SYMHC Classics: Nuclear Close Calls

This episode from 2017 covers several moments in history when the world came perilously close to a full-scale nuclear war, due to false alarms or miscommunication. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by YouTube Premium.

• 0:07Speaker 02

  You already like YouTube, so how can YouTube get any better? Premium is the supercharged way to experience YouTube. There are so many features and benefits, including ad-free, hello, uninterrupted videos, background play, you know, lets you keep listening with your screen locked, offline downloads. You can download your videos to watch anywhere, even without Wi-Fi connection.

• 0:28Speaker 01

  Whether you're relaxing at home or on the go, it's built for you because your YouTube experience just got even better with Premium. So if you like YouTube, you'll love Premium. Sign up now for your free trial. Terms and conditions apply.

• 0:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  Whether you're calling the wise women in your life, video calling your girlfriends across the country, or checking in on someone who always knows how to make you smile, staying connected matters. Those small conversations, shared laughs and quick hellos are what keep relationships strong even when life gets busy. Some of the most life-giving conversations start with just a phone call. That's why AT&T guarantees the network you can rely on, so you can focus on the moments and people that matter most. That's the AT&T Guarantee. AT&T, connecting changes everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com/guarantee for details. We've all tumbled down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose, and it leaves us more anxious than informed. Our feeds are full of wellness trends, but how do we know what's real, what's exaggerated,

• 1:27Tracy V. Wilson?

  and what's just wrong? Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association breaks it all down. Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends, not to cancel them, but to understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. So listen to Health vs. Hype wherever you get your podcasts. The Old Gays are back with Silver Linings, their lovable podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with Vive Healthcare. Robert, Mick, Bill, and Jessa strut back down memory lane for season two, sharing lessons on life, love, and loss. These are the kind of insights that only come from experience.

• 2:08Tracy V. Wilson?

  So tune into Silver Linings with The Old Gays on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 2:16Speaker 04

  Attention Chicken Nugget fans. Burger King heard that a lot of you didn't like the old Chicken Nuggets, so they got to work and reinvented them. These new Chicken Nuggets are their tastiest, crispiest, juiciest nuggets ever. And because better Chicken Nuggets deserve better sauces, they've reinvented several of their sauces, and they created a brand-new one. The new special savory sauce, which is only available for a limited time at participating US restaurants, don't wait around. You gotta try the new Burger King Chicken Nuggets today.

• 2:47Tracy V. Wilson?

  Happy Saturday. Today, at least on the day this episode is publishing, is the anniversary of a nuclear close call that happened in 1983, when an early warning system falsely showed five US missiles headed toward the Soviet Union. We talked about this in our episode on Nuclear Close Calls, which is today's Saturday classic. It originally came out on April 10, 2017. September 26 is also now observed as the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, which was established by the United Nations in 2013. This episode's a little stressful, but enjoy.

• 3:29Tracy V. Wilson?

  Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 3:40Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson. And I'm Holly Frey. Not long ago, I went to the Maritime Museum in San Diego, California, which, if you like boats and ships and maritime history, is worth a stop. It's also right down the road from the USS Midway Museum. So if you would like some military history and some maritime history altogether, like, you could just spend a whole day out there.

• 4:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  Don't do what I did and lose your camera, though. If anyone saw my camera in San Diego, let me know. Yeah, I think I have the last known photo from that camera because you texted it to me from the museum. Oh, I took that from my iPhone. Fortunately, I didn't lose my phone. I only lost my point-issue camera. Anyway, the actual point is, among the many seafaring vessels at the Maritime Museum is this Soviet Foxtrot-class submarine, which is home to an exhibit about a really harrowing incident I had never heard about before. It was one of the surprisingly many moments in history when the world came perilously close to a full-scale nuclear war.

• 4:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  And I did not actually know there were that many, that surprisingly many incidents, until I started looking into it for this episode today. So today, we are just going to look at three of them, including the one I learned about in San Diego, which inspired today's show. The incident aboard Soviet submarine B-59 is tangled up with the Cuban Missile Crisis and the nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. With the help of its allies, the United States developed the first nuclear weapons through the Manhattan Project. Among the weapons the Manhattan Project produced were the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in 1945. Not long after World War II, the Soviet Union successfully detonated its own nuclear

• 5:32Tracy V. Wilson?

  bomb, and soon the United States and the Soviet Union were locked in a Cold War and a nuclear arms race. Both nations were simultaneously building more nuclear weapons and developing more powerful weapons that were able to travel greater distances and deliver bigger payloads. The Cuban Missile Crisis grew out of this Cold War and arms race. In July of 1962, the Soviet Union reached an agreement with Cuba to install several missiles there. The negotiation and the transportation of missiles to Cuba were conducted in secret, but the US learned about it through aerial surveillance photography on October 14, 1962. Those photographs were delivered to the White House the next day.

