Episode 199: Damascus Titan II Missile Explosion

i dropped... i dropped the socket follow scooter on the butterfly site: https://bsky.app/profile/angryscooter77.bsky.socialcheck out somehow you didn't die on the way to work with roz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxaVNVX9N3U donate to help buy liam's coworker's grandson a mobility van: https://helphopelive.org/campaign/24216/check out Public Rail Now: https://publicrailnow.org/ Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wtyppod/ Send us stuff! our address:Well There's Your Podcasting CompanyPO Box 26929 Philadelphia, PA 19134DO NOT SEND US LETTER BOMBS thanks in advance in the commercial: Local Forecast - Elevator Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

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

• 0:01Justin Roczniak?

  Do you like, do you like, do you like body horror? Read various Roald Dahl books.

• 0:07Liam McAnderson?

  I'm a dog because he was anti-Semitic.

• 0:09Justin Roczniak?

  Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. No, Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is so far superior to the book it's based on. That's always one that always gets me.

• 0:20Liam McAnderson?

  That's just because, that's just because you love Gene Wilder, man.

• 0:23November Kelly?

  We have to, we have to sync the, we have to sync the audio.

• 0:26Justin Roczniak?

  We have to sync the audio. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to say three, two, one. Mark. Three, two, one. Mark.

• 0:35Justin Roczniak?

  Okay. Good enough.

• 0:36November Kelly?

  Yes.

• 0:37Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, no, I do. I do enjoy Gene Wilder's performance as Willy Wonka. I think it's, it's fantastic. I love, I love watching it.

• 0:47November Kelly?

  You know the sequel that Roald Dahl wrote to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that was too racist to film?

• 0:54Liam McAnderson?

  Glass elevator?

• 0:55Justin Roczniak?

  I didn't notice. I haven't read it in a very long time.

• 0:58November Kelly?

  Yeah, Charlie and the Glass Elevator.

• 1:00Justin Roczniak?

  I don't, I don't want to reread it because I'm scared of the verminious knids.

• 1:06November Kelly?

  Well, you should, you should be scared of those and also be scared of the, the guy kind of working in some racist bits.

• 1:15Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, yeah, I could see that. I could see that. That guy, that guy, that guy, you know, you needed a good director and you needed Gene Wilder to save that. It's to save that entire concept. Now, now it's a beloved thing. You know, that and I don't know. I saw the James and the Giant Peach movie a long time ago, which was weird.

• 1:39Liam McAnderson?

  Aren't they rebooting with Timothy Chalamet, Boo?

• 1:42November Kelly?

  Oh my god. Yeah, they're trying.

• 1:44Liam McAnderson?

  I hate that fucking guy, man. I hate Timothy Chalamet.

• 1:47Justin Roczniak?

  Why do you need to reboot Willy Wonka?

• 1:50Liam McAnderson?

  Uh, because Timothy Chalamet has to give you a haunting performance because Johnny Depp wasn't fucking weird enough, I guess, man.

• 1:56Justin Roczniak?

  They did it right the first time. They got it right the first time. They don't have to do it again.

• 2:01November Kelly?

  I I listened.

• 2:02Liam McAnderson?

  Bet Affleck trying to remake Casablanca. At some point, you should be shot.

• 2:05Justin Roczniak?

  New movies.

• 2:06November Kelly?

  I just need you to know.

• 2:07Justin Roczniak?

  New movies.

• 2:08November Kelly?

  I I just need you to know. I listened to the episode, the free episode that you did without me. I'm sorry, I was doing live shows and then I got COVID, but I'm back now. And people were like, well, we miss November, which thank you. I appreciate. But wow, this was the quickest they got to the point ever. Like they started the show like that. And for some reason, my presence is a kind of talisman that causes each of us to become distracted and start talking about Roald Dahl movies.

• 2:40Justin Roczniak?

  Yes, yes. Well, no, we shouldn't have to talk about them because again, they got it right the first time. They don't have to make any more of them.

• 2:49November Kelly?

  Yeah, it's a perfected technology like the AR-15.

• 2:53Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:57Liam McAnderson?

  Willie Walker, the chocolate factory, as produced by Mummar Gaddafi, of course.

• 3:06Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, that's that, that the Oompa Loompas singing about their Armalites. Yeah.

• 3:14Justin Roczniak?

  No, that that wouldn't work. The Oompa Loompas are orange.

• 3:20Justin Roczniak?

  They're the bad guys.

• 3:22November Kelly?

  I am, I am trying to go to Ireland in less than a week. You are gonna get me turned away at the fucking border.

• 3:29Liam McAnderson?

  No, we got this. We got this.

• 3:32Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, exactly. This is, this is not going to come out until Nova is back from Ireland and we'll never be welcome there again.

• 3:38Speaker 03

  We could prevent her from getting back home.

• 3:41Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, she's stateless like that guy in the terminal. Yeah.

• 3:47Liam McAnderson?

  Welcome to Kill James Bond, a podcast about movies.

• 3:52Justin Roczniak?

  Recording this podcast, we have to think about our girls on hunger strike in the, in the prisons of Belfast.

• 3:59November Kelly?

  I so like because I was going to Dublin and because I'm like interested in the history and the like culture and stuff. I was like, and I'm gonna get the pronunciation wrong. And I'm sorry. I wanted to see Kilmainam Jail, right? Which is where they

• 4:11Liam McAnderson?

  Good enough.

• 4:11November Kelly?

  Where we, the British, right, executed a bunch of the leaders of the East arising.

• 4:15Liam McAnderson?

  He was tied to a chair and you shot him.

• 4:18November Kelly?

  I know. I know. On the, on the plus side.

• 4:21Liam McAnderson?

  November Kelly, personally.

• 4:22November Kelly?

  Yeah, this is, I personally shot James Connolly. I'm sorry that I did it. But on the plus side, it did lead to the collapse of British colonialism in, in the south of Ireland. But, um, I wanted to go. And the thing is, it is sold out and booked up for the whole month. So Ireland is so woke that they won't let trans women into prison.

• 4:46Liam McAnderson?

  Wow. Wow.

• 4:49November Kelly?

  I'm rattling the gates from the outside. Let me in.

• 4:53Liam McAnderson?

  Let me in, let me in.

• 4:58Justin Roczniak?

  All right, we had to, we have to start this podcast at some point. Hold on. Let me see if I remember how to do this.

• 5:04November Kelly?

  Yeah, I still don't have the drops. Nate's gonna send me the replacement mixer at some point.

• 5:10Speaker 03

  On the note of that, all I remember, uh, speaking of like going on vacation to countries where the troubles were a thing, was I had to keep reminding my wife to please stop singing IRA songs while we were in the UK.

• 5:22Liam McAnderson?

  Well, they do that to my dad, too. Yeah.

• 5:24November Kelly?

  It's, it's fine. My, my grandma used to blast them out the window of the flat when my mom was growing up. It's fine.

• 5:33Liam McAnderson?

  My dad pointed to Lord Nelson's column in front of like, whatever your cops are, and said, the IRA never got that one. And that was a legitimate military target. And they stopped staring at this for a mighty long time. Yes, they did.

• 5:45November Kelly?

  But because there was a Nelson's column in Dublin, right? And it's currently, it's currently the spire, which is just like the most, we felt like we had to put something here thing. But because it was blown up by the IRA. And when it was, uh, Dev, uh, Aymond de Valera, not Devon, um, no relation, as far as I know, suggested the headline to the Irish Times, British Admiral Leaves Dublin by Air.

• 6:16Justin Roczniak?

  Speaking of leaving by air.

• 6:20Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 6:20Liam McAnderson?

  What?

• 6:21Justin Roczniak?

  Hello. And welcome to, well, there's your problem. It's a podcast about engineering disasters with slides. I'm Justin Roczniak. I'm the person who's talking right now. My pronouns are he and him. Okay, go.

• 6:37November Kelly?

  Oh, it's been a hot minute. I hope I can still remember how to do this. I am November Kelly. I'm the person who's speaking right now. My pronouns are she and her. Yay, Liam.

• 6:46Liam McAnderson?

  Yay, Liam. Hi, I hope this is not too crunchy. Sorry if it is.

• 6:50November Kelly?

  No, no, wait, Liam, Liam. I heard, I heard the episode you recorded without me. So let me do this one. Hi, my name's Liam McAnderson. My pronouns are he and him.

• 7:00November Kelly?

  See how you like it.

• 7:01Justin Roczniak?

  Wow.

• 7:05Liam McAnderson?

  You want to, you want to introduce Victoria? You want to just cut it there?

• 7:09Justin Roczniak?

  That's the end of the podcast.

• 7:11Speaker 03

  I'm Victoria Scott. My pronouns are she and her. And we have a guest.

• 7:15Justin Roczniak?

  We have a guest.

• 7:16Speaker 04

  I'm back. Hi, I'm Angry Scooter. My pronouns are he, they, and I'm the person talking right now.

• 7:27Speaker 04

  And let's do this.

• 7:29Liam McAnderson?

  Do you want to do the normal thing where you disavow your employer? Are you good on this?

• 7:32Speaker 04

  No, no, no, I'm good on this one.

• 7:34November Kelly?

  Your employer avows everything, like everything that you're about to say is their opinion.

• 7:39Justin Roczniak?

  Company policy. What you can't see here, but this is actually a rail exco.

• 7:52Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, they got a deal on it. Yeah.

• 7:56Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 7:58Speaker 04

  I mean, later, later in the podcast, I do compare it to my job. So, uh oh.

• 8:05Speaker 04

  We did try, we did once. Okay, real quick, we did once try buying a nuclear missile.

• 8:11November Kelly?

  Well, who hasn't, you know?

• 8:13Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, yeah, of course.

• 8:14Speaker 04

  There was the one, the one in Ranhtul, Illinois.

• 8:19Speaker 04

  No, there was this one in Ranhtul, Illinois. That's the display for the old Air Force Base that got, got, it's gone. But the, it went up on gov deals and both of us were like. Come on.

• 8:34Speaker 04

  And then they took it off of deals and kept it.

• 8:35November Kelly?

  Nuclear missile. How much could it cost?

• 8:37Speaker 03

  Damn, this is how I, this is how I ended up with my nine foot tall Soviet rocket ship model is I was like, well, I mean, I might as well just put it in a bid for a lark.

• 8:47November Kelly?

  Let she who has never put an unwise bid on an auction site cast the first pod.

• 8:53Speaker 04

  We spent the same.

• 8:54Justin Roczniak?

  Cast the first physics package.

• 8:59Speaker 04

  We spent the same amount on that stupid A class we had that we sold to, to Roxy. As that missile was going for, and that would have looked so much cooler in our yard.

• 9:10Speaker 03

  Honestly, yeah, like the A class is one of those things that is sicko. Um, also shit, I didn't realize that went from you to Roxy. I'm redrawing the lineage of this car in my mind. Anyway.

• 9:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:22Justin Roczniak?

  I don't know what that is.

• 9:24Speaker 03

  Oh, it's the, it's the little Mercedes.

• 9:26November Kelly?

  Yeah. Do you want the best Mercedes ever made? The Mercedes, the small Mercedes.

• 9:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:33November Kelly?

  Do you want, do you want, do you want that or a nuclear missile?

• 9:38Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, you'd have the polar opposite of vehicles, like the enormous rail Xco truck and then the very small rail Xco sports car.

• 9:46Speaker 04

  You didn't even get to drive in the rail X, the big rail Xco truck.

• 9:50Justin Roczniak?

  That truck was so huge, Scooter. That was the hugest truck I've ever been in.

• 9:54Speaker 04

  That is a normal 1500. I have a 3500.

• 9:58Liam McAnderson?

  3500s are, are.

• 9:59November Kelly?

  I just, I just love the idea of the.

• 10:01Liam McAnderson?

  I want a 3500 with dooleys.

• 10:03November Kelly?

  The rail Xco technical, which is an A class with an ICBM strapped to the top of it.

• 10:13Speaker 04

  On the trailer behind it.

• 10:17November Kelly?

  Line a bunch of those up like a North Korean parade.

• 10:23Liam McAnderson?

  Who's low bidding who now?

• 10:27Speaker 03

  This is our future where every single person has to buy their own ICBM lest Donald Trump shut down their primary waterways. If you have a stream in your backyard, you want to float paper boats down, you have to have an ICBM to keep it clear.

• 10:41November Kelly?

  Oh, yes.

• 10:42Liam McAnderson?

  There's no offense like defense.

• 10:46Speaker 03

  Will we?

• 10:47November Kelly?

  I think so.

• 10:48Speaker 04

  For the lore, you know, we, we point the ICBM at Amtrak and demand another turbo liner.

• 10:56Speaker 04

  But.

• 10:59Justin Roczniak?

  We want, we want more places to drop private cars.

• 11:04Speaker 04

  Justin Rozdak has paid us to hold you ransom.

• 11:08November Kelly?

  What we see on the screen before us is an accessory for a Mercedes Benz A-Class.

• 11:14Liam McAnderson?

  This is, this is dealer installed, actually. It's my, does that say Wernher Von Braun did nothing wrong?

• 11:29Speaker 04

  So, uh, anyway, I do have a disclaimer. Um, it's two things about this presentation because, uh, number one, this story is told over an hour and a half in a movie and 20 hours in a book and then another 11 hours in another book. Uh, it has to be condensed at some point. So I'm sorry if our four hour presentation is too fucking short for you. Go watch the movie. Um, and second, because I did a lot of interviews for this. I actually did like real research, which wow, I know, right?

• 12:04Justin Roczniak?

  Unbelievable.

• 12:06Speaker 04

  Get a lot of interviews.

• 12:07Justin Roczniak?

  Never happens on this podcast.

• 12:08November Kelly?

  No.

• 12:08Speaker 04

  A couple of people asked to put a, to say that even though it's a comedy podcast, we're going to make a bunch of jokes here. Uh, the people involved took their jobs very seriously and for very good reason because of what they handled. The only people at fault, as far as I'm concerned, and hopefully everybody makes their own opinion are the motherfuckers that made the decisions and not the motherfuckers that did this as their job.

• 12:40November Kelly?

  I hate when I want.

• 12:41Speaker 04

  On everybody, but remember who the real clowns are.

• 12:44November Kelly?

  I hate when I want to put my Mercedes into like a sort of, I want to make, I hate when I want to make my Mercedes go fast and I have to put it into race mode.

• 12:53Justin Roczniak?

  I had to put a, I had to put a Titan two rocket on top of it, you know, to make it go fast.

• 12:59Liam McAnderson?

  Like the, uh, what was that, that stunt on, uh, Mythbusters?

• 13:05Speaker 04

  The Jada rocket.

• 13:06Liam McAnderson?

  The Jada rocket. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

• 13:07Speaker 03

  The A and A class stands for assisted.

• 13:13Justin Roczniak?

  So yeah, today's episode, we will be talking about the Damascus, Alabama Titan two.

• 13:22Liam McAnderson?

  Arkansas.

• 13:22Speaker 04

  Off to a great start.

• 13:24Liam McAnderson?

  Arkansas.

• 13:25Speaker 04

  Arkansas.

• 13:26Justin Roczniak?

  Arkansas, excuse me.

• 13:28November Kelly?

  Alabama, Arkansas. I sure love my mom, Paul. These things.

• 13:32Justin Roczniak?

  Alabama, Arkansas. Love my mom, Paul. Yeah. I, okay, okay. I'm doing great. This is why I had to go get some coffee.

• 13:43Liam McAnderson?

  I've got a white monster.

• 13:45Justin Roczniak?

  But first we have to do the goddamn news.

• 13:49November Kelly?

  Do, do, do, do.

• 13:51Justin Roczniak?

  All right. Yeah. We don't, we don't have, we don't have the thing.

• 13:54November Kelly?

  Nate is going to send me the replacement mixer very soon. He assures me, I am assured of this.

• 14:03Justin Roczniak?

  So remember how we just did an episode about the Union Pacific Norfolk Southern merger?

• 14:10Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah. Uncle Charlie's fucking, no, Uncle, you, Uncle Pete, Pete is fucking a horse.

• 14:14Justin Roczniak?

  Is marrying the horse.

• 14:15Liam McAnderson?

  Fucking the horse. Yes. We're here to fuck the train. I know.

• 14:18Justin Roczniak?

  The day after we recorded it, the new documents were submitted to the Surface Transportation Board.

• 14:25Liam McAnderson?

  That's, that's real.

• 14:29November Kelly?

  They're calling it the timeliest podcast ever.

• 14:34Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 14:38Justin Roczniak?

  So, um, yeah, I, I, I, I don't know how to summarize this other than, okay, they've decided they're gonna do less investment in infrastructure than they said they were gonna do previously.

• 14:50Liam McAnderson?

  How is that even possible?

• 14:51Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, well, uh, they're, they're gonna do major improvements to one of the old wabash lines and that's about it.

• 14:59Liam McAnderson?

  No, they won't.

• 15:00Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, probably not.

• 15:01Speaker 04

  It's called line.

• 15:03Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 15:03Speaker 04

  They do it a lot.

• 15:05Justin Roczniak?

  Something there, I, there's like 400 pages or whatever about intermodal lanes, new ones. The big news is they're trying to sort of extort the Surface Transportation Board by saying, look, if you grant anyone baggage rights or like dibs on branch line sales, uh, we're not gonna do the merger.

• 15:30Liam McAnderson?

  Whoa, no.

• 15:31Justin Roczniak?

  It's gonna look bad for commerce because obviously everyone loves these mergers, right? It'll look bad if you don't do them.

• 15:39Liam McAnderson?

  Victory to Dan Roczniak, victory for 1,000 years.

• 15:43Justin Roczniak?

  Honestly, though, yeah, yeah, I mean, that, that, that is the thing about this is it's like, um, the most relevant industries out there all hate this shit.

• 15:55Justin Roczniak?

  But I don't know, they're gonna let Trump, uh, drive the big boy or something, so.

• 15:59November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 15:59Justin Roczniak?

  Who knows?

• 16:00November Kelly?

  A pox on both their houses. And speaking of pox.

• 16:04Justin Roczniak?

  Speaking of pox, yeah, I hate everything.

• 16:10November Kelly?

  You have hantavirus. I mean, listen, I, I, I don't wanna, we, we probably have too many hypochondriacs to me to do that joke. No, it's, uh, so there was this cruise ship with.

• 16:25Justin Roczniak?

  You already have hantavirus. I'm sorry.

• 16:27Liam McAnderson?

  You're dying as we speak, you stupid asshole.

• 16:29November Kelly?

  Based on the spread of COVID back when everyone was following the like, huh, seems like some shit was happening in like a wet market in Wuhan and everyone reading it already had COVID. Um, I don't know, but so there's this cruise ship that was going from, uh, Argentina to Cape Verde, I want to say. And this Dutch couple got hantavirus, hantavirus, which is a very nasty class of viruses that you get mostly off of like rodents. And the husband died, the wife was transporting his body to South Africa and then died. And they think that there's like human to human transmission, there's some cases.

• 17:12November Kelly?

  But everyone's stuck on this boat, which they're now, everyone is arguing about where to send it. It's looking like it might be the Canary Islands. But in the meantime, everyone is self isolating in the worst phase of all, because they are stuck on board with hantavirus and not one, but two travel YouTubers.

• 17:33Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, God.

• 17:34Liam McAnderson?

  Shoot me dead.

• 17:35Justin Roczniak?

  No, that's, yeah, no, no, that is, that is way worse than the, the hantavirus.

• 17:40November Kelly?

  Is getting mad at the other one because he's like being inflammatory in the content that he's posting. So the YouTubers are now beefing. And at this point, I sort of start thinking about ways I could like throw myself overboard without my body washing up and giving anybody hantavirus.

• 18:00Justin Roczniak?

  I'm gonna be honest, I, I feel like this is kinda, I, I don't think this is a huge, like, well, unless you're on the ship, obviously, it's very bad. I don't think this is a huge deal. This is apparently like a, a strain of the hantavirus, which is already endemic in Argentina. You know, it does occasionally transmit person to person, but it's not very common. And, you know, it doesn't tend to spread because, uh, well, it kills people so quick.

• 18:28November Kelly?

  Yeah, it's, it's not a very, you need a lot of like close contacts as well. But like, the thing is, I, well, exactly, right? Rationally, I'm like, this is nothing. We're just filling out the news section. And then I flash back to the news sections we were making in 2019 and 2020. And no, it's fine. It's fine. Everything's gonna be fine and I'm not gonna ruin it if I say that everything's gonna be fine.

• 18:53Speaker 03

  No, this is fine. The next slide is what's gonna be our COVID moment.

• 18:57Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, no, I, I, this does not give me anywhere close to the same vibes as COVID did.

• 19:02Speaker 03

  38% fatality rate, I think I read, and like you just can't, like, virus transmission just doesn't work very well at that scale of death.

• 19:10Speaker 03

  And yeah, like I it requires sustained contact that like I think that the only place you could really get this cruise ship rather than like, you know, uh, you know, any kind of normal day to day life.

• 19:21November Kelly?

  One of what cruise ships, cruise ships are such fucking like incubators of everything bad.

• 19:27Speaker 03

  Okay, I fully admit also.

• 19:28Justin Roczniak?

  Don't all of them here, folks. If they have had the virus, don't fuck them.

• 19:35Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, thanks. Thank you. A new form of V D. None of the doctors have ever seen it before.

• 19:41November Kelly?

  Coughing up blood. It doesn't matter how sexually they're doing it. Do not have sex with them.

• 19:48Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, but it's like a sort of Victorian, you know, they're they're dying of tuberculosis.

• 19:53November Kelly?

  Oh, yeah.

• 19:54Liam McAnderson?

  Laying them down one more time. Yeah. And then you get had to virus. Good job, Ross.

• 19:58Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, exactly. That's that's not going well. Well, now I have the Victorian like coughing up blood disease.

• 20:05Liam McAnderson?

  She's right there, man.

• 20:06November Kelly?

  I'm just getting better from the Victorian coughing up blood disease. Also, my favorite thing that we said in the segment is victorious. Where you you ever notice how someone is like so obviously anxious in general that they have become an epidemiologist out of anxiety? Where it's just like casually like, oh, yeah, I know a lot about disease vectors because I'm scared all the time. I also am like this.

• 20:33Justin Roczniak?

  Hmm.

• 20:34Speaker 03

  I am saluting. I I unfortunate. This is how I feel about the oil market. Hmm. I I wanted to be an auto journalist, and so I learned a little bit about how.

• 20:44Justin Roczniak?

  The oil market, the the oil market.

• 20:46November Kelly?

  Do we still have that?

• 20:48Speaker 03

  I learned.

• 20:49Justin Roczniak?

  Ah, yeah. I have one question before we go to the next one.

• 20:54Speaker 03

  I learned a little bit about how gasoline makes it from the ground to my door. And now I'm like, oh, my God, this is the worst thing I've ever learned in my life. It's sort of like deciding to read the society, the spectacle at the age of 21 and being like, oh, fuck.

• 21:10Justin Roczniak?

  I have one question.

• 21:11Speaker 03

  Pandora's box.

• 21:12Liam McAnderson?

  Hmm.

• 21:13Justin Roczniak?

  Yes. Before we move to the next slide.

• 21:15Liam McAnderson?

  Yes.

• 21:15Justin Roczniak?

  It's about the Chyron. What the hell is this Northern Lion thing I keep hearing people talk about?

• 21:21Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, I know what this is.

• 21:21November Kelly?

  I like to, I like to put in the Chyrons and then not explain them. Um, just as a little bonus for the people who, uh, only watch on YouTube, but if you don't, the Chyron that I put in says Northern Lion now second worst cruise organizer of 2026. Um, this is a little bit of a cheap shot because, uh, a Canadian Twitch streamer called Northern Lion, who my wife likes a lot, um, along with seemingly every other trans woman in the world, tried to organize like a fan cruise, which then collapsed within, I would say a week, but no one got Hunter Virus.

• 21:58Justin Roczniak?

  Damn, it's a good thing we didn't follow through with those guys who contacted us.

• 22:01Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 22:02November Kelly?

  No, they just, they were asking everybody, huh? They, they got through with Northern Lion and they got to us.

• 22:09Liam McAnderson?

  And they were like, oh boy, you guys want to organize a cruise? And I, I will not be, I will not be on the Wiki of people who disappeared mysteriously at sea. I have made this very abundantly clear to my wife.

• 22:20November Kelly?

  If we organize a cruise, you would be on the Wiki of people who died ironically if that ship sank. How do you think I feel about getting on, getting on a plane for the first time in like 10 years? The getting on a plane for the first time since I started this podcast in less than a week.

• 22:36Liam McAnderson?

  They don't have a boat?

• 22:37November Kelly?

  The, I mean, not really, but mostly it's just like the easiest way to go. Anyway, the magical thinking is fucking getting to me. So, you know, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna be plummeting, plummeting down towards the ground being like, oh shit, I think I have Hunter Virus.

• 22:53Speaker 03

  I mean, if it, if it helps at all, though, but if you're gonna die in a plane crash, we all know that'll probably happen during takeoff and landing. You won't even really have that long to plummet to the ground.

• 23:04Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, I'm flying on a Max nine like I already flew on one this year. I'm gonna fly on one in a couple of weeks.

• 23:11Speaker 04

  Are you flying out?

• 23:12November Kelly?

  This is, this is, this is a Max eight, so I.

• 23:15Justin Roczniak?

  No, I had a, I had a moment of personal growth, which is I realized if I'm gonna transfer to O'Hare anyway, I can fly out of Philadelphia International Airport and not Newark.

• 23:28Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, you're, you're learning at age over you 33.

• 23:32Justin Roczniak?

  33. I'm still flying United.

• 23:35Liam McAnderson?

  I know you are.

• 23:36Speaker 03

  I'm still thinking I'm dying in a car crash because I feel like that would maximize the amount of irony for me.

• 23:42Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, that's a piece of news we should have put in.

• 23:46November Kelly?

  This will also be my first time flying since transition, right? It's one of the big reasons why I haven't. So it's gonna be really funny if my experience is I go to the airport for the first time in 10 years. A guy grabs my dick, misgenders me, I get Hunter virus and then the plane crashes.

• 24:06Liam McAnderson?

  I don't statistically, I think you'll be fine. I do look forward to the, the airport worker saying, of course, Ms. Kelly, right this way, Ms. Kelly. Just to screw with you.

• 24:16Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna have to go phone up the guys at Glasgow Airport and say, this is my friend November. You have to treat her very nicely.

• 24:28November Kelly?

  She's like a very nervous horse.

• 24:32Speaker 03

  I will say, UK airport security was much, much nicer to me than US airport security ever was. And I handed them like a seven pound bag of film. They had every reason to be like, oh, great, this bitch. It'll be fine. It'll be fine.

• 24:48Justin Roczniak?

  In other news.

• 24:52Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:58November Kelly?

  Yeah, so about it being fine, they're probably gonna, you know what else is gonna happen is I'm gonna go to the airport. I'm gonna, I'm gonna get my dick sort of groped and then they're gonna put me on the plane. I'm gonna get hantavirus, the plane is gonna crash and as it's crashing, I'm gonna be coughing up a lung being like, oh shit, they canceled my flight back because they ran out of jet fuel.

• 25:17Justin Roczniak?

  Yes, yes, yes. That's, you know, this is a total Delta Airlines victory because they refine their own fuel.

• 25:27Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, and they're also getting, they're also getting rid of a snack service. So go fuck yourself.

• 25:32Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, God, no, I don't fly Delta.

• 25:35Liam McAnderson?

  I don't fly Delta because I'm not a bitch.

• 25:37Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 25:39Liam McAnderson?

  If we have any listeners who fly Delta, fuck you.

• 25:41Speaker 03

  I used to fly Delta.

• 25:45November Kelly?

  Yeah, just says that the war is maybe, is maybe back on unless it's off, in which case it might still be on unless it's off. Maybe because at time of recording, at this point, I think Dev's gonna need to put a, not just a date stamp, but a timestamp. At time of recording, Trump has abandoned project freedom of trying to like, you know, escort ships through the strait, but is now attacking Iranian shipping through the strait. And meanwhile, the Iranians have bombed Fujairah, which is on the like eastern seaboard of the Emirates,

• 26:25November Kelly?

  which is kind of like shutting the back door on the strait. So it's, it's all going just wonderfully, I think. You know, either there's gonna be a deal and I will get back from Dublin, or there will not be a deal and I will have to apply for asylum in Ireland and live there and live out the rest of my days in exile there.

