"the United States has 1,770 nuclear weapons deployed meaning those weapons could launch in as little as 60 seconds and up to a couple minutes some of them on the bombers might take an hour or so Russi..."

"here's Annie Jacobson let's start with a an immensely dark topic nuclear war how many people would a nuclear war between the United States and Russia kill so I'm coming back at you with a very dark an..."

"every Source I interviewed for this book from Secretary of Defense you know all retired nuclear subforce commander stratcom commander FEMA director except on and on and on nuclear weapons Engineers th..."

"nuclear war and that's how I begin the scenario what are the different ways it could start like literally who presses a button and what does it take to press a button so the way it starts is in space ..."

"absorb a nuclear attack it will launch nuclear weapons in response before the bomb actually hits so the president as part of the launch on warning policy has 6 minutes I guess can't launch for 6 minut..."

"will unfold so fast only one person can be in charge the president he asks permission of no one not the Secretary of Defense not the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff not the US Congress so built ..."

"inevitable that it's going to be escalated to a full-on nuclear war that destroys everything and it seems like it it will be it's inevitable in the position of the president it's almost inevitable tha..."

"the first people that gets notified by noad or by stratcom or by nro these different parties that all see the early warning data one of the first peoples that's notified is the Secretary of Defense as..."

"not necessarily classified but it certainly wasn't out there and I felt like wow herb York left these behind for someone like me to find right and what the process of he wanted to know the answer to y..."

"minutes we just don't as a human civilization have experience with that but it doesn't mean it'll never happen it can happen just like that I mean I think what you're after and I couldn't agree more w..."

"know that why do we know that well I found a document inside of a budget um that the defense department was going to Congress for more money recently and showed maps of precisely where these submarine..."

"answers not to ask top secret questions but uh to what degree do you think the Russians know the locations of the silos in the US and vice versa Lex you can you and I can find the location of every Si..."

"about these Hypersonic weapons well we have a Hypersonic weapons program you know Falcon Google blackswift right this is loeds doing um you know we're DARPA exists to create the vast weapon systems of..."

"that Satchel but the peed presidential emergency action directives right those have never been leaked no one knows what they are what we do know from one of the mill AIDS who spoke on the record a guy..."

"happens so again going back to this absurd Paradox nuclear war will never happen you know Mutual assured destruction that is why deterrence will hold well I found a talk that the deputy director of st..."

"stopped I was at a dinner party with a very informed person right like somebody who really you know should have known this and I this is when I was considering writing and Reporting this book and he s..."

"atmospheric kill vehicle okay there's no explosives in that thing it's literally just going to take out the Warhead ideally with Force so one of them is going like you know March 20 and the I mean the..."

"this it's an actual fact after 911 Congress considered putting and you know egis missiles and maybe even Thad systems along the west coast of the United States to specifically deal with the threats ag..."

"confirmed all of this as fact this is not this is this is this is the situation right so in the scenario I have the nuclear ICBM coming in the Interceptor missiles try to shoot down the Warhead the ca..."

"at the Pentagon and it was the the the night watch fell on him essentially right and he gets this call in the middle of the night he's told that Russia has launched not just icbms but submarine launch..."

"Perry for example spent his whole life dedicated to building weapons of war only later in life to realize this is madness and he shared with me that it was that idea about one's grandchildren inheriti..."

"right in terms of disarmament but there were 60,000 and by the way that was not the ultimate High the ultimate high was 70,000 okay this is insane and Ronald Reagan was President and he orders this wa..."

"the procedure escalates always I mean here's a crazy nomenclature jargon thing for you ready escalate to deescalate that's what comes out of it think about what what I just said escalate to deescalate..."

"our adversary right now that we're sort of saber rattling with just trust us and that is where nuclear war unfolds into Armageddon and that hole in National Security is shocking and as Panetta told me..."

"him how are you going to not have an absolute Armageddon like furer with nuclear weapons in the air if people can't get on the phone during a ground war I I'd like to believe that there's people in ma..."

"talking about Copans and the more a political leader becomes divisive becomes pmic it the more his platform is predicated on hating the other side either within his own country or with enemy alleged e..."

"window so it's not exactly like you can let me put a pot of coffee on and really tell me what you think and we can strategize here right you have your SEF and your chairman maybe the vice chairman and..."