• 6:16Tracy V. Wilson?

  At this point, the United States' nuclear arsenal was far, far bigger and more powerful than the Soviet Union's. And the United States also already had missiles stationed in Turkey in easy reach of Soviet territory. But with the placement of missiles in Cuba, for the first time, the Soviet Union also had missiles in easy reach of American territory. Even though the Soviets insisted that the missiles were only in Cuba as a defensive measure, this was a move that was both intended and interpreted as a threat. For a few days, news of the missile installation was also kept secret from the general public. But on October 22, President John F. Kennedy gave a televised address, giving Americans

• 7:00Tracy V. Wilson?

  a detailed description of the missile sites being built. He called Soviets' placement of missiles in Cuba "a clandestine, reckless, and provocative threat." And he announced a naval quarantine around Cuba to prohibit the delivery of any further materials or weapons. This quarantine really goes in air quotes. It was a blockade, but calling it a blockade would have presumed a state of war, so they chose the word quarantine to be nicer about it. Kennedy also wrote to Nikita Khrushchev, the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, basically the leader of the Soviet Union, to say that the United States would not tolerate the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba.

• 7:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  He also spelled out that any nuclear attack on any nation launched from Cuba would be viewed as a Soviet attack on the United States, and the United States would retaliate in kind. Khrushchev, for his part, insisted that these missiles were just being placed there to defend Cuba from attack. For the whole of the 13 days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the United States and the Soviet Union were in an incredibly tense stalemate, with the US demanding that the Soviet Union remove the missiles, and the Soviet Union both refusing and continuing construction on the missile sites. And on October 27, things were particularly bad. The US had been at DEFCON 2, with the armed forces ready to launch an all-out nuclear

• 8:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  war for three days. And then that day, an American U-2 spy plane was shot down by a Russian missile over Cuba, and its pilot, Major Rudolph Anderson, was killed. So the prevailing description of the Cuban Missile Crisis is that for this entire time, the world was on the brink of a nuclear war. But there was also this other element of it going on that wasn't known about until much later. There were four Soviet submarines, each of them with a nuclear-tipped torpedo among their armaments, and they were en route to Cuba as part of a submarine force that was going to be stationed there. These were all Foxtrot-class submarines, and they were powered by a combination of diesel and battery power.

• 9:12Tracy V. Wilson?

  While they were submerged, they ran on their batteries, and then they had to return to the surface periodically to get recharged. Soviet navigators were exceptionally skilled at using the varying temperatures of the ocean depths to avoid detection on radar. But without periodically recharging the batteries on the surface, where they were much more easy to spot, they could not stay underwater. Their last instruction from Moscow had been to hold position not far from Cuba, but they'd since lost contact. And the vessels themselves, built for use in colder waters, were not tolerating the warmer ocean near Cuba very well. The air conditioning failed, and the temperatures in the subs started to rise well above 100 degrees.

• 9:56Tracy V. Wilson?

  To make matters worse, they were running out of food and water. And since they'd lost contact with Moscow, their only way of finding out what was happening and whether the United States and the Soviet Union had gone to war was to listen to a civilian radio broadcast from Miami.

• 10:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  On the 27th of October, a spotter plane caught a glimpse of one of the submarines near the surface of the ocean. And late that afternoon, American reconnaissance had detected the presence of at least three Soviet submarines near Cuba. Ships that were in the area as part of the quarantine started to try to get the submarines to the surface by dropping signaling charges into the ocean. There's a little bit of discrepancy in accounts among the people who were actually there. Some of them say that dropping four or five loud but non-damaging charges was an official signal to surface, but others say that they were intentionally dropping these charges to harass the submerged submarines in the hope of basically forcing them up to the surface.

• 10:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  Aboard the B-59, though, the Soviets had no idea what was going on. They had not gotten new orders from Moscow in more than a week, and they were overheated, dehydrated, and exhausted. As battery power failed, life support systems did as well, and the air aboard had less and less oxygen. They didn't know if the explosions that they were hearing around them could damage or destroy their craft. And their only source of information was these American news reports on the civilian radio, which were reporting the extreme tensions and fears about the Cuban Missile Crisis.