• 26:43Justin Roczniak?

  You're gonna have to get on a sailing ship.

• 26:47Liam McAnderson?

  If you ever listen to excursion around the bay.

• 26:49November Kelly?

  Pretty good.

• 26:51Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, it's also pretty good.

• 26:52Speaker 03

  You live on an island.

• 26:54Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 26:56Speaker 03

  You're on the island.

• 26:58Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, this is the island of the island.

• 27:01November Kelly?

  I mean, I live on an island with a rail link, right? Ireland is not an island with a rail link off of it unless we build the the tunnel, the Dublin tunnel, which we should do. I think that would be a good idea.

• 27:15Justin Roczniak?

  Donald.

• 27:16November Kelly?

  Yeah. Or the bell funnel.

• 27:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, apparently, according to President Trump, as of right now, the United States has, quote, "won" the war in Iran.

• 27:23Liam McAnderson?

  Weren't we just?

• 27:24November Kelly?

  Oh, that's good news, I guess.

• 27:25Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 27:26Speaker 03

  He said, "We're in good shape, and now we're doing well, and we have to get what we have to get."

• 27:32Justin Roczniak?

  Folks, gas is 85 cents again. Go to bed, grandpa!

• 27:38November Kelly?

  This is like the third, fourth time that the US has won the war. So, you know, that's pretty huge, I guess.

• 27:45Justin Roczniak?

  They said, he said, "You'll get tired of winning."

• 27:50Liam McAnderson?

  I am.

• 27:51November Kelly?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 27:55Justin Roczniak?

  Anyway, yeah, so...

• 27:57November Kelly?

  What we should just do is, like, we should just keep like a victory counter, like a running total, and we can just increment that anytime the US wins the war.

• 28:05Speaker 03

  Now, I would like it noted for the record, obviously, there are a lot of other effects that are way more pertinent, but I will note that the average American drives 40 miles a day at the average price of gas in Seattle.

• 28:17Justin Roczniak?

  What?

• 28:18Speaker 03

  Six dollars and 50 cents a gallon.

• 28:20Justin Roczniak?

  How do you drive 40 miles?

• 28:21November Kelly?

  The average American does what?

• 28:23Speaker 03

  That is the average, if you take million miles traveled and divide it by the American population, the average American drives 40 miles a day.

• 28:31November Kelly?

  What the fuck is wrong with you people? Why?

• 28:33Justin Roczniak?

  That's a lot of driving.

• 28:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, you don't have 65 miles to the shop.

• 28:37November Kelly?

  Roads that are pleasant to drive on.

• 28:38Justin Roczniak?

  No, yeah, but...

• 28:39Speaker 03

  No, it's hell!

• 28:40Justin Roczniak?

  But, Scooter, you have a really big truck, so it's like comfy.

• 28:46Liam McAnderson?

  I'll drive my Sierra 1500.

• 28:48Justin Roczniak?

  I drive a Civic to the shop.

• 28:50November Kelly?

  You drive 40 miles a day, but it's the distance from like the front wheels to the rear wheels?

• 28:57Liam McAnderson?

  Would you like a high mileage Alpha Giulia Quadrifoglio?

• 29:02Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 29:03Justin Roczniak?

  Ooh.

• 29:03Speaker 03

  Company car.

• 29:04Liam McAnderson?

  Company car.

• 29:06Speaker 03

  Crazy, crazy crossover with the Liam cinematic universe with the Transglisimo episode you were on, but the exact Viper I pointed out in the episode that I wanted is for sale currently.

• 29:16Liam McAnderson?

  Send me a link.

• 29:17Speaker 03

  I will.

• 29:18Liam McAnderson?

  Thank you.

• 29:19Justin Roczniak?

  Anyway, so.

• 29:21Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 29:22Speaker 03

  Go ahead. I'm done. I just wanted to tell Leo about the Viper.

• 29:26Justin Roczniak?

  I'm just, I guess, I guess, okay, we won the war, so let me just cross this out.

• 29:36Justin Roczniak?

  Gas is gonna be 85 cents a gallon again. We do not need to carry oil with truck by land. We're good. Okay. Right.

• 29:46Liam McAnderson?

  Well done us.

• 29:49Justin Roczniak?

  Thank you, President Trump.

• 29:53Justin Roczniak?

  I'm excited for term three. Speaking of term three.

• 29:57Speaker 03

  God.

• 29:57Justin Roczniak?

  That was the goddamn news.

• 30:04Speaker 03

  If I have to deal with this guy stealing another decade of my fucking life, for me, I'm going to do things that I can't say on a podcast.

• 30:12Liam McAnderson?

  Sure you can. Devil will bleep about.

• 30:14November Kelly?

  Oh, you want to be optimistic and make it a decade, huh?

• 30:19Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 30:21Justin Roczniak?

  So.

• 30:25Justin Roczniak?

  I think it'd be useful to start this program with some context, starting with the Cold War, right?

• 30:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, because I got booed really bad for the last time I talked about it, so.

• 30:37Justin Roczniak?

  So, basically, the United States and the Soviet Union

• 30:44Justin Roczniak?

  fought the Germans and defeated them and killed Hitler and so on and so forth.

• 30:49November Kelly?

  There was also, there was also one weird looking baby type guy involved, seen here on the left, which he wasn't.

• 30:58Liam McAnderson?

  Don't worry about him.

• 30:59November Kelly?

  But I think we can safely discount him and his contributions.

• 31:03Liam McAnderson?

  Can you cross him out?

• 31:05Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, no, ignore this guy. I don't want to deal with him.

• 31:08Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, let's talk about the siege of Gallipoli, fuckface.

• 31:11Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, some real American heroes here.

• 31:16November Kelly?

  Yeah, it's like, you know, one guy from New England, one guy from Georgia, which makes it a real sort of like heartwarming north-south friendship story.

• 31:26Justin Roczniak?

  Exactly, exactly, yeah. No, when we were in World War II, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin apparently got along like a house on fire. Like, they were, they were good buddies.

• 31:41November Kelly?

  And their house was named Poland.

• 31:47Justin Roczniak?

  I still think there's, there's a potential for a FDR-Stalin buddy comedy film. I think that would be a, you know, yeah.

• 31:57November Kelly?

  Death of Stalin prequel?

• 31:59Justin Roczniak?

  Yes, exactly, exactly. The life of Stalin.

• 32:05Justin Roczniak?

  But FDR, unfortunately, had, it was very, it was very unfortunate. He died only in his fourth term as president, so...

• 32:18Speaker 03

  Did he get hands on fire?

• 32:20Justin Roczniak?

  He, I don't know, he might have been vaxxed.

• 32:23Speaker 04

  He wasn't vaxxed.

• 32:25Liam McAnderson?

  No, that was kind of a big thing.

• 32:28November Kelly?

  His final fireside chat announcing that he was gonna go bird watching in Argentina.

• 32:37Justin Roczniak?

  So, after World War II,

• 32:41Justin Roczniak?

  we had to be really mad at the Soviet Union because of the godless communists and so on and so forth. And that remained the case for, I don't know, 40 years or so.

• 32:55Justin Roczniak?

  Which means we need, that's, that's the summary. Yeah, that's the, that's the, the short, short version.

• 33:04Justin Roczniak?

  Which means we have Strategic Air Command.

• 33:08Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, boy, these fucking weirdos.

• 33:15Justin Roczniak?

  We have developed nuclear weapons, which are

• 33:20Liam McAnderson?

  Good, actually.

• 33:22Justin Roczniak?

  Which are nuclear.

• 33:24November Kelly?

  Yeah, and because of the experience of the Second World War, you have an institutional memory of, you know, the Jeanine Pirro clip where she's like, bomb them, bomb them, keep bombing them.

• 33:36November Kelly?

  You just, you just have that irrespective of its utility and you, you gave those guys nukes, which was an interesting decision.

• 33:43Speaker 04

  Bombing, you win.

• 33:45Justin Roczniak?

  So you, you, you have this sort of,

• 33:51Justin Roczniak?

  theoretically, the nuclear weapons are under civilian control, but you know, they're, the people who are developing the strategies and tactics of how to use them, they're in Strategic Air Command. And they're constantly in a race with the Soviet Union, or their imagined version of the Soviet Union, to figure out, how do we, how do we get our special gift over there quicker than they can get theirs over to us? When International Friends Day finally comes.

• 34:30November Kelly?

  Yeah, well, so like back in the day, the, the, when they, the, the sort of only friends packages, when the only gifts that you had were like airdropped, right? It meant that you had to get a bunch of planes and fly them in really fast, either really high or really low to avoid the Soviet Union's best friends radar, their best friends defense system, so that you could give them their gifts really quickly.

• 34:58Justin Roczniak?

  Really quickly, yeah, I, this is a, this is a B-47.

• 35:03November Kelly?

  Have to give them gifts anytime, so like you have to have these guys ready to go sitting by the planes.

• 35:10Justin Roczniak?

  You had to be very conscientious.

• 35:13Speaker 04

  You had to have them by the planes, or as we found out last time, you had to have them in the air all the time.

• 35:21Liam McAnderson?

  In the air, right?

• 35:22November Kelly?

  Yep.

• 35:25Speaker 04

  You know, and there's various psychopaths that came up with those ideas.

• 35:30Speaker 04

  Like all of them, everyone in the Strategic Air Command was crazy.

• 35:36Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, I looked relaxed, but I'm actually incredibly tense at all times.

• 35:43November Kelly?

  Yeah, Curtis LeMay, the inventor of the Dennis system.

• 35:49Speaker 03

  Was it an absolutely terrible policy that, you know, spent millions of the millions and billions of dollars on a a complete waste of resources to destroy half the globe at a moment's notice? Yes, but it did also give us the Afro Vulcan, which is pretty, pretty good looking. I saw one of those the other day. It's really good looking airplane, so.

• 36:10November Kelly?

  I, I, I like it when we do it. I think we had a bit more panache and a bit more elan when we did it as opposed to you fucking pig fucking yokels. So, you know.

• 36:23November Kelly?

  Listen, we, we did it with a delta wing. So like it's good actually.

• 36:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, but the plane only had to fly like 15 miles.

• 36:32November Kelly?

  I, I, I, I missed you all too.

• 36:38Justin Roczniak?

  So, you know, this, this culminates in a policy of we need aircraft in the air with live nuclear weapons at all times. And we need to strap fucking rockets to the back of B-47s so they can get in the air more quickly. And, you know, all this kind of crap. And eventually, uh, we get better at rocketry thanks to.

• 37:03Liam McAnderson?

  Don't worry about it.

• 37:03Justin Roczniak?

  You know, a guy who may or may not have, you know, done some stuff in World War II. And we get the intercontinental ballistic missile, right?

• 37:15November Kelly?

  Yeah. What if we had like stuff like hypergolic fuels? What if we had, what if we honestly, one of the biggest like it like innovations here is truck. What if we had a big truck? What if we had a TEL that could do this?

• 37:27Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, yeah.

• 37:28November Kelly?

  And downstream of that is me playing snow run. So thank you for not ending the world and lessening me play with the civilian version of these.

• 37:37Justin Roczniak?

  Well, this is a weird one because usually you would think this would be the different one, but Russia had big truck. But I think it was only the, the United States. We never got big truck. We did have big train.

• 37:47November Kelly?

  No.

• 37:48Speaker 04

  We tried big train. We almost got big train in 91. Um, we tried big truck. It was too damn expensive because it was again psycho.

• 38:00Liam McAnderson?

  It's a cold war. We have a limited money for this bullshit.

• 38:04November Kelly?

  It was too expensive for the, yeah, it was too expensive for the American defense industrial.

• 38:12Speaker 04

  The entirety of the southwest and put silos like every five or six miles apart from each other and thousands of these and then have trucks move the missiles silo to silo like every few hours to keep the, the Soviets from knowing where they were. And we're talking like hundreds of missiles moving at the same time. And for some reason, the Carter administration deemed this too expensive.

• 38:43Liam McAnderson?

  It's just a ballet for assholes.

• 38:51November Kelly?

  The thing about the Soviet Union is that there was a lot of it and there was a lot of it with not a lot of people where you could just pop one of these things out of a peat bog and fire the missile that like destroys DC. So it's kind of easier. Plus also you have the engineering base for a lot of like heavy trucking and like battle boots and stuff. So.

• 39:11Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. So anyway, in short, uh, what is an intercontinental ballistic missile? It is a ballistic missile that goes between continents. So again, when international friends day comes, you can strap your thoughtful gift to your friend on another continent to the missile and send it to them very quickly. So it's a surprise before they send their again, very thoughtful and conscientious gift.

• 39:44Justin Roczniak?

  To you, right? Cause you want it to be a surprise, right? You want to really brighten up their day, you know?

• 39:51Liam McAnderson?

  So to speak.

• 39:51Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, brighten up their day by several millions of lumens.

• 39:58November Kelly?

  Yeah, I've bought flashlights off of Amazon too.

• 40:01Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, yeah. So, you know, this also, because we have intercontinental ballistic missiles, of course, you don't need to have, you know, all these B-52s or B-47s or whatever with atomic weapons in them flying around in the sky constantly, all the time to achieve your, you know,

• 40:24Justin Roczniak?

  deterrence, I guess.

• 40:26November Kelly?

  Yeah, put a, put a lot of good psychos out of work at the psycho.

• 40:29Justin Roczniak?

  I was about to say, yeah, I can't believe.

• 40:33Speaker 04

  You need to have all those presents ready.

• 40:38Justin Roczniak?

  Henry Kissinger put so many psychos out of work with mutually assured destruction.

• 40:47Speaker 04

  No, you just keep those planes around because of course you do. You gotta have extra presents.

• 40:52Liam McAnderson?

  Spend some money.

• 40:53Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 40:54Speaker 04

  In case the first present doesn't do enough to make them happy.

• 41:00November Kelly?

  Such a hoarding problem.

• 41:03Speaker 03

  My pet belief.

• 41:04Liam McAnderson?

  Talk to me about my flex server, yep.

• 41:06Speaker 04

  2700 is still around.

• 41:09Speaker 03

  My pet belief is that the, uh, the end of Strategic Air Command is actually what caused the serial killer boom in the seventies. It wasn't the lead in the paint. Cause all those guys just didn't have jobs anymore.

• 41:20November Kelly?

  Was wearing wing walkers.

• 41:22Justin Roczniak?

  They all got laid off by Kissinger.

• 41:27Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 41:29Justin Roczniak?

  So there's one particular intercontinental ballistic missile we're going to talk about today. I'm handing it off to Scooter now.

• 41:38Speaker 04

  We'll get there. Yeah. So ICBMs weren't a thing until the late 50s because up until the late 50s, we had bomber generals running the Strategic Air Command. I'd say again, psychos. Um, and they had a hard on for their planes because that's what they liked doing was flying. Um, so there was a command problem where they just didn't think that missiles would really be worth it at any time.

• 42:10Justin Roczniak?

  Nah, it sounds fake.

• 42:11November Kelly?

  There's no psycho on board. How do you know that it's gonna do what you want?

• 42:14Speaker 04

  Exactly. So in the late 50s-

• 42:17Justin Roczniak?

  I need to drain the humanity from someone to feel alive.

• 42:22Speaker 04

  So in the late 50s, they're kinda like-

• 42:24November Kelly?

  Doing the chesty puller thing of like looking at the missile and being like, "Where'd he put the guy with the cowboy hat?"

• 42:31Speaker 04

  On top, clearly. Uh, yeah, we'll get to that, sorry. Um, but... They kinda dragged their feet a lot harder than they should've. So in the late 50s, they find out the Russians are doing things, um, with their missiles, but they still think they're ahead. So they have one missile that's like the one, and it's called the Atlas. And it's kinda the... We know this works, it's better than the V2, and we can make it intercontinental, so we'll, we'll go with this. And they just focused on it because they thought they could get done the fastest.

• 43:12Speaker 04

  Um, it's the one on the left. The... So it was like a balloon-

• 43:17Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, she white?

• 43:18Speaker 04

  Tank. It was just like, if it didn't have its fuel in it, it would just collapse on itself if it was standing up, or if it was, um, put under any load. Um-

• 43:30Justin Roczniak?

  This was something that fascinated me from the Command and Control book, was just how thin the skin on these, uh, missiles are, that it was like, no, if they weren't fueled up, they'd just fall apart under their own weight.

• 43:42Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah, and this one was like, really bad. It was like the thickness of a dime was the outer skin. Um, but the big thing about it was-

• 43:51November Kelly?

  See, back in the day, you could just plow shares the shit out of stuff by just getting on base with a screwdriver and just like poking through this.

• 43:57Speaker 04

  Well-

• 44:00Justin Roczniak?

  The subject of today's episode.

• 44:03November Kelly?

  God damn, this is why I should learn to read a heads!

• 44:08Speaker 04

  Um, no accidents I know of had Atlas have that problem though. Um, Atlas just had a problem of exploding on the pad because it was

• 44:23Speaker 04

  new.

• 44:24November Kelly?

  It's a really thin tin cow for a big bomb.

• 44:27Speaker 04

  Yeah. So what's special about it or different about it, I should say, is that that the bottom there. So it has three motors and the outside two fall off in flight and the center one keeps running all the way up to Apogee. Well, not all the way, but close to the top of its flight plan and then it drops the reentry vehicle down for presents to be delivered to Moscow.

• 44:55Speaker 04

  But that was how we knew technology. We knew we could launch a missile and it the rocket motor stay ignited. We didn't know if one could ignite outside the atmosphere. So

• 45:10Speaker 04

  in 1955, the air force bid out a second contract for the Titan one and the Titan one was the, okay, if the Atlas fucks up in development, we'll have this on development as well. And it was a two-stage rocket or missile. I'm going to get yelled at because I'm going to air change those this whole time.

• 45:35Speaker 04

  It was a two-stage missile. So you would have your first take you up into the atmosphere and then the second take you through the outside the atmosphere portion to deliver the reentry vehicle, which means you could lift heavier loads. Cause you'd lose the second half of your missile.

• 45:51Liam McAnderson?

  Presents like Costco.

• 45:52Justin Roczniak?

  Oh yeah. Big, big, very, very.

• 45:54November Kelly?

  Presents.

• 45:54Liam McAnderson?

  More presents.

• 45:55Justin Roczniak?

  Very large.

• 45:56November Kelly?

  More presents plus the, the presents are like ideally moving even faster, you know.

• 46:01Liam McAnderson?

  We are going to be so good at surprises.

• 46:04Speaker 03

  My take on, my take on the whole rockets versus missiles distinction is that rockets are just missiles with better PR.

• 46:10Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 46:10Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. It's the tyranny of the Santa's sleigh equation.

• 46:20Justin Roczniak?

  Sounds like you're just using reindeer to bring up reindeer.

• 46:28Speaker 04

  So the, the big thing about Titan, the Titan one was the idea that it would be fueled in the silo so that it, the atlases were all quickly rushed into, into production and into delivery to where they were like, the one on the left is in a coffin above ground. So you get surprised with your present early, uh, the missile, the coffin and everything gets wiped off the face of the earth before you can send the missile back to deliver your present. Um, but the idea with Titan was you could fuel it on the stand and then raise

• 47:11Speaker 04

  it out of the silo and then launch it once it's out of the silo.

• 47:16Liam McAnderson?

  The advantage of this being that it's a bit hardened, I suppose?

• 47:19Speaker 04

  Very hardened. Yeah.

• 47:20Liam McAnderson?

  Okay.

• 47:21Speaker 04

  The difference being-

• 47:22November Kelly?

  If, if I want to throw my present at this in order to like stop you from using it to launch a present at me because of how much I love you, then, uh, you would have a harder time and maybe we'll both get presents.

• 47:36Speaker 04

  So I wanted to point out two things with the Titan one is one of the most famous shots of a rocket exploding, missile exploding, is that the Titan one at Cape Canaveral seen on the right, well, that's not Cape Canaveral, but the missile on the right is on the stand. It fires its, its motors, lifts off about two feet and then collapses back onto the pad because the motor shut down because one of the umbilicals for the electrical connections didn't detach. So it was like, oh shit, it's actually not time to go and shut down the motors. So-

• 48:14November Kelly?

  Yeah. This is kind of what it's like when I like try to get out of a chair.

• 48:17Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah. Listen, I- Making a creaky noise, just a really loud, ugh.

• 48:25Justin Roczniak?

  I've started, I've started going to talk therapy and you know, I've been working on executive dysfunction. So I understand this missile's problem.

• 48:35Speaker 04

  So I also wanted to point out, so they, they took these and they put them in underground hardened silos, but because they were, uh-

• 48:49Speaker 04

  Liquid oxygen fueled, they were like your standard NASA rocket, for those of you that don't know anything about this. It's like, like your NASA style rockets where it's liquidite, oxygen and fuel. So you had to fuel it on the pad in the silo and then lift it out, which took about 15 minutes. You couldn't store the propellants onboard the missile.

• 49:14Speaker 04

  So they would leave it in the hole, raise it and then fire it after it was fueled. So it was on an elevator, right? The

• 49:22Justin Roczniak?

  Ah, right.

• 49:23Speaker 04

  Problem with that is that had to lift the fully fueled missile out of the hole to launch it.

• 49:30Liam McAnderson?

  Should have built a missile escalator.

• 49:33Speaker 04

  On the first attempt to test that elevator, they bring it, they fuel it, bring it out of the silo. Everything's great. They go to put it back down and the brakes fail. So the missile goes careening back down to the bottom of the silo. It hits the bottom.

• 49:51November Kelly?

  Kind of like me trying to climb a flight of stairs.

• 49:53Speaker 03

  You'd think, you'd think during Operation Paperclip, we would have, maybe would have grabbed a couple of the German elevator guys.

• 49:58Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 50:03Justin Roczniak?

  Otis would be ashamed.

• 50:05Speaker 03

  Look, I'm just saying.

• 50:06Liam McAnderson?

  This is very basic.

• 50:13Speaker 04

  So it, it blows up, obviously it blows up and it launches the service tower there on the left, a hundred feet in the air. Out of the silo and that goes right back down into the hole, I'm told. So like self-contained.

• 50:28Liam McAnderson?

  Does it get one of those hole-in-one mini golf celebrations and you get a free, get a free round?

• 50:33November Kelly?

  Technically winning a game of kabat toss with a nuclear weapon.

• 50:39Justin Roczniak?

  Right? That would be an entertaining subject for a, you know, a bowling alley, you know, strike animation.

• 50:52Speaker 04

  So I want-

• 50:52November Kelly?

  Do you think the service tower getting into the air was like sort of having the like anglerfish dying on the beach, I might never have known thing of being the only one of its kind to see from above a hundred meters in the air?

• 51:06Justin Roczniak?

  I think if I had watched that happen in live, like if I were there on the site watching it, um, I would have burst out into so much hysterics, I would have been fired on the spot.

• 51:17Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 51:18November Kelly?

  You would have- You should have sent a podcaster.

• 51:20Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 51:20Speaker 04

  All of these tests, I would have been the same way. We have even more to talk about. So, um, I just wanted to point out, if you've driven down I-75 through Georgia in Cordial, you have seen one of these. There's one sitting to the right of the highway, uh, because the local Rotary Club wanted one in the sixties and they just got one.

• 51:43Justin Roczniak?

  That's funny.

• 51:44Liam McAnderson?

  Sure, man.

• 51:45Speaker 04

  I'm mad. I didn't get one, but the fucking town of Cordial, Georgia got one. It's not fair.

• 51:51Justin Roczniak?

  What, what is, what is-

• 51:52Liam McAnderson?

  Well, there's your problem, Field Trip. We're gonna go steal a missile, boys.

• 51:57Speaker 03

  I love the idea of a nuclear armed Rotary Club.

• 52:02November Kelly?

  If you had told me a couple of years ago, or even a couple of minutes ago, that we would be plotting an expedition into Georgia to steal a town's monument and take it down, I would not have guessed it would be a nuclear missile.

• 52:16Liam McAnderson?

  Putting up statues of Sherman to just, to just like hold this L engraved beautiful script.

• 52:24Justin Roczniak?

  What is a crystal with a K and is it good?

• 52:27Speaker 04

  White Castle and no.

• 52:28November Kelly?

  It looks like it's in the Supreme font. I, William T. Sherman would have loved nuclear weapons. I think we can be clear about that. He would have lit one of those off as soon as look at one.

• 52:38Speaker 04

  The clouds would have risen again in a mushroom cloud.

• 52:42Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, it would have risen several thousand feet in the air and come down as a fine powder. Yes.

• 52:49Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, we should have, we should have nuked Lee.

• 52:52November Kelly?

  I think it's, I think it's important to articulate William T Sherman within a grand American military tradition of psychos. And yeah, he would have done it.

• 53:02Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. Uh, Savannah would have been rendered into, uh, how do I say? Fine mist.

• 53:12Speaker 04

  All right. So the Titan one was rushed and it only lasted in its alert life for three years. They build a bunch of these silos, put the missiles in them and from 1962 to 1965, they worked. They sat there. Uh, why so short, you say? Well, that's because of next slide, please.

• 53:37Speaker 04

  During development of the Titan one, like early in development, the designers were like, well,

• 53:47Speaker 04

  why don't we just use a propellant that can be stored? And then we can put it in the silo and just launch it from the silo if it'll survive.

• 54:00Liam McAnderson?

  I don't.

• 54:00November Kelly?

  What if we had a shelf-stable missile?

• 54:03Speaker 04

  See, exactly.

• 54:03Liam McAnderson?

  Okay, that actually is really helpful for me. Thank you.

• 54:06Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

• 54:07Justin Roczniak?

  From, we go from coffee can to coffee can full of bacon fat.

• 54:13Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 54:15Liam McAnderson?

  Are we not supposed to be pouring that down the drain?

• 54:18Justin Roczniak?

  No, you, you, you like a good southern cook. You have a coffee can.

• 54:23Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah. This is my, this is my nuclear missile runs on grease fires.

• 54:27Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 54:29Justin Roczniak?

  That's where you put the bacon fat and you store it on top of the stove.

• 54:33Speaker 03

  Excuse me, in transsexual households, we use a pickle jar.

• 54:36November Kelly?

  Average Moscow civilian year 1965 being like, what smells so good? Atomized.

• 54:45Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, it's just peppers and onions.

• 54:50Speaker 04

  So we get the Titan II, the LGM 25C, which is what the development, the deployed version was. It went in service in 1962. Why do you say that this went in service?

• 55:05November Kelly?

  Does that display behind it call it a sentinel of freedom? Jesus fucking Christ.

• 55:10Liam McAnderson?

  Probably, yeah.

• 55:12Speaker 03

  Almost certainly.

• 55:12Speaker 04

  Yeah. Welcome to the National Museum of the United States Air Force.

• 55:16Speaker 03

  Oh shit, that is the missile I've seen.

• 55:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 55:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's in Dayton, Ohio.

• 55:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 55:22November Kelly?

  Okay, okay. It is time for me to go to the Psycho Museum.

• 55:26Speaker 03

  Oh, it's horrifying. I love it.

• 55:30Speaker 04

  I used to volunteer there. I don't think I'll be allowed back.

• 55:35November Kelly?

  Victoria knows this. I love a machine of evil, right? Like, because she has seen me at the National Museum of Flight, in fact, has posted a photo of me at the National Museum of Flight with an Avro Vulcan, holding a plushy Avro Vulcan. So.

• 55:53Speaker 04

  That's adorable.

• 55:55Speaker 03

  It was really cute.

• 55:55November Kelly?

  I'm willing as a commit.

• 55:58Speaker 03

  It was so funny because like Nova and I were both like, oh my God, this is the sexiest killing machine ever devised. And my wife is looking at me like, you're both sociopaths. What the hell is wrong with you?

• 56:15November Kelly?

