclear weapon could be a threat to the world." "In my opinion, you can forget them." "I think they should be destroyed." "I think we are better off without them." "Theres a 183 countries in the world that do not have nuclear weapons." "Many of these countries could have nuclear weapons." "They have chosen not to have them." "We have decided to take al 180 degrees turn in South Africa" "When I became President" "I was then informed that we have completed six devices more or less comparable to the bombs which were actually used at Hiroshima." "I indicated that i would like us to stop this program and to become part of the mainstream world again" "The only way to eliminate the threat of nuclear terrorism is to eliminate all nuclear weapons in all countries." "We have got to ensure that never once the terrorists suceed in detonating a nuclear weapon." "You think about nuclear security its all about the material" "The simple physical fact is that if you dont have fissile material ... either highly enriched uranium or plutonium for example ... you cannot have a nuclear weapon." "The focus is all about material." "Stop making new material." "Secure the material where you know it is around the world" "And make sure that you detect the illicit transfer of material." "And then start getting rid of the material that you have" "Today in the world we have about 1,700 tons of HEU." "So that's enough material for around the order of 50 to100 thousand weapons to really create a truely international system for these facilities." "International Fuel banks or International reprocessing centers... that would be a mauch safer world" "We havnt lost an ounce of gold from Fort Knox." "We shouldnt lose an ounce of plutonium or highly enriched uranium." "During the Cold War," "I believed in the value of nuclear weapons to detter an attack." "20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, there is no excuse any longer for keeping nuclear weapons on launch ready laert" "We can remove all of the warheads on our missiles , share our safe guards technology and establish a joint warning center to ensure Nuclear war cannot happen by mistake." "When I came into government in the early '1980s, the idea that within about10 years, both sides would have agreed to have 50% reduction in their Nuclear weapons would have sounded absurd." "But we achieved it." "That means a reduction of more than 5,000 nuclear warheads a piece" "We have gone almost 20 years now without really any demonstrative steps to nuclear reductions" "This has to be a step by step process" "That's how we did it with chemical weapons." "These weapons are now taboo." "The Soviet Union imploded when I was Sec of State and we actually got an enforceable treaty where we goot Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine to give up their nuclear weapons." "All countries in the world have to sign a legally binding, intrusively verifiable agreement to rid the world of nuclear weapons." "The choice we face is eliminate nuclear weapons or live in a world with 25 or 30 nuclear powers." "We can do this" "There has to be a carefully orchestrated process of reductions" "The United States and Russia, with 96% of the worlds nuclear weapons have to lead the way" "We start in a world where there are 23,000 nuclear weapons." "The very first step is to cut those arsenals dramatically in the United States and Russia." "Once you get down to low hundreds in the world then you have built up the confidence and the mechanisms to ensure that you can verify this process so that we can get rid of the last one" " None." " Should be zero." "I say zero." " Never" " We'd rather not have them." "I think" " None." " Zero." "No nuclear weapons." "Zero." " Zero." " Zero." "No country should have them." "The ultimate number is none." "Ideally will be zero" " Zero nuclear weapons." " Zero." "Zero." "We have taken important steps forward  toincrease nuclear security andtostopthe spread of nuclear weapons." "Thisstartswiththe reduction ofourown nuclear arsenals." "This legally binding treaty  will be completed this year." "The arms control agreements we negotiated between the United States and the Soviet Union ..." "You think these were independent initiatives taken by governments, but the fact is that public opinion had a big role to play in the process" " President Kennedy," "After he passed the limited test ban treaty and whenever he mentioned it on the stump afterwards he got thunderous applause." "And he quote:" ""If I had known that it was so popular," ""I would have done it a long time ago. "" "The elimination of nuclear weapons has not yet been agreed to by political leaders of the world." "It's a revolutionary idea, but they can be eliminated." "We have to change our way of thinking." "And if we cant change our way of thinking, we wont survive." "Its that simple" "I have changed my way of thinking and millions and millions of other people are changing their thinking" "And, frankly, if you have never changed your mind about something," "I .. pinch yourself You maybe dead."