• 11:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  The commanders of these four submarines had been authorized to use their nuclear-tipped torpedoes if they were attacked. And aboard the B-59, Captain Valentin Savitsky concluded that they were. And he gave orders to prepare their nuclear torpedo, saying, quote, "We will die, but we will sink them all. We will not disgrace our navy." Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed. Savitsky had the agreement of his other officers in launching the torpedo. But since the B-59 was the flagship of the flotilla bound for Cuba, it also carried the flotilla commander, Vasily Arkapov. Since Arkapov was aboard,

• 12:15Tracy V. Wilson?

  they needed his approval as well, and Arkapov refused, and he instead convinced Savitsky to surface. They got fresh air, they recharged their batteries, and, at the first opportunity, submerged and slipped away again, evading American detection before apparently returning to Soviet waters. Today, Arkapov is generally regarded as a hero, as somebody whose clear thinking prevented what surely would have been a full-on nuclear war. But on his return to the Soviet Union, his decisions were heavily criticized. The general feeling was that he and the rest of them should have gone down with the ship. Arkapov later died of cancer, probably a

• 12:57Tracy V. Wilson?

  result of a previous incident aboard a submarine, which was a near meltdown on the K-19 during its maiden voyage, that killed seven people who were aboard almost immediately and then caused delayed effects for many of the others who had been there. Basically, they averted a total meltdown situation, but it was at a high cost. The US was completely unaware that they had been dropping signaling charges on a nuclear-armed submarine until much later. And the whole incident was little known until documents related to it were declassified in 1992. If you would like to know more, there is a PBS Secrets of the Dead episode about this whole incident that's called "The Man Who Saved the World."

• 13:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  And to wrap up the Cuban Missile Crisis, eventually, the Soviet Union agreed to remove the missiles from Cuba in exchange for a pledge that the United States wouldn't invade the nation, something that the US had already tried and failed to do during the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. And in another move that wasn't publicly known until decades later, the US also removed its nuclear missiles from Turkey.

• 14:08Tracy V. Wilson?

  I kind of imagine this as being like, if you were throwing rocks at a tree and not hitting it, and then you realize later that the tree had a big ol' hornet's nest inside, like, that's sort of what was going on, with dropping signaling charges onto this nuclear-armed submarine full of people who were overheated, exhausted, dehydrated, and not having enough oxygen. Yeah, but a hornet's nest that could kill a lot of people. Yeah, a hornet's nest that would destroy the entire world. So with that theory thought, we're gonna take a quick break, take a word from a sponsor before we move on to our next story.

• 14:47Speaker 05

  Today's episode is brought to you by YouTube Premium. YouTube Premium takes something you already love, YouTube, and makes it even better. The content, the creators, the feeling of finding exactly what you're into for every mood and moment of your day. Premium transforms that experience into a more supercharged, enhanced way to enjoy YouTube.

• 15:08Speaker 06

  A YouTube Premium subscription gives you access to exclusive YouTube features and benefits, including but not limited to ad-free, uninterrupted videos.

• 15:17Speaker 05

  It's great for me. Sometimes my daughter comes up and is like, Dad, I want to watch octopuses using camouflage right now. And so it's great to just go straight to the octopus, ad-free.

• 15:27Speaker 06

  You got ad-free, uninterrupted videos, you got background play, you have offline downloads. That's the good one right there. Download it ahead of time, take it with you on your flight, underground bunker, wherever you're going without Wi-Fi.

• 15:40Speaker 05

  Also, you've got smart downloads. These work automatically to download videos by your favorite creators. So even if you forget to download ahead of time, Premium has you covered.

• 15:49Speaker 06

  So if you like YouTube, you'll love Premium. Sign up now for your free trial. Terms and conditions apply.

• 15:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  First thought is like, wow, how are we gonna do all this? Hey, everybody, it's Tracy from Stuff You Missed in History Class. That's Alan Goya, a planning engineer at AT&T. He's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, defining the fan's experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible. It was good to rival anything that was already built. And that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page. That includes Field Services Manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.

• 16:33Speaker 05

  Through what Alan's whole crew designed, we connected the event visitors to the world.

• 16:39Tracy V. Wilson?

  And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.