  You either have the Psycho gene or you don't, right? Like, my wife notably doesn't, and so she was there with Antichony as well, being like, what the fuck are you talking about? Why are you looking at this machine whose job was to deliver presents to Moscow really quickly, under the Russian air defense system, and saying, gender, or this is me, actually, or real, or things of that nature?

• 56:40Justin Roczniak?

  Because you are conscientious person who wants to deliver thoughtful gifts to your friends very quickly.

• 56:50November Kelly?

  Yeah, that's so true.

• 56:53Speaker 03

  Anyway, you would, you would, okay, just as a quick sidebar, the, the Museum of the United States Air Force is like, one of those museums that is completely unaware of how evil it is. It's kind of like, it's another level from even like the British museums in London, where they're, instead of being like, yeah, we got this stuff, what about it? They're like, check it out, this is boxcar, this plane killed 80,000 people. This shit's so cool, with like bald eagles on the infographic, and you're just like, oh my god.

• 57:27Liam McAnderson?

  They got American flag truck nuts hanging off boxcar.

• 57:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, it's insane.

• 57:33Liam McAnderson?

  Courtesy of the red, white, and blue just blaring left and right.

• 57:38Speaker 03

  I went there when I was like 15 years old, and this is before I had developed any ideology, and I was still fully a homeschooled altar boy. And I was like, this seems a little off to me.

• 57:50Speaker 04

  That's before they made the place woke.

• 57:51November Kelly?

  I just have a vision, right? I have a vision of the Museum of the Air Force, where you go in and it just has in 14-foot-high engraved letters on a face of granite, "Bombing is an effective means of effectuating political change on the ground," and no one has done anything about that for years.

• 58:12Speaker 03

  Oh god, yeah.

• 58:13November Kelly?

  This is what USAF officers actually believe.

• 58:16Speaker 03

  Can we do a, can we do like a live show there, you think?

• 58:20Speaker 04

  You can rent the space.

• 58:22Speaker 03

  There we go.

• 58:23Speaker 04

  The foundation is willing to do anything for money.

• 58:29Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, we can do anything for money.

• 58:33November Kelly?

  We gotta do the National Army Museum in, in, in London, because that's one of the only military museums in London that's like actively chatted. We can do a, um, a live show under the Lynx helicopter that's like balanced and looks like it's gonna drop onto all of us like a hitman.

• 58:48Liam McAnderson?

  Ooh. I wanna do- One at the Virginia Science Museum under the SR71 they have hanging there precarious.

• 58:56Speaker 03

  Actually, this is a great time to ask both Liam and Roz, you're coming with me to the Freedom 250 Grand Prix of Washington DC? To do, to do a live show there.

• 59:06Liam McAnderson?

  Unfortunately, probably.

• 59:08Justin Roczniak?

  To the Freedom 250 Grand Prix.

• 59:10November Kelly?

  You can get a plushy SR71.

• 59:12Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 59:13November Kelly?

  And I am, I am.

• 59:14Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 59:14November Kelly?

  Purchasing.

• 59:16Liam McAnderson?

  You have a job to do. Hey, hey, get off your back.

• 59:22November Kelly?

  Liam?

• 59:23Liam McAnderson?

  Yes, yes, ma'am.

• 59:25November Kelly?

  Victoria told me that when you were on Trangolismo, you were listening to the baseball game at the same time.

• 59:31Speaker 03

  No, no, no.

• 59:34Speaker 03

  It was a basketball game and it was our own bonus episode.

• 59:37Justin Roczniak?

  The Sixers are having a hell of a run right now.

• 59:40Liam McAnderson?

  They are.

• 59:41November Kelly?

  Okay, okay, well, I'm still buying this SR71.

• 59:45Liam McAnderson?

  No, that's fine. Do what you gotta do. There's like five people on this podcast. It doesn't matter. We have failsafes. We can deliver gifts to anyone at any time. Look at Scooter's face right now.

• 59:53Speaker 04

  We have 29 more slides.

• 59:58Liam McAnderson?

  Fuck and you, bud.

• 1:00:01Speaker 04

  Mine's having like six.

• 1:00:06Liam McAnderson?

  I got all night. Sixers aren't on until seven. I'm gonna watch it on you. I don't give a fuck.

• 1:00:13November Kelly?

  I think it's probably fine for me to spend as long as I want recording this.

• 1:00:18Speaker 04

  Okay, so the Titan 1 was used to test the Titan 2 silo launch concept. So they stuck one in a silo, launched it, didn't destroy the fucker, so they decided to build Titan 2. It went in service in 1962 alongside the Titan 1 because we're psychopaths and we had to have as many missiles as possible in the Cold War.

• 1:00:40Liam McAnderson?

  I don't, I don't understand this logic. It's just like we had this, we had this ready to go, but we just like, just more is more.

• 1:00:47Justin Roczniak?

  We cannot allow a bomber gap.

• 1:00:49Speaker 04

  Right, yeah, we couldn't have a missile gap.

• 1:00:51Liam McAnderson?

  Henry Kissinger's Roz?

• 1:00:53Speaker 04

  Post, post 1957, we couldn't have a missile gap, so why not have more? The only, the only thing that stopped it was Robert McNamara.

• 1:01:04Speaker 04

  He, he came in, said it's just too damn expensive to have both these online.

• 1:01:08Liam McAnderson?

  It's the Cold War. How is anything too expensive?

• 1:01:11Speaker 04

  Again, it's mind boggling when you read about this shit and you hear the word too expensive and not enough in the same sentence.

• 1:01:20Speaker 04

  But whatever, they took, they took the Titan ones offline because they could have fifty-four of these and then all of the Minuteman missiles. And when I say all, I mean a thousand of, uh, which are solid fuel, um, up in the north. And then they put these out in the desert to, for the, not the desert, but the central US. Because we'll talk about later, everything had to be kept the same temperature, liquid fuel.

• 1:01:47Speaker 04

  Uh, this was the largest missile we ever fielded at nine megatons with the W-53 Warhead. Uh, last episode, we talked about the, the, uh, B-53 Warhead, which was the one that went down Cumberland, Maryland. And the sheriff stood on to look at the wreck site.

• 1:02:07Speaker 04

  Even though the Titan II was liquid fueled and harder to operate. It was kept online because it was a third of the megatonnage of all of our weapons, all of our missile systems. So it was all, it was fifty-four missiles out of a thousand, but it was a third of the power we had.

• 1:02:32Speaker 04

  Funny story, when they were building it, they couldn't figure out how to weld the aluminum. So they came up with a process in Baltimore and brought it over to Colorado where they were building these.

• 1:02:45Speaker 04

  It's one of those, I really think the bug company should have been involved because they've learned to weld anything. But they figured out how to do the impossible to weld aluminum.

• 1:02:56Justin Roczniak?

  Aluminum is very annoying to weld, having done it unsuccessfully two or three times.

• 1:03:02Speaker 04

  Absolutely. And a weird aluminum is even harder.

• 1:03:07November Kelly?

  Well, no pressure though, because it's only on a, on a missile.

• 1:03:10Justin Roczniak?

  Only an intercontinental ballistic missile with a nine megaton Warhead on top. Yeah.

• 1:03:15Speaker 04

  And hypergolic fuels holding it all together. Yeah. So another thing about it is it has an AC spark plug, internal guidance system. So General Motors put OnStar on it.

• 1:03:32Speaker 03

  This, this, this reminds me of when my girlfriend got one of those cube max. And I found out, one of the last like water cooled ones and I, she cracked it open and it had a Delphi parts sticker on it. I was like, what the fuck?

• 1:03:49Speaker 04

  Well, Delco built the second guidance system, but you know what's crazy is the one they put in 1978 was also the guidance system used on the 747.

• 1:04:02Justin Roczniak?

  Wow.

• 1:04:03Liam McAnderson?

  What?

• 1:04:03Speaker 04

  Yep. The only difference between the two is you would leave the one on the missile on all the time. Where obviously the one on the aircraft would get turned off, but it was the same thing.

• 1:04:16Justin Roczniak?

  You know, I mean, if it works, it works.

• 1:04:19Liam McAnderson?

  If it works.

• 1:04:20Speaker 04

  Exactly. Yeah.

• 1:04:21Speaker 03

  Does this, does this, does this mean that the Soviets were justified for Korean Airlines flight 007?

• 1:04:30Liam McAnderson?

  What?

• 1:04:31Justin Roczniak?

  Sure.

• 1:04:32Speaker 03

  That is not a serious viewpoint. Don't yell at me.

• 1:04:36November Kelly?

  It's a take we could start having for fun, I'm sure.

• 1:04:39Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, cause James Bond was on it.

• 1:04:42Liam McAnderson?

  That's legitimate military target.

• 1:04:45Speaker 04

  So it had a LR 87 stage one motor, which is that two double bell one that we'll see more of. And then LR 91 stage two motor, which all Titans had, just a little fun fact. And also it had three target, you could target it for three locations and three locations only.

• 1:05:06Speaker 04

  So you had three buttons and you get told by Strategic Air Command, which push in the, in the silo. And that's it. You just let it roll after that. So.

• 1:05:16Speaker 03

  What if you have a friend in a fourth location?

• 1:05:19Speaker 04

  Uh, fuck them.

• 1:05:20Speaker 03

  That needs a gift.

• 1:05:20November Kelly?

  Don't worry about it.

• 1:05:21Justin Roczniak?

  They're gonna be left out.

• 1:05:23Liam McAnderson?

  Unfortunately.

• 1:05:24Speaker 04

  Sucks to suck. No presents for you.

• 1:05:26Justin Roczniak?

  Hopefully one of your compatriots in a different silo will send them a present.

• 1:05:32November Kelly?

  Yeah, you have to have pre-planned all of your gifting, which again, as we know is a real problem.

• 1:05:37Justin Roczniak?

  People were really thoughtful back then. I mean, this is a lot of work.

• 1:05:41Speaker 03

  This would make Christmas with a polycule so much easier.

• 1:05:49November Kelly?

  I mean, I mean, like, fuck giving gifts, like, put me in the warhead of one of these, I could get to the polycule way faster, you know?

• 1:05:57Liam McAnderson?

  I'm here!

• 1:06:00November Kelly?

  In some ways, I feel more relaxed about the prospect of getting gravity's rainbowed to the polycule than I do flying commercial.

• 1:06:08Liam McAnderson?

  That makes sense, that, yeah.

• 1:06:12Speaker 03

  Because we don't have high-speed rail and can't take trains to lesbians in other states, we've had to develop an interstate ballistic missile system to launch Twitter lesbians at each other.

• 1:06:25Speaker 04

  Next slide, please.

• 1:06:28Speaker 04

  So you've seen this before. Uh, this is probably the most famous missile, in my opinion. Uh, it's been on Fallout 76, War Games, the movie with Matthew Broderick where scary shit happens. Uh, Half-Life, in, I think all, all of the Half-Lifes, they just, the model for it's really shitty in the first one.

• 1:06:55Speaker 04

  You've got Gemini Titan, which is what sent astronauts into orbit to do the tests for the Apollo program.

• 1:07:03Speaker 04

  And my favorite is Venture Brothers. They use the, they use the model for what goes down must come up. Rusty rides it. Yes.

• 1:07:15November Kelly?

  God, I love, I love that show.

• 1:07:16Speaker 04

  I was making this, I was making this presentation, and make, and this slide was made. And I, I was watching the episode, and had, had the like Leonardo DiCaprio like, moment.

• 1:07:35Speaker 04

  So I had to change everything in this slide to fit it, and also I think that screen cap's illegal, but don't ask. So, but, yeah, it, it's been in everything, and I'm sure I'm missing 20 different uses, so.

• 1:07:52November Kelly?

  Yeah, catch me bouncing around the divide in New Vegas lonesome roads, uh, lighting off warheads off of this thing.

• 1:07:59Speaker 04

  That's one I missed. They use the same model. That's, it's that one.

• 1:08:03November Kelly?

  Yeah, of course they do because of, because of the economy or whatever.

• 1:08:06Justin Roczniak?

  It's all Titan twos. It's, it's, uh, forever. Uh, it's the best rocket. We, we made, we made it.

• 1:08:13Liam McAnderson?

  We don't need to make it again.

• 1:08:14Justin Roczniak?

  Fuck off. It's a Titan two.

• 1:08:17Speaker 04

  Next slide.

• 1:08:22Speaker 04

  So how does it get in the air? And Roz, you might have to help me with how this works because I didn't do chemistry. I didn't like chemistry. Uh, it has stable liquid fuel instead of solid fuel, which is what the Minuteman uses is, or, um, cryogenic liquid fuel, which is what the Titan one, the Atlas used. Uh, it used aerazine 50 as a fuel and then unsymmetrical dimethylhydrogen, hydraz- uh, god.

• 1:08:55Justin Roczniak?

  Dimethylhydrazine.

• 1:08:57Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 1:08:58November Kelly?

  Ooh, okay. What if hydrazine was worse?

• 1:09:00Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, let's add, let's add two methyls to the hydrazine, obviously, right?

• 1:09:07Speaker 04

  That's, sorry. That's what aerazine 50 was, was hydrogen and dimethylhydrazine. The oxidizer.

• 1:09:16Liam McAnderson?

  Better, better. Hell yeah. I can't wait to deliver my petrochemical gifts to my.

• 1:09:22Speaker 03

  I was, I was gonna say the, the cloud.

• 1:09:24Speaker 04

  Not to put drapes well on this slide.

• 1:09:28Speaker 03

  The, the launch cloud there looks delightfully yummy to breathe in.

• 1:09:32Justin Roczniak?

  Well, yeah.

• 1:09:33Speaker 03

  Bright orange smoke.

• 1:09:34Liam McAnderson?

  That is turning you to Swiss cheese. Your lugs are gonna look bad.

• 1:09:43Speaker 03

  Three seconds of that is equivalent to a lifetime of, uh, American spirit turquoise.

• 1:09:51Liam McAnderson?

  I smoke red. Yeah, well, I smoke stable liquid fuel.

• 1:09:57November Kelly?

  Smoking, smoking Marlboro orange.

• 1:10:01November Kelly?

  Smoking Marlboro red fuming.

• 1:10:03Speaker 04

  The orange comes from the nitrogen tex- tex- tetra.

• 1:10:07Justin Roczniak?

  Tetroxide.

• 1:10:08Speaker 04

  That one.

• 1:10:08Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, so this is.

• 1:10:10Speaker 04

  Oxidizer.

• 1:10:10Justin Roczniak?

  I guess the, the, the idea here is, okay, so combustion, right? As a concept, um, you are taking some kind of organic molecule that you might find in, I don't know, uh, wood or, you know, in like, uh, what's another thing that burns? Cold.

• 1:10:33November Kelly?

  Toast.

• 1:10:34Justin Roczniak?

  Toast, yes.

• 1:10:37November Kelly?

  You have a stroke.

• 1:10:38Justin Roczniak?

  And it has, um, it combustion is when it, with the presence of heat, it reacts with something with oxygen, right? Such as the air, right? And it produces CO2, carbon dioxide, and it produces H2O, which is water, right? So when I'm, you know, and also produces, of course, energy. Now, um, so when I have a, a rocket, a missile, right? I, I want to do toast, but a lot more, right? So I, I need.

• 1:11:21Justin Roczniak?

  I, my, my bread, my bread is the fuel, right? You know, in this case, um, I don't know what hydrogen is offhand, something terrible, I'm sure.

• 1:11:33Speaker 04

  Horrible, yeah.

• 1:11:34Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. But then I have, you know, the air is not enough. Number one, because it's a rocket, it's going outside the atmosphere. But number two, even then, it's still not enough. So I have nitrogen tetroxide, which.

• 1:11:51Justin Roczniak?

  I I I don't, I didn't look this up, but I'm going to assume that's a nitrogen with four oxygens on it, with some kind of horrible bond on it, really difficult to achieve chemically. But that's like, you know, that, that as an oxidizer, that's way more efficient than just oxygen. This is something, this is a molecule that wants to die.

• 1:12:18Justin Roczniak?

  And, and if given the opportunity in the presence of, you know, your, your horrible fuel, it will go off with a bang. So, yeah.

• 1:12:30November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:31Speaker 04

  Wonderful.

• 1:12:31November Kelly?

  This is, this is a hypergolic fuel. You don't need to ignite it. It goes off spontaneously in contact.

• 1:12:37Speaker 04

  Yep. But the fuel is explosive at 2% concentration. So it's like.

• 1:12:45November Kelly?

  That's not a lot of percent.

• 1:12:47Speaker 04

  Very spicy shit.

• 1:12:48November Kelly?

  In fact, I would say that's the second, second smallest number of percent there is.

• 1:12:53Justin Roczniak?

  That's okay, as long as you have more than that.

• 1:13:01Justin Roczniak?

  So. Just displace the oxygen, you're fine.

• 1:13:04Speaker 04

  So there's in the first stage, 163,000 pounds of aerosine 50 and 85,000 pounds of the oxidizer, because I can actually say that. And then the second stage has 28,000 pounds of fuel and 49,000 pounds of oxidizer. That's straight from the book. I've checked it twice. If that's a error, my bad.

• 1:13:30Liam McAnderson?

  No, that would be the book's bad.

• 1:13:31November Kelly?

  Oh, here's a, here's a fun fact about hydrazine I just discovered.

• 1:13:34Liam McAnderson?

  Don't like this.

• 1:13:35November Kelly?

  So, so the, the recommended exposure limit is 0.03 parts per million in two hours. The odor threshold is 3.7. So.

• 1:13:48Justin Roczniak?

  Ooh, tasty. Spicy. Actually, not spicy.

• 1:13:53November Kelly?

  Hmm. No.

• 1:13:54Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, not spicy at all, yeah.

• 1:13:56November Kelly?

  Then.

• 1:13:57Speaker 03

  What?

• 1:13:59Justin Roczniak?

  What? Yeah, you've already, yeah, you've already died.

• 1:14:04Speaker 03

  What is the Scoville rating of hydrozine?

• 1:14:09Justin Roczniak?

  Doesn't he even have the decency to clear the sinuses before you die horribly?

• 1:14:14November Kelly?

  Keeping, keeping a small bottle of hydrozine in my purse in case the food doesn't come out sizzling enough.

• 1:14:20Liam McAnderson?

  I like to put it on my fajitas.

• 1:14:22Speaker 03

  That's, that's the, that's what they call the.

• 1:14:24November Kelly?

  When the, when the fajitas come out hypogolic and it's just a photo of you being blasted against a wall.

• 1:14:34Speaker 03

  You're familiar, you're all familiar with buffalo wings, correct?

• 1:14:37Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, of course.

• 1:14:38Speaker 03

  The hydrozine special is the, that's the love canal wings.

• 1:14:43Justin Roczniak?

  That's why, that's why the Mexican restaurant is called Me Pueblo number three, because number one and number two were blown up by hydrogen explosions.

• 1:14:53Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. If you're ever in, if you're ever in, uh, where the fuck were we? Springfield, Kentucky?

• 1:14:58Justin Roczniak?

  Springfield, Kentucky, yes.

• 1:15:00Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, highly recommend Me Pueblo number three.

• 1:15:03Justin Roczniak?

  Well, howdy, Sheriff.

• 1:15:05Liam McAnderson?

  Howdy, Sheriff. We don't need to tell that story out there. Keep it moving.

• 1:15:12Speaker 04

  So they did test launches at Cape Canaveral, uh, and then they moved them to Vandenberg Air Force Base for the integrating with the silo. Fun fact, in 1976, they launched the last one of these because they had run out of missiles.

• 1:15:29Speaker 03

  How?

• 1:15:30Speaker 04

  They were all, the last remaining were part of the recycling program and in the silos, they stopped making them in the sixties. And stop making the parts in the 70s.

• 1:15:41Justin Roczniak?

  Hmm.

• 1:15:42Speaker 04

  This becomes important later.

• 1:15:45Justin Roczniak?

  This is a, this is a parts missile, actually.

• 1:15:48Speaker 04

  So I, I included this slide just to give us an overview of the silo.

• 1:15:53Liam McAnderson?

  Project missile ran when parked.

• 1:15:59Justin Roczniak?

  This was something I didn't really understand from the, uh, command and control book was the actual layout of the missile silo.

• 1:16:07Speaker 04

  Does it make a little more sense now?

• 1:16:09Justin Roczniak?

  Uh, yeah, well, I haven't, I haven't had time to read all the, the labels. Well, there's a lot of, there's a lot of leaders on here.

• 1:16:17Speaker 04

  It's fair, but the big thing, and we'll see it in other slides, is you have a doorway in the middle that goes downstairs and then goes to a split hallway with two blast doors. Go the right, you go into the missile silo. Go the left, you go into the command center.

• 1:16:35November Kelly?

  I love to go into the rejuvenation area.

• 1:16:37Speaker 03

  The only thing I can think of looking at this diagram is under most US zoning laws, this kind of mixed use walkable or.

• 1:16:45Speaker 03

  This is illegal.

• 1:16:46November Kelly?

  It's, it's such a problem that like bunkers is like such a pain in the dick to maintain. Like man was not meant to live under the ground, not least because like, do you know how to, how like a toilet works? Um, for one thing, like, because I would love to live in a bunker. I would love to live beneath the ground, you know? And we decommissioned a bunch of these.

• 1:17:07Speaker 03

  This is, this looks like such a cool, like hangout spot. Like movie night with the girls here would just get different.

• 1:17:13November Kelly?

  You could start, you could stuff this thing with a polycule and like, it would be cool.

• 1:17:18Liam McAnderson?

  You could stuff this thing with a polycule is just a hell of a sentence.

• 1:17:22Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:23November Kelly?

  I said stuff.

• 1:17:27Justin Roczniak?

  Donald Fagan recorded a track about this. Yeah.

• 1:17:32Liam McAnderson?

  I like the idea of polycule staff.

• 1:17:34November Kelly?

  The polycule, the polycule moves in and we have to add one extra label that says chore wheel.

• 1:17:42Liam McAnderson?

  Where's the plaque server go?

• 1:17:44November Kelly?

  Oh my God, Luna. I told you it was your turn to clean the fucking rejuvenation area.

• 1:17:51Justin Roczniak?

  Who has custody of the keys? That's the real question, right?

• 1:17:55Speaker 03

  The Dobbs, obviously.

• 1:17:57November Kelly?

  The one top, yeah.

• 1:17:59Justin Roczniak?

  The two, the two people who hate each other the most, that means.

• 1:18:03Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:18:05Justin Roczniak?

  Actually, that might not work. They might, you know, they might mutually decide to end it all.

• 1:18:10Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, fuck this, I'm out. That's what you get for not taking out the trash, baby.

• 1:18:16November Kelly?

  The good news is that there's an escape hatch, which I think really lends itself to any habitation. I love when, I love when my house has one of those.

• 1:18:24Justin Roczniak?

  All right, that becomes relevant later, yeah.

• 1:18:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:18:27November Kelly?

  What? Oh, oh, oh, oh.

• 1:18:29Speaker 04

  Very relevant, yeah.

• 1:18:31November Kelly?

  Does the rejuvenation area become relevant later?

• 1:18:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:18:33Justin Roczniak?

  I'm still not seeing this rejuvenation area.

• 1:18:37November Kelly?

  Uh, so it's, if, if you go dead center, uh, beneath platform two, decontamination shower, decontamination area, rejuvenation area. So it's, it's like, it's like laboratory, like you get out, you decontaminate and then you rejuvenate.

• 1:18:49Justin Roczniak?

  You rejuvenate, okay, yeah. No, I think this was a mod for The Sims.

• 1:18:57November Kelly?

  I would have played the fuck out of The Sims, uh, like Titan silo DLC.

• 1:19:03Speaker 04

  So I have three friends, uh, okay, maybe not friends, but three people I know.

• 1:19:09Justin Roczniak?

  Wow, okay. Friends, my god.

• 1:19:14Speaker 04

  But I know, I know three people that have silos. One has a Titan one, one has an Atlas and one has a Titan two command center.

• 1:19:22Speaker 03

  Will one of them let, will one of them let me get into take pictures?

• 1:19:25Speaker 04

  I'm sure I could get the non-hyper Republican one to do it.

• 1:19:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's fair. That'd probably be a problem for me.

• 1:19:32November Kelly?

  Republican one, sell me the silo?

• 1:19:35Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah, the one, the ones for sale for like 900,000, so podcasting, podcasting silo.

• 1:19:43November Kelly?

  Though, so.

• 1:19:44Speaker 03

  Can you imagine the audio quality though?

• 1:19:46Speaker 04

  For five years, so I mean, they might take lower offers.

• 1:19:49Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:50November Kelly?

  I, I have, I have, um. On me like 25 pounds.

• 1:19:55Speaker 03

  Well, we know that you have 25 less dollars because you bought the plushy SR71 earlier in the episode, so. That would have been the difference.

• 1:20:03November Kelly?

  This is gonna financially ruin me.

• 1:20:06November Kelly?

  Are you aware that on aliexpress.com you can buy a 120 centimeter tall Dongfeng 5C and ICBM plushie?

• 1:20:16Justin Roczniak?

  Ooh.

• 1:20:18Speaker 03

  I need you to drop the link for that right now.

• 1:20:23November Kelly?

  You get a choice of a Dongfeng 61 or a Dongfeng 5C, so like.

• 1:20:27Speaker 03

  I don't know my Dongfengs that well, so this doesn't really help me very much. Is this what it sounds like when I talk about cars?

• 1:20:34Justin Roczniak?

  Here is the thing I am looking at. Here in the silo, right, we have the missile. Then we have the diesel fuel tank right next to the missile.

• 1:20:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, oh my god.

• 1:20:45Justin Roczniak?

  I don't know what happens when that launches. And then behind it.

• 1:20:48Speaker 04

  It doesn't matter.

• 1:20:50Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, I guess so. We also have the diesel fuel slop tank. Which is, I assume, another name for our podcast.

• 1:21:04Speaker 04

  So there's 54 of these built for hundreds and hundreds of millions of $19.60 per silo in Kansas, Arkansas, and Arizona. The one we're focusing on today, well, ones, there's multiple, are the Arkansas and Kansas silos. So, think very Midwest.

• 1:21:23November Kelly?

  It's cool that in order to like stuff one of these, you have to be deployed to some of the most miserable places on earth.

• 1:21:28Speaker 04

  Yep. A lot of the people.

• 1:21:30Speaker 03

  Did they have one in Minot?

• 1:21:35Speaker 04

  Minot?

• 1:21:36Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. I've only read it on an Amtrak sign.

• 1:21:42November Kelly?

  Canada must capture North Dakota in order to rename it and re-pronounce it.

• 1:21:48Speaker 04

  That's where all the Minutemen's are instead of these.

• 1:21:53November Kelly?

  It's actually pronounced Minuteman.

• 1:21:59Speaker 04

  Tore myself off my third story house.

• 1:22:04Speaker 04

  But the funny, funny story, the guys that operated the Titan twos called the Minuteman missiles BBs because they're low yield and the Titan twos cannonballs.

• 1:22:19Liam McAnderson?

  So that's, that's grim. I like that.

• 1:22:21Speaker 04

  I like the idea of a cannonball run as the launch.

• 1:22:27Speaker 03

  I would be cool. We should do a, we should organize a road rally where you just drive to every exit Titan missile launch site.

• 1:22:36Speaker 04

  Should do every, go to, go to all the Minuteman ones in North Dakota and have the security forces chasing you the whole way.

• 1:22:42Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah. Volkswagen GTI.

• 1:22:47November Kelly?

  Try, trying to do the Scientology run thing. Now, hold on just a goddamn second because I'm, I'm on the next slide. All right. And if we, if we go to this, I, I need to know why the blast doors above the silo have the fucking OpenAI logo.

• 1:23:08Speaker 04

  That's, that's not the OpenAI logo, logo. That's the bicentennial flower from 1976.

• 1:23:16Liam McAnderson?

  Yep.

• 1:23:17Speaker 04

  For some, I am, in all my research, I couldn't find why they did this on this silo, but they put the flower.

• 1:23:24Liam McAnderson?

  Because it was the bicentennial.

