All language subtitles for Countdown to Zero (2010)

Narrator:
"l don't believe it.

lt makes no sense."

"There is something
so strange."

"Perhaps you can suggest
some fantastic explanation."

"Couldn't it be this sort of thing?"

He turned the drawing around.

"Yes," she said,

"that is what l mean."

This was the first explanation

of the splitting of the atom.

Robert Oppenheimer said, "lmpossible,"

but within 15 minutes he decided it was real.

He realized it would release

a great amount of energy,

that you could generate power

and make bombs.

Within a week

on Oppenheimer's blackboard

there was a crude drawing of the bomb.

Enrico Fermi stood in his office

and looked out over Manhattan.

He cupped his hands
to the size of a tennis ball.

"A little bomb like that," he said,

"and it would all disappear."

( people screaming )

Valerie Plame Wilson:
There is no doubt in my mind--

if terrorists had acquired
a nuclear weapon,

they would not have hesitated to use it.

( sirens wailing )

Wilson:
So l guess the question is,

"Could they ever get one?"

Al-Qaeda is determined
to acquire nuclear weapons

and to use them if they get them.

ln the early '90s they tried to buy

highly-enriched uranium in the Sudan.

They got scammed.

Just prior to the 9/1 1 attacks,

we do know that Osama Bin Laden

and his lieutenant Zawahiri

sat down
with two Pakistani nuclear scientists

and discussed nuclear weapons.

Before releasing the sarin gas
in the Tokyo subway,

the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo

attempted to acquire
a nuclear bomb in Russia.

They bought a sheep farm
in Australia

to mine uranium
to build their own bomb.

Graham Allison:
The objective of Al-Qaeda

is to, quote,
"kill four million Americans,

including two million children."

This is, in his calculation,
what's required

to balance the scales ofjustice.

He takes various incidents,

from Shatila to the war in lraq,

and counts up the body count and says,

"That's how many people
we're out-- four million."

You're not gonna get
to kill four million people

by hijacking airplanes

and crashing them into buildings.

Actually, l'm not that worried
about nuclear weapons.

lt's not one of my main worries.

l do not worry about nuclear weapons.

( speaking Chinese )

lsn't everybody worried
about nuclear war?

That's a stupid answer, right?

( speaking Russian )

Man: l don't know.
lt just has never been

something that l've actually had
to think about in my everyday life.

( speaking Chinese )

lt might, you know, get on your conscience
for a couple days maybe,

and then it kind ofjust disappears.

( speaking Chinese )

Man: l don't think anybody is
going to use in this day and age--

ridiculous even to think about it.

What can you do? Nothing.

At the end of the day, it's one button

and there's gonna be a big mess
at the end of it, isn't there?

Somebody's gonna make
a mistake one day

and we're all gonna suffer for it.

Rolf Mowatt-Larssen: There are
three ways to acquire a nuclear weapon:

you could steal a bomb;

you could buy a bomb;

and you could build a bomb.

Of all the things l learned

after 9/1 1 about terrorism intent,

the most startling discovery
for me personally

was realizing that they were
trying to build a bomb.

Wilson:
The hardest part of making a nuclear bomb

is getting the material--

the highly-enriched
uranium or plutonium.

Many countries
have these materials,

and often they are poorly guarded.

But if l were a terrorist

intending to build a nuclear bomb

and l wanted to blow up a major city,

l would look to the countries
of the former Soviet Union.

There have been many cases
involving the theft

of highly-enriched
uranium or plutonium.

And every time there has been
a black-market seizure

of stolen H.E.U. or plutonium

and they were able to track it
back to its source,

it came from Russia.

Matthew Bunn:
There was a case at a Russian naval base

in the early 1990s.

One of the naval personnel
told a relative of his

where the highly-enriched
uranium at this base was.

This relative walked
through a gaping hole

in a security fence,

walked up to what you
and l would consider to be a tool shed,

snapped the padlock with an iron bar.