• 16:42Speaker 05

  To actually see the whole stadium light up and data's flowing is a beautiful thing.

• 16:47Tracy V. Wilson?

  What the fans experience is incredible. It gave me a lot of pride. AT&T, connecting fans to what they love. Connecting changes everything. AT&T. Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast, from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jesse have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane, navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders,

• 17:32Tracy V. Wilson?

  honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 17:55Speaker 04

  Okay, chicken nugget fans, I've got huge news. The new Burger King Chicken Nuggets just dropped, and they are the crispiest, the juiciest, and the tastiest chicken nuggets ever at Burger King. Burger King heard that a lot of you didn't like the old chicken nuggets, so they got to work and reinvented them. To go along with the new chicken nuggets, a lot of the sauces were reinvented, too, because better chicken nuggets deserve better sauces. We're talking new buffalo sauce, honey mustard, sweet and sour, and even a whole new option, too, the new special savory sauce, which is only available for a limited time at participating US restaurants. I mean, you need to taste it all for yourself. This

• 18:38Speaker 04

  new chicken nugget, reinvented, based on real feedback, is made with 100% white meat chicken and is now better than ever. You gotta try.

• 18:47Tracy V. Wilson?

  The new Burger King Chicken Nuggets and Sauces today. For any small business owner, there's a moment when you realize the next hire could be the difference between staying busy and actually growing. The challenge is finding the right person without wasting time sorting through candidates who aren't the right fit. That's where Indeed Sponsored Jobs comes in. When workplace chaos hits and you need someone who can step in and make a difference, this is a job for sponsored jobs. It helps put your job in front of candidates who match the criteria that matter most to you, whether that's skills, experience, certifications, or location. And you're certainly not alone in using Indeed. Join the 3.3 million employers worldwide that use Indeed to connect with quality talent that fits their needs.

• 19:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  That's millions of businesses turning to Indeed to help solve hiring challenges and find people who can help drive results. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. Get your $75 sponsored job credit today at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now, then this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

• 20:05Tracy V. Wilson?

  Now, we are going to move beyond the Cold War into a story that's right on the cusp of our typical window of history on the show. It took place in 1983. And as was the case with the Soviet submarine B-59, this also happened during a period of heightened tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. Throughout the Cold War, both the US and the Soviet Union were actively making plans for what they would do if the other struck first in a nuclear attack. And for a couple of years in the early 1980s, Yuri Andropov, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was particularly convinced that the US was making definite plans for a nuclear attack that would devastate Soviet leadership.

• 20:50Tracy V. Wilson?

  Under his command, the Soviet Union was preparing for a certainty, not an eventuality. Both the US and the Soviet Union had also made it clear that a nuclear strike by one would prompt an immediate and devastating response from the other.

• 21:05Tracy V. Wilson?

  In 1983, a series of incidents had ratcheted up the general sense of nuclear paranoia. On March 8th, President Ronald Reagan had delivered a speech arguing against a proposed nuclear freeze, in which he called the Soviet Union "an evil empire." Later that month, he announced the missile defense system that came to be known as Star Wars. Both nations undertook maneuvers and drills purportedly for the sake of preparedness, but often they were interpreted by the other as being anything from a threatening show of force to a real effort to secretly lay the groundwork for an upcoming World War III. And when our next incident took place, the latest and probably most alarming of

• 21:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  these was the downing of Korean Air Flight 007. The commercial flight was en route from New York to Seoul with a stop in Anchorage to refuel. After leaving Anchorage for reasons that aren't entirely clear, the flight diverged from its planned course and wound up in Soviet airspace. The Soviet Union, apparently believing it was a US spy plane, scrambled two fighter jets, which attacked the plane with air-to-air missiles. The flight crashed into the sea, killing all 269 people aboard, one of whom was US Representative Larry McDonald of Georgia.

• 22:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  The incident sparked international outrage and a slew of conspiracy theories, some of which still persist today. The Soviet Union did not help the matter by being incredibly secretive about the incident, at first not even admitting that it had happened, and not revealing whether it had found the wreckage or flight data recorders. A lot of the details remained completely unknown to the rest of the world until after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and some of the details are still a mystery. Three weeks after the incident with Flight 007 on September 26th, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov of the Soviet Air Defense Forces was stationed in a bunker known as Serpakov 15, which was part of the Soviet Union's newly-enabled early warning satellite

• 23:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  defense network. At Serpakov 15, satellite intelligence was received and analyzed, and in the case of an attack, there was a telephone with a direct line to commanding officers. Petrov's job there was so secret that not even his wife knew where he worked or what he did. By this point, both the United States and the Soviet Union each had satellite systems that were meant to help keep watch for the launch of intercontinental ballistic missiles from the other. United States satellites basically looked down on the Earth from above, but on the Soviet side, the satellites looked at the planet on edge. They were looking for missiles after they had already been launched. It would sort of be silhouetted against the background of space.