• 1:23:25Speaker 04

  Sure. NASA did it to the building, to the vehicle assembly building. So why not we put it on the silo? Perfect.

• 1:23:33Liam McAnderson?

  My country tis the sweet land of liberty, I sing.

• 1:23:42Liam McAnderson?

  Nearer my God to thee, but it's just like, look at the flower.

• 1:23:47Speaker 04

  So this is your top side of, of the complex, of the silo specifically. And you have trailers outside which are called hard, they're on the hardstands, which is concrete pads that you pull up. The trailer is full of the evil bad shit. Uh, so you have one for fuel.

• 1:24:06November Kelly?

  Must be cool to like go stand in the middle of the OpenAI logo and know that you are at like on the crosshairs of where another ICPM is aimed. Cause like, you can't really know for sure many other places. Exactly. But this one, you'd just be like, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go like make snow angels there.

• 1:24:26Liam McAnderson?

  This is the gift portal, yes.

• 1:24:27Justin Roczniak?

  Well, I'm excited. I'm excited for the present. They might give me something nice. You know?

• 1:24:32Liam McAnderson?

  Ooh, a first edition.

• 1:24:34Justin Roczniak?

  Well, you know, and as I'm getting older, I'm like excited for like socks and underwear and things like that, you know?

• 1:24:40Speaker 04

  If it's, if it's a Minuteman silo, it's like the fastest ride in the country because of the, the door getting flung off the top before the missile comes out. Actually, we'll, we'll get to that later. Never mind. I shouldn't talk about that. Um, but anyway, there's, there's trailers topside for extra fuel, extra oxidizer, uh, that are connected down to hard tanks down to the missile.

• 1:25:07Speaker 04

  In 1978, so this is 16 years after the first Titan 2 was put on, online.

• 1:25:19Speaker 04

  The Damascus site, uh, 37, 374-7, uh, which is the site we're talking about today, uh, had an oxidizer leak from a topside trailer. So one of these guys, because the heater got stuck on and boiled the oxidizer, creating a big plume when the vent went off. Um, killed a bunch of cattle, makes the local sheriff sick because he was trying to evacuate people because the air force didn't say ship to him. He just saw the cloud and was like, orange cloud, bad. Probably should solve that. And, uh, made everybody nearby not really think the air force had their shit together since they didn't say anything about it.

• 1:26:02November Kelly?

  Very, very funny to like establish sort of local report by poisoning the sheriff.

• 1:26:08Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:26:09Justin Roczniak?

  That hell of a job to, uh, make the, uh, make, uh, rural Arkansas not trust the, uh, military.

• 1:26:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm kind of impressed because this is the kind of shit we usually do to other countries we put our military bases in. Doing it domestically is like, kind of impressive.

• 1:26:24Liam McAnderson?

  Cold War speedrun, yeah.

• 1:26:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:26:29Speaker 04

  The a nuclear missile has never killed a single foreign national, but it's killed a hell of a lot of Americans.

• 1:26:37Speaker 04

  So, uh, on that note.

• 1:26:39November Kelly?

  That's a beautiful statistic and one that could invert instantly.

• 1:26:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, this would be the funniest slash worst Devon Devon text update for when this episode was recorded. We've ever done.

• 1:26:59Justin Roczniak?

  Hold on, I gotta use the restroom. I'll be right back.

• 1:27:03November Kelly?

  You know, this is not a show to do if you have an anxiety disorder or OCD.

• 1:27:08Speaker 03

  That's crazy because I think every host has an anxiety disorder.

• 1:27:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:27:12November Kelly?

  Yeah, well, maybe, maybe we shouldn't for a living do the podcast that makes you feel bad.

• 1:27:20Speaker 03

  Well, see, here's the thing, right? It's like I started a podcast that was supposed to make me feel better and then it turns out everything's so bad that it makes me feel bad. Like, I, this is a, this is a total, like, you know, non sequitur or whatever, but, um, I've been talking about that stupid Indy car race they're doing in Washington DC. As like a joke. And then today they released a bunch of like white nationalist propaganda with the official Indy car for sure. And it's like, damn. It, it sure feels like my, my personal has become political or vice versa.

• 1:27:52November Kelly?

  It does. It does. Kind of. It is. It is sometimes that bad. Yeah. But I worry that that's giving me.

• 1:27:58Speaker 03

  Also, it's really, it's really.

• 1:28:01Speaker 03

  It, it's really a good bit to be like a car enthusiast and be like, whoo, finally a contextless thing for me to focus on as an American, first of all. But then also at the same time, I was gasping seven dollars a gallon. Scooter, you're a beautiful, like, well, I'm not sure what you're doing.

• 1:28:17Speaker 04

  The, the Titan Missile Museum just got back to me right now.

• 1:28:22Speaker 03

  Oh, shit.

• 1:28:23Speaker 04

  Can I go take pictures there?

• 1:28:28November Kelly?

  It is, it is simply time for all of us to go to North Dakota.

• 1:28:31Speaker 04

  All right.

• 1:28:33Speaker 04

  Tucson, Arizona, but that's not the, the thing. I have got to thank this guy. I have been looking for, ever since Roz and I talked about doing this, months, literal months, I posted on Twitter. I've, I've just everywhere trying to find the size of the socket that is the focus of today's podcast.

• 1:28:54Liam McAnderson?

  Time elevator.

• 1:28:57Speaker 04

  That was gonna be the joke until I got it.

• 1:29:02Speaker 04

  But everything says 8.75 pounds. Everything. Every book, every person, I asked multiple people I interviewed and the ones that remembered were like, "Yeah, it's 8.75 pounds." I'm like, "That is not a socket size. That is a weight."

• 1:29:22Liam McAnderson?

  You all right there bud?

• 1:29:24Justin Roczniak?

  I'm back with more coffee.

• 1:29:25Speaker 04

  Roz, Roz, they got back to me. I got the size of the socket.

• 1:29:31Justin Roczniak?

  Really?

• 1:29:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, I just got the email like now.

• 1:29:36Justin Roczniak?

  Oh my God. Thank God.

• 1:29:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:29:40Justin Roczniak?

  That's the most important piece of information in the podcast.

• 1:29:45November Kelly?

  I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna put this, this photo in the Discord here.

• 1:29:50Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, oh.

• 1:29:55Speaker 04

  I love that.

• 1:29:57Speaker 03

  I, I'm actually gonna buy that plushy whistle to go with my plushy, well, my not plushy Duran.

• 1:30:04Justin Roczniak?

  This is, this is like an advanced blajh.

• 1:30:10Speaker 03

  This is what all the trans girls who work at Lockheed cuddle with to sleep.

• 1:30:14November Kelly?

  Oh gods.

• 1:30:17Liam McAnderson?

  We see you, our very specific audience.

• 1:30:19Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Yeah, that comedian can't make fun of you, only we can make fun of you.

• 1:30:26November Kelly?

  That's true. That is, this is what I believe, yes.

• 1:30:31Speaker 04

  Alright, so now that Rob's is back, can we continue on?

• 1:30:34Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 1:30:35Liam McAnderson?

  No.

• 1:30:36Speaker 04

  Damn it.

• 1:30:37Justin Roczniak?

  No, we're stuck here forever.

• 1:30:39Liam McAnderson?

  Fun number.

• 1:30:41Speaker 04

  The silo is pictured. There you go. That's what it looks like when it's about to ship your presents to your friends.

• 1:30:50Justin Roczniak?

  It's a hole in the ground.

• 1:30:51Liam McAnderson?

  It's a butthole.

• 1:30:52Speaker 04

  It's a hole in the ground with rails.

• 1:30:54Justin Roczniak?

  Is that how your butthole, that's how your butthole works? It has a big like cover that slides off?

• 1:30:59Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, it's like, I'm constantly wearing a pair of footy pajamas, man.

• 1:31:07Speaker 03

  And it's got the bicentennial flower on it.

• 1:31:09Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, you know, those, you know, those, those, those bling butts they sell for cats that you can put on their tail and it covers their butthole with like a sparkle thing? Yeah, it's, it's, it's like that.

• 1:31:19Speaker 03

  What? What the fuck are you talking about?

• 1:31:21Speaker 04

  You've never seen that?

• 1:31:23Speaker 03

  No!

• 1:31:24Speaker 04

  Oh, it's so stupid. It's so good, though. It's a little, little sparkly thing for your cat's butthole.

• 1:31:30Justin Roczniak?

  What is, what does the cat think of that?

• 1:31:32Liam McAnderson?

  What do you care? It's cat.

• 1:31:34Speaker 04

  It's cat.

• 1:31:36Speaker 03

  Bert gets equal input in all household decisions. What the fuck are you talking about?

• 1:31:44Speaker 04

  Dewey's just staring at me mad because I said that.

• 1:31:47Liam McAnderson?

  Hinged butt plug is not a thing I thought I would ever come up with, but like this. Lambo doors.

• 1:31:56Justin Roczniak?

  Oh my.

• 1:31:58Speaker 04

  So anyway, the silo door is on rails that's lifted up by hydraulics and then pushed over.

• 1:32:06Speaker 04

  Unlike Minutemen that launch the, the door out of the way and just fling it because, you know, used once for obvious reasons, I hope. Well, I argue that that makes the Titan II an EMD because it's got General Motors guidance system and it's on rails.

• 1:32:25Liam McAnderson?

  It's a train.

• 1:32:26Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, it's a train, yeah.

• 1:32:28Speaker 04

  It's a train. So while we're on this slide.

• 1:32:31Liam McAnderson?

  Consult Garrus' chart.

• 1:32:36Speaker 04

  While we're on this slide, there's two other incidents we need to talk about with the Titan II's history. In 1965.

• 1:32:47Speaker 03

  When they detonated the gadget barn at Trinity.

• 1:32:51Speaker 04

  Too far back.

• 1:32:54Speaker 04

  In 1965, while they were upgrading a silo with the missile still in it fueled, but the warhead removed because there were civilians on site.

• 1:33:07Speaker 04

  They were welding is what the air force says, but not welding. If you ask the guy that was in the silo and a hydraulic line burst and/or got sprayed with sparks and set the missile silo on fire.

• 1:33:27Speaker 04

  Two people survived finding their way out by luck, I guess is the best way to put it. While 53 guys died.

• 1:33:36Justin Roczniak?

  Jesus Christ.

• 1:33:37Speaker 04

  Mainly of smoke inhalation, but some were like burned into the silo.

• 1:33:44November Kelly?

  That's that's no way to die in a hole in the ground.

• 1:33:49Speaker 04

  No, it's completely undignified. It's awful, but the missile that was in the silo at the time was missile 62 triple six. This becomes important.

• 1:34:01November Kelly?

  Hey, oh Satan.

• 1:34:04Speaker 04

  Triple zero six.

• 1:34:05November Kelly?

  Satan is the code name of a Soviet ICBM. Was the reporting name.

• 1:34:13Speaker 04

  So.

• 1:34:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, NATO just gave those they were just handing out whatever they felt like.

• 1:34:17Justin Roczniak?

  Uh, it's like, yeah, this one's really bad.

• 1:34:19November Kelly?

  You're coercively assigned reporting name.

• 1:34:22Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:34:23Speaker 03

  Once again, somebody else deciding for me to be called me a faggot. Anyway.

• 1:34:28Justin Roczniak?

  Victoria.

• 1:34:30Speaker 04

  Jesus.

• 1:34:34Justin Roczniak?

  I only know the civilian airliner ones. Good. Yeah. Maintain your innocence.

• 1:34:40Speaker 03

  No sis people are allowed to refer to the MiG 15.

• 1:34:45November Kelly?

  One of the helicopter ones is the is the hormone, which I approve of.

• 1:34:50Justin Roczniak?

  Oh.

• 1:34:51Speaker 03

  Ooh, that'd be a good, that'd be a good next tattoo.

• 1:34:54Justin Roczniak?

  I identify as an attack helicopter. I.

• 1:34:58Speaker 03

  I think you may have, yeah.

• 1:35:01Speaker 03

  All right. Well, next time we hang out, let's just go get tattoos together. We get matching Soviet aircraft.

• 1:35:05Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:35:06Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, that I want to go.

• 1:35:08November Kelly?

  Especially since it's it's a camo KA 25, which is one of the cool like bug looking Navy ones.

• 1:35:14Speaker 03

  Ooh, yeah.

• 1:35:16Speaker 04

  So to ruin the mood, the silo was put back in service within a year. But a lot of the burns were still there. They didn't paint over all of them.

• 1:35:26Justin Roczniak?

  Ugh.

• 1:35:26November Kelly?

  Don't mind the guy silhouette.

• 1:35:31Liam McAnderson?

  The guy sized hole in the wall. Yeah. This is my hole. It was made for me, right?

• 1:35:36November Kelly?

  This is this is ruining the rejuvenation area.

• 1:35:43Speaker 04

  So later on in 1976.

• 1:35:47Justin Roczniak?

  That guy's still dead.

• 1:35:54Speaker 04

  In in 1976, we go back to complex 374-7. A mechanical maintenance team was sent into the silo to clean hydraulic fluid off a missile from a burst hydraulic line.

• 1:36:10Speaker 04

  To do that, they use the industry standard, as I've come to find out, Freon 113. They'd spray it on a rag and wipe it down. You know, what is now probably like a thousand to $2,000 a jug. They were just spraying on rags and wiping the aluminum down.

• 1:36:33Speaker 04

  But they were taking the rags they were wiping everything with and just dropping them down to the bottom of the silo where the launch duct was. That vents the gases out.

• 1:36:44November Kelly?

  That's a downstairs problem.

• 1:36:45Justin Roczniak?

  Well, that's some somebody else's problem, yeah.

• 1:36:48Speaker 04

  No, uh, the, the, no, uh, because one of those guys had to go get it, right? So he goes down in the very bottom of the silo where there's fairly low air movement because it's a nuclear missile silo. And just falls to the ground. Gone.

• 1:37:05November Kelly?

  Ooh.

• 1:37:05Liam McAnderson?

  Jesus.

• 1:37:06November Kelly?

  Ooh, um, mm, okay.

• 1:37:10Speaker 04

  The other guy goes down, starts smelling fumes and leaves. What, what happened was it was fucking Freon in an enclosed space.

• 1:37:20Liam McAnderson?

  Yep, that sounds about right.

• 1:37:21Speaker 04

  Guy inhaled it, ran out of oxygen, died. The investigation shows they had used 2.5 gallons of Freon.

• 1:37:31Liam McAnderson?

  Jesus Christ.

• 1:37:34Speaker 04

  Threw it all down.

• 1:37:35Speaker 03

  I'm beginning to, I think I'm beginning to understand how the hole in the ozone layer maybe got there.

• 1:37:39Speaker 04

  Uh huh. Yeah, I found out this is how they cleaned dark spots off of trains too.

• 1:37:45Justin Roczniak?

  This is so. I, I gotta say, in terms of these kinds of incidents, the fact that the second guy wasn't like, I'm gonna go save that guy. He definitely saved some lives.

• 1:37:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:38:00November Kelly?

  Oh, yeah. It's starting with his own.

• 1:38:03Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, yeah, usually, usually three or four guys go in before someone gets the picture.

• 1:38:10November Kelly?

  Do not enter the confined space to rescue someone. The life you save may be your own.

• 1:38:17Speaker 04

  You wanna know how they fix this? They, uh, they were to log the use of how much Freon they used when they were cleaning. And, uh, we're told not to throw rags in the launch duct anymore.

• 1:38:30Liam McAnderson?

  Good enough.

• 1:38:32Speaker 04

  So, you know.

• 1:38:32Speaker 03

  That would fix it.

• 1:38:35November Kelly?

  You should probably try. I was gonna say, you have to, you have to stop, you have to stop saying Kobe when you throw the rags coated in Freon.

• 1:38:46November Kelly?

  But this wouldn't even like have been Kobe at the time. It would have been like a guy you've never heard of. It would have been like the threat about the old guy at the YMCA basketball game who's doing bank shots off your soul.

• 1:38:59Liam McAnderson?

  Bob Cousy.

• 1:39:00Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:01Speaker 03

  Will Chamberlain, right? I mean, like.

• 1:39:03Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:04Speaker 03

  I've, I've heard of him and I'm not a big, big basketball fan. Hearing, hearing a British, hearing a British woman say Kobe is very funny to me.

• 1:39:15Justin Roczniak?

  Kobe.

• 1:39:17Speaker 03

  It's a very, one of my favorite pronunciations. Brought us.

• 1:39:22Speaker 04

  Okay, next slide.

• 1:39:23November Kelly?

  I'm sorry. Maybe if I listened to the basketball games during the recordings, I would be better at pronouncing the names.

• 1:39:30Speaker 03

  I meant it in a charming way.

• 1:39:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:39:34Liam McAnderson?

  Okay.

• 1:39:34Justin Roczniak?

  Like Kobe beef?

• 1:39:37Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, Kobe beef.

• 1:39:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:39:38November Kelly?

  I was maybe confusing him with the beef. I'm sorry.

• 1:39:43Liam McAnderson?

  That's okay. He's, I think, named after the region of Pam, but I may have that wrong. Um, I may have to drop. Uh, Corinne's having an allergic reaction. So if I just go dark, just.

• 1:39:55November Kelly?

  Oh, God. Yeah, no, of course.

• 1:39:57Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:39:57Liam McAnderson?

  She's, she's, she, she, she had allergy shots today. I don't want to.

• 1:40:01Speaker 04

  Ah, okay.

• 1:40:02Liam McAnderson?

  And they're, they're, yeah, so we're gonna go as long as we can. Yeah, roll tide, buddy. Um.

• 1:40:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:40:10Speaker 04

  Well, hopefully it gets better. That's awful. I hate when mine comes through.

• 1:40:15Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah. Okay. Let's roll. And then if I need to drop, I need to drop.

• 1:40:18Speaker 04

  Understood.

• 1:40:19Liam McAnderson?

  Okay.

• 1:40:20Speaker 04

  So we have gone to the beautiful, small town of Damascus, Arkansas. Uh, population small. Uh.

• 1:40:31Speaker 04

  There's a grocery store and not much else. And I'm not talking then, I'm talking today. Um.

• 1:40:38November Kelly?

  Hmm.

• 1:40:38Speaker 04

  Just north of that, about where the flag is on the map there, is site 374-7. We've talked about it a few times.

• 1:40:47Liam McAnderson?

  Eighty-two people.

• 1:40:49November Kelly?

  Come, come to Damascus, see the scenic site 374-7. This sounds like the type of town that doesn't even have a restaurant, but they do things a little differently.

• 1:40:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:41:04Justin Roczniak?

  They do. They have, uh, oh, we got both kinds of music, country and western.

• 1:41:09Liam McAnderson?

  They have, dude, they have a restaurant called Amigo Loco.

• 1:41:12Justin Roczniak?

  Amigo Loco?

• 1:41:14Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah. Amigo Loco Mexican restaurant. I bet this fucks.

• 1:41:19Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, I bet that's really good, actually.

• 1:41:20Speaker 03

  It is either the best, it is either the best restaurant you could possibly go to, or the absolute worst.

• 1:41:26Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, this is.

• 1:41:27Speaker 03

  Uh, have I eaten at the one Mexican restaurant?

• 1:41:30November Kelly?

  About keeping a small bottle of hydrazine in my purse to try to put on the fajitas.

• 1:41:37Liam McAnderson?

  Good news, there's Damascus liquor right next to Sun Gas propane.

• 1:41:41Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:41:42Liam McAnderson?

  Just a quick way out.

• 1:41:44Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Well, I ran through Damascus right before this and I, it was dark, so I didn't see any of this shit. And that's unfortunate.

• 1:41:56Speaker 04

  I would have totally gone to the Mexican restaurant. Anyway, focus. So Damascus is just north of Little Rock, Arkansas. And at Little Rock is where the 308 Strategic Missile Wing is based,

• 1:42:12Speaker 04

  which is the reporting base for all the missile crew. So you'd be based there.

• 1:42:18November Kelly?

  Oh, yeah. I always forget that like they don't have like the, they're geographically dispersed by design, but it's not like on the grounds of one big base. It's like, there is a base and then they just send out just some guys, you know?

• 1:42:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's like a three, the silo is like a three acre property with a fence around it and that's it.

• 1:42:37Justin Roczniak?

  You gotta drive there in your car?

• 1:42:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, that's what they did. They drive, drove out like Suburbans and shit. With it said Air Force on them. I want one really bad. Like a blue Suburban with yellow lettering on the side from like 1976.

• 1:42:55November Kelly?

  Oh, okay. Okay.

• 1:42:57Justin Roczniak?

  That'd be pretty cool.

• 1:42:59Speaker 04

  Blue lights on top. Oh, God.

• 1:43:01Justin Roczniak?

  That was the world's hugest car back then and now it's barely the size of a Mini.

• 1:43:08Speaker 03

  Still gets seven miles to the gallon though.

• 1:43:10Speaker 04

  Hell, yeah.

• 1:43:13Speaker 03

  My, my most, my most macho vehicle I ever had was a Suburban with a 454 in it. And unfortunately for his, for his blue haired and pronoun as I am, that thing fucking ripped. That got nine miles a gallon, whether you were idling in traffic or pulling like an entire like super yacht behind you. It was awesome.

• 1:43:35Justin Roczniak?

  It's like a gas turbine.

• 1:43:36November Kelly?

  You either have the psycho gene or you don't.

• 1:43:42Speaker 03

  The Avro Vulcan of domestic SUVs.

• 1:43:46November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:47Speaker 04

  Speaking of having the psychogen, next slide, please.

• 1:43:53Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, here we are.

• 1:43:54Speaker 04

  So.

• 1:43:55Speaker 03

  Oh, man, that guy sitting at the computers where it got the operator glasses.

• 1:43:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, this is the combat crew.

• 1:44:00November Kelly?

  He does, yeah.

• 1:44:01Speaker 04

  This is not the combat crew for a silo, but this is like one of the class pictures of the guys that turn the keys and launch the missile. Uh, crew consists of four men.

• 1:44:11November Kelly?

  To call that combat makes some deep sort of part of my soul revolt, you know?

• 1:44:16Speaker 04

  I mean, when they turn the keys, it is combat. They are going into war.

• 1:44:20November Kelly?

  Yeah, sure, I guess.

• 1:44:22Speaker 04

  They are going to be evaporated right after they turn the key. It's.

• 1:44:28November Kelly?

  This, this, this to me is an Americanism, you know?

• 1:44:31Speaker 03

  Still, still more.

• 1:44:32November Kelly?

  What you're doing is not.

• 1:44:33Speaker 03

  Still more.

• 1:44:33November Kelly?

  It's not combat. It's something different than that.

• 1:44:36Justin Roczniak?

  What exactly were you supposed to do after you turned the key? Like, what was the protocol then?

• 1:44:41Speaker 04

  Return to base.

• 1:44:42Justin Roczniak?

  Did they let you have a cigarette?

• 1:44:43Speaker 04

  No, I talked to a guy. It was return. You were supposed to turn the key, missile go off, stand by for orders, but most of them had talked with upper management. And, uh, it was, it was you were going to return to base and then get reassigned to another location because we were at war.

• 1:45:02Speaker 04

  The thought of returning to the nuclear missile base.

• 1:45:06Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, I don't know, guys. I might, I might give this a few minutes.

• 1:45:14Justin Roczniak?

  Let's see what happens.

• 1:45:15Speaker 04

  We can take a break. It's fine.

• 1:45:17Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. All right. Let's take a 30 minute break, everyone.

• 1:45:21Speaker 03

  Nova, to your point, this is still more skin in the game than the average drone pilot has. So like, I don't know what that says about modern American warfare.

• 1:45:31Speaker 04

  Uh, so it's, it's a four man team, a commander, deputy commander, ballistic missile analyst technician, and a facility maintenance technician. So the last two guys, one knows about the missile and what the fuck it's doing and making sure it's ready to go.

• 1:45:46Speaker 03

  Oh, and the other one knows where it is. I know this.

• 1:45:48Speaker 04

  Bingo.

• 1:45:50Speaker 04

  The other one knows about the facility it's in and makes sure it works. And that's it. That's all they do. Uh, so.

• 1:45:58November Kelly?

  Oh, shit, that is a really nice suburban. Sorry, I just found it.

• 1:46:04Justin Roczniak?

  Hold on, hold on. Put the link in the, put the link in the thingy.

• 1:46:08November Kelly?

  Oh yeah, don't worry. Four guys driving one of these to work. Yeah, it's pretty good.

• 1:46:16November Kelly?

  Put, there you go. It's in the Discord.

• 1:46:19Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, it's in the Discord. Okay.

• 1:46:21Speaker 03

  We're gonna have to start, uh, you're gonna have to start doing the Tran Grilis mode.

• 1:46:24Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:46:25Speaker 03

  Where you put all of the, uh,

• 1:46:26Justin Roczniak?

  Oh shit, yeah.

• 1:46:27Speaker 03

  The images you refer to in the show, in the show notes. That, that does fuck.

• 1:46:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:46:32Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:32November Kelly?

  We will do. The thing is that this, this whips. This, this, this, this, this whips ass.

• 1:46:37Speaker 03

  If you just imagine rolling up to a live show, all of us in that.

• 1:46:41Speaker 04

  Oh yeah. Lights, lights on.

• 1:46:43Justin Roczniak?

  Lights on.

• 1:46:44Speaker 04

  Two people jump out the back. Oh God.

• 1:46:48Speaker 03

  We all inexplicably have DOE carbines for some reason.

• 1:46:53Justin Roczniak?

  Uh, we're, we're, we're dressed, we're all dressed in, uh, RFC OC suits.

• 1:47:00November Kelly?

  If you told me I could get a DOE carbine out of it, I would come to America tomorrow.

• 1:47:07Speaker 04

  I got a buddy, but anyway.

• 1:47:10Speaker 04

  So, the launch procedure is really simple. It's, you have two guys at two consoles, far enough away from each other that they can't, one person can't turn the keys. You turn the keys, the batteries get charged, the door opens.

• 1:47:24November Kelly?

  Maximum arm length to be an S A C.

• 1:47:27Justin Roczniak?

  Holding each other back, like not, not touching, can't get mad.

• 1:47:32Speaker 04

  But the batteries charge, the door opens and the missile ignites its engine, sits for a second, burnt, uh, builds up power and then comes out of the silo. Takes about 58 seconds. Once the keys turn, it's gone whether you want it to be or not. Later on, we're gonna hear a story about what happens when that, when that procedure starts. But that's at the end.

• 1:47:58Speaker 03

  Hmm. You wanna talk about, you wanna talk about jobs that are bad for people with anxiety and or OCD?

• 1:48:03Speaker 04

  So, so watching the documentary, the, the guy in, one of the guys in this picture, uh, is just like the most nervous man I've ever seen. Now, he went through this disaster, but like, I can't imagine him having to turn that key. He's like, I would have done it. It's for our country. I'm like, dude, you couldn't have stood up to do it. You look nervous.

• 1:48:28Speaker 04

  And I doubt he was different then.

• 1:48:29November Kelly?

  Can I just ask real quick?

• 1:48:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:48:31November Kelly?

  What's with the fuck ass turtlenecks?

• 1:48:33Speaker 04

  That was the uniform. That was the Strategic Air Command Combat Uniform.

• 1:48:37Liam McAnderson?

  Keeps you warm in the event of nuclear winter.

• 1:48:39Justin Roczniak?

  I thought those were neckerchiefs. My god.

• 1:48:42Speaker 04

  No, it's, I think it is neckerchiefs. Yeah. It's a scarf.

• 1:48:47November Kelly?

  Ridiculous. Americans are so cool.

• 1:48:50Liam McAnderson?

  Dandies.

• 1:48:51Speaker 04

  I love it.

• 1:48:51Liam McAnderson?

  About to, about to annihilate the entire planet.

• 1:48:54Speaker 03

  You don't have to hand it to us.

• 1:48:56Liam McAnderson?

  Yes, you do. Yes, you do. Yes, you do. Don't give it to me.

• 1:48:59Speaker 04

  Next slide.

• 1:49:00Justin Roczniak?

  We're the, we're the Boy Scouts who are going to kill everyone.

• 1:49:07Liam McAnderson?

