EP29 The Handmaidens of the Apocalypse

it's Hardcore History [Music] aandm throughout the entire history of the Hardcore History Podcast we've been talking about nuclear weapons whether it's on shows that we've done about nothing else but nuclear weapons like the destroyer of worlds or The Logical insanity and logical Insanity extra shows uh the last Supernova in the East show the Hardcore History addendum we did with Fred Kaplan many common sense shows that touched upon nuclear weapons the changes to Warfare that they've created and the opportunity that they've opened up for dystopian outcomes that were practically unimaginable before their invention if we want to think about how we're going to end up with a Statue of Liberty in the sand moment in our future while nuclear weapons would seem to be the oddson favorite vehicle for creating it I can't think of a more important topic for discussion and something that should be far more a part of our conversation at all times than it is I think we've forgotten how it felt during the height of the Cold War to consider the fact that you could wake up and find out that the missiles were on the way and then sometime after the Soviet Union fell and we entered into that period sometimes referred to as the end of History um when people sort of forgot as we had referred to it in the destroyer of world show that we had metaphorically speaking as a civilization a gun pointed at our head which brings me to a new book by investigative reporter pulit Sur prise finalist Annie Jacobson that she did called nuclear war a scenario when I got this book I didn't think it was going to be for me because it is written WR almost in a dramatic narrative sort of form and I'm not a Fiction guy but once I got to reading it I realized that that was precisely what made it so good and that so much of what I had read had sort of removed the dramatic part of the story that turned it into kind of a dry history where we were talking about you know megat tons and blast radius and destructive Valu and uh systems that were in place and all of a sudden sometimes you just need a reality check moment that brings you back down to if you're pardon the upon ...