• 23:56Tracy V. Wilson?

  In theory, this minimized the number of natural phenomena and other non-threatening human activities that could cause a false alarm. But on September 26th, just after midnight local time, a false alarm did indeed happen, most likely thanks to sunlight reflecting off of high-altitude clouds. The system detected the presence of, at first, one missile, but in moments, that number grew to five, all launched from the United States. The warning of the detected incoming missile strike played out within the Serpakov 15 bunker like something out of a movie. There were blaring alarms and warnings in huge red letters on the screens.

• 24:38Tracy V. Wilson?

  If you've ever seen a nuclear disaster movie in which the launch happens and it's met with like giant wailing klaxons, and the words "launch" in big red flashing letters on the screen, and you've thought, "Man, that looks ridiculous." Apparently, that's really what happened. It looked exactly like that. Protocol was for Petrov to immediately contact his superior officers to report that the launch had been detected, but he had some doubts that the report was accurate. This system was brand new, and in his opinion, it had been rushed into use when it was still, in his words, "raw."

• 25:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  Five also seemed like an unusually low number of missiles for a preemptive nuclear strike. He would later say, quote, "When people start a war, they don't start it with only five missiles. You can do little damage with just five missiles." So instead of contacting his superior officers to say that a nuclear strike was incoming, he called to report a false alarm. Even as he did, though, he wasn't completely sure that he was right. It wasn't until the missiles in question failed to reach the Soviet Union that he knew for sure that his hunch had been correct. Yeah, he was like, "I thought it was maybe 50/50." And he also later theorized that if someone else had been on duty, it would not have

• 26:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  been the same call. By his own account, though, after this was all over, he went home, he drank a whole lot of vodka, and he slept for more than 24 consecutive hours. As with the submarine B-59, the details of this incident only became public much later. At the time, Petrov himself got no recognition within the Soviet Union for what he had done and the crisis averted under his watch. However, after an investigation, he did get a reprimand for not keeping a detailed enough log about what had happened. His explanation was that he had a phone in one hand and the facility's intercom in the other, and he couldn't juggle both at once and also take notes. In the aftermath of all this, the computer program that was designed to filter out

• 26:47Tracy V. Wilson?

  natural phenomena and other noise from the early warning systems' results was rewritten to account for this combination of sun and high-altitude clouds. The world learned of Petrov's actions about 15 years later, when his commanding officer wrote about it in his memoir. His wife learned of it when a reporter came to their home following the publication of that memoir. A documentary about this whole incident came out in 2014, which was called "The Man Who Saved the World." That is not an error. It is the same name as the one about the submarine. And we're going to take another quick break before we talk through one more of these.

• 27:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  So YouTube Premium, it takes something you already love, that being YouTube, and it makes it even better, not just the experience, but the content, the creators. The feeling of finding exactly what you're into for every

• 27:44Speaker 06

  Mood every moment of your day. Premium transforms that experience into a more supercharged, enhanced way to enjoy YouTube.

• 27:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, folks, a YouTube Premium experience gives you access to exclusive YouTube features and benefits, and these are real game changers for us.

• 28:01Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah, that includes what is not limited to ad-free viewing of YouTube. Imagine no more ads popping up in the middle of videos or at the end of videos. Uninterrupted videos.

• 28:11Speaker 05

  And now think about this. Let's say you're using YouTube on the go. You're exercising, you're washing dishes.

• 28:17Speaker 06

  You can have YouTube playing in the background with Premium, which means you can keep listening while your screen is locked. Also, you can download videos offline, so you don't even need Wi-Fi connection to watch your stuff. I love this on plane flights. Ben, how have you been using YouTube Premium? Oh, man. Well, Matt, you know, I like to take a night walk and YouTube Premium is perfect for this because of the background play.

• 28:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  So I can pull up a documentary about the neighborhood I'm walking around in, put the phone in my pocket and still hear everything perfectly.