  I do sweat.

• 1:49:11Justin Roczniak?

  Do you want some donuts after church?

• 1:49:14Liam McAnderson?

  Visual, visual the gags, baby.

• 1:49:17Speaker 04

  So.

• 1:49:18November Kelly?

  Oh, hey, I remember this motherfucker from Lonesome Road.

• 1:49:22Speaker 04

  Same missile. Um, so they would change these missiles out on a regular basis. Well, you know, like every, I think it was two years, the one guy told me, I couldn't find it in a book. Um, they would change these out just to recycle them, go through components, make sure the electronics were fresh, the batteries were fresh, et cetera.

• 1:49:46Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, it's new missile day.

• 1:49:48Speaker 04

  It's new missile day.

• 1:49:50November Kelly?

  Still got that new missile smell? You have been exposed to three ppm of piracy.

• 1:49:55Speaker 04

  This is the time before, like, we had the cool transporter truck that was built out for all this shit. They just put it on a fucking flatbed semi and haul, hauled it through the Midwest, um, which is wild.

• 1:50:09Justin Roczniak?

  Well, it's before like the interstate was finished, so it's just going down some, the main street is some town.

• 1:50:16Speaker 04

  Yeah. There's pictures of it. It was really hard not to just like.

• 1:50:20Liam McAnderson?

  You like this, you cousin fuckers?

• 1:50:28Speaker 04

  Sorry.

• 1:50:32Speaker 04

  But yeah, they just brought a crane out and just like down in the silo you go.

• 1:50:36November Kelly?

  Um.

• 1:50:37Liam McAnderson?

  Plop.

• 1:50:38Speaker 04

  But, uh, so the complex we're at three seventy four dash seven. So we're going to call it four seven from now on. So I don't have to say that every time.

• 1:50:47November Kelly?

  What can we?

• 1:50:47Speaker 04

  Just.

• 1:50:48November Kelly?

  Four seven.

• 1:50:49Speaker 04

  Four seven. Uh, it had just completed a recycle three weeks before the date we're coming up on. Um, getting missile sixty ta sixty two dash zero zero zero six. The same.

• 1:51:05November Kelly?

  The one that killed like fifty people.

• 1:51:07Speaker 04

  Missile didn't do it, but it was in the silo. It watched.

• 1:51:12November Kelly?

  The missile, the missile that has seen, the missile that has seen men killed.

• 1:51:19Justin Roczniak?

  The missile knows where it is because it knows who it's killed.

• 1:51:25Speaker 04

  So there's a site in Rock, Kansas that had just gone through a recycle on in nineteen seventy eight. And when they went to go redo, refill the missile with oxidizer. The hose that you put on the oxidizer plug shot off and started unloading oxidizer into the silo. Uh.

• 1:51:48Speaker 04

  The guys that were doing this work wore what are called refcos and we'll get to a slide that has them next. And that is a rocket fuel handlers. Cover outfit. I fuck. I need to look at the other slide. Cover all outfit refco. It's a.

• 1:52:10Justin Roczniak?

  Sides.

• 1:52:11Speaker 04

  Spaceman suit with a plastic visor.

• 1:52:14Justin Roczniak?

  It's your P P E for handling oxidizer and other horrible chemicals.

• 1:52:18Speaker 04

  And and hydro and aerazine fifty. Yeah.

• 1:52:21Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:22Speaker 04

  But.

• 1:52:22November Kelly?

  Oh, wow. That fully is just like a spacesuit. Cool.

• 1:52:25Speaker 04

  So these guys like go running out of the silo and it's a whole story. We don't have time for. Other guys die because they were left in it and then they drug them back out. Another guy dies because he did that.

• 1:52:39Liam McAnderson?

  I just want to point out the sentence. We don't have time for that. An hour fifty five minutes not yet had through half.

• 1:52:45Speaker 04

  I'm working on it. Uh. But anyway, they run out, go through the command center and go up the escape hatch in their refco suits. This becomes important later. So our disaster starts here.

• 1:53:02Justin Roczniak?

  Yep, here we are, folks.

• 1:53:04Speaker 04

  September 18th, 1980. The combat crew arrives that we saw earlier. And they're told that the stage two oxidizer tank has been fluctuating and is now low.

• 1:53:19Speaker 04

  Which means the missile will have to be taken offline and not be able to go deliver presents in a hurry. Which is bad. Uh, Strategic Air Command doesn't like that.

• 1:53:30Justin Roczniak?

  You never know when you have to, you know, your friend might be depressed and you have to give them a present.

• 1:53:35Liam McAnderson?

  Really surprise them, yeah.

• 1:53:37November Kelly?

  Yeah. If you're ever not ready to deliver a present, then the real psychos at SAC get really mad at you.

• 1:53:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, actually.

• 1:53:45Speaker 03

  And with Ronald Reagan about to assume power, like they had to be like, we gotta, we gotta keep the missiles online or otherwise he'll, he'll cut our funding to do Star Wars instead.

• 1:53:54Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:53:55Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:55Speaker 04

  Actually, uh, so also they have to do a walk around the silo just to like inspect everything when they do a change out. And they notice that in the hard water tank, which is the, the fire suppression system's water tank. Uh, the tank float switch is stuck open. So somebody has turned the fill for the hard water tank off. So they add that to the maintenance checklist. This also becomes important later. Next slide.

• 1:54:26Speaker 04

  So now we get to the PTS team. This is the propellant transfer systems team. Uh, they're the guys that wear the refco suits, go out to the missile and do the most dangerous job I could fucking think of. Working for the air force. Cause spicy, very spicy fuel to play with.

• 1:54:46Speaker 04

  Um.

• 1:54:47November Kelly?

  This looks like, looking at the kind of sweat on the inside of that guy's visor, this looks like one of the most miserable jobs in the Air Force as well.

• 1:54:57Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:57Justin Roczniak?

  These are the suits they wear to go into the back rooms.

• 1:55:01Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:55:02November Kelly?

  This is, this is like all time level of like recruiter trick knowledge, right? Is to go and be like, dude, almost anything in the Air Force. Smash cut to, you are inside the fucking astronaut diaper suit, shielded again by like a millimeter of plastic from the chemicals that kills you instantly. And you are in Arkansas.

• 1:55:28Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, for four.

• 1:55:31Speaker 04

  So.

• 1:55:31November Kelly?

  It is, it is an Arkansas summer and you are in this thing with no air conditioning. Oh, you are about to get the purple heart for like, like jockstrap itch.

• 1:55:44Liam McAnderson?

  Like the Ozarks, yep, yep.

• 1:55:45Speaker 04

  So like, these guys like got fucked when they got in, but once they got in, they would all be like, super, super close. Like these guys were all crazy, but like stuck with each other really hard.

• 1:55:59Liam McAnderson?

  Special brand of psychos.

• 1:56:00November Kelly?

  Oh yeah. This is, this is like, this is like, the, this is like the, the, the sort of like garrison of like, a French Foreign Legion fought in the 1890s in like, uh, fucking Mauritania, you know?

• 1:56:14Speaker 04

  So these guys are the special group of psychos because one of their favorite things to do as a prank would be to take a ping pong ball full of oxidizer and throw it into a bucket of fuel and watch the bucket explode while they were waiting to do shit.

• 1:56:34Liam McAnderson?

  Just guys being dudes. What's better than this?

• 1:56:37Speaker 04

  They had a guy they didn't like, they, he'd get like in his refco suit, which is just like plastic. Like I've seen them at the Air Force Museum and the one there, I wanted to get a picture, but I forgot to when I was there for the last presentation, uh, has like tape all the fuck over it. Like that thing must've ripped all the fucking time.

• 1:56:58November Kelly?

  At this point, I realized that the, the, the minimum age limit for enlisting in the United States Air Force is 17 years old.

• 1:57:07Speaker 04

  Oh, that becomes a factor soon.

• 1:57:13Speaker 04

  So one of the other things they would do-

• 1:57:15Justin Roczniak?

  You can't trust a seventeen year old with a nuclear missile. Who can you trust?

• 1:57:18Liam McAnderson?

  That's true.

• 1:57:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:57:21Speaker 04

  One of the other things they would do is take a hose, once the guy they hated got in his suit, stick the hose in him and then slap his helmet on so he couldn't get out.

• 1:57:31Liam McAnderson?

  What the fuck? That's just, that's- That's fraternity level torture. That's fraternity torture.

• 1:57:38November Kelly?

  Yeah, less hazing, more drowning.

• 1:57:42Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, rush pylam, I guess.

• 1:57:45Speaker 04

  So to do any fuel work, you were supposed to go category one, which meant two guys in refco suits going into the silo, and then two guys standing by outside the silo, and then three guys topside doing all the work with the trailers. And one crew-

• 1:58:01November Kelly?

  Which of them, which of them are like throwing ping pong balls full of explosives into buckets of explosives?

• 1:58:07Speaker 04

  The three guys up top.

• 1:58:09Liam McAnderson?

  And you're just dodging them like?

• 1:58:11Speaker 04

  You're just-

• 1:58:12Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, duck and wee, baby. Duck and wee, baby.

• 1:58:16Speaker 04

  So, we're at the site. The oxidizer needs refueled or re-upped with nitrogen so that the tank's at the right pressure. So, uh, one of these team, PTS teams goes out, and the two guys that are picked to go downstairs are David Powell, who's twenty-one years old, and he's one of the two, one of the two that are going category one. He's been on the job for three years. So he's been doing this since he was nineteen. Eighteen, sorry.

• 1:58:53Speaker 04

  So the other guy that's going down with him is Jeffrey Plum, nineteen years old, who is doing his on-the-job training.

• 1:59:00Liam McAnderson?

  Oh my god.

• 1:59:03Speaker 04

  In the space-

• 1:59:04November Kelly?

  Yeah, get the apprentice to do it. A tale as old as time.

• 1:59:10Liam McAnderson?

  Get in there, pledge.

• 1:59:11Speaker 04

  So it's September eighteen-

• 1:59:13Justin Roczniak?

  I probably could have handled that at nineteen years old.

• 1:59:15Speaker 04

  It's September eighteenth, nineteen eighty, three PM.

• 1:59:19Justin Roczniak?

  Everyone think about how you were at nineteen years old. Could you have done this job?

• 1:59:23Liam McAnderson?

  No, I was on the shakes all the time.

• 1:59:26November Kelly?

  I don't remember. I don't remember because of the gender.

• 1:59:31Liam McAnderson?

  Cause of woke is why.

• 1:59:34Speaker 04

  So it's three PM-

• 1:59:35Liam McAnderson?

  Quite literally, yes.

• 1:59:38Speaker 03

  I was doing a redacted speed in my dad's Honda Civic I was borrowing. I did not have the like frontal lobe development yet to adequately repair a missile. Nuclear or otherwise.

• 1:59:52November Kelly?

  At the age of, at the age of nineteen, I was, at the age of nineteen, I was a pair of twink legs sticking out of a cloud of Marlboro smoke.

• 2:00:02Liam McAnderson?

  Yep. Yep. Not, not really twink, but yeah.

• 2:00:09Liam McAnderson?

  Marlboro smoke.

• 2:00:11Speaker 04

  So it's three PM, they've been on the job because they were at a different site first. So they've been on the job for like, I think it was six hours at this point. They get to the silo and the platforms.

• 2:00:27November Kelly?

  Oh, God. Hi, God.

• 2:00:29Speaker 05

  I'm very sorry because I'm here with a very important announcement as.

• 2:00:33Liam McAnderson?

  It's time. Yes, yes, it's time. I was about to do it. I was about to do it. Yes.

• 2:00:38Speaker 05

  My beloved wife's birthday, so happy.

• 2:00:40Liam McAnderson?

  Happy birthday, Nova!

• 2:00:46Speaker 03

  Happy birthday. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday.

• 2:00:55Liam McAnderson?

  Why are we doing like a search?

• 2:00:58Speaker 03

  Happy birthday, dear Nova. Happy birthday to you.

• 2:01:15November Kelly?

  Thank you so much. I'm old now.

• 2:01:18Speaker 05

  No, you're not.

• 2:01:18November Kelly?

  Yes.

• 2:01:19Liam McAnderson?

  I just sent this present. You'll get it in about thirty minutes.

• 2:01:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:01:24Speaker 05

  This will be, of course, dating the episode on account of, you know.

• 2:01:27November Kelly?

  We'll put a literal timestamp on that. Thank you. Thank you for hijacking my work to celebrate me being old.

• 2:01:33Speaker 05

  I am not in the remote as bit, sorry.

• 2:01:36November Kelly?

  Uh huh. I love you so much.

• 2:01:38Speaker 05

  I love you too.

• 2:01:38November Kelly?

  Happy.

• 2:01:39Speaker 05

  Can't say that on YouTube.

• 2:01:41November Kelly?

  Thank you. I love all of you too. 29, obviously. Thank you for, yeah, thank you for helping me celebrate my 20th birthday in style. Um, I, I, I love doing the podcast.

• 2:01:53Liam McAnderson?

  I, you know, it's, uh, it's, they, they, they, they say 20 is the new 10. Um.

• 2:02:01Justin Roczniak?

  Do they? Do they say that?

• 2:02:07Liam McAnderson?

  I met the sky.

• 2:02:12Justin Roczniak?

  No, no, no, no. We can't be pedophiles.

• 2:02:21November Kelly?

  Oh, happy birthday. What did, what did you get me? Oh, we got us the entire podcast cancelled and your single largest source of income zeroed out overnight.

• 2:02:38Liam McAnderson?

  I should be very clear and say that we are not pedophiles. Yes.

• 2:02:45November Kelly?

  Thank you, Liam.

• 2:02:47Liam McAnderson?

  I got you.

• 2:02:48November Kelly?

  Official, official stance of the podcast. Oh, god damn. If this is what being 35 is like, it fucking sucks. Jesus, take me back.

• 2:03:03Liam McAnderson?

  Nope, nope. And the big hook comes out now. Oh, good. We're, what are we, about halfway through? Yeah. All right.

• 2:03:16Speaker 04

  Don't blame me about this taking long. It's not my fault.

• 2:03:19November Kelly?

  I'm so, this episode is so long that I was a year younger when we started.

• 2:03:25Liam McAnderson?

  Boom.

• 2:03:37Justin Roczniak?

  Hi, it's Justin. So this is a commercial for the podcast that you're already listening to. People are annoyed by these, so let me get to the point. We have this thing called Patreon, right? The deal is you give us two bucks a month and we give you an extra episode once a month. Sometimes it's a little inconsistent, but you know, it's two bucks. You get what you pay for. It also gets you our full back catalog of bonus episodes so you can learn about exciting topics like guns, pickup trucks, or pickup trucks with guns on them. The money we raise through Patreon goes to making sure that the only ad you hear on this podcast is this one.

• 2:04:20Justin Roczniak?

  Anyway, that's something to consider if you have two bucks to spare each month. Join at patreon.com/ W T Y P pod. Do it if you want, or don't. It's your decision and we respect that. Back to the show.

• 2:04:43Speaker 04

  Okay. All right. September 18th, 3pm at 1980. The platforms won't lower in the silo, so they have to get the hydraulics techs out first. So these guys have to wait even longer to go into the silo. You know, their birthdays are coming up. Just in the suits, just boiling, you know? Exactly. Yeah. So finally, the crew comes out on a helicopter with the parts to do it. They get the platforms to lower. And they get these plum and pal into the cableway of the silo to go pressurize it. Now...

• 2:05:27Speaker 04

  Normally, you're supposed to use a torque wrench. By the new technical order, which I'm not gonna read. Uh, you have to use a torque wrench. That changed from using a ratchet and a socket that were inside the cableway. That was part of the, the go kit essentially. In case you need to go into the silo and tighten something or do something out of hurt.

• 2:05:49November Kelly?

  Uh, the torque wrench.

• 2:05:50Liam McAnderson?

  Something?

• 2:05:52November Kelly?

  Ah.

• 2:05:53Speaker 04

  The torque.

• 2:05:57Speaker 04

  The torque wrench and the ratchet both have one of those little knobs that come out to hold the socket on.

• 2:06:04Liam McAnderson?

  Same.

• 2:06:04Speaker 04

  Except on the ratchet that they're using, it won't lock.

• 2:06:10Speaker 04

  So they're not supposed to use this ratchet in the first place, but they do anyway, because they've been out there for ever. And at six o'clock ish, they work their way towards the silo or the missile to take a dust cap off. To then be able to put the hose on, to put nitrogen in the tank.

• 2:06:33Justin Roczniak?

  I love, I love precision machinery where it's like, yeah, the dust cap needs a precision torque.

• 2:06:40Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:06:41November Kelly?

  You know?

• 2:06:42Speaker 04

  Cause if you torque it more than 160 pounds, you rip the skin off the missile, apparently.

• 2:06:48Justin Roczniak?

  Hmm. Ah, well, you know.

• 2:06:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, fun little.

• 2:06:52November Kelly?

  Delicate and really welded aluminium.

• 2:06:55Speaker 04

  Yep. Yeah, the Atlas had a dime thick skin. Apparently this had nickel thick skin. I know that doesn't mean anything to you.

• 2:07:04November Kelly?

  I, I, I don't, yeah, sure. Explain this to me in real money.

• 2:07:09Speaker 04

  Thicker by, thicker by a little bit more, that's about it.

• 2:07:12Justin Roczniak?

  Yep. What, what is that in Pence?

• 2:07:16November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:17Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:17Speaker 04

  If I know.

• 2:07:18November Kelly?

  Dime thickness.

• 2:07:21Speaker 04

  That, you're, you're asking the same person that doesn't know that.

• 2:07:25November Kelly?

  I like to, I like to think that I have some dime thickness personally myself, but you know, whatever.

• 2:07:30Speaker 04

  I would say it's a 16th of an inch versus an eighth of an inch, but you also don't use freedom units. So I don't know what the fuck to do here.

• 2:07:37November Kelly?

  1.35 millimeters. Okay. So UK coin thicknesses.

• 2:07:46November Kelly?

  This is riveting content, right? Well, actually, it's talk wrench.

• 2:07:49Justin Roczniak?

  Yes, yes.

• 2:07:51Speaker 04

  And you wonder why it takes so fucking long.

• 2:07:55Justin Roczniak?

  Exactly 160 foot pounds.

• 2:07:57November Kelly?

  That is thinner than any coin currently in, like, issued in the UK.

• 2:08:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, they're small.

• 2:08:04November Kelly?

  That's crazy.

• 2:08:06Speaker 04

  Put them on rail tracks.

• 2:08:07Justin Roczniak?

  That's why your money's worth more.

• 2:08:09November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:11Speaker 04

  Alright, so, next slide.

• 2:08:16November Kelly?

  What?

• 2:08:17Speaker 04

  Roz, if you do the, do the honors of reading the time.

• 2:08:21Justin Roczniak?

  So it's September 18th, 1980, at 6:30 PM.

• 2:08:29Speaker 04

  They're taking the dust cap off with the ratchet. One guy is holding the socket with his hand while the other's holding the ratchet on and pulling the lever. Hal pulls the, the ratchet off and the socket falls off the end of the ratchet.

• 2:08:45Speaker 04

  It hits the platform, rolls, and goes right between the missile and the platform. Straight down.

• 2:08:52November Kelly?

  Ah, I love, I love the photo where the guys are posed looking exactly like they're both like, "Oh dang it."

• 2:09:00Speaker 04

  Hal, Hal says over the silo radio, "Oh no." And that's the last thing he says until they get back in the command center.

• 2:09:09November Kelly?

  Oh, well, at least there's, at least there's a subordinate clause there, you know?

• 2:09:14Justin Roczniak?

  I like how the riveting on the side is like Gothic cathedral windows.

• 2:09:21November Kelly?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:09:22Speaker 04

  About that socket, it's not a 10mm. It is...

• 2:09:28Justin Roczniak?

  Well, they would never have found it, then.

• 2:09:30Speaker 04

  3 inches and 1/8 size socket, AKA 8.75 pounds.

• 2:09:39Speaker 04

  This is a big motherfucker. Next slide, please.

• 2:09:45Speaker 04

  Roz, do you know what's funny?

• 2:09:47Justin Roczniak?

  What?

• 2:09:48Speaker 04

  The socket I picked out for this picture?

• 2:09:52Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 2:09:52Speaker 04

  Is the same size. I got a three and one eights.

• 2:09:59Justin Roczniak?

  That's a big socket.

• 2:10:00Speaker 04

  It's a big motherfucker.

• 2:10:02November Kelly?

  That's a big fucking socket. Yeah.

• 2:10:04Justin Roczniak?

  I wouldn't want to fuck with that. Yeah.

• 2:10:06Speaker 04

  And they dropped that down 80 feet. It hits the thrust mount and hits the side of the, bounces up and hits the side of the missile.

• 2:10:15November Kelly?

  Oops.

• 2:10:16Speaker 04

  Big oops.

• 2:10:17Justin Roczniak?

  Uh oh.

• 2:10:18Speaker 04

  Previous slide, please?

• 2:10:22Speaker 04

  So the, the ring in the bottom.

• 2:10:24November Kelly?

  The thing about the, the thing about the, the suits is the, any kind of suit like that, great opportunity for physical comedy. Because even just the guy like bending over and looking down is just getting me in hysterics, kind of just be like.

• 2:10:40Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, that's, that's not gone well.

• 2:10:42Speaker 04

  No.

• 2:10:44Speaker 04

  The picture, the picture in the center there is the actual, not the one that did the oopsie, because it probably is gone, gone. But this is the same size at Titan Missile Museum. So

• 2:10:58Speaker 04

  old big motherfucker. Pre-impact socket, you know?

• 2:11:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was gonna say, can they, can they take the Uggadugga to this?

• 2:11:07Speaker 04

  Bad idea.

• 2:11:10Justin Roczniak?

  Supposed to use a torque wrench for a reason.

• 2:11:13Speaker 03

  Ah, tight, tight.

• 2:11:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, tight, tight.

• 2:11:17Speaker 04

  So, uh, next two slides, please. Sorry. So they, the commanders are in the control center and all of a sudden the klaxon goes off. All the lights on the command, on the command console light up. Everything goes haywire. So they press the, the reset button. Cause when you're doing this kind of operation, you might let a little oxidizer out and the sensors pick it up. No big deal. They reset it and it all just comes right back on. And what's, what's wild is as this fuel spraying out of the side of the missile from this impact.

• 2:11:58Speaker 04

  The fuel, the fuel warning comes on, fuel in launch duct. And also the oxidizer in launch duct warning comes on, which.

• 2:12:09November Kelly?

  Oh, but those two things react to each other, explosive.

• 2:12:12Speaker 04

  You can't, yeah, you can't do that. So they're like, hey, guys, what's going on out there? And they're like, hey, we see a white cloud in here without saying what happened.

• 2:12:24Justin Roczniak?

  I didn't do it.

• 2:12:27Speaker 04

  Well, they don't.

• 2:12:27November Kelly?

  Nineteen year old move.

• 2:12:31Justin Roczniak?

  Exactly though. Yeah, it just sort of happened.

• 2:12:36Liam McAnderson?

  Just did that.

• 2:12:37Justin Roczniak?

  I don't know.

• 2:12:39Liam McAnderson?

  Just did that.

• 2:12:40Speaker 04

  So they, they come back into the, they get told to come back into the command center. And that's when they tell the commanders that, oh yeah, I dropped the socket. Oops, sorry.

• 2:12:52Justin Roczniak?

  What happened? I, I dropped, I dropped the socket. What? I dropped, I dropped, I dropped the socket.

• 2:13:02November Kelly?

  Using the senior admin's full name so he knows he's in trouble.

• 2:13:07Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. What did you, I dropped the socket. I'm sorry.

• 2:13:12Speaker 04

  I'm sorry.

• 2:13:14Speaker 04

  So the fire also kicks on, the fire warning kicks on. This is important because vent fans won't run if the fire alarm's going off. Uh, and if there's vapor, or sorry, if the fire alarms go off, the water suppression system goes off, which then turns the vapor alarms off because you don't want to get water in the vapor detectors. So the fire suppression goes off, which means water is mixing with the fuel, which is diluting it, which is helping the situation currently.

• 2:13:50Speaker 04

  Uh, the, the combat crew commander is so pissed off that he didn't find out until about thirty minutes after this happened. That when they go to tell Strategic Air Command and the, the local commander, that he does a very catty thing and puts Powell on the phone instead of just telling them what happened.

• 2:14:14November Kelly?

  Oh, that's rough. Like, you're, you're like captain or your major or whatever puts the senior admin on the phone and is like, tell them what you did? Tell them what you did.

• 2:14:24Speaker 03

  Is, is Powell the one who's, is Powell the one who's nineteen?

• 2:14:28Speaker 04

  No, Powell's the twenty-one year old.

• 2:14:30Speaker 03

  Oh, okay. Well, at least this one can have a drink afterward.

• 2:14:35Liam McAnderson?

  You just wait till your dad gets home.

• 2:14:39Speaker 04

  So at seven PM, the, the fuel tank pressure for stage one, which is the one leaking, is at two point six PSI. The oxidizer tank is at eighteen PSI. Now, I read off both because the fuel tank is currently going down and is going to approach the negatives. That's bad because the missile can collapse. The oxidizer pressure is rising because temperature's going up because of the fuel in the silo, which means the oxidizer tank could potentially explode.

• 2:15:13Speaker 04

  Or pop the, or pop the poppet valve, which is the, the emergency vent in case it gets too hot. Touch the fuel vapor and explode.

• 2:15:24Speaker 04

  So because this is a giant clusterfuck with a missile, the missile potential hazard team is formed, and that's next slide.

• 2:15:33November Kelly?

  The missile big oopsie reaction force.

• 2:15:35Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:36Speaker 04

  This consists of Colonel John Moser.

• 2:15:43November Kelly?

  Just one guy still wearing the fucking astronaut suit, having to take this socketless wrench into more and bigger offices? Just traipsing sadly down a corridor until he gets to this conference room, which is full of guys with stars on their shoulders.

• 2:16:01Liam McAnderson?

  What did you do, son?

• 2:16:03Speaker 04

  I dropped the sock in.

• 2:16:07Speaker 04

  I dropped it, I'm sorry.

• 2:16:10November Kelly?

  Oh, you're getting such a super quantum. That like, that like junior enlisted have had some bad days at work. I don't know that they could be a lot worse than this.

• 2:16:24Speaker 04

  So, this, please let me take the suit off. I dropped the sock in.

• 2:16:31Liam McAnderson?

  The suit stays on during sex.

• 2:16:39Speaker 03

  Just imagining him outside sitting his Dodge Challenger, like ripping the seat, fucking grumbling at the ground, still sitting in the space suit.

• 2:16:46Speaker 04

  I dropped the sock in.

• 2:16:48November Kelly?

  Just like trying to get the Marlboro red to the face, but the visor keeps getting in the way. Six hours later, he finally gets to take the soot off and there's like a sort of a buckets worth of piss and terror sweat coming out of it first.

• 2:17:06November Kelly?

  Smells like dog surgery as soon as you hit the zip.

• 2:17:10Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, and that's, that's, that's just sloshing.

• 2:17:14Justin Roczniak?

  That's just a normal nineteen year old smell.

• 2:17:19November Kelly?

  Oh, yeah, get the evidence here. Slosh, slosh, slosh.

• 2:17:24November Kelly?

  Sounds like he's wading through a river, which functionally he kind of is.

• 2:17:32November Kelly?

  Oh, I love my job.

• 2:17:35Speaker 04

  I dropped the sock in.

• 2:17:42November Kelly?

  Oh, the saddest spaceman in the world.

• 2:17:49Liam McAnderson?

  God, I could tell the major top dude's just pissing.

• 2:17:55Speaker 04

  Well, the good news, son, is you're gonna get to wear a space suit. Ooh, you're not gonna go up.

• 2:18:02Liam McAnderson?

  Quite the opposite, really.

