Original subtitles

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

[David] Tonight on "Secrets Declassified,"

the close calls that nearly triggered Armageddon

and the doomsday plans designed to survive it.

From the Soviet secret nuclear train...

[Hakeem] It looks like a normal railway car,

but on the inside is Armageddon on rails.

- To NATO war games that pushed the Kremlin to red alert.

- The Soviets could have nukes in the air within 30 minutes.

- Or a Soviet submariner standing alone

to prevent nuclear apocalypse.

- If he just follows orders, the planet is done.

- These are the astonishing and sometimes terrible things

done by governments and the people who work for them.

It's time to bring them to light.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

A moving target is harder to hit.

So when the Kremlin wants to shield

its nuclear launch sites from a U.S. first strike,

it doesn't just camouflage them.

It puts them on wheels.

[tense music]

[Don] It's late 1983, and the Kremlin is panicking.

The U.S. has just deployed

new Pershing II missiles in West Germany.

And the Soviets believe these missiles can hit

Moscow in under 10 minutes.

- The Communists are concerned that a surprise attack

could take out all of their nuclear silos

before they have an opportunity to counterattack.

So the Soviets need a new mobile missile system

that they can hide from the U.S.

and launch from anywhere.

[David] Soviet war planners find a solution

hiding in plain sight: the Soviet rail system.

- The Soviet Union is enormous.

It runs across 11 time zones

and has 100,000 miles of railway running over it.

[Don] This huge rail network is bigger

than the U.S.'s entire interstate highway system.

[Greg] The thinking is that,

if they put an ICBM on a train,

they can run it across all of this track,

across 11 time zones, leaving the Americans never knowing

just where it might actually be.

[David] The Kremlin hands the top-secret project

to a proven rocket scientist, Vladimir Utkin.

[Greg] Utkin is something of a genius.

He's one of the best rocket scientists in the Soviet Union.

- His team has already built the Soviet's

most powerful ICBM, a monster nicknamed Satan.

[Greg] Even Utkin is a little daunted

by the task before him.

He calls it "amazing in its grandeur,"

which I'm pretty sure is Russian for "this is insane."

[David] Utkin now has to design a missile that

can be safely launched not from a concrete silo

but from a train.

- At the time, the Soviet Union is using

what's called a hot launch for ICBM rockets.

Basically, this means that the engine ignites,

and as it does, out come the exhaust fumes,

and that's what's firing the rocket off into the air.

[Hakeem] These fumes coming out of the rocket can reach

temperatures similar to that at the surface of the sun,

around 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

So what you're going to end up with

is tracks and railroad cars that have been reduced

to puddles of liquid metal.

[Greg] So Utkin developed something

called a cold launch, and this uses compressed gas

to launch the rocket instead.

Basically, think of it like popping the cork

on a champagne bottle.

♪ ♪

- Once it's safely in the air and away from the railroad car,

it fires up its conventional engines,

and off it goes.

♪ ♪

[David] It's a win for Utkin,

but now he faces another challenge.

Normal ICBMs are just too big to fit

in a Soviet train carriage.

- To stay hidden, Utkin needs to fit

his new missile system inside a standard sized freight car.

[Greg] That's a problem.

Freight cars are about 80 feet long,

and Satan is 120 feet long.

The math just doesn't work.

[David] Utkin's solution is ingenious.

[Greg] Now, Utkin can't shrink the rocket,

nor can he expand the freight car.

However, he could do something with the nose.

So he decides to make the nose collapsible.

- He creates a kind of origami design

made of corrugated metal, which folds down inside the rocket

like an accordion.

- Once it's launched,

compressed gases reinflate the nose cone,

returning it to its perfect aerodynamic shape.

♪ ♪

[David] - Utkin calls his new missle the Molodets,

Russian for "good job."

Now he just needs a train to put it on.

[Hakeem] So the Soviets create what is known

as the combat railway missile system.

[Greg] It looks completely ordinary on the outside,

but it's got a missile on the inside.

This is Armageddon on wheels.

[Hakeem] When it's time for the missiles to launch,

the first thing that happens is hydraulic legs extend

out of the train and touch down on the ground

in order to stabilize the train car.