-He set off no alarm.

He was not detected at all.

The Russian military prosecutor
in that case said, quote,

"Potatoes were guarded better."

At a facility called Luch

where they fabricate fuel

made from highly-enriched uranium

there was a worker there who knew

that as long as the output

was within about 3% of the input,

they figured it was
normal losses to waste

and they didn't bother
to investigate.

So he kept stealing
small amounts of highly-enriched uranium

day after day
over a long period of time.

( man speaking Russian )

Eventually he stole a kilogram and a half

of 90% enriched
highly-enriched uranium.

He set off no alarms.
No one noticed.

He had friends
who were making their living

stealing car batteries.

And they said,
"Maybe the guy in Moscow

who buys our stolen car batteries

will buy your stolen uranium."

So they went down
to the train station together

and the police came and arrested
the car battery thieves

and he got arrested
along with them.

That's the only way
he was ever caught.

Graham Allison:
We have cases in which

people from the Russian nuclear arsenal

were selling material
and they were captured.

We have cases in which people
from Russian nuclear labs

were selling material.
They were captured.

Bunn:
Almost all of those cases--

until the material was seized,

it had never been noticed
to be missing.

All the black-market seizures
that l'm aware of

were serendipitous.

They were caught by luck.

So that we don't know

whether it's the iceberg
or the tip of the iceberg.

Wilson: Once you've managed
to acquire highly-enriched uranium,

you'd need to smuggle it
out of the country.

Lawrence Scott Sheets:
Georgia is located

along Russia's southern border--

a natural corridor.

And things like
highly-enriched uranium

could be smuggled
through such a place

on their way to Azerbaijan,

lraq, lran,

Turkmenistan, Afghanistan

and so on and so forth.

( Pavlenishvili speaking English )

The Georgians invented a so-called

man of Turkish nationality

who said he was a Muslim man

representing a serious organization.

Oleg Khintsagov believed
he was selling

highly-enriched uranium
to make an atomic weapon

to terrorists.

( Khintsagov speaking Russian )

( Pavlenishvili speaking )

Sheets:
lf a truck driver can get a hold of it,

a small time hustler

who just wanted
to become a rich guy,

imagine what professionals
could have done--

real professionals
with an ideology,

with an agenda, with brains.

( Pavlenishvili speaking )

Wilson: Once you've moved
the highly-enriched uranium,

you could use any number of ports

in the Middle East
or the Mediterranean

to ship the H.E.U. to your destination.

Smuggling highly-enriched
uranium into the United States

is pretty straightfoward.

Lead pipe
will shield the H.E.U.

The detector would have to be
within a few inches

to pick up any radiation.

And then hide it
amongst everyday goods.

Allison:
100 lbs of highly-enriched uranium

is smaller than a football.

lt would fit in a six-pack
of beer cans.

Bunn:
100,000 shipping containers

go to the United States every day.

Allison: Every way
that drugs come to New York City

would be the same way
you would imagine

highly-enriched uranium coming.

lf you have any doubt
about the ability of Al-Qaeda

to bring highly-enriched
uranium into the U.S.,

they could always hide it
in a bale of marijuana.

Scott Sagan:
Terrorism is just one threat--

the deliberate threat.

But there is also
the unintentional threat

of a nuclear detonation

by accident, by error

or by misjudgment.

We'd like to think

the U.S. military or other militaries

that control nuclear weapons
are perfect organizations.

They will never fail.

We expect them
to have 100% reliability.

But even the well-disciplined,

very professional
United States military

made very serious mistakes
with nuclear weapons.

Newsreel announcer: An atomic bomb
breaks loose from a mounting shackle

in a B47 jet over Florence,
South Carolina,

causing a sensational freak accident.

A B52 bomber was loaded
with nuclear weapons by mistake.

Reporter: An American warplane flew
1500 miles across the nation,

we're told, with six nuclear
warheads onboard.