• 2:18:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:18:07Speaker 04

  So the missile potential hazard team is formed and that is the commander of the 308, which is the their little rock. This is now his problem to deal with. And he has to call. Everybody that has ever touched a Titan two to try and figure out what to do. Because the command team has found out as they've been going through the checklist to figure out uh how to stop a fuel leak uh that there is no checklist to stop a fuel leak. So the hazard teams formed and you have Colonel John Moser, who's been on the job for three months and has never touched a Titan two. He was a Minuteman Colonel. He was a Minuteman officer, so he understood the Minuteman system.

• 2:18:53Speaker 04

  You then also have Colonel Ben Scallorn, who's Deputy Chief of Titan Missiles for the Eighth Air Force. So this guy is he he was there when they were building the silos. He's been on the the rep. He's been in the refco suits, working on the missiles. And now he is the guy that understands them. This becomes important later because he's not not happy during this whole ordeal.

• 2:19:19Liam McAnderson?

  No, I would not. I would also not be happy.

• 2:19:21Speaker 04

  You also have Mark Marietta, who built the missile.

• 2:19:26Speaker 04

  And they're in Colorado with their they call in their executive team and also their technicians to try and figure out what's going on. The executive team is surprisingly candid throughout this. I just want to remind everybody.

• 2:19:41Speaker 04

  Now, the guy that's not candid is Lieutenant General Lloyd Dick Levitt, Strategic Air Commander.

• 2:19:53November Kelly?

  How do you get the nickname Dick when your name is Lloyd? And I know the answer.

• 2:19:58Speaker 04

  His middle name's Richard, but. Nah.

• 2:20:02Liam McAnderson?

  No, that's stupid.

• 2:20:04November Kelly?

  Lieutenant General Lloyd Asshole Levitt.

• 2:20:10Liam McAnderson?

  And his brother fuckface.

• 2:20:13November Kelly?

  I'm just thinking, you are a space suited piss coated senior AM and who has just become the problem of two colonels and a lieutenant general.

• 2:20:23Justin Roczniak?

  I dropped the socket.

• 2:20:28Speaker 04

  Multi millionaire executives in Colorado.

• 2:20:32November Kelly?

  I would really, really, really like us to sell a shirt with a sad spaceman and I dropped the socket on it inexplicable to anyone else. If you want to draw us, if you want to draw us a sad spaceman with half a socket.

• 2:20:50November Kelly?

  Oh, get in touch.

• 2:20:50Speaker 04

  Marietta, I dropped the socket.

• 2:20:53November Kelly?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 2:20:58Speaker 04

  So Levitt is a fighter general. He was only in planes.

• 2:21:04November Kelly?

  Asshole.

• 2:21:06Speaker 04

  To the top of Strategic Air Command because he was a decorated fighter pilot and then fighter.

• 2:21:12November Kelly?

  I see this asshole in his long pocket badge. I don't know, no.

• 2:21:18Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 2:21:18November Kelly?

  Like.

• 2:21:19Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 2:21:19Liam McAnderson?

  Guys, he's the guy in the middle, right?

• 2:21:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, he's the guy in the middle. I couldn't find, yeah, my bad on that. Pictures that weren't, that were available for the other two guys except from their IMDb page. So I just use those.

• 2:21:35Liam McAnderson?

  What?

• 2:21:37Speaker 04

  It's, they're in, they're in the documentary.

• 2:21:39Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, that makes sense.

• 2:21:40Speaker 04

  Anyway, so these.

• 2:21:41November Kelly?

  I was gonna say least cloud chasing air force officer, but go off.

• 2:21:45Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:46Speaker 04

  This team gets formed also with the entire team of the PTS teams get all called in to help with this situation.

• 2:21:59November Kelly?

  All right, everybody has to suit up because this asshole dropped the socket.

• 2:22:04Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 2:22:05Liam McAnderson?

  I'm, I'm sorry. Getting a lieutenant colonel into the piss stained shit stained suit because they've only got one.

• 2:22:16Liam McAnderson?

  All right, into the skid mark special, you go my guy.

• 2:22:23Liam McAnderson?

  We do a lot of body humor on this podcast.

• 2:22:27Speaker 04

  So they they pulled together what they call the K.

• 2:22:29November Kelly?

  Adults and engineers.

• 2:22:31Liam McAnderson?

  Talk about poop.

• 2:22:33Speaker 04

  They pulled together what's called the K crew. That's everybody that's involved to try and get this thing solved. That includes a Colonel Morris, who's in charge of all of the three oh eights maintenance teams. And Sergeant Jeff Kennedy, who's going to come up later, but he is the guy at the three oh eight that understands the missile. He is the team was a team chief. He's now an inspector, so he understands it.

• 2:22:58Speaker 04

  So they get all these people together. They get Morrison Kennedy out on a helicopter to get them out to the silo. And then they come up with. Plan A.

• 2:23:08Liam McAnderson?

  Plan A, let's go.

• 2:23:09Speaker 04

  Send the second guy group of guys, the PTS team that was in the blast lock. In in their refco suits they had ready to go. Vent the fuel tank, then vent the silo, then stabilize the missile. Immediately they're told this won't work because when all the guys left to get into the command center. They left their refcos in the blast lock. Which is now has fuel vapor in it from the silo. So now they can't get.

• 2:23:39November Kelly?

  Oh, we left the PPE and the hydrazine clouds. Yeah, okay.

• 2:23:44Speaker 04

  There would be three guys up top, right? And all their.

• 2:23:47Liam McAnderson?

  I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I dropped the I dropped the socket and I left the suit.

• 2:23:52Liam McAnderson?

  I'm so sorry.

• 2:23:53Justin Roczniak?

  You're going in there and your boxers.

• 2:23:56Speaker 04

  There's three guys up top, right? Well, they were told to evacuate as soon as they found out it was a fuel leak in case it spread up top side. So they're off site now and unreachable.

• 2:24:08November Kelly?

  Yeah, those guys, those guys are in the nuclear suburban floor. Boring it to Amigo Loco right now.

• 2:24:18Speaker 04

  So it's eight o'clock. The fuel PSI is at point four. The oxidizer is at 20 PSI. And the silo temperature has risen from 60 degrees to 80 degrees. And I have no idea why it got so bright. What the fuck? Oh, okay.

• 2:24:37Liam McAnderson?

  It's time for your close up scooter.

• 2:24:39Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, I was about to say that someone just delivered a present. That was supposed to, that was supposed to go to November.

• 2:24:49Justin Roczniak?

  Oops. Should be there in about seven minutes.

• 2:24:54Speaker 04

  All right. Next slide, please. So the, the potential hazard team tells everybody in the command center to evacuate. Because they're afraid the blast doors won't hold if the missile blows up. So the team leaves the phone off the hook so that they can listen for alarms and make sure the power stays on at the site. To be able to deal with this. And that's when they go out the hatch, the hole made for these guys.

• 2:25:23Speaker 04

  Nobody had ever been in it.

• 2:25:26Speaker 04

  Apparently this is like hell at a, at a missile site. They had never, nobody ever used it. It was hard to get the bolts open to get this hatch open. And there's supposed to be a single light bulb at the top of this 40 foot shaft and it's out.

• 2:25:44Speaker 03

  This is almost worth the anesthesia special. That's the mental image this is filling me with.

• 2:25:50Liam McAnderson?

  About where I am too, yeah.

• 2:25:52Speaker 04

  So they evacuate top side.

• 2:25:53November Kelly?

  Climb this ladder in the dark or die.

• 2:25:57Liam McAnderson?

  Good luck asshole. Shouldn't have dropped the socket asshole.

• 2:26:01Justin Roczniak?

  Why did we make it so small?

• 2:26:03November Kelly?

  And one of you, and one of you is doing it in a space suit in the full knowledge that the full weight of the US Air Force is about to land on your head.

• 2:26:14Liam McAnderson?

  You're just, you're just sucked in piss.

• 2:26:17Justin Roczniak?

  If I went through this escape hatch, I would just perfectly seal it like a plug and everyone would die.

• 2:26:30Speaker 04

  So they stripped the guy of the space suit because they don't think it'll fit. So.

• 2:26:37Speaker 03

  Oh, God, that's that's.

• 2:26:39Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, yeah. Skivvies. Yes.

• 2:26:43Liam McAnderson?

  At least you're not sloshing anymore.

• 2:26:48Justin Roczniak?

  Making me go in the hole. I deserve to be in the hole.

• 2:26:53Speaker 04

  At the Rock Kansas incident, they did evacuate in their PTS suits. So this becomes important later. That's why I'm bringing it up. Uh, so they get out, they go through a breakaway panel in the fence and out the backside and then run to the front where the gate is, where the other PTS teams are starting to show up since they've been dispatched.

• 2:27:17Speaker 04

  Jeff Kennedy shows up on his helicopter and.

• 2:27:22Liam McAnderson?

  Must be nice.

• 2:27:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, the the helicopter almost crashes because it almost hits power lines. And they have to, the crew has to wave them off at the last minute. I'm telling you, this site and this missile are cursed.

• 2:27:37Speaker 03

  Or we just gave a bunch of 19 year olds apocalyptic weapons and they're doing exactly what you'd expect.

• 2:27:43Liam McAnderson?

  Uh, I do want to apologize, uh, uh, in advance. The Sixers are on and winning and Corinne is kind of yelling at the television. I'm not going to mute myself. You're just going to deal with it. Go Sixers.

• 2:27:54November Kelly?

  Oh, no, I listen. I let me be clear. I respect when Corinne does it.

• 2:28:02Liam McAnderson?

  Fuck you.

• 2:28:05Liam McAnderson?

  No, you're beautiful. I'm yelling at Nova.

• 2:28:10November Kelly?

  You have to be nice to me. It's my birthday.

• 2:28:13Liam McAnderson?

  No, she respects when you watch basketball games while you're recording and she doesn't respect me when I do it.

• 2:28:24Liam McAnderson?

  Getting roasted from all sides. This is delightful. I love, I love to be in my piss soaked

• 2:28:31November Kelly?

  Feminism, Liam.

• 2:28:32Liam McAnderson?

  Piss soaked astronaut suit shitting my pants.

• 2:28:36Justin Roczniak?

  I dropped the socket.

• 2:28:38Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah. I'm gonna drop my nuts on your face. What about it?

• 2:28:42November Kelly?

  In, in, in my head, this guy under the space suit had heart print boxes.

• 2:28:49Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:50Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:51Speaker 04

  So Kennedy arrives on site and Kennedy is pissed that the control center had been evacuated because now they can't figure out what the pressures in the missile are, which are important because the fucking thing's going to collapse. Now this pal who dropped the socket walks up to him and goes, Kennedy, I fucked up like you wouldn't believe.

• 2:29:11Justin Roczniak?

  I dropped the socket.

• 2:29:13Liam McAnderson?

  That's not what he says.

• 2:29:15November Kelly?

  Just in, in floods of tears. This poor fucking kid.

• 2:29:22Speaker 04

  So also about the same time, the fire suppression system runs out of water due to that broken float we talked about from them shutting the valve off. So the tank doesn't overflow. So now there's nothing to dilute the fuel going into the silo. It's a problem. It's going to get hot very quickly. One other fun fact about this time is next door, there's a man named Sam Hutto who runs a cattle farm.

• 2:29:56Speaker 04

  Nine months earlier, he had synchronized all of his cattle to have birth on this night. So he have.

• 2:30:03November Kelly?

  Wait, wait, wait, wait.

• 2:30:04Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, no, go, go away.

• 2:30:09November Kelly?

  What in the, what in the?

• 2:30:12Speaker 04

  What the fuck?

• 2:30:13November Kelly?

  Did this motherfucker do to his cows?

• 2:30:15Justin Roczniak?

  People do all kinds of fucked up shit with cows.

• 2:30:18Speaker 04

  You synchronize them so they have calves.

• 2:30:20Liam McAnderson?

  Fuck the cows.

• 2:30:21Speaker 04

  All the same time. Yeah.

• 2:30:22Liam McAnderson?

  We'll know the cows.

• 2:30:23Speaker 03

  What did, what did Uncle Pete do this time?

• 2:30:26Liam McAnderson?

  Stop fucking.

• 2:30:27November Kelly?

  Just, just on a military operation like, all right. Everyone synchronize cows.

• 2:30:32Speaker 04

  It's just artificial insemination. You just make them all pregnant at the same time.

• 2:30:37Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, I was just picturing.

• 2:30:39November Kelly?

  So he had a bunch of like turkey basters laid out in a line like a calliope.

• 2:30:44Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:47Justin Roczniak?

  I think there was a Jordan Peterson tweet about this.

• 2:30:53Speaker 04

  I only put this in here because he's avoiding the Air Force guys like the plague because they're starting to put a a cordon off around the area and he keeps dodging them and half of what we know what goes on is from his accounts. So because he's dodging them to go give birth to like a hundred cattle. So I found it funny.

• 2:31:17Liam McAnderson?

  No, it's funny. It's just real fucked up.

• 2:31:19Speaker 04

  It's fucked up, but it's funny.

• 2:31:20Liam McAnderson?

  Which is kind of the premise of the show, actually.

• 2:31:22Speaker 04

  That's how you get your fucking hamburger. All right.

• 2:31:26November Kelly?

  Doing, doing some kind of weird Bosby Berkeley turkey baster shit to impregnate a bunch of cows at the same time and being like, well, I think I'm busy now, but I'm going to be busy in nine months' time.

• 2:31:38Speaker 04

  Next slide.

• 2:31:39Speaker 03

  Explaining, explaining a nuclear disaster to an American.

• 2:31:43Justin Roczniak?

  Imagine a hamburger. Ingredients to a burger.

• 2:31:47Speaker 04

  All right. It's nine fifteen ish. Uh, Jeff Kennedy goes up to Morris and says, we need to know the pressures of those tanks so that we can build a plan. Morris is like, ah, we're not supposed to do anything without getting told. Kennedy goes, okay, well, we're going to go inspect the site. Remember, he's the sergeant that knows the most about this of anybody at the three oh eight. So he grabs Powell and they run around the sil- the, the fence and go in the back and then he tells Powell to wait for him. Instead of going through the center and the entrapment area,

• 2:32:27Speaker 04

  he decides to go through the escape hatch and back down into the command center to read the pressures off the PT- PTPMU, the propellant tank pressure monitoring.

• 2:32:40November Kelly?

  Again, you fucked up so bad and meanwhile, the guy who came to like rescue you from it is like, no, I'm just gonna climb down this totally dark ladder.

• 2:32:48Liam McAnderson?

  Fuck, it beats this.

• 2:32:50Speaker 04

  The problem with-

• 2:32:51Liam McAnderson?

  Beats Washington.

• 2:32:51November Kelly?

  At night.

• 2:32:52Speaker 04

  The problem with him doing that is Strategic Air Command has a two man rule. Anytime you're on a missile site or around nuclear weapons, and him telling Powell to wait violates that two man rule. Now, between you and me, the Air Force has a rule that if it's an emergency, it can be violated, but they only apply that when they want to.

• 2:33:17Speaker 04

  So he goes down into the command center, looks at the PTPMU and realizes and says, we're in some serious shit. Now, a guy I interviewed said that he heard that over the phone that was off the hook.

• 2:33:35Speaker 04

  So he's talking to himself, which means it's really bad. Uh, the fuel tank pressure was at negative two.

• 2:33:42November Kelly?

  Well, maybe he was just, maybe he was just like, like stepping over the remains of the Rafco suit.

• 2:33:49Liam McAnderson?

  Recently liquefied.

• 2:33:52Speaker 04

  So the fuel tank pressure is at negative two, because there's no way, there's nothing venting it, so it's actually pulling down as it, the level goes all the way to the bottom of the tank. The, what they had always talked about was the expected collapse was between negative two and negative three.

• 2:34:12Speaker 04

  Oxidizer stage one is at 29 PSI, stage two's at 41.6 PSI. The expected burst for that burstus for the vent is at 50 PSI.

• 2:34:27Speaker 04

  So clock's ticking. So Kennedy comes out of the escape hatch, meets back up with Powell and goes back to Morris, who's the Colonel they're reporting to. Kennedy tells Morris the pressures and then Powell speaks up and goes, Kennedy went into the silo without me.

• 2:34:47Liam McAnderson?

  I know, I know, I know, I dropped the socket, but he went in by himself. I'm not the only guy I pulled here.

• 2:34:57Speaker 04

  And he tells

• 2:34:58November Kelly?

  Just crashing out.

• 2:34:59Speaker 04

  Morris, Morris crashes out. He starts losing his shit on Kennedy for going in alone and violating the two man rule. So Morris reports it back to the missile potential hazard team that Kennedy had gone in without a second person. And they all lose their shit.

• 2:35:20November Kelly?

  This is way worse than just a cursed missile.

• 2:35:23Speaker 03

  Five minutes away from blowing up Little Rock.

• 2:35:25November Kelly?

  Yeah, this is way worse than a cursed missile in military terms. This is like a, this missile is an NJP magnet. This is like, this isn't cursed in the sense that it blows up. This is cursed in the sense that it blows up your career.

• 2:35:38Speaker 04

  Yep. We're getting there. Uh, so Kennedy has a plan. And Kennedy's plan, they tell us to Morris is to head in through the escape hatch, open the silo door to vent from the command center to reduce the heat, then drop the platforms to hold the missile upright in case it collapses, and then send the spare PTS team down to fill the fuel tank with nitrogen to keep the pressure from going into the negatives. Morris

• 2:36:09November Kelly?

  Refuel this wobbly tube of explosives in the room full of explosives.

• 2:36:14Liam McAnderson?

  But possibly both.

• 2:36:15Speaker 04

  It's actually not the worst plan. Yeah. The problem is, is he tells Morris and Morris tries to tell the potential hazard team and he gets told to shut the hell up. Nothing will be done on the plat, on the site without Strategic Air Command's direct approval. So now Levitt's in charge.

• 2:36:34Justin Roczniak?

  Uh, you see, you put here in the notes, uh, nobody does anything unless it comes straight from Omaha. I'm like, why does Union Pacific have a say in this?

• 2:36:44Liam McAnderson?

  Uncle Pete, you son of a bitch.

• 2:36:48Speaker 04

  Oh, that's where I'm going to point my uh my missile when we're done because the fuck you be.

• 2:36:55Speaker 04

  So it's next slide, please.

• 2:36:59Speaker 04

  9:45 PM and the missile potential hazard team decides they have a plan. They want to enter the silo, vent the fuel tank, if required, remove the cap with flyers.

• 2:37:12Justin Roczniak?

  Okay.

• 2:37:12Speaker 04

  The the socket cap because they all know it's been removed. Uh, and then pop the tank pop it with a broom handle.

• 2:37:21Justin Roczniak?

  Great, let's go.

• 2:37:23Speaker 03

  I will also say that like that like the the four different plans from five different sources and everybody keeps like accidentally breaking rules actually does imply to me that there already was a poly fuel missile silo and it was just one.

• 2:37:40Speaker 04

  So Levitt shuts down all the discussion.

• 2:37:42November Kelly?

  I think now is the point to to to emphasize that the US Air Force is the organization that came up with the concept of the OODA loop.

• 2:37:51Justin Roczniak?

  This is sort of.

• 2:37:51November Kelly?

  And what we see here is an OOOOOOODA loop.

• 2:37:56November Kelly?

  Well, so far there's so far there's no D or A, so it's just an OOO loop.

• 2:38:01Speaker 04

  Uh, so.

• 2:38:02Justin Roczniak?

  I don't know what that is.

• 2:38:05November Kelly?

  It's a it doesn't matter.

• 2:38:07Justin Roczniak?

  Okay.

• 2:38:07Speaker 04

  So Levitt shuts down all discussion between everybody and demands that the door not be opened, the missile silo door not be opened for fear of flinging the warhead out in case the this the missile explodes. This is his largest consideration over everything and he says it.

• 2:38:27Speaker 03

  Just imagining the farmer next door, 60 cows deep.

• 2:38:37Speaker 04

  Well.

• 2:38:38Justin Roczniak?

  Hold that thought.

• 2:38:39November Kelly?

  One of those one of those Steam idle, one of those Steam clicker games. Where you have to like assist with the delivery of a hundred calves before you get a warhead flung at you?

• 2:38:52Speaker 04

  While they're discussing Martin Marietta is just taking wild guesses of what state, what, what pressure the stage will collapse. Like they're just like, it might be like negative three. The tech guys say maybe negative five, you might get lucky, but not, they're like literally wild guessing it the whole way.

• 2:39:11November Kelly?

  It might legally be a tontine.

• 2:39:14Speaker 03

  And that's number wang.

• 2:39:16Speaker 04

  So at this point,

• 2:39:22Speaker 04

  at this point, PTS team B shows up and this is like the, the second force that's coming in with the disaster response team, which is all the lawyers for the air force base that go around if something happens.

• 2:39:36Speaker 04

  They're not allowed to do anything because there has been no disaster yet. It's only the PTS guys that can do anything. They bring in like bulldozers and light all units and all kinds of shit and plenty of the refcos and guys willing to go into the silo. They're all volunteers.

• 2:39:55November Kelly?

  I it's, it's really, really funny to me. If you're, you're just like sort of neck deep in cattle and like an air force lawyer in a space suit hops the fence and just comes up, hands you some papers and runs away.

• 2:40:07Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:40:08Speaker 04

  So.

• 2:40:09Justin Roczniak?

  And meanwhile, you got a bunch of these guys lining up like I served the Soviet Union.

• 2:40:17Speaker 04

  Next slide.

• 2:40:21Speaker 04

  I included this because it's important to bring Bill Clinton into this story.

• 2:40:27Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 2:40:30Speaker 04

  So.

• 2:40:30Speaker 03

  Story about little rock mentioned, everybody should be asking, where's Bill?

• 2:40:34Justin Roczniak?

  Where's Bill Clinton?

• 2:40:36Speaker 04

  At the Democratic National Convention in Hot Springs, Arkansas. With.

• 2:40:43Speaker 03

  Oh my God.

• 2:40:44Speaker 04

  Vice President Walter Mondale and Senator Richard Pryor.

• 2:40:49Speaker 04

  Richard Pryor, oh shit, I should have put his first name.

• 2:40:53November Kelly?

  Yeah, I didn't know Richard Pryor was a senator.

• 2:40:56Justin Roczniak?

  Me neither.

• 2:40:57November Kelly?

  You'd think after the crack, it would have been so kind of hard to get elected, but who knows?

• 2:41:02Justin Roczniak?

  Tell that to Marion Barrow.

• 2:41:04Speaker 04

  David Pryor, my bad. Um, anyway, so they're in Hot Springs at DNC while one of Pryor's staffers, Skip Rutherford, is back in Little Rock.

• 2:41:19Speaker 04

  Uh, he gets a phone call from two Air Force men that wished to remain unnamed to him and Pryor, that there's an incident at the Titan silo and it's about to go horribly wrong. These same two men-

• 2:41:36November Kelly?

  Just getting a phone call and someone just calls you up and says, yeah, he dropped the socket.

• 2:41:43Speaker 04

  He dropped the socket.

• 2:41:44Justin Roczniak?

  He's very sorry.

• 2:41:45Liam McAnderson?

  He's very sorry.

• 2:41:48November Kelly?

  One guy drops the socket, the entire Air Force Command tries to look for different people to tattle on to each other.

• 2:41:57Justin Roczniak?

  I dropped the socket and I had to apologize to the president.

• 2:42:02Justin Roczniak?

  He wasn't the president yet, but he would be.

• 2:42:05Speaker 04

  These same two guys had warned Pryor earlier in 1979 that the Titans were leaking-

• 2:42:12November Kelly?

  They gave them prior warning.

• 2:42:13Speaker 04

  That they were unsafe, that the PTS crews were untrained and too young, and that there had been multiple oxidizer and fuel leaks topside that they had not been told about. So he goes to a silo as a visit as a senator, and while he's there, they had turned the vapor detectors off because they were broken. And he finds out about that after the fact, so he demands an investigation and to put an amendment to put warning sirens on top of all Titan sites. This amendment and investigation was approved on September 16th, 1980, two days before our incident.

• 2:42:58Speaker 04

  It's important that Walt, that Vice President Walter Mondale's at this because he's close enough to see the explosion if he wants to, if this thing goes nuclear. So I included the oh shit map.

• 2:43:11November Kelly?

  You dropped the socket. The colonels are there. The general is there. The vice president is there now.

• 2:43:16Justin Roczniak?

  The vice president is there.

• 2:43:18Speaker 04

  So I included the, the map to give you an idea of how big the explosion would be. If it like went full nuclear in, in like your worst case scenario. To show how close they were, like Mondale would have seen it with his own eyes, but not been affected.

• 2:43:38Justin Roczniak?

  You'd have to, I, I.

• 2:43:40Speaker 03

  I think he might've been affected.

• 2:43:42Speaker 04

  Well, he's in hot springs.

• 2:43:43Speaker 03

  He's emotionally.

• 2:43:46Speaker 04

  But it's important later, so I wanted to include it.

• 2:43:50Justin Roczniak?

  I dropped the socket.

• 2:43:52Speaker 04

  He also, he also calls into the Strategic Air Command, who says everything is fine. To the vice president.

• 2:44:00Justin Roczniak?

  Okay, okay, good.

• 2:44:01November Kelly?

  He picked up the phone. Uh, no, no, no service to vice president. Nobody dropped a socket. Unprompted.

• 2:44:07Speaker 04

  I can neither confirm nor deny there's an issue.

• 2:44:10Justin Roczniak?

  We're gonna write him up. We're gonna write him up. It's gonna go on his permanent record. We're gonna give him detention.

• 2:44:18November Kelly?

  It seems like this is just like more and more humiliation is being added first. Like I half expect this guy's mom to be there.

• 2:44:29Justin Roczniak?

  We called his parents. He's gonna get, he's gonna be suspended, not three day in school suspension.

• 2:44:38November Kelly?

  Your high school crush heard that you dropped the socket.

• 2:44:42Justin Roczniak?

  No.

• 2:44:42Speaker 03

  Oh, Josh.

• 2:44:43Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, just, just fucking tell me, man.

• 2:44:46Speaker 03

  Sitting, sitting bolt upright in bed 30 years later. Oh my God, I just had a dream where I dropped the socket.

• 2:44:55November Kelly?

  So the ex you're not over heard you dropped the socket.

• 2:44:59Speaker 04

  In, in the documentary, he says he can close his eyes at any time and see that socket falling. Forty-five years later. I bet he can. Yeah.

• 2:45:11Justin Roczniak?

  I feel bad for making fun of him now. I'm gonna keep doing it, but.

• 2:45:19Speaker 04

  I feel bad about it.

• 2:45:20Speaker 03

  Look, I-

• 2:45:21Speaker 04

  I thought you watched the documentary. I'm sorry.

• 2:45:27Speaker 04

  Watch it. It's very good if you haven't.

• 2:45:29Speaker 03

  Rep for episodes I don't write? I come in blind that I'm funnier.

• 2:45:34Speaker 04

  Well, that's what I'm here for, I guess. Alright, next slide.

• 2:45:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, this, this show is adversarial. One person has the information, the other X number try to prevent them.

• 2:45:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, I know.

• 2:45:47Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, salty sound.

• 2:45:48November Kelly?

  It's like Khabib, but for interruptions.

• 2:45:51Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:55Speaker 04

  Okay, so.

• 2:45:57November Kelly?

  Thanks, Corin.

• 2:45:59Liam McAnderson?

  I think she was laughing at the Knicks.

• 2:46:02November Kelly?

  Well, that's also valid.

• 2:46:06Speaker 04

  So we're on plan I.

• 2:46:08Liam McAnderson?

  Question mark, question mark, question mark.

• 2:46:11Speaker 04

  It's 11pm and the missile potential hazard team has come up with this. They will have an airman in a refco suit go to one of the silos vents and check the fuel vapor. If the fuel vapor is lower than 200 parts per million, per million, two PTS team will enter the entrapment area and break into the silo. Nobody thought that somebody in a refco suit can make it through the escape hatch.

• 2:46:40Speaker 04

  Remember Rock, Kansas? Yeah, well, we don't remember that. Uh, so.

• 2:46:45Liam McAnderson?

  Nope.