An arm comes out of the top

to move any power lines out of the way.

The roof splits open, and the Molodets missile goes vertical

and is ready to launch.

[David] Starting in 1987, the Soviets built 12

top secret nuclear ghost trains,

which patrolled the railways for years,

completely unknown to the public,

but not to the CIA.

- Only in 1999, the CIA declassifies its files

on the apocalypse express.

♪ ♪

The files show that the CIA did know about these trains

from their spies back in the 1980s.

♪ ♪

[David]- The files also revealed that the Soviet camouflage

was startlingly effective.

- The U.S. knew that the trains existed.

But frustratingly, they couldn't find them.

So even if the U.S. struck all of their fixed silos,

the Soviets would still be able to launch

a devastating retaliatory strike

from their hidden nuclear trains.

The system worked perfectly.

♪ ♪

- From doomsday trains to doomsday planes,

when nuclear missiles start flying,

most governments head underground.

But not the U.S. president.

He heads to a command center built

to survive Armageddon,

one that hides 30,000 feet up in the air.

♪ ♪

[Sami] In the aftermath of the attacks of September 11th,

there is absolute panic,

and a bigger question starts to form.

Will other attacks be coming?

[David] Just minutes after the assault on the Pentagon,

observers in the capital are terrified

by another potential threat in the sky.

- People spot this mysterious aircraft

circling above Washington D.C.,

like it's watching over the city in lockdown.

[David] The aircraft looks like a jumbo jet

with one key difference.

- If you look at the plane and you compare it

to a traditional 747,

there's a big hump on the back of the plane.

- Confusion turns to fear.

News agencies scramble to find out if this aircraft

is friend or foe.

[David] To calm the public, Pentagon sources come clean.

The plane is one of theirs.

♪ ♪

It's President George W. Bush's wartime ride,

the E-4B, known to insiders as the Doomsday Plane.

♪ ♪

- This is essentially a nuclear command and control in the air.

- Now President Bush's secret apocalypse escape machine

has been exposed to the world.

- With President Bush in Florida,

its 9/11 mission is a mystery.

[Sami] People wonder if the government knew

something was going to happen

and launched the Doomsday Plane in advance.

But in reality, it just so happens that the Doomsday Plane

is actually engaged in a standard drill

while the attacks are ongoing.

[David] Now the press and public want to know

more about the plane.

Is the strange hump concealing a weapon system?

The government decides to open up.

- The administration gives journalists permission

to film inside so the public can see the inner workings

of the Doomsday Plane.

- The E-4B Doomsday Plane's been in service

out of the public eye since 1980.

Now the government reveals it is a fully functional

Pentagon in the sky.

♪ ♪

- The Doomsday Plane can support up to 112 personnel.

You've got a command center, a conference room,

even a briefing room where the president can address

whatever's left of the nation.

Further back, you've got the operations area,

where 30 specialists sit glued to their screens,

monitoring intel and the status of every U.S. asset worldwide.

[Sami] One way to think of this thing

is like an underground bunker with wings.

[David] The Pentagon also reveals what's inside

the mysterious hump.

It's the plane's vital heart,

allowing the president to command a nuclear war

from the skies.

- Inside that hump is the most sophisticated

communication suite that's ever been put into the air.

It has 67 satellite dishes to ensure that,

even if one form of communication fails,

there are lots of backups.

- The hump allows the president to speak to anybody, anywhere

across the surface of the world,

as long as they can answer a phone.

[David] If World War III breaks out,

the most important people for the president to contact

may not be on the surface

but lurking deep down at the bottom of the ocean.

- Coiled up in the belly of the Doomsday Plane

is a 5-mile-long wire antenna.

And in a worst-case scenario,

it can be unspooled behind the aircraft.

[Evy] The wire transmits very low frequency radio signals.

These radio signals are the only ones

capable of penetrating beneath the surface of the water

to communicate with U.S. nuclear armed submarines.

[Sami] This simple wire lets the president

give the subs that final

apocalyptic order to retaliate and unleash hell.

♪ ♪

So even if the nation is a graveyard,

its capacity for vengeance is very much alive.

♪ ♪

[David] The tragedy of 9/11 exposed the president's

top secret E-4B Doomsday Plane to the public.