• 28:51Speaker 06

  Amazing.

• 28:52Tracy V. Wilson?

  So don't delay. Sign up now for your free trial. Terms and conditions apply. Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jessa have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane, navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you.

• 29:36Tracy V. Wilson?

  All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 29:56Speaker 04

  Okay, chicken nugget fans, I've got huge news. The new Burger King Chicken Nuggets just dropped, and they are the crispiest, the juiciest, and the tastiest chicken nuggets ever at Burger King. Burger King heard that a lot of you didn't like the old chicken nuggets, so they got to work and reinvented them. To go along with the new chicken nuggets, a lot of the sauces were reinvented too, because better chicken nuggets deserve better sauces. We're talking new buffalo sauce, honey mustard, sweet and sour, and even a whole new option, too, the new special savory sauce, which is only available for a limited time at participating US restaurants. I mean, you need to taste it all for yourself.

• 30:38Speaker 04

  This new chicken nugget, reinvented based on real feedback, is made with 100% white meat chicken and is now better than ever. You gotta try the new Burger King Chicken Nuggets and sauces today.

• 30:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  For any small business owner, there's a moment when you realize the next hire could be the difference between staying busy and actually growing. The challenge is finding the right person without wasting time sorting through candidates who aren't the right fit. That's where Indeed Sponsored Jobs comes in. When workplace chaos hits and you need someone who can step in and make a difference, this is a job for Sponsored Jobs. It helps put your job in front of candidates who match the criteria that matter most to you, whether that's skills, experience, certifications, or location. And you're certainly not alone in using Indeed. Join the 3.3 million employers worldwide that use Indeed to connect with quality talent that fits their needs. That's millions of businesses turning to Indeed to help solve hiring challenges and

• 31:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  find people who can help drive results. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. Get your $75 sponsored job credit today at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now, then this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

• 32:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  So you're considering getting a home security system, but you want something that fits your space. Well, with ADT Blue, it's easy to customize a system that's right for you and set it up yourself. Just pick the kit and monitoring plan that makes sense for your home. Let's say you're worried about package theft. The ADT Plus app can walk you through setting up a new doorbell camera kit. Once it's installed, ADT Pros can help you keep tabs on it 24/7, or you can manage it yourself from the ADT Plus app. There are no long-term contracts, so you can change your monitoring plan whenever you want. The flexibility doesn't end there. You can add to your system as you need to with things like extra cameras or motion sensors. Some life decisions are hard, but thanks to ADT Blue, you can DIY trusted ADT home

• 32:47Tracy V. Wilson?

  security in a snap. Head to ADT.com/BLU to build your system today. And to hear more about home protection and other grown-up topics, check out new episodes of Grown Up Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 33:12Tracy V. Wilson?

  The last of these incidents that we are going to talk about today is way more recent than we generally get into this on the show. We have kind of a rule of thumb window. You know, it's, this is definitely newer than that. But as I was going through the surprisingly many events of this type, it stood out for reasons that are going to become clear. By this point, the Soviet Union had dissolved, so the nuclear superpowers at play were the United States and Russia. And we have a little less detail on this one than we did on the other two in part, because any United States documents pertaining to it are probably still classified.

• 33:50Tracy V. Wilson?

  On January 25th, 1995, Russian radar operators near the coast spotted a fast-moving object that appeared to be a missile. It was over the Barents Sea, roughly between Russia's northern coast and the Arctic Ocean. And then, as it moved, the object separated into multiple pieces. It was behaving like a Trident missile. And judging from where it originated, it could have been launched from a US submarine.

• 34:19Tracy V. Wilson?

  The radar technicians feared that this was an American nuclear warhead set to detonate high in the atmosphere and to put all of Russia's early warning satellite system, which was still being maintained in spite of the end of the Cold War, out of commission. That system, though, had not detected any launches, but it was also primarily focused on missile sites in North America. There was apparently also some cloud cover. The satellite operators notified their commanding officers that a suspected launch was in the works. In the United States, Russia and other nations that have nuclear weapons, a specially outfitted satchel known as the nuclear briefcase accompanies the head of state.

• 35:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  The briefcase's actual contents are secret, and the US version weighs about 45 pounds. Its purpose is to make sure the head of state has all the necessary documentation on hand, while also allowing them to receive information, make decisions, and if necessary, order a nuclear strike. The US has also noted that part of the briefcase's purpose is being able to identify that it really is the president making the call.