• 2:46:45Speaker 04

  If it's good, they're going to open the blast door six, which is the one that goes,

• 2:46:52Speaker 04

  blast door six and seven to go into the command center with a hydraulic pump to get the blast doors open, since you know, they're blast doors.

• 2:47:04Speaker 04

  And then they're gonna check the MSA, which is the vapor detector. If it's below 200, if it's below 200 parts per million, they'll enter the silo and vent the fuel tank in any way they can.

• 2:47:19Speaker 04

  Colonel Ben Skalorn, there on the right-hand side, says that this is a bad idea because the oxidizer tank could be at any point ready to blow since it was at 42 PSI an hour ago. He wants them to enter the control center instead of the silo. I screwed that up earlier, I'm sorry. And then check tank pressures before they go for it. Lloyd Levitt tells him to shut the hell up. Hmm. Mark Marietta. Compelling argument. Mark Marietta speaks up and is like, uh, do you guys want our thoughts? And Levitt goes, go ahead.

• 2:47:58Speaker 04

  And they go, we think you should get as far away from that silo as possible and wait to see what happens.

• 2:48:05Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, wait and see. I like it.

• 2:48:08Speaker 04

  Marietta says they would never send their people into a situation like this.

• 2:48:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, but this is the Air Force. We have an infinite number of 19-year-olds. We don't care about.

• 2:48:17November Kelly?

  Basically own them.

• 2:48:19Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 2:48:21Liam McAnderson?

  They can't do that to our pledges. Only we can do that to our pledges.

• 2:48:24Speaker 04

  The Air Force decides to go for it.

• 2:48:28Speaker 03

  Shocking. Oh, my God. I can't believe that.

• 2:48:30Liam McAnderson?

  Fuck, yeah. Send in the piss suit, boys.

• 2:48:34Speaker 04

  Two hours later.

• 2:48:37Liam McAnderson?

  Much like this podcast.

• 2:48:38Speaker 04

  Yep. Yep. So, next slide.

• 2:48:44Liam McAnderson?

  I will never let you finish a sentence, Scooter.

• 2:48:48Speaker 04

  So, mind you, Kennedy is fucking livid at this point because they haven't sent anybody in. They haven't done anything. And at this point, whatever the fuck they're going to do is a bad idea, but it's his men going in, so he's going to at least be around for it.

• 2:49:04Speaker 04

  So, we are on plan whatever the fuck. But. Yes. The plan is they're going to take five guys out to the fence and go down into the entrapment area. Break in through the two doors. Ah.

• 2:49:21Speaker 04

  Audio just went crazy. Sorry. They're going to break in through the blast doors and go in to the command center and get the pressures. Kennedy goes with the PTS guys that are going in because he wants to be there. Morris doesn't want him anywhere near it because they're still mad that he went in the silo.

• 2:49:42Speaker 04

  So what happens is they get two guys that are volunteers. Or sorry, three guys that are volunteers, Greg Devlin,

• 2:49:52Speaker 04

  David Livingston, Rex Huckle, and then Kennedy all ride the truck up to the site and then get into the PTS, into the refco suits. And then Morris and Hanson, who's another sergeant, are commanding them through their radios.

• 2:50:09Speaker 04

  The plan is to send one guy up, check the vent, see if it's 200 parts per million. If it's not, go in the entrapment area, break the door open, go into the command center, get pressures. This is the plan they decide to act on. It is 1 a.m. This thing has been venting since 6.

• 2:50:31Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, good.

• 2:50:32Justin Roczniak?

  It's probably, it's probably almost done by now.

• 2:50:35November Kelly?

  Living's nothing, there's nothing like a bad, there's nothing like a bad decision made slowly.

• 2:50:40Speaker 04

  Yep. Livingston goes up to the vent and gets an off, off meter high rating on the vapor detector.

• 2:50:48November Kelly?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:50:49Speaker 04

  Levitt says to-

• 2:50:50Justin Roczniak?

  Not great, not terrible.

• 2:50:52Speaker 04

  Yeah. Levitt says to go, continue on and go in. So they have Devon and Huckle go first and they take a pump and a crowbar.

• 2:51:02Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, cool. I like Half-Life.

• 2:51:04Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:51:05Speaker 04

  The, the first two doors are just like steel doors, so they just pry them open. The first one takes 15 minutes. They have 30 minutes of air on their air pack. The first one takes 15 minutes. The second door takes 15 seconds.

• 2:51:21Speaker 04

  Devlin was a boxer.

• 2:51:22November Kelly?

  Feeling great about nuclear weapons, security.

• 2:51:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, right? So they get to the blast door. They hook the pump up to the blast door, but neither of them know how the pump works, so they can't get to force the pins open on the blast door.

• 2:51:38Liam McAnderson?

  Feel like that's something someone should have gone over and-

• 2:51:40Speaker 04

  Correct. They run out of time-

• 2:51:43Justin Roczniak?

  They only had seven hours.

• 2:51:47Speaker 04

  They, they run out of time and come back topside because their air packs are about to run out. Run out. They had an hour worth of air, but none of these things actually worked for an hour. So they gave them thirty minutes.

• 2:52:02Speaker 04

  So they come topside.

• 2:52:03Speaker 03

  How are we a superpower?

• 2:52:08Liam McAnderson?

  Normally the stuff didn't break.

• 2:52:11Speaker 04

  Except when it did.

• 2:52:12Liam McAnderson?

  This much.

• 2:52:16Speaker 03

  Jesus Christ. It's like the Keystone Cops had a nuclear deterrent.

• 2:52:21Speaker 04

  So they come topside. Scallorn's pissed because they've waited seven hours to do this and they're not recalling these guys in.

• 2:52:30Speaker 04

  But they come topside and Hanson and Morris are like, read the instructions for the pump, switch out your air pack and go back in.

• 2:52:39Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, I didn't think about that.

• 2:52:40Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 2:52:44November Kelly?

  Doing, doing the Ikea like question mark phone call illustration, but then he's wearing a space suit.

• 2:52:52Liam McAnderson?

  He's just covered in piss.

• 2:52:57Speaker 04

  Kennedy, uh, actually knows how the pump works. So he goes up and goes, I'll go in with Livingston and Livingston volunteers to go with him. So Kenny and him get suited up. They go back into, into the entrapment area. Next slide, please.

• 2:53:17Speaker 03

  I love to walk into something called the entrapment area.

• 2:53:20Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 2:53:21Liam McAnderson?

  That's where the FBI lives for leftist pod, for leftist protesters.

• 2:53:28Speaker 04

  They go in and they get told to go towards the missile this time and read the vapor detector in the cableway to the missile. They go into the cableway, operate the pump, open the door, you know? Cause Kennedy actually can figure it out. And it's off meter high at twenty-five hundred parts per million.

• 2:53:51November Kelly?

  Have you sort of white noise airborne toxic event thing about this where it's like, well, at least now they've got a handle on it, you know, they understand it better.

• 2:53:59Liam McAnderson?

  Yes.

• 2:54:02Speaker 04

  Well, they find out it's off scale high and they decide to leave. They're told to leave by Morris and Hanson.

• 2:54:10Speaker 04

  They go up topside. And as soon as they get topside.

• 2:54:16Speaker 04

  Hanson tells them to go and throw the purge fan switch, purge fan switch for the cable way.

• 2:54:28Speaker 04

  Later on, this is said that they are told to go stand by the switch, not to flip it.

• 2:54:36Speaker 04

  This is a point of contention later on. But Livingston goes down into the hole. Kennedy stays topside right by the, the entrapment area.

• 2:54:49Speaker 04

  He flips the switch. Thirty seconds go by and he gets topside again, about two feet away from the door. What were you gonna say, Victoria?

• 2:54:58Speaker 03

  Oh, I was just gonna say not to be like, you know, too much of a, a systems head about this, but I feel like if the seven hours into your nuclear missile recovery, your entire like fault rests on whether or not somebody misheard and flipped the switch. I think you may have systemic issues further upstream.

• 2:55:16Justin Roczniak?

  Just a little bit.

• 2:55:17November Kelly?

  If your nuclear missile recovery lasts longer than seven hours, consult a physician. Consult a physicist, really.

• 2:55:27Speaker 04

  I dropped the socket.

• 2:55:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, at the end of the day, like if dropping a socket causes a nuclear disaster, you fucked something up along the way. Real bad.

• 2:55:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, you put that whole disclaimer in at the beginning about like, don't blame these individual guys. And no, I, I think that my blame here does not rest with the 19 year old who accidentally dropped a tool while he was balancing on a ladder 80 feet up in a missile silo. Uh, I think it might be with the system that, you know.

• 2:56:01Speaker 04

  Allowed it to happen?

• 2:56:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:56:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, speaking of allowing it to happen, 30 seconds go by. Yes.

• 2:56:13Speaker 04

  God damn it. Sorry.

• 2:56:16Liam McAnderson?

  I shot, I, I shot down Flight 93.

• 2:56:25Justin Roczniak?

  I'm sorry.

• 2:56:27Speaker 04

  So Kenny and Kenny and Livingston are standing topside. They just got out of the entrapment area. Everybody's looking at the silo because they were told to evacuate after the fans turned on. They're all going to regroup and next slide, please.

• 2:56:41Speaker 04

  December 19th, 1983 AM, the damn thing finally detonates.

• 2:56:47Liam McAnderson?

  Boom. Say black dots or tires.

• 2:56:50Speaker 04

  This is actually not a picture of the explosion. The only photos is like a really shitty grainy video. That's a guy running the fuck away from it. Trying to get 10 seconds of footage and it's really bad. So I didn't include that.

• 2:57:06Justin Roczniak?

  Right. Yeah. Cause the press, the press had become aware and were like congregating outside the, uh,

• 2:57:13Speaker 04

  At the end of the road.

• 2:57:13Justin Roczniak?

  Missile silo. Yeah.

• 2:57:15Speaker 04

  And they all went fucking running all of a sudden, uh, for reasons. This picture is actually them destroying.

• 2:57:23November Kelly?

  If you see a guy in an astronaut suit running, try to keep up.

• 2:57:28Liam McAnderson?

  Follow him.

• 2:57:32Speaker 04

  So it, it, it blows. The missile goes off. This picture is from, uh, when they were destroying the silos at the end of the program. But the, the missile blows up and everybody fucking evacuates all of the PTS teams, all the news. Everybody just starts running in whatever direction was gone.

• 2:57:53Speaker 04

  They all decide to regroup at the local grocery store in Damascus. Cause that's a good place, I guess.

• 2:58:00November Kelly?

  Who wants sizzling fajitas?

• 2:58:06Liam McAnderson?

  Good news. You're the protein.

• 2:58:08November Kelly?

  I could, I could go for fajitas right now. Can you go for fajitas right now, piss guy? And piss guy is just like, I dropped the socket.

• 2:58:16Speaker 04

  I'm the reason that happened, pointing at the mushroom cloud down the road. It's all my fault.

• 2:58:24Liam McAnderson?

  I dropped the socket. Can I have, can I have a, can I have a Modelo with the lime, please?

• 2:58:36Speaker 03

  The poor nineteen year old who was with him is like, ah, yeah, I guess I'll have a lemonade.

• 2:58:42November Kelly?

  Immediately drops the Modelo.

• 2:58:46Justin Roczniak?

  Oh shit. This is why everyone hates me.

• 2:58:50November Kelly?

  I can't do anything right.

• 2:58:53Speaker 04

  So, next slide, please.

• 2:58:56Speaker 04

  There's three theories to why it happened here. The first-

• 2:59:00November Kelly?

  Oh, that's one of the diagrams of all time. I love this.

• 2:59:03Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, this is bananas.

• 2:59:06Speaker 04

  The first theory, this is straight from the book on Titan two, by the way. I love this diagram.

• 2:59:13Speaker 04

  The, the first theory is the one that Kennedy prescribes to, and is probably the most accurate, is that the fans started it. The electrical spark lit the fumes in the cable way. They got down into the silo. You know, problem solved.

• 2:59:29Justin Roczniak?

  Nineteen seventies DC motor, probably, yeah.

• 2:59:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:59:32November Kelly?

  Cool. Yeah.

• 2:59:34Speaker 04

  The other is just a general rogue equipment spark, because they had left everything, everything on in the silo that wasn't like, able to be turned off at the command center. So like, lights-

• 2:59:45November Kelly?

  And again, seventies electrical engineering.

• 2:59:48Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 2:59:51Speaker 04

  The third is probably, the, the third is probably the most like plausible, in my opinion, is because we knew that the missile, like, four hours beforehand was in the negative pressures in the tank. Is that the stage one just collapsed? And when it collapsed, it obviously created sparks. The oxidizer tank ripped open and detonated. And then the set, the first explosion blows the silo door off and launches the second stage up into the air with the motor from the second stage jammed into the fuel tank.

• 3:00:31Speaker 04

  That causes the fuel tank to rupture and explode, because the oxidizer also ruptured and explode, exploded just at the ground level.

• 3:00:43Speaker 04

  So there's two explosions and it launches every, the first launches everything out of the silo. The second launches it all up into the air. Including the W-53 Warhead, which is expected in the report to have gone a thousand feet up into the air.

• 3:01:01Justin Roczniak?

  God damn.

• 3:01:03November Kelly?

  Big Bo. W53 being like, I'm doing it. I'm doing it. I'm doing it. Oh.

• 3:01:08Justin Roczniak?

  It's finally happening. It's finally happening.

• 3:01:12November Kelly?

  Moscow, Moscow.

• 3:01:16November Kelly?

  You finally get to lace them up and it's nothing.

• 3:01:20Justin Roczniak?

  I was hoping for, if not Moscow, at least Nizhny Novgorod, but no.

• 3:01:26Liam McAnderson?

  Can't have shit in this house.

• 3:01:28November Kelly?

  Warhead ever like talks about how it could have gone pro, but then it like blew its knee out.

• 3:01:37Speaker 04

  So, that's what happened when it comes to the explosion. Again, everybody's running for their lives.

• 3:01:43November Kelly?

  By the way, this fucking tilt shifted, isometric Disco Elysium Command and Conquer looking ass thing. Incredible. I want to right click on this right now.

• 3:01:56Speaker 04

  Um, so everybody goes running. All the guys that were like right there, the four,

• 3:02:04Speaker 04

  of them, Morris in the truck was sitting in the truck waiting for them to come back. He says that he laid down on the seat when the windshield blew out and just sat there and laughed as the like mushroom cloud went through the windshield.

• 3:02:20Justin Roczniak?

  The old Justin Ross, yeah.

• 3:02:25Speaker 04

  I found that story the funniest of all of them, unfortunately.

• 3:02:29Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:02:33Speaker 04

  Devlin starts running and gets his ankle broken by a piece of rebar launched out of the silo.

• 3:02:41November Kelly?

  Ow.

• 3:02:41Justin Roczniak?

  Ow. Yeah, no thanks.

• 3:02:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, Huckle was sitting on the back of the truck.

• 3:02:46November Kelly?

  Negatively polarized against nuclear weapons by this.

• 3:02:50Speaker 04

  By a nuclear weapon.

• 3:02:52Speaker 03

  Just, just to like, uh, you know, kind of like, put this all into focus. Um, what exactly would have been the difference if they had been like, oh shit, we fucked up. We listened to the experts in Denver and we all just run away as far as possible versus what actually happened?

• 3:03:08Speaker 04

  Uh, less guys would have been injured.

• 3:03:10Speaker 03

  Cool. Okay. So like, maybe they should have, sorry. I just, that was all I wanted to check here because it seems like the last eight hours, they've just been throwing 19 year olds.

• 3:03:20Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 3:03:20Speaker 03

  Uh, into a hole to see how many they can kill.

• 3:03:23November Kelly?

  Sounded like he was just feeding 19 year olds to the missile silo and then his lieutenant general started yelling. I, I really, I realized now. How badly I need.

• 3:03:36November Kelly?

  I realize now how badly I need a kind of strategic air command jarhead or generation kill.

• 3:03:45Justin Roczniak?

  Listen, that would be great. If it sucks, hit the bricks.

• 3:03:49Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, you could just leave.

• 3:03:51Justin Roczniak?

  You can leave.

• 3:03:52Liam McAnderson?

  You will, you will be court martial, but you could just leave.

• 3:03:55Speaker 04

  Just fucking leave.

• 3:03:57Speaker 03

  So if you're in the military right now and you don't like it, just, just change genders. There you go.

• 3:04:03Justin Roczniak?

  If, if you drop the socket.

• 3:04:07Liam McAnderson?

  Leave.

• 3:04:07Justin Roczniak?

  Join the French Foreign Legion, I guess.

• 3:04:14Speaker 03

  Anyway, I just wanted to verify that like.

• 3:04:16November Kelly?

  Foreign Legion. You get into the French Foreign Legion and they ask you about your past to see whether like, whether or not you're an ex Nazi or something. And they're interrogating you and you just say, uh, like. Je laisse tomber le clair du. In a really sad voice.

• 3:04:38Speaker 04

  So.

• 3:04:39Speaker 03

  Just before you got into the death toll, I just wanted to make sure that like, you know, we didn't need to let anybody die with the exact same end result.

• 3:04:45Speaker 04

  Okay, cool. This is Levitt's fault. Like.

• 3:04:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, just checking.

• 3:04:50Speaker 04

  Like, this is a hundred percent because even the guys on directly under him like Scallorn. And Moser are all like, no, this is writ- no. And he's like, no, they need to go in, stop this because, you know, nuclear warhead. But we'll get to that. Um. I want to just say content warning for the next two because it's ugly. Um, I mean, you've heard worse on this podcast, but still bothers some people. Next slide, please.

• 3:05:22November Kelly?

  It's a bad sunburn.

• 3:05:24Speaker 04

  So on the left hand side is Devlin, who I just said has ankle shattered. And was burned to shit because he was, uh, coming out of his refco suit at the time.

• 3:05:36Liam McAnderson?

  Stay in the piss suit.

• 3:05:39November Kelly?

  We're making you get this, get on this big ass phone to Ronald Reagan and we're making you hold that phone in your burned hand.

• 3:05:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:05:46Liam McAnderson?

  What a dick move.

• 3:05:48Speaker 04

  So Devlin gets like, Devlin's the only person I could find pictures of injuries for. That's why, that's why I included it. Kennedy has a, gets thrown, as he says in the documentary, in his very thick Maine accent. He gets thrown ass over tea kettle from the silo. And then he tries, he tries to run, but his leg was broken.

• 3:06:13Speaker 04

  So he's like in the thick of it all, inhaling oxidizer because his face shield got shattered.

• 3:06:22Speaker 04

  And as he's trying to run away, he can hear Livingston, who was pretty much right next to him, screaming for help. Why is Livingston in such bad shape? Well, a, a hole the size of your fist was blown through his abdomen.

• 3:06:38Speaker 04

  And he was also burned to.

• 3:06:40Liam McAnderson?

  Don't like that.

• 3:06:42Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, not very good.

• 3:06:44Speaker 04

  So, uh, everybody hauls ass away, including Morris, Devlin and them, you know, get as far away as they can. And then two guys hear Kennedy on the radio of Morris's truck saying, come help us, come help us. So they come in and throw Livingston, Kennedy in the back of their truck and they take them out to the main road.

• 3:07:11Justin Roczniak?

  Cause they all thought this was a totally unsurvivable incident.

• 3:07:14Speaker 04

  Correct. Everybody thought everybody on the site was dead.

• 3:07:18Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 3:07:19Speaker 04

  Now, at the same time, at the, the command post, Colonel Mosher is on the phone with the missile potential hazard team and all the radios go silent, including the, the phone line at the site. And he thinks that the, the warhead detonated. For about 10 minutes, they had no contact with the site.

• 3:07:43Speaker 04

  So they just assumed that they had just blown it to hell, blown Little Rock to hell and they were waiting for a blast wave.

• 3:07:52Liam McAnderson?

  That's gonna be fucking nerve wracking. Don't love that.

• 3:07:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, I wanted to include that cuz that's like,

• 3:07:59Speaker 04

  you know, just like, oh, fuck, fuck, fuck.

• 3:08:02Speaker 03

  Oh, you thought dropping the socket was bad? How about the 10 minutes where you thought you just blew up Little Rock?

• 3:08:07Speaker 04

  Yeah. As you're sitting in Little Rock waiting for it to hit.

• 3:08:12Liam McAnderson?

  Waiting for this to be the end, right?

• 3:08:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, at that point, at this point, I think that you're kind of happy. You just be just be like, all right, fine, fucking, I don't wanna, I don't wanna deal with the consequences of this tomorrow.

• 3:08:24Justin Roczniak?

  Getting my retribution for dropping the socket. No, I can't believe I dropped the socket.

• 3:08:31Liam McAnderson?

  I can't do anything right. This is not what Little Rock deserves, though. Buck up, soldier.

• 3:08:38Speaker 04

  I really wish I could spend more time on this, but you get pretty into the weeds with it. But, yeah, at the end of the day, the guy, all the people that were on site end up at the local hospital in Little Rock and not the base hospital.

• 3:08:56Speaker 04

  This becomes a problem because the Air Force wants them back so they can't talk to the press. Livingston dies in the hospital. He goes into surgery and they can't fix his abdomen. He's, you know, burned to shit.

• 3:09:11Speaker 04

  Apparently, on his way back to the, to the hospital in the back of that truck, he's like begging for people not to tell his mom, even though he didn't do anything.

• 3:09:24Speaker 04

  He flipped a switch, like, he didn't drop the socket, like, it's not his fucking fault.

• 3:09:30Justin Roczniak?

  That was the real crime, was dropping the socket.

• 3:09:37Speaker 04

  Kennedy goes into the ICU because he inhaled a bunch of oxidizers, so he couldn't breathe on top of his leg being shattered and ripped open. He ends up getting out, but him and Devlin are two people that have talked about this. Uh, what happens afterwards is they get out finally and they wanna discharge from the Air Force for their injuries cuz Candy can barely breathe cuz of the oxidizer. Devlin had been burned and can't walk, and they get put in a psych ward.

• 3:10:07Speaker 04

  Fuck you, man.

• 3:10:09November Kelly?

  Oh, that's, that's the air force we know and love.

• 3:10:12Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 3:10:13Justin Roczniak?

  They actually got catch 22'd.

• 3:10:15Speaker 04

  Yes. Yeah. They get put in a psych ward for a while and then they get, they don't get their discharge. They get sent back to their base.

• 3:10:25Liam McAnderson?

  Suck my fucking dick.

• 3:10:27Speaker 03

  I, I hope, I hope Iran wins.

• 3:10:32Speaker 03

  We deserve it as it just as a society.

• 3:10:35Speaker 04

  To quote Colonel Mojer is a, a well-known phrase that I was going to say at the beginning of this is to error is human. To forgive is not sack policy.

• 3:10:50Speaker 04

  And they sure prove it during this.

• 3:10:52Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 3:10:53Speaker 04

  So.

• 3:10:53Liam McAnderson?

  Hello, May.

• 3:10:55Justin Roczniak?

  Bad news. You're gonna have to fly more missions.

• 3:10:58Speaker 04

  In, in 1981, in 1981, the report comes out. All the blame is put on Livingston for turning the fan on without.

• 3:11:08Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 3:11:10Justin Roczniak?

  Yep, it was one guy.

• 3:11:11November Kelly?

  We might have built the nuclear missile silo unfairly, but this guy flipped a switch.

• 3:11:18Speaker 04

  Kennedy, it, it, they, they blame the explosion on him, but not the fault for the explosion. Kennedy gets reprimanded for violating the two man rule.

• 3:11:31Speaker 04

  And then Powell gets a, Powell, who dropped the socket, gets a official. Ah, crap, I didn't put in the notes. He gets, he gets an actual charge. He gets charged for not using the torque wrench instead of the ratchet.

• 3:11:50Justin Roczniak?

  You, you've been, you've been indicted on one count of dropping the socket.

• 3:11:55Speaker 04

  Actually.

• 3:11:58November Kelly?

  Doing, doing the, the whole length of A Few Good Men, but to be like, did you drop the socket? You're goddamn right, I did.

• 3:12:10November Kelly?

  You want me on that gantry. You need me on that gantry.

• 3:12:16Justin Roczniak?

  And I'll drop it again.

• 3:12:18Liam McAnderson?

  I'll throw it this time, actually.

• 3:12:23Liam McAnderson?

  Cover to court my piss boots.

• 3:12:28Speaker 04

  Eventually, because of public outcry, because they had spoken to the press.

• 3:12:35Speaker 04

  Kennedy, Devlin, and three others get an Air Force Medal and then get their discharge. Kennedy and Devlin sue Martin Marietta because you're not allowed to sue the Air Force if you're in it.

• 3:12:50Speaker 04

  Millions, and they only get about $6,000 each.

• 3:12:54Speaker 03

  Which, okay, to be fair, not not to be like, oh, I'm gonna defend the corporation here, but Martin Marietta, to their credit, was like, hey, you should get the fuck out of there.

• 3:13:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:13:02Speaker 03

  So really, you should blame the Air Force.

• 3:13:05November Kelly?

  Yeah, we wouldn't put our guys in this shit.

• 3:13:08Justin Roczniak?

  Probably, probably walk away from this one, guys.

• 3:13:12Speaker 04

  Incident that we've had loss of life for this with this missile, somebody sued Martin Marietta and settled out of court for it. Which is, again, it's like they built it.

• 3:13:25November Kelly?

  I would like a small compensation payment. Yeah.

• 3:13:29Justin Roczniak?

  I would very much like to, uh, if I imagine, imagine if one of the missiles actually, you know, went to his destination, that'd be a hell of a loss.

• 3:13:42Speaker 04

  So Kennedy passes away at 56 in 2011, right before the book on this was released.

• 3:13:51Speaker 04

  He had severe oxidizer-like burns on his lungs, so that's likely how he didn't make it.

• 3:14:00Speaker 04

  Devlin becomes a space shuttle propellants technician. He actually lives down in Titusville, Florida, and when he retired, he started writing children's books. Now, he does interviews about this all the time, and I wish I could have gotten gotten him on this, but, uh, he's very candid about how shittily he was treated after the fact, him and all the guys. And then, like I said, pal.

• 3:14:26November Kelly?

  Getting, getting an old guy who got like horribly treated in a spacesuit to be on a three hour, 17 minute podcast with us assholes feels like.

• 3:14:35Justin Roczniak?

  That might be worse, yeah.

• 3:14:38Speaker 04

  I did reach out to talk to him. He, he just never got back to me. So, um, next slide.

• 3:14:45November Kelly?

  Justified. Maybe he listened to some of our episodes.

• 3:14:48Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 3:14:49Speaker 03

  Just given, given the number of vets that I am friends with, the US military just kind of seems like a machine that turns 19 year olds into radicalized 30 year olds communists.

• 3:15:00Liam McAnderson?

  Awesome goo.

• 3:15:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, or goo. Yeah.

• 3:15:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, goo. That's true.

• 3:15:06Speaker 04

  All right. So you ready to get really mad?

• 3:15:09Liam McAnderson?

  I am.

• 3:15:09Speaker 03

  Oh, great. Sure.

• 3:15:10Speaker 04

  So the Air Force refuses to talk about the incident immediately after, including with state and environmental groups. Uh, they can neither confirm nor deny that there was an incident and whether or not there was a nuclear warhead attached to the missile. They can neither confirm nor deny there's any, there's any contamination or anything. There was, as far as you know, nothing happened other than an explosion that was contained.

• 3:15:37Speaker 04

  Uh, immediately after reporters sat at the end of this, at the end of the driveway for the, uh, for the site and harassed every vehicle and every person entering the site for any kind of comment. The Air Force gave none, including to the local sheriff from before that had his, uh, his shit blown in from the oxidizer. Uh, never talked to him. Refused to.

• 3:16:02Justin Roczniak?

  It's a heinous incident and unthinkable. The guy dropped a socket.

• 3:16:07Speaker 04

  I forgot to mention that if you remember the miss, the disaster response team.

• 3:16:15Speaker 04

  When the missile blew, they were the first to leave the site.