It's still on duty

but in a world of heightened tensions.

In 2024, the Air Force awards a $13 billion contract

to create an upgraded replacement.

The details of those improvements

remain a tightly guarded secret.

Coming up, the Pentagon builds

a wonder weapon so dangerous, they don't dare test it.

[Hakeem] This monster is an apocalypse machine

powered by an unshielded nuclear reactor.

[David] And later, on the most dangerous day in history,

a lone Soviet submariner must decide the fate of the planet.

- If he gives the word, he could start World War III.

♪ ♪

- Nuclear weapons are designed to instill fear into the enemy.

But in the 1950s, the U.S. builds an apocalypse machine

of such awesome power, even its makers are

terrified to test it.

They call it the Flying Crowbar.

[tense music]

- By 1957, in Washington, there's a new paranoia.

The Soviets have just introduced

the world's first ICBM,

or Intercontinental Ballistic Missile.

So now the Soviets are capable of striking us first

before we can retaliate.

- The Pentagon decides they need a wonder weapon.

They want something so terrifyingly overwhelming

that Moscow won't even dare start a war with the U.S.

[David] They turn to the home of the H-bomb,

Lawrence Livermore Labs in California.

- At Livermore, they hand the responsibility

for creating this monster machine

to 37-year-old associate director Ted Merkle.

[Don] Merkle assembles a dream team,

the sharpest engineers and nuclear scientists he can find.

Their job is to invent the most devastating weapon possible.

- The stakes are so high,

he's given a budget of $230 million a year

in today's money to bring this vision to life.

[David] The result should be so hellishly deadly

that the mission is codenamed after the Roman god

of the underworld,

Project Pluto.

- Merkle envisions a missile-bomber hybrid

with no human crew, like a gigantic nuclear-armed drone.

He wants it to be able to lurk for days at high altitude.

And he wants to pack not 1, but 16 nukes.

[David] Soon Merkle settles on a design for the weapon

based on a stainless steel shell

nearly 100 feet long.

It's brutally simple, designed for destruction,

so Merkle calls it the Flying Crowbar.

First, the Crowbar needs a game-changing engine

to make it airborne.

- To keep it in the air for days,

carrying 50,000 pounds of bombs,

Merkle comes up with a solution straight out

of atomic-age science fiction.

He's going to power the Crowbar using a nuclear reactor.

[Hakeem] Typically, a nuclear reactor has

a lot of shielding so that people are

protected from the radiation that it produces.

But all that shielding is just too darn heavy for a missile.

And given that this aircraft is unmanned,

Merkle decides to just ditch the shielding

and save all that weight.

So now you have an unshielded nuclear reactor.

- By the early 1960s, Merkle's team has

a full-scale engine prototype ready.

Now they need to test it.

♪ ♪

[Hakeem] You can't just fire up

an unshielded nuclear reactor anywhere.

You need a place where you can make

a big, giant nuclear wasteland.

So they find a location of 8 square miles

in Jackass Flats, Nevada.

- Once the reactor starts,

the radiation will make it deadly.

- Merkle's team builds a thick-walled concrete bunker

for the reactor to be tested inside of

and a second concrete bunker

for his team to observe the tests.

[Dan] To solve the problem of how to move the reactor

once it's running hot,

they build a two-mile railroad track

and its very own remote-controlled rail car

to move it into position.

[David] On May 22, 1964, the Flying Crowbar's

full-sized nuclear reactor engine rolls out

for its make-or-break test.

- The engine is a monster-- 9 feet long,

5 feet in diameter, weighing 10,000 pounds.

[Dan] When the test starts, the roar is deafening.

The reactor glows as it hits 2,500 degrees.

That's so hot that it melts lead bricks

placed under the tracks.

♪ ♪

[David] The test lasts for just five minutes.

♪ ♪

Project Pluto's nuclear-powered engine

is a success.

Once it's been deployed,

it will drive the Crowbar at Mach 3

on an apocalyptic multi-stage attack run.

- So there are four big threats associated

with the Flying Crowbar.

Number one is the shock wave it produces.

Because the weapon is traveling at Mach 3,

it's producing a shock wave

that can flatten buildings.