Reporter #2: And nobody knew--
not the aircraft's crew,

not the commanders
on the ground.

Sagan:
We've had B52s explode in the air

during a refueling mission,

causing the four
thermonuclear weapons

to fall onto Spanish territory

and into the Mediterranean.

A B52 bomber
carrying nuclear weapons

crashed near a U.S.
air force base in Greenland,

scattering deadly plutonium
over the ice cap.

Sagan:
ln 1960,

a BOMARC air defense missile exploded,

melting the nuclear warhead.

ln 1968,
the U.S.S. Scorpion sank

400 miles southwest
of the Azores.

The nuclear weapons onboard
were never found.

A B47 bomber disappeared
over the Mediterranean.

The nuclear weapons aboard
were never located.

ln 1959,
an aircraft crashed

near Whidbey lsland, Washington.

The nuclear depth charges
were not recovered.

A Skyhawk strike aircraft
carrying a nuclear weapon

rolled off an aircraft carrier
in the Sea of Japan.

The weapon
was never recovered.

There are many ways in which

efforts to make a system
more reliable

actually backfire
and make it less reliable.

Sometimes we add
a redundant system.

We add backup systems

so that if one fails,

another can take its place.

But complexity is
the enemy of reliability,

because as you add systems
and make them more complex,

it's harder to understand
all the potential interactions.

lt's that unlikely, bizarre interaction

where one person interacts with another

in a way that wasn't anticipated

or one backup system
interacts with another

in ways that you can't
figure out ahead of time

and therefore can't plan around--

those are what cause the problems.

ln 1961 , a B52 broke apart in midair

over Goldsboro, North Carolina,

causing two nuclear bombs to fall.

One parachute functioned properly,

and that bomb survived
with minor damage.

The other parachute failed to open.

When that bomb hit,

five of six safety devices
malfunctioned.

A single switch prevented
a nuclear explosion.

When l worked in the Pentagon,

l believed that the likelihood

of a nuclear weapons accident

in the United States occurring
was very low.

l still believe that.

But low-probability events happen.

They happen all the time.

There's a first time
in history for every event.

Eventually

those low-probability events
will occur.

( people exclaim )

- Woman: Was that supposed to happen?
- Man: No.

Man: l could probably list
every country in the world today.

Whoo!

How many countries
do l think have nuclear weapons?

- List them?
- China.

- l don't think l signed up for this.
- Russia.

U.K., maybe?

America, l'm guessing.

Oh, us?
Oh, well, that was a given.

- France.
- Germany?

- Australia?
- Canada? l don't think Canada.

No?

Japan?

No, not Japan.

There's more.
l know there's more.

lraq, lran, Saudi Arabia.

All other countries
that's not telling us-- they have 'em.

Afghanistan?

- North Korea?
- North Korea.

Do they?
Okay, North Korea.

Who knows?
Who knows exactly?

l don't know. l'm out.

l think that's it.

- Yeah.
- Yeah.

Wilson:
After the United States detonated

the first atomic bomb
in the New Mexico desert,

nuclear technology
began to spread

and other countries
began to acquire

their own nuclear bombs.

( Russian announcer speaking )

Reporter: Great credit is due
for this mighty British achievement,

for it seems

that by the possession
of such deadly weapons

peace can be maintained
in this troubled world.

Reporter #2:
At Reggane, deep in the Sahara,

France goes foward
with the detonation

of her first atomic bomb.

The explosion carries France
a step further

towards General de Gaulle's dream

of national glory restored.

Man: This is a gigantic success
of Mao Zedong's thought.

Our nation's first nuclear test

surpasses the levels
of the first nuclear tests

of the United States,
Britain and France.

Their criminal attempt to block
and prevent our nation's people

from grasping nuclear weapons

have been thoroughly smashed.

Walter Cronkite: Pakistan, which has
often been at war with lndia,

hinted it now might have to join

the once-select nuclear
community in self-defense

and warned,
"Membership of the nuclear club

will not stop at six."