"there's also a really interesting term which I learned about called jamming the president which is often understood in Washington that the military advisers would we don't know if this is legit we've ..."

"not if which targets the argument would be about which targets not about if yes I I hope that even the warmongers would uh at this moment because what underlies the idea of you wanting to go to war it..."

"thought and only over time did did the did the kind of concept come into play that no we can we can never have a nuclear war it's the famous gorbachov and Reagan joint statement a nuclear war cannot b..."

"president is uh this scenario that we've been describing these six minutes imagine the man or woman sitting there 6 minutes waiting for the pot of coffee but I think about that issue with with any wit..."

"opinion well uh I agree with you first of all but it feels like when nuclear war one person becomes like exponentially more important with uh regular War the decision to go to war or not advisers star..."

"situation when the the the the the future of human civilization hangs in the balance I mean it to be the person that says yes launch it's no matter what I just can't see a human being on Earth being a..."

"Noels from there also I want to look up who's the commander of stratom now um speaking of which you've interviewed a lot of experts for this book is there uh some commonalities about the way you've ta..."

"years because he was an engineer who actually wired nuclear bombs in the 1950s he was a member of the Manhattan Project in 1946 worked on operation Crossroads the first explosions of nuclear bombs aft..."

"central figure in a book I wrote about the cia's paramilitary called surprise kill vanish and W Halo jumped um a tactical nuclear weapon into the Nevada test site with a small team almost unknown to a..."

"differs perhaps yes well for that you you want to go to The Experts right so in for Russia for example um there's a guy called pavle podvig who is probably the West's top expert on Russian nuclear for..."

"very very dangerous shift in nuclear Russian nuclear policy which is this many Russian experts will tell you that Russia has always maintained that it never had a launch on warning policy now I don't ..."

"the way that you know military men think and it's very different right so Putin's not a military person per se he's an intelligence officer so what con would concern concern me there if I had to guess..."

"and perhaps makes it less likely that the president would pick up the phone and talk to the other president and or that the close advisors near the president would make that happen you were talking ab..."

"when chaos takes control well let let's talk about it uh so God forbid if a nuclear weapon reaches its Target what happens what uh perhaps you could say what you think would be the first Target hit wo..."

"one Megaton nuclear weapon is 19 football fields of fire think about that nothing remains nothing remains and there's then a radius where people die immediately and then there's people that are dead w..."

"me how the climate models today with the systems we have the computer systems reveal that actually nuclear winter is worse right so to answer your questions the bombs stopped falling in my scenario 72..."

"winter you know after the Sun starts to come back let's say 8 nine 10 years um now you have no ozone layer or you have a severely depleted ozone layer and so the sun's rays are now poisonous so you ha..."

"this idea I looked at uh the oldest known archaeological site in the world in Turkey which is called gockley tapy and it's really fascinating to me because I interviewed one of the two archaeologists ..."

"remember about this time right it is terrifying to think that most of it will be forgotten everything we kind of assume will not be forgotten we think maybe some of the technological developments will..."

"stones let me ask you about the great filter when you look up into our galaxy into our universe look up at the sky do you think uh there's other alien civilizations that are contending with some simil..."

"near-death experience but a sort of near life experience right where he believed that the human consciousness which is where so much of this thoughtfulness about metaphysics and uh ESP perhaps come fr..."

"maybe just in general espb what is it what what do you know of it the book was so interesting to report because I spend so much time dealing with like mechanized systems machines war machines and yet ..."

"think he was also at MIT for a bit um he came up with that term and you might even say for the CIA does that trouble you that so much of this is coming from the CIA first you mean the placebo concept ..."

"that information was King the U2 spy pain was developed out at are at Area 51 and I interviewed hervey Stockman the first man to fly over the Soviet Union in a U2 gathered all this intelligence preven..."

"that's where it gets conflicted because you in a good way because you realize where we're all such creatures of our personal lives right so you have a professional life where your National Security ar..."

"write about war and weapons and National Security and government secrets and the people I interview are at the heart of all of this I mean they are really capable people intellectually brilliant physi..."

"real real what is their real truth you know when I went to Vietnam with Billy w i mean so much of it was the details are just you know every detail right I mean starting with the fact that he he showe..."