Number two is the unshielded nuclear reactor

that's powering it.

When it's flying, it's, of course, leaving

a path of radioactivity as it flies.

- It's carrying a payload of 16 nuclear weapons.

It can drop them one at a time,

each with the power to destroy a city.

And lastly, the Crowbar itself is a bomb.

So it can be programmed to target one final bullseye

and take it out.

♪ ♪

- It will be horrifyingly efficient.

[David] The nuclear reactor engine works on the ground.

Now the Pluto team needs to flight test

the Flying Crowbar in real-world skies.

- Where on Earth can you flight test a weapon that devastating?

The Nevada test range is way too close to Las Vegas,

and even the Pacific test areas are too risky.

[David] While the Pluto team are grappling

with this thorny problem,

a newer, simpler missile steals the Crowbar's thunder.

[Martin] While it was under development,

we finished the development of our Minuteman

intercontinental ballistic missile.

Once we had the Minuteman, we didn't really need

the Flying Crowbar any longer.

- Only months after a successful reactor test,

Project Pluto is quietly canceled.

It has cost the equivalent of $2 billion.

- Project Pluto is not only shockingly expensive,

it's a totally indiscriminate weapon of mass destruction.

So the government buries the details

under top secret classification for decades.

- Finally, in 2015, the Department of Energy

and the Air Force declassify an extraordinary document.

♪ ♪

It details how truly deadly

the Flying Crowbar would have been.

[Sami] It shows the United States government was willing

to try just about anything to give it an advantage

over the Soviet Union.

Project Pluto would have been one

of the most devastating weapons ever created.

♪ ♪

[David] Coming up, during the Cuban Missile Crisis,

a Soviet sub with nukes on board

surfaces in the middle of the U.S. battle fleet.

- The two crews are basically staring each other down.

♪ ♪

- In the darkest hour of the Cuban Missile Crisis,

the future of humanity hangs on a single Soviet submariner

stranded beneath the waves

in order to fire a nuclear torpedo.

[tense music]

- It's October 1962.

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev has

managed to have intermediate-range

ballistic missiles placed in Cuba,

just 100 miles off the U.S. Coast.

The Soviet Navy is also establishing

a submarine base at Cuba.

[David] To reinforce the undercover

Soviet forces there,

Khrushchev orders the Foxtrot class submarine B-59

to sail in secret to the island.

[Sami] Its captain is a man named Valentin Savitsky.

Also on board is the coolheaded 36-year-old

Commodore Vasiliy Arkhipov.

- For this special mission, B-59 is packing an extra punch.

Alongside conventional weapons,

it's loaded with a single nuclear torpedo

capable of destruction on par with Hiroshima.

♪ ♪

[David] As B-59 is crossing the Atlantic,

U.S. spy planes spot the secret nukes

Khrushchev has smuggled into Cuba,

and all hell breaks loose.

President Kennedy orders the Navy to surround

the island with warships.

Now the submarine is heading straight

into the Cuban Missile Crisis.

- Soon, destroyer escorts and anti-submarine units

head to Cuban waters to stop

any Soviet reinforcements from getting through.

- What this means for the B-59 mission is that now they are

sailing into a vastly more dangerous situation

than the one that they thought they were sailing into

when they departed the Soviet Union.

- The U.S. Navy is watching the seas around Cuba,

hunting for Soviet subs.

On October 27th, the B-59 gets spotted.

Its secret mission is exposed,

and the most dangerous day in history begins.

♪ ♪

[Don] B-59 is running for its life,

pursued by U.S. destroyers

and aircraft from a nearby carrier.

The U.S. Navy drops depth charges below,

basically grenades that generate shockwaves

to signal to the Soviets to come to the surface.

♪ ♪

- The shock waves violently shake the Soviet sub.

And for the crew inside, it's akin to sitting inside

of a metal barrel while somebody hits it

with a sledgehammer.

♪ ♪

[Martin] They're unaware that the United States Navy

wants to drive them off without killing them.

- All they know for sure is that there are explosions

going on around their sub.

♪ ♪

It has every appearance of war.

[David] Captain Savitsky decides that the U.S.

is coming in for the kill.