• 3:16:19Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, I bet they were. Naturally, yeah. No, there's a few, there's a, there's a couple of stories in command and control of like, okay, there's just this insane convoy of military vehicles booked it off the site. You know, people saw them go by. And it was like, is something up? Is something happening? They didn't stop to give instructions. They didn't stop to warn people. They just booked it. They were out of there.

• 3:16:42Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 3:16:43November Kelly?

  Yeah, just seen 20 of the coolest suburbans I've ever seen in my life going 70 down a dirt road.

• 3:16:50Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like, maybe that's the signal that you should also go that way. I don't know.

• 3:16:58Speaker 04

  So Vice President Mondale is briefed by the Air Force before he goes on to talk about it. But the Air Force local management decides that they can neither conform nor deny that there's a warhead, even though he demands the no. This is the vice fucking president.

• 3:17:17Justin Roczniak?

  Would you tell JD Vance if there was a warhead?

• 3:17:20Speaker 04

  But.

• 3:17:22Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, Mondale had even less respect than that.

• 3:17:28Speaker 04

  So, well, Mondale calls Harold Brown, who's the Secretary of Defense.

• 3:17:34Speaker 04

  Cool guy. You know, I don't really know on that one. But he has.

• 3:17:41Speaker 03

  The SecDef?

• 3:17:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, SecDef.

• 3:17:43Speaker 03

  Probably not a cool guy. I'm just gonna throw it out there. I don't think he would get along with us.

• 3:17:48Speaker 04

  In not, not with this podcast, but with, um, when it comes to all of this military history, he's not the worst. But anyway, that's not the point of where I'm getting to.

• 3:18:01Speaker 03

  We do not have to hand it to the Secretary of Defense.

• 3:18:03Speaker 04

  No, I'm not saying that. I'm just, yeah, anyway.

• 3:18:08Speaker 04

  So Mondale calls Harold Brown and Harold Brown is like, well, yeah, it's, it's fine. There's no radiation spreading. It's, you know, we've got everything contained. We're gonna work on getting everything cleaned up. And he goes, yeah, but was there a warhead? And he goes, I can neither confirm nor deny that, uh, President Mond, Vice President Mondale. And Mondale cusses him the fuck out on the phone. And, and then he goes, well, actually, yes, there, there was a warhead. Um, it's, it's contained. So.

• 3:18:42Speaker 04

  Similarly, Lloyd Levitt has to go on a press conference and all they want to ask about is the warhead. Right after Mondale lets it out that there was and he threatens to end the conference if somebody asks one more time if there was a warhead and the press laughs him out.

• 3:19:00Speaker 03

  Help me, I am turning this car around.

• 3:19:03Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah. I'll tell your dad.

• 3:19:05Justin Roczniak?

  Back to the side of the explosion.

• 3:19:07Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah. Everybody had, come on, like at gunpoint making them all.

• 3:19:12Speaker 03

  I'll make you get in the suit, goddamn it.

• 3:19:14Liam McAnderson?

  You've got your piss hole.

• 3:19:18Speaker 04

  The command, after everything's done, everything's like, the site's cleared, but they haven't started like doing remediation work. The command crew is sent back in because they're still technically in charge of that missile site. And they have to go in to get the documents out of the command center that they couldn't get into the safe to make sure they were secure because there were too many documents. They go back down in and they could have wrote it out. The glass of Coke that the commander had poured right before everything started was still sitting on his desk.

• 3:19:54Speaker 03

  I wouldn't have finished that though.

• 3:19:58Speaker 04

  I wouldn't finish that.

• 3:20:00Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, the Nuka Cola.

• 3:20:01Justin Roczniak?

  All right. Totally unsurvivable because that Coke went flat.

• 3:20:06Speaker 04

  Arazin Cola.

• 3:20:08Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 3:20:09Speaker 04

  The point of this is though, had they have wrote it out, they could have checked the pressures, they could have turned the vent fan on from inside, they could have opened the silo door and vented it. They could have done a lot from there and they didn't because they were told to evacuate.

• 3:20:26Speaker 03

  But, but, but also they could have just not thrown guys in the hole.

• 3:20:31Speaker 04

  True.

• 3:20:32Liam McAnderson?

  Yes.

• 3:20:33Speaker 04

  But.

• 3:20:34Liam McAnderson?

  Or they could have gone in through the emergency escape hatch.

• 3:20:37Speaker 04

  They could have gone in through a escape hatch because they, you can fit a refco down there. Um.

• 3:20:43Speaker 04

  I like the not throwing the guys in the whole thing, but if if you had started this with these guys staying in the hole. Uh, you could have like vented it and then sent a PTS team in.

• 3:20:53Speaker 03

  I just, I just love, I just love that this is obviously a process that needed to happen a bunch and they just didn't have a protocol for like what happens if fuel spills.

• 3:21:01Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 3:21:02Speaker 03

  Like, nobody even ever thought, huh, what happens if we spill some of this? Ah, we could never spill fuel. What are you talking about?

• 3:21:09Speaker 04

  What happens if the missile gets damaged is the real question. The answer is it won't get damaged.

• 3:21:14Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 3:21:15Speaker 04

  That's it.

• 3:21:15Justin Roczniak?

  There's no way. No. Someone could drop the socket. They all save some for pussies. Yeah.

• 3:21:21Speaker 04

  So, the warhead that we saw talked about that got flung, got flung into the air and then landed in a ditch on the access road. They find it and everybody's shitting their pants because like, is it armed? Is it ready to go? They fly out somebody from Sandia, which is the weapons laboratory that that builds nuclear weapons for the United States. And their specialist looks at it and goes, oh, it's fine because the the electronics package had been ripped off of it. So.

• 3:21:54Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, it's good.

• 3:21:55Speaker 04

  It's good.

• 3:21:55Speaker 03

  Don't worry. A little bit.

• 3:21:57Speaker 04

  So they.

• 3:21:58Speaker 03

  Slapping it like a Midwestern dad with a boat trailer like that shit ain't going anywhere. Don't worry about it.

• 3:22:06Justin Roczniak?

  Hold on, I know how to do this. Now I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna kick it. And it should be good. And if it isn't, it's not our problem anymore. Exactly.

• 3:22:17Speaker 04

  So they pack it into a a jet fuel container, apparently that's filled with sand. Loaded on a flatbed truck. And then they had like a multi convoy of flatbed trucks leave the site to hide that it was in one of those trucks.

• 3:22:32Speaker 03

  Doing the fucking Las Vegas like, uh, shell game scam. Flatbed trucks.

• 3:22:39Speaker 04

  They just didn't want the press to know. So they're just trying to play games with it. I do like in in the videos of it. That the guys running the trucks are giving thumbs up as they go by the press like, hey. It's like fucking Smokey and the Bandit's camp convoy. Just like, what's up, hey?

• 3:22:58Speaker 03

  Aw damn, I'd watch that movie.

• 3:23:00Speaker 04

  You seen that shit in the back? You see what I'm hauling today?

• 3:23:05Justin Roczniak?

  Hey, I gotta, and then, and you stop at the choke.

• 3:23:08November Kelly?

  They're saying milk we're hauling.

• 3:23:09Justin Roczniak?

  There's the sheriff.

• 3:23:13Speaker 04

  So I talked to a guy that was one of the security forces after the explosion. And I asked him, uh, I asked him like, what was it like being there? And he's, his answer was, I, they told us to go out there because we had to keep our military safe from all those damn Arkansas looky loos. And I was like, did you have many? And he went, so damn many. The worst were the news. The damn air force didn't exactly make it easy with all, to make them, make them easy to deal with, with all that can neither confirm nor deny bullshit. That was the dumbest thing I've ever done.

• 3:23:58Speaker 04

  I loved that guy. That was such a fun conversation.

• 3:24:02Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 3:24:04Speaker 04

  So

• 3:24:06Speaker 04

  that is the end of our disaster. But you might be asking, what happened with the Titan two? And simply, it got pulled out of service. It was decided that it was too old, uh, too accident prone. And, uh, they didn't want to do the upgrades to it to make it safer. Remember the accident happened in 1980?

• 3:24:33Speaker 04

  They didn't pull it out of service till 1987.

• 3:24:37November Kelly?

  Okay. I mean, seven years is pretty quick by air force standards. As we've seen, given that it takes them seven hours to flip a switch that explodes the missile.

• 3:24:47Justin Roczniak?

  They, uh, they, they did a lot of not dropping the socket training.

• 3:24:53Speaker 04

  Well, so the reasons that they kept it was because.

• 3:24:59Speaker 04

  Uh, earlier before, when it was an outdated missile system, but Damascus hadn't happened, it was as a negotiating tool is half the reason. Henry Kissinger wanted to keep it around to trade off for the SS7, I believe. Could be wrong. And the real reason it was kept around though, is because the air force needed their big stick. It was a third of the mega tonnage of the whole force and they needed their big stick until they got a replacement. Next slide.

• 3:25:32Speaker 03

  The country is so stupid.

• 3:25:36Speaker 04

  Here's the big stick.

• 3:25:38Liam McAnderson?

  Ooh.

• 3:25:39Speaker 04

  This is the LGM 118 Peacemaker.

• 3:25:43Liam McAnderson?

  Look how many presents you can deliver.

• 3:25:45Speaker 04

  It's all right. Peacemakers are the blamer. Peacekeepers, the, the, the present deliverer.

• 3:25:51November Kelly?

  America is one of the ugliest nations on the face of the earth.

• 3:25:55Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, we're the great Satan for a reason.

• 3:25:57Speaker 03

  It really is. It really, really, every time I do one of these, I'm just like, oh, I didn't think I could hate this place anymore.

• 3:26:05Speaker 04

  So that, this began development.

• 3:26:07Speaker 03

  Wait a second, wait a second, Scooter, is that the fucking train they have at the goddamn Dayton Air Force Museum?

• 3:26:12Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 3:26:13Speaker 03

  God damn it. I've seen that train. I think I took a picture with it.

• 3:26:18November Kelly?

  Nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons will pervert everything you love most in the world, including trains.

• 3:26:22Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 3:26:23Speaker 03

  Well, at, at least it was like a, you know, carbon efficient method of delivering presents.

• 3:26:27Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 3:26:30November Kelly?

  It's, it's a good way to decarbonize the delivery method of carbonizing a lot of people.

• 3:26:39Speaker 04

  So they started development in 1971, but it took so long to get this thing out. Like they kept changing what it was. This is the one that they were going to put in the trucks and run everywhere through the, the desert. Uh, it took so long to actually get out. It didn't get deployed until 1986 and it was just deployed in a bunch of, uh, used Minuteman silos.

• 3:27:01Speaker 04

  Uh, so it was like fairly cheap for being ten, ten warheads of three hundred kilotons on top of this thing, plus decoys. Uh, they did want to put it on a train. It would have been cool as shit. Um, but they, Cold War ended because George H. W. Bush came to save us. And, uh, that was that. We, we won. Yay.

• 3:27:27Justin Roczniak?

  Wow.

• 3:27:28Speaker 03

  Now, this is, I, I maintain that the main reason the Soviet Union collapsed is because they were too busy working on the Bureon and they forgot to do their budget.

• 3:27:35Justin Roczniak?

  I was, uh.

• 3:27:36Speaker 03

  They're just like, it was like the drill candles tweet, but it was all just energy of Iran.

• 3:27:41Justin Roczniak?

  It was when.

• 3:27:42November Kelly?

  I mean, it was revisionism, but we're saying the same thing, I think.

• 3:27:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:27:46Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, no, it was revisionism. Yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll agree with that one. Yeah.

• 3:27:53Speaker 04

  So after the Titans are pulled, they, they need to do something with them. So next slide, please.

• 3:28:04Speaker 04

  They turned them into space launch vehicles. They used them to launch, uh, satellites.

• 3:28:09Speaker 03

  Once again, proving my theory that a missile is just a rocket with worse PR or vice versa.

• 3:28:15Speaker 04

  But actually, they launched thirteen of them as the, as the twenty-three, the Titan twenty-three G launch vehicle from Vandenberg. Uh, they scrapped forty-two of them. And then there are seven left in museums, including the Titan Missile Museum, we've seen multiple times, Dayton. Uh, there's one out in Washington.

• 3:28:39Speaker 04

  At, uh, I think Evergreen Museum.

• 3:28:43Speaker 03

  Oh, I've seen that one. Yeah. That's the, that's the one that was owned by the ex-CIA front company that is now a vineyard and they have a seven forty-seven rotting in a, uh, field of grapes.

• 3:28:55Speaker 04

  Isn't America so cool?

• 3:28:56November Kelly?

  God, I love the Northwest.

• 3:28:57Speaker 03

  It's insane. I will admit, it is a great, like, kind of like Cascadia aesthetic to be just like in a big vineyard on a rainy day with a green painted ex firefighting CIA shell company, uh, jumbo jet next to you.

• 3:29:12Speaker 04

  That's cool as hell.

• 3:29:13November Kelly?

  Oh, God. Let me through, let me through your border, America. Let me in.

• 3:29:19Justin Roczniak?

  Missiles are real happy, like, we're finally going to Moscow, boys.

• 3:29:22November Kelly?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:29:23Justin Roczniak?

  No, they're going to orbit.

• 3:29:26Speaker 04

  Go all the way, boys.

• 3:29:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's one at the Stafford Air Museum, which I was half tempted to drive out to just to get the damn size of that dust cap for the socket.

• 3:29:38Speaker 04

  Titan Missile Museum. Yeah, there's, there's, there's a bunch to look at. It's, it's worth going to see how crazy this thing was.

• 3:29:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, I will say, like, having, having been to the missile silo room at the Dayton Air Force Museum, where they kind of grouped all together, and they actually have, like, a replica, like, sort of silo area at the Evergreen Museum.

• 3:30:00Speaker 03

  It's one thing to talk about all this stuff. It really is actually, like, it, it in your stomach sickening to see these things.

• 3:30:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:30:07November Kelly?

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:30:09Speaker 03

  It's great.

• 3:30:10Speaker 04

  Next slide, please.

• 3:30:13Speaker 04

  So the family lived on after the Titan II. There was the Titan III and the Titan IV. And it was solely used for, for orbital vehicle launch or sending stuff out of orbit, out into deep space. On the left is the manned orbiting lavatory launch. That was a test to make sure you could send a capsule up with a hatch in the bottom of it. I think it's cool because it was tall and pointy and neat. And then on the right is

• 3:30:47Speaker 04

  the Titan Launch System being hauled. This is, this was hauled by trains, by two SWs.

• 3:30:54November Kelly?

  I love this locomotive very much. It's a beautiful paint scheme.

• 3:30:58Speaker 03

  That would be an absolutely kick-ass model railroad.

• 3:31:02Speaker 04

  One, one got sold, and then the other is still at Cape Canaveral at the, the Space Museum. Like, you can go see it.

• 3:31:12November Kelly?

  I've been back on my train sim bullshit lately, and that's, I mean, it's good. It's a good way of boring yourself on purpose, so the rest of your mind can wander. But like, I feel like, maybe they could introduce, just to thought, the idea of maybe some trains that are, like, interesting.

• 3:31:32Justin Roczniak?

  I know a guy who works for Train Simulator, who has explained to me exactly why they cannot do that, which is-

• 3:31:43November Kelly?

  No, I know, right? They've tried to sneak stuff out, right? They've, they've, they've brought out like the, the like military cargo thing where they tried, maybe what if the thing that the train was hauling was interesting? And I'm like, yeah, sure, I'll buy that. But like, then if you do that, like, the, the like, you know, 2% most autistic population of Germany get very mad at you for being like, actually, you should be modeling exactly the timetable of the Schnelloenkaden.

• 3:32:12Speaker 03

  Do Germans have timetables anymore?

• 3:32:15Justin Roczniak?

  It's worse than that. You can't even like simulate a bad day on the railroad if you're licensing actual railroad, you know, stuff because they get mad at you for showing that sometimes the railroad doesn't work.

• 3:32:30November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 3:32:30Justin Roczniak?

  Um, which I don't know if you've worked on the railroad-

• 3:32:32November Kelly?

  Why the fuck can't you? Why can't you use assets that you would have to develop for free? Because the intellectual property is there of like, I don't know, X like fucking communist countries. Then you could show shit being as bad as you want.

• 3:32:45Speaker 03

  Yes, I'm going to work today on the Nerlington Barthor-

• 3:32:48November Kelly?

  Why am I doing Euro Truck Simulator, driving from Frankfurt to Stuttgart all the time when I could be blasting through Libya at 70 miles an hour?

• 3:32:59Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, one day I wanted to, I want to do a bonus episode about the Train Simulator. And how it's declined, you know?

• 3:33:07November Kelly?

  Can we do that next? Because I would be thrilled. I can, I can contribute to that.

• 3:33:13Justin Roczniak?

  Sure. Yeah, no, we, we, we should, we should figure that one out. Yeah.

• 3:33:19Speaker 04

  Can I finish?

• 3:33:21Justin Roczniak?

  No.

• 3:33:21November Kelly?

  Yes.

• 3:33:24November Kelly?

  Listen, you're making me work until 2 AM on my birthday, so I'll interrupt you just as much as I feel like.

• 3:33:34Liam McAnderson?

  I dropped the socket.

• 3:33:40Speaker 04

  So they still use that launcher for ULA launches, but they don't use the cool locomoses anymore. They use stupid ass trackmobiles. So if you, if you want to see it.

• 3:33:50Speaker 03

  I thought they used the Toyota Tacoma.

• 3:33:52Speaker 04

  The what?

• 3:33:52November Kelly?

  Just, just a high rail pulling this thing out.

• 3:33:55Speaker 03

  No, the old, there was a pickup truck commercial with it. It was a Toyota Tundra, actually, where it pulled the space shuttle. It was just a bit.

• 3:34:02Speaker 04

  Ah, gotcha.

• 3:34:03Speaker 03

  Uh, American car company commercials 15 years ago that I have memorized for some fucking reason.

• 3:34:09Liam McAnderson?

  Wonder what that is? Probably nothing.

• 3:34:11Justin Roczniak?

  So who would, who would have a commercial from 15 years ago memorized? I'll call now.

• 3:34:16Speaker 03

  I hope, I hope, I hope RFK isn't listening to this or I'm gonna get put on yet another list.

• 3:34:22November Kelly?

  Where the like brother comes home from Africa and he's excited to get good coffee in America. Uh, hmm.

• 3:34:30Speaker 04

  Yeah. So I just wanted to finish out with, there is so much more to this story that you can't fit in. Uh, read the book, Command and Control. Uh, it's really fucking good. The audio book's just as good. Uh, the movie is short, but very good. And, uh, yeah, it's, it's wild. It's very bad story, but it's a very wild, well-reported story.

• 3:34:54Justin Roczniak?

  Pretty wild story. Yeah.

• 3:34:56Speaker 04

  Yeah. And, uh, yeah, it's, this is just one incident with nuclear missiles there. I came across so many fucking more and, uh, looks like we've got one more to talk about.

• 3:35:10Justin Roczniak?

  Uh oh.

• 3:35:11Speaker 04

  Roz, it's all you.

• 3:35:12Justin Roczniak?

  Well.

• 3:35:14Justin Roczniak?

  Well, first, what did we learn?

• 3:35:16Speaker 04

  Ah, right.

• 3:35:17Liam McAnderson?

  Don't drop the socket. Don't piss in the suit. Uh, happy birthday Nova.

• 3:35:22November Kelly?

  Yeah. On a statistical average, most of being 35 is spent talking about ICBMs.

• 3:35:28Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 3:35:29Liam McAnderson?

  There are worse things.

• 3:35:31Justin Roczniak?

  All right. Yeah. Don't, don't drop the socket.

• 3:35:36Liam McAnderson?

  I dropped the socket.

• 3:35:37November Kelly?

  Don't drop the socket. I want to make that a shot.

• 3:35:40Liam McAnderson?

  And drop.

• 3:35:41Justin Roczniak?

  I dropped the socket.

• 3:35:44Justin Roczniak?

  Well, we have a segment on this podcast called Safety Third.

• 3:35:49Liam McAnderson?

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 3:35:52Justin Roczniak?

  Shake, shake hands with danger.

• 3:35:57Justin Roczniak?

  Hello. Well, there's your problem. All right. I was told I have a topical story and that I must write in.

• 3:36:08Justin Roczniak?

  Well, here you go. I was a missile maintainer at the F E Warren Missile Fields in the 1980s. Oh, boy.

• 3:36:17November Kelly?

  All missile all the time, all day. Let's go.

• 3:36:20Justin Roczniak?

  Yes, this is a topical safety third. Across my time in the Air Force, we had many exciting times like driving three hours to then have to drive three more because we brought the wrong wrench. Flying in a helicopter to a site in a hurry, just to realize the problem was usually trivial. Like a light bulb being out or getting stuck in our beat up vehicles in the snow because none of these silos could be conveniently put on a major highway. But nothing will be as exciting as the first time we had the call. Oh, dear. It was the 1980s in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Oh, boy.

• 3:37:05Justin Roczniak?

  That's another, that's another homeland of Union Pacific.

• 3:37:12Justin Roczniak?

  We were at the base when suddenly everyone was told to drop everything and start running for a silo miles away. Apparently, a launch control center had the missile away light come on.

• 3:37:29Justin Roczniak?

  And the associated missile stopped responding to input from the silo.

• 3:37:36Justin Roczniak?

  Or for the layman, it was trying to launch.

• 3:37:41November Kelly?

  Lace them up, lace them up, lace them up. Moscow, Moscow, Moscow.

• 3:37:49Justin Roczniak?

  So as the two guys in the hole start shitting their pants, ripping the wiring out of the walls. Oh, fuck. Trying to get the system to shut down. We start driving out with the closest available vehicle.

• 3:38:06Justin Roczniak?

  Which was a peacemaker, more professionally known as the Cadillac Gauge Ranger.

• 3:38:12Speaker 04

  Seen on the right.

• 3:38:13November Kelly?

  The most, the most like hastily hastily armored truck. Fuck in the world. I love this thing. It looks so fucking doofy.

• 3:38:23Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Five tons of Dodge pickup kill dozer, especially for the Air Force Security Forces.

• 3:38:30Speaker 03

  Shit, that actually goes. That's awesome. I'd hate handing it to them, but they did it.

• 3:38:37November Kelly?

  It looks so, it looks so happy to be there.

• 3:38:40Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. I'm part of the team.

• 3:38:45Justin Roczniak?

  Once at the site, the instructions were simple. Pull up on top of the silo. Park the front wheels on the door. Put it in park. Get out and run like hell.

• 3:39:00Justin Roczniak?

  Damn thing did start the sequence to launch. So they're parking like over here.

• 3:39:07November Kelly?

  Like on the edge.

• 3:39:09Justin Roczniak?

  On the edge. If the damn thing did start the sequence to launch, the 110 ton door would blow off at about 45 miles an hour. And the peacekeeper would flip into the hole, solving the unofficial launch problem.

• 3:39:27Justin Roczniak?

  Unofficial launch.

• 3:39:30November Kelly?

  Also, I just, I just note here that the turret gunner here is wearing an MSA millennium, which also makes this transgender.

• 3:39:40November Kelly?

  I mean, it's, it's an MCU too, the like, you know, military version, but still.

• 3:39:47Justin Roczniak?

  Now, of course, this latter situation did not happen. Otherwise this would be a bigger story. The techs were able to get in and reset everything, but after I did my time and left the Air Force, I saw articles on this incident on the internet. And it turns out they're reading about it on Facebook. This was a regular occurrence.

• 3:40:11November Kelly?

  Yes.

• 3:40:11Justin Roczniak?

  The parking the truck on the door, that was, and maybe still is standard operating procedure. Of course.

• 3:40:18November Kelly?

  Real Call of Duty type shit. Hell yeah.

• 3:40:24Justin Roczniak?

  Of course, Strategic Air Command and Strategic Command have sanitized all of this since, but no one can ever keep their mouth shut. Hope this doesn't keep you up tonight. Keep up the fun show from Florida Minuteman. Thanks, Florida Minuteman.

• 3:40:40November Kelly?

  Thank you.

• 3:40:42Justin Roczniak?

  My, I, I forget where I heard this, but apparently these, uh, these big, uh, silo doors, when they go off, they slide across the desert like a hockey puck.

• 3:40:54Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 3:40:56Justin Roczniak?

  Terrific.

• 3:40:57Speaker 04

  I, I made the slide and I included the big gas generator. It's just this big pneumatic cylinder that just literally just counterweights and just flings that thing off.

• 3:41:10Speaker 03

  I really want to drive that truck.

• 3:41:15November Kelly?

  Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner getting obliterated by the bicentennial flower on the side of a hundred and ten ton blast.

• 3:41:24Speaker 03

  I, I do also love the idea of weaponizing a Dodge hitting something to save the world. Like, we've taken the natural inclination.

• 3:41:38Justin Roczniak?

  Funny thing, you can still drive it afterwards. That's if it was a Toyota.

• 3:41:44Liam McAnderson?

  Or a Dakota Diesel, sir.

• 3:41:46Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. All right. Yeah. That's a great way to solve a problem. Drop a truck on the missile.

• 3:41:55Speaker 03

  This is why ride heights have to be so high, otherwise.

• 3:41:57November Kelly?

  Package right here.

• 3:42:03Justin Roczniak?

  I didn't see them do this on Top Gear.

• 3:42:11Speaker 03

  Well, there's your problem, North Dakota special.

• 3:42:19Justin Roczniak?

  Well, that was, that was safety third.

• 3:42:24Justin Roczniak?

  Shake hands with danger.

• 3:42:28Justin Roczniak?

  Our next episode will be on Chernobyl. Does anyone have any commercials before we go?

• 3:42:33November Kelly?

  Happy birthday Nova. Oh, listen, thank you. Thank you. Your, your birthday present to me is to listen to all of my podcasts and subscribe to the Patreons. They are this trash future, be gay solve crimes, kill James Bond, no gods, no mares. Check out Nate from Trash Futures banned second homes, just put out their album. It's really good. It's called Find A Way To Hate It. It rocks.

• 3:43:01Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, that's, that's, that's, there's some bangers on there.

• 3:43:05November Kelly?

  Subscribe to Trangolismo. Uh, just, uh, maybe like break into rail yards and start stealing rail cars. I, I don't know. Everything.

• 3:43:13Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 3:43:16Justin Roczniak?

  Gareth Dennis and I will have a new project shortly, which is just on the Rail Natter Patreon. Where we're just gonna chat for 30 minutes about trains every week.

• 3:43:29November Kelly?

  Oh, hell yeah.

• 3:43:31Speaker 03

  I'd love this for you. This is awesome.

• 3:43:33Justin Roczniak?

  I'm supposed to share the somehow you didn't die on your way to work podcast, which I was on actually a month ago. Talking about Thomas the Tank Engine. So I'll put a link to that in the description.

• 3:43:48Speaker 03

  Oh, can I, can I just throw in one thing really quick?

• 3:43:51November Kelly?

  What's in the 10,000 losses?

• 3:43:55Speaker 03

  I am trying to finish my next photo book fairly soon, and I am looking for events and people to shoot focused on like queer life in Seattle. And since I keep getting recognized in the city of Seattle from being on this podcast, I figure there might be some people listening who that would be cool for.

• 3:44:14Speaker 03

  So if that sounds like modeling for pictures, uh, sounds like something you would enjoy, maybe let me know. It needs to be relevant.

• 3:44:23November Kelly?

  Yeah, do that. Do that. Uh, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be in Dublin from the 12th to the 19th of May. I'm not doing anything. I'm just hanging out. If you see me on the street, just say hi, I guess.

• 3:44:36Liam McAnderson?

  Fiddly D, potatoes. Fiddly D, potatoes.

• 3:44:40November Kelly?

  I don't associate myself with these people.

• 3:44:43Liam McAnderson?

  End this. Yes, you do. Yes, you do. I know that, I have those founding documents, buddy. End this. Alright, alright.

• 3:44:55Speaker 03

  Happy birthday Nova.

• 3:44:56Speaker 04

  Happy birthday.

• 3:44:57Liam McAnderson?

  Bye, everybody.

• 3:44:58November Kelly?

  Thank you. Bye.

• 3:44:59Speaker 03

  Bye.