• 35:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  Russia had a clear protocol in the event of a missile launch. First, signal the president's nuclear briefcase. At this point, accompanying President Boris Yeltsin. Then assess the situation, and within 10 minutes, make a decision on whether to retaliate. According to Russian Defense Protocols, incoming missiles didn't have to actually strike anything before the retaliatory strike was ordered. In spite of the discrepancy between what the radar operators and the early warning satellites were reporting, about five minutes into that 10-minute window, word went out to submarine commanders in the area to maintain a state of readiness and prepare for further instruction.

• 36:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  Eight minutes into the 10-minute window, the mystery objects on the radar fell into the sea, and everyone thankfully stood down. And the culprit in this case was the Black Brant 12, a sounding rocket, which is a scientific rocket used to take measurements and conduct tests. A sounding rocket typically has a rocket and a payload designed to separate from it at a certain altitude. Often, once it's taken its measurements or conducted its experiment, the payload portion comes back to Earth with its descent slowed down by a parachute. That separation of the instruments and the payload from the rocket is what the radar detectors had interpreted as the separation of a Trident missile.

• 36:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  It was really a Norwegian rocket that was being used to study the Northern Lights.

• 37:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  And where it gets, yeah, where it gets a little unnerving is that the Norwegian and American team that was responsible for this thing had notified multiple other countries, including Russia, of what was about to happen, but nobody had told these satellite operators who raised the alarm about it. And apparently, nobody made the connection between this report of a launch from the coast and the launch of a scientific rocket that was already known to everyone. Like, nobody connected those two things together. However, the thing that made this so notable and made me want to include it in today's episode, in spite of its recency, is it's the only known time in world history that

• 37:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  a head of state has actually activated their nuclear briefcase. I can't help but think how frustrating it would be for the science team to be like, we did everything right, and yet, and yet. We literally told you. Inadvertently, we could have set off like a horrible global incident, despite having like gone through the checklist and done everything we were supposed to. To our knowledge, there is no movie or TV show about this particular incident yet, but since this incident was about 10 minutes of a long and sometimes controversial political career for Boris Yeltsin, they will probably title it something besides The Man Who Saved the World, although you never know.

• 38:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  Maybe so. Maybe that's just the title of all nearly, near, all incidents of, of, just barely averting nuclear catastrophe. They will all be called The Man Who Saved the World. That does seem to definitely be the pattern. Yeah.

• 38:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like to send us a note, our email address is [email protected]. And you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 39:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Whether you're calling the wise women in your life, video calling your girlfriends across the country, or checking in on someone who always knows how to make you smile, staying connected matters. Those small conversations, shared laughs,

• 39:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  and quick hellos are what keep relationships strong even when life gets busy. Some of the most life-giving conversations start with just a phone call. That's why AT&T guarantees the network you can rely on, so you can focus on the moments and people that matter most. That's the AT&T Guarantee. AT&T: Connecting Changes Everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com/guarantee for details.

• 40:19Speaker 05

  Snoring, gasping for air during sleep, daytime sleepiness? I'm Shaquille O'Neal, and this shouldn't be anybody's experience. Ask your doctor about Zepbound Trisepotide, the first and only FDA-approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea in adults with obesity. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced-calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and obesity to improve their OSA. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15-milligram injection. Zepbound contains trisepotide, and should not be used with other trisepotide-containing products or any GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepbound is safe and effective for use in children.

• 41:03Speaker 05

  Don't share needles or pens, or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop Zepbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia, if you're nursing, pregnant, plant-to-be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zepbound with a sulphonal urea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-5979,

• 41:47Speaker 05

  or visit zepbound.lilly.com.

• 41:50Speaker 00

  Hola a todos. Soy Jamie Lynn Sigler. Cuando me diagnosticaron tenía veintitantos años y todo mi mundo cambió por completo. Pero con el tiempo decidí que no iba a permitir que eso frenara mi vida. Quise tomar las riendas. Y después de hablar con mi médico sobre mis opciones, la elección para mí fue obvia. Boom, eso es KISSIMTA. Obtenga más información sobre KISSIMTA o fotumumab en kissimta.com.

• 42:19Speaker 05

  Hey, it's Covino and Rich Davis from Covino and Rich. Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it starts with a great deal on an off-road ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's most capable and longest-lasting trucks. Combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. Built on reputation for quality and reliability. Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which can mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places.

• 42:54Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.