- He was given rules of engagement

when he departed the Soviet Union.

And the rules of engagement were,

if they fire on you, you return fire.

For him, the most effective weapon system available

is a nuclear-tipped torpedo.

He orders the weapon to be armed.

[Greg] This is terrifying.

We effectively have a Soviet commander giving the order

that has all the potential in the world

to start World War III.

[David] However, Soviet launch protocol requires

both senior officers to agree to fire the nuke.

So now there's just one man who can walk humanity back

from the edge of Armageddon:

Commodore Vasiliy Arkhipov.

- Arkhipov isn't buying it.

[Martin] Arkhipov realized that, if these guys wanted us,

they could have had us from the start.

But they're putting on a display.

This is theater--

not shooting directly at you,

but shooting near you.

- So he takes these explosions to mean that the Americans

just want them to come up and surface.

- Arkhipov defies Captain Savitsky.

He refuses to give permission to fire the nuclear torpedo.

♪ ♪

- That single moment, that singular decision,

may very well have saved humanity's existence.

[David] With the future of the world hanging by a thread,

Submarine B-59 slowly ascends to the surface.

[Martin] B-59 finds itself surrounded

by U.S. Navy warships that are not firing at it.

There is no World War III going on,

as they had been concerned might be the case.

- The two crews are basically staring each other down.

They're right next to one another.

[Sami] The U.S. Navy doesn't board the sub,

so they don't find out about the secret nuclear torpedo.

- The very next day,

President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev

cut a deal, and the Cuban Missile Crisis is over.

♪ ♪

[David] B-59 sails back to Russia,

its nuclear torpedo still a secret.

For decades, no one in the West realizes just how close

the world came to Armageddon.

Then, in 2002, on the 40th anniversary

of the Cuban Missile Crisis,

experts get a stunning revelation--

an insider's account that, for the first time,

unveils the one man who prevented all-out nuclear war.

It makes headlines around the world.

[Martin] The article reveals for the first time

that Vasily Arkhipov saved the world that day.

He was well within his rules of engagement

to release that weapon.

And if he had done so, the consequence would have been

the Third World War.

♪ ♪

[David] Coming up, physics students get

an explosive homework assignment.

- Using books from the public library,

they have to build a nuclear bomb from scratch.

♪ ♪

- When the U.S. built the world's first nuclear bomb,

it took a team of a half a million to make it.

But in the 1960s, the government tasks a couple

of recent graduates to design another one,

using nothing but a pad of paper,

a pen, and a library card.

[suspenseful music]

♪ ♪

- It's a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis.

President Kennedy is terrified of the proliferation

of nuclear weapons around the world.

- He's thinking it's not a case of if other nations

will get nuclear bombs but when.

So the U.S. government needs to find out how easy or difficult

would it be to actually create a working bomb.

- They commissioned Lawrence Livermore Labs in California

to begin a top secret experiment.

- And the goal is simple:

to see if physicists with no prior weapons experience,

no access to classified information,

can design a nuclear bomb.

[David] First, they need guinea pigs--

sharp scientists, but ones who don't know the first thing

about building a bomb.

They recruit physics PhDs

David Dobson and Robert Selden,

chosen for being what the scientists call

"nuclear innocents."

Then they briefed them on their

top secret science assignment,

building an atom bomb from scratch.

- Dobson's first thought?

Hmm, sounds like a bit of a challenge.

♪ ♪

[Martin] This working group is tucked into

a small office at Livermore.

Although they have security clearance,

they don't have access to any classified information.

And as this is the analog era,

that means that they can go to the public library,

and they can go to the university library.

All they have access to are published sources.

But everything that this working group produces

immediately becomes top secret.

[David] First, the young scientists must decide

what kind of atomic bomb to make.

- They've got two choices.

They could attempt to build either a uranium-based bomb

or a plutonium-based bomb.

[Evy] Uranium is a simpler bomb.

You can just shove one mass of uranium

into another to create an explosion.

[Hakeem] Plutonium is more powerful but harder

because it requires this very precise

three-stage explosion to make it work.

[Evy] They want to impress the scientists at Livermore,

so they go with plutonium.

[David] Next they hit the library.