"my husband repacked his bag and uh with you know like got him a proper suitcase that was carryable and small and didn't have the hangers you know he wasn't trailing the hangers but it was the it was t..."

"people and probably there's a bunch of human details that you can't possibly Express in words things left unspoken but you saw in the silence exchange between the two of you the sadness the the maybe ..."

"there um what can you describe as the sort of the history of technological development that went on there I mean Area 51 is huge by the way and it's you know it's a secret it's a top secret military f..."

"that with such fondness this is like in 2009 when I was reporting that and all many of the guys who were in their 80s and 90s were World War II Heroes like serious World War II Heroes like Colonel Sla..."

"passed now yeah so there's there's a lot of incredible technological work going on there so the legend the lore like you said aliens mhm were there ever aliens in Area 51 as you understand it so I've ..."

"is this is a very strong argument for why this is a big strategic deception campaign right think about the defense department and the air think about how jealously they guard its airspace right I mean..."

"problem because jacqu believes that this is some kind of intelligence right which really the closest I can do to wrapping my head around that takes me to Consciousness right the idea of what is consci..."

"like and it I to me it's beyond military lications it's like the basic human question of like what is even this thing like you mentioned Consciousness that's going on like where does this come from wh..."

"grotesque child siiz Aviator just looking back at all that now years later um what's the probability that it's true what's the probability it's not so you know I've never I've never revealed who that ..."

"source told me that the the the reason for this program and that the real Roswell crash remains where in fact it was a a black propaganda hoax infiltrated you know or rather predicated at this idea th..."

"so it sounds Preposterous and if it was just someone saying I you might say well it's ridiculous tell me and get them onto another subject but the difference was is this Source who is very well-placed..."

"wow well I uh you received a lot of criticism over this story and it confused me why because it's give in the context of everything you've described with the CIA and other intelligence agencies it is ..."

"Halo jump in to the palace and grab Chavez and probably kill him because he wouldn't allow himself to be captured and uh you know what Billy and by the way Halo jumping for those of listeners who don'..."

"the bigger picture that you're asking me about right yeah I think pretty much The Operators I know they just stick to the mission so on the technical difficulty of those missions just your big sense h..."

"really EOD mugia we're about to kill right um but I once asked Billy when I was trying to get the question you know and he wouldn't answer it and I said so there's another person in my book named Rick..."

"the that's the umbrella agency that has the different paramilitary organizations under it right so the most lethal one is Brown Branch um and that's what I reported on in Surprise kill vanish and its ..."

"more difficult than you would imagine mhm mhm but perhaps that's the intelligence aspect of it not the actual assassination of locating the person well I think most it's because mostly from what I und..."

"the story right but how we got there was we needed you know the CIA needed confirmation you can't kill the wrong person so the seal panicked according to Billy W and was just like I'm out of here this..."

"with mad and M is dead now that the truth about that being a co- CIA mission was not reported for many years after the fact it was originally mad took credit as the CIA often likes to just give other ..."

"information that I'm getting is based on perception of others which one would think would be deeply clouded by the idea that America's the greatest right right right right we're better than them you k..."

"that you said great question I don't know uh not enough people say I don't know and that's a sign of a great journalist uh but speaking about things you might not know about uh let me ask you about so..."

"answers the door and instead of killing him he has like this moment of conscious of Crisis or crisis of conscience and says like I can't kill you even though that's what I'm supposed to do and then si..."

"Russia I'm far less familiar with modern-day Russian assassination activities although we certainly know on the record you know that they exist some people have done great reporting on that um but the..."

"surveillance job for them by all of us sharing our facially recognizable images on Instagram and Facebook and everywhere else X um by sharing information by writing up narratives about ourselves um th..."

"in drone strike boom if we could uh return to nuclear war you've briefly mentioned that a lot of things go back to the third Rank and Hitler if we go back to World War II we look at Hiroshima and Naga..."

"Churchill quote the story of the human race is war except for brief and precarious interludes there has never been peace in the world and before history began murderous Strife was Universal and unendi..."

"Annie thank you for being a wonderful example of a great journalist a great writer a great human being and I'm a big fan of yours it's a huge honor to meet you to talk with you today so thank you so m..."