[Hakeem] As they seek a way forward,

they're looking for whatever information

they can find in the public domain.

And they get lucky because they find this unclassified report

from the Manhattan Project.

So it's kind of like a roadmap.

[David] But the report is so heavily redacted,

it's of little use in the end.

- Once they've gone through the document,

it's all just nothing but disappointment.

♪ ♪

- For months they struggle,

even feeling paranoid and wondering if they're

being set up to fail.

But still, they keep going.

[Martin] These are smart and resourceful men,

and they understand that they don't know anything

about explosives, and so they begin

a process of educating themselves on the subject.

- Ironically, they get their biggest boost

from Eisenhower's 1950s Atoms for Peace program,

which declassified nuclear data for civilian purposes.

So they repurposed that data for their weapon.

[David] Soon they begin to build their bomb.

But their experiments aren't even allowed to leave paper.

[Evy] When these physicists want to run an experiment,

they have to write out a very detailed report of exactly what

they want to know and then give it to their Livermore handlers.

They're never told whether or not the experiments

are actually carried out.

They just get a report back with the results.

[David] By 1966, after less than three years,

Dobson and Selden are done.

[Martin] They have completed their plan for the device.

It's too big to fit in a missile,

but it is small enough to fit in the back of a pickup truck.

And the plans are so detailed that they even boast

that it could be completed and manufactured

in a machine shop.

♪ ♪

[David] Now the question is, will it work?

Have they passed the test?

No one at Livermore will tell them.

Dobson and Selden get sent out on the road

on a classified lecture tour.

Government-approved scientists and military officers

get a chance to question the men about

their assumptions and methods.

- After their final Q&A, their Livermore handler

pulls them to the side

and lets them in on a little secret.

He tells them that, if their design is constructed,

it would make a pretty impressive explosion.

Dobson and Selden want to know how big,

and the answer leaves them stunned.

- It would be an explosion comparable

to the Hiroshima bomb, a 15-kiloton nominal yield.

- They've created a DIY apocalypse.

[David] It is a spine-chilling result.

In less than three years,

the young physicists have unlocked the secrets

of mass destruction.

- Dobson and Selden's success has the government

really concerned with nuclear proliferation.

So they pushed forward

with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,

which is signed by 59 nations in 1968.

[David] The government keeps the experiment top secret

for four decades

until reports are declassified in 2003.

♪ ♪

Even then, the details reveal far too much

about how to build a nuclear bomb.

- The results of this experiment

are deemed so dangerous,

even when they're eventually declassified

and released to the public, almost every page is redacted.

♪ ♪

[David] Coming up, to hide a nuclear test from the Soviets,

the U.S. pushes their technology to the limit.

[Hakeem] They're going to try and launch a set

of nuclear rockets off the deck of a ship

in one of the roughest spots in the ocean.

♪ ♪

- How do you defend against a nuclear missile

screaming towards you at 15,000 miles per hour?

In the 1950s, the Pentagon's solution is

straight out of science fiction--

a gigantic radioactive force field

covering the whole of the United States

created by detonating nukes in space.

[tense music]

♪ ♪

- By the late 1950s, in the Department of Defense,

there is an anxiety that the Soviets can

launch an ICBM attack.

The United States is working on the same technology,

but we're not there yet.

What this begins is an era in our history

during which intelligent people come up with ideas

of how one might stop an ICBM attack.

One of the people that comes forward

is Nicholas Christofilos.

- He's a former elevator repairman

and self-taught physicist who's now working

at the University of California's radiation lab.

[David] Christofilos proposes a plan

straight out of science fiction--

a plasma shield in space.

- His plan is genius but insane.

Step one, explode a nuclear warhead

300 miles above continental America.

This will release a cloud of nuclear particles.

Step two, let nature run its course.

Christofilos believes that Earth's magnetic field is going

to trap those particles above the continent,

essentially creating a nuclear shield above America.

- If the Soviets were to launch a warhead through that shield,

its electronics would be completely fried.

- This will destroy any nuclear weapon aimed at America.

- The two big issues are, number one, whether or not

the Earth's magnetic field will be strong enough

to hold that radiation in place to create the desired barrier.

And then number two is whether or not

it will be created in such a concentration

that it can interfere with electrical systems on an ICBM.

There's no way to prove this in a lab.

The only way to do it is

to give it a try and see what happens.

♪ ♪

[David] President Eisenhower signs off on the plan.

Project Argus is born.

But it's on a tight deadline.

The U.S. and Soviets are negotiating

an end to nuclear testing,

set to kick in by the end of the year.

- To beat that deadline, Argus has to be

completed in just six months.

That's not very much time, so the race is on.

[David] The next challenge is secrecy.

[Martin] If the United States were to conduct

any kind of an experiment, launching a nuclear weapon

into to Earth orbit and detonating it,

the Soviet Union would certainly walk away

from the negotiating table.

[Hakeem] That means that they can't use

their normal nuclear test sites--

not the one in Nevada,

not the one in the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific.

They want a location that's so remote,

that Soviet spies would never know

the tests have ever occurred.

- They choose a spot in the South Atlantic, far out to sea,

more than 600 miles away from the closest land.

- This is one of the most desolate stretches

on the planet.

[David] Now Project Argus must attempt

an unprecedented feat--

launch nuclear missiles from a ship at sea.

[Don] To beat the deadline,

they'll have to do it in August.

That's right in the middle of the South Atlantic winter.

[Hakeem] We're talking about the roughest seas,

some of the biggest waves,

some of the fastest winds on Earth,

and storms coming from out of nowhere.

- It is insane.

♪ ♪

[David] In the early morning hours

of August 27th, battered by the wind and waves,

the Argus team fires off their first missile.

[explosion booms]

[Dan] The conditions are too difficult.

The missile veers off course and detonates too low.

♪ ♪

Days later, they try again.

That one also fails.

They've got one last chance.

♪ ♪

[Evy] Their third and final attempt

comes on September 6th.

They launch the missile and hope that it works.

[David] The missile soars 300 miles up

and detonates on target.

- The crewmen on deck look up,

and they see this beautiful man-made aurora

stretching across the sky.

It's from the radiation they just added

to the magnetic field.

[Hakeem] A satellite flies right through it,

and it captures critical data

and beams it right back down to mission control,

ready for analysis.

[David] The good news--

Christofilos is definitely on to something.

- The explosion does create a measurable cloud

of radioactive particles in space.

- This becomes a new phenomenon that is known

as the Christofilos effect.

[David] There's bad news too.

The Christofilos effect is nowhere near strong enough

to knock out a missile.

- Project Argus ends up costing $100 million

in 21st century dollars.

Within a year of the test, the project is canceled.

[David] Argus doesn't work,

but the Pentagon manages to keep it a secret.

That's about to change.

- "New York Times" reporters get wind of the story,

but the government convinces them to sit on it

for national security reasons.

- Then, when government scientists start pushing

to release the Argus data,

"The New York Times" doesn't want to be scooped,

so it breaks the story.

♪ ♪

[Martin] It turns out that,

primarily because Argus failed,

it does not derail the negotiations

toward the limited test ban treaty,

which becomes a reality in 1963.

And from that moment forward, there will be no more

atmospheric nuclear testing.

And there will also be no more nuclear blasts in space.

♪ ♪

- Coming up...

when NATO war games get too realistic,

the Soviets prepare to strike.

- Soviet high command starts moving into

their underground bunkers.

Moscow is freaking out.

♪ ♪

- In 1983, thousands of NATO troops mobilize

across Europe.

Nuclear weapons are armed and loaded onto aircraft.

The impossible question facing the Kremlin:

is this another military exercise

or the opening move of World War III?

[tense music]

[Sami] In 1983, Ronald Reagan referred to the Soviet Union

as the evil empire.

For the United States to demonize the Soviets

in that kind of fashion suggested that Reagan was

taking on the Cold War as kind of a crusade.

- Many in the U.S. recognize this as simple saber rattling.

However, in Moscow, they are convinced that,

in fact, the United States is on the warpath.

[David] And it's a powder keg of paranoia into which NATO is

about to drop a lighted match.

On November 7th, senior officers gather

at NATO HQ in Belgium, ready for the culmination

of their annual war games,

an exercise known as Able Archer.

- What Able Archer is designed to do

is to mimic the reality that most everyone assumes will be

how World War III begins,

with a Soviet and Warsaw Pact invasion

across the Fulda gap of Western Europe,

which would be immediately reacted to

by a NATO-United States nuclear response.

[Greg] Crucially, this is not just a paper exercise.

For the first time, these are full-on war games

where they have soldiers in the field.

And they're going through the entire exercise

as though the Soviets have, in fact, crossed

into NATO territory, all the way up to where

NATO would need to respond with a nuclear attack.

♪ ♪

[David] To the Soviets watching,

Able Archer soon feels dangerously different

from previous war games.

[Paul] As Able Archer starts,

NATO rolls out a new encryption system.

And that's exactly of thing the Soviets see

as a warning sign of an impending conflict.

- NATO forces did exactly what they would have done

in a real wartime scenario.

They actually moved the NATO functioning headquarters

to a new location.

And NATO bases all around the world

had their alert statuses increased in a way

they had never done before.

[David] To the Soviets, that's another red flag

that war is imminent.

Margaret Thatcher and the other political leaders

are going through the process that they would go through

in case of NATO and the United States

authorizing a nuclear first strike

against the Soviet Union.

- Soviet agents in Europe are reporting this back to Moscow,

and Moscow is freaking out.

As far as they're concerned, this looks like exactly

the scenario that they would expect

from NATO attacking them, not an exercise.

So they see the beginning of the end.

- In a nuclear standoff, when one superpower is super scared,

everybody should be super scared.

♪ ♪

[David] Hour by hour, Soviet intelligence delivers

more terrifying details to Moscow.

- The Soviets can see, through satellite imagery

and even spies on the ground,

that American bomber aircraft are loading up.

What they don't know is that the aircraft are

loaded with training warheads.

Everything indicates that there's

a nuclear strike inbound towards the Soviet Union.

- Soviet high command starts moving into

their underground bunkers.

They have their fighters in Poland and East Germany

start loading their planes with live nukes.

In bunkers across the Soviet Union,

ICBM crews are preparing their own missiles to launch.

The Soviets could have nukes in the air within 30 minutes.

- The world is now teetering on the edge of apocalypse,

but NATO doesn't know it--yet.

[Vince] At the Soviet embassy in London,

an urgent telegram hits the desk

of KGB station chief Oleg Gordievsky.

It's a desperate message from Moscow to all stations.

"Drop everything you're doing, and look out

for any indications of an imminent attack."

They were convinced that World War III was about to begin.

[David] Oleg Gordievsky, however, is hiding a secret.

[Paul] What the Soviets don't know is that

Gordievsky is a double agent.

He's secretly working for the British,

and he's a very highly placed asset for them.

[David] Gordievsky realizes the danger,

so he immediately contacts his handlers

in British intelligence and passes on the information.

[Paul] Gordievsky tells them the Soviets think

this is a real-world activity, not a war game.

He's trying to convey that the Soviets are

prepared to retaliate and might even panic

and launch a first strike.

[David] The warning shoots up the chain of command

in London, then to D.C.

And news of the critical situation is

delivered straight to the president.

- Reagan realizes, oh, my gosh, they're more afraid of us

than we are of them.

- On November 11th, Able Archer is wrapped up,

and NATO forces are ordered to stand down.

Moscow breathes a huge sigh of relief.

The Soviet war machine has also backed down,

and World War III does not start.

- The whole event shakes Reagan to his core,

and he launches a new diplomatic effort

to ease tensions.

This ultimately culminates in the end of the Cold War.

- For decades, details of the exercise

and the terrifying Soviet response are

buried under top secret classification.

And they'd be there still, but for the efforts

of one persistent investigator.

[Greg] Researcher Nate Jones spends 12 years sending

Freedom of Information requests.

And in 2015, he gets his response.

♪ ♪

This declassified report reveals

just how terrifyingly close we came to World War III.

♪ ♪

- From doomsday weapons to apocalyptic close calls,

governments have long covered up

how near we've come to Armageddon.

Only individual human courage and sheer good fortune

have allowed us to escape disaster so far.

♪ ♪