One prime minister of Pakistan
said that Pakistan

would build a nuclear weapon
even if it meant

that the people had to eat grass.

"We will make the bomb
even if we have to eat grass."

( men shouting in Arabic )

Reporter:
ln Karachi, they poured into the streets

pulling a symbol of the power
they're celebrating.

The bomb has become a huge
source of national pride.

Pervez Musharraf:
Total jubilation in the streets of Pakistan--

the first time
we've achieved something

which places us in the ranks

of very very few countries
of the world.

We were proud of our scientists.

We were proud of our capabilities

We were proud of our strength.

People thought that,

"Now let lndia do anything
to Pakistan.

Let's see what they do."

Mike Chinoy:
l had North Korean officials say to me

the lesson they took away

from the toppling of Saddam Hussein

was that Saddam was ousted

because he didn't have a bomb.

They were not going to let
the same thing happen to Kim Jong ll.

Therefore, they needed
to have a bomb.

North Korea is scared
of disappearing into

what the communists used to
call the "dustbin of history"

like all their other
communist friends.

And they see nukes
as the one thing

that makes them the country

that is taken seriously
by the United States

and the other big players
in the neighborhood.

Wilson:
Every country has enemies.

Every country can use self-defense

as a rationale for acquiring
nuclear weapons.

But if every country does so,

it is a much more dangerous world.

Oppenheimer: When you see
something that is technically sweet,

you do it.

That is the way it was
with the atomic bomb.

Film narrator: The father
of the atomic bomb, Robert Oppenheimer,

gave some frank answers
to important questions in 1947.

Oppenheimer:
l have been asked

whether in the years
to come it will be possible

to kill 40 million American people

in the 20 largest American towns

by the use of atomic bombs
in a single night.

l am afraid that the answer
to that question is yes.

l have been asked
whether there is hope

for the nation's security

in keeping secret
some of the knowledge

which has gone into
the making of the bombs.

l am afraid there is no such hope.

Alexander Glaser:
A nuclear weapon, in a sense,

is the most simple configuration

of nuclear material
that you can imagine.

You just bring together

a certain quantity
of fissile material--

highly-enriched uranium
or plutonium--

and if you do it right,
it will explode.

Hoodbhoy:
The design of the first atom bomb

was a very deep secret.

ln fact, that was a time

when people didn't even know

whether a bomb was possible.

Now the making of the atom bomb
has become much easier.

Joseph Biden: Those who say
building a nuclear weapon is easy--

they're very wrong.

But those who say building
a crude device is very difficult--

they are more wrong.

Would you agree with that statement?

l won't comment on that statement, sir.

Bunn: People from the U.S.
nuclear weapons laboratories

were testifying
in a classified session to Congress.

And they said
that it would be possible

to make a nuclear bomb

with all the parts
being commercially available

except for the actual
nuclear material.

Allison:
Senator Biden asked

the heads of the three weapons labs,

"ls this possible? ls it really possible
that terrorists could do this?"

And they said yes.
They said, "This is something

that we test our graduate
students on from time to time.

We take two graduate students

who haven't been prepared
for doing this.

We tell them, 'See if you can
make a bomb that would work.'

Lo and behold,
most of them pass this test."

Bunn:
Biden said, "Prove it."

And so they went
and made a nuclear bomb,

with everything other than
the nuclear material, from commercial parts.

They actually brought it

into the classified
hearing room in the Senate.

Typically, an implosion bomb
would have

something like 25kg of uranium,

which is about the size
of a grapefruit.

lf, let's say,

between 70kg and 100kg of H.E.U.

is available,

then the design is not
a major factor.

lt would not be very efficient.

lt would not use all the uranium

that was used in it.

And yet it could be enough
to level a city.

Tony Blair:
During my 10 years as prime minister,

what l really noticed
was that it was actually

the threat of the proliferation,

the fact that these weapons could fall

into other people's hands--

that was the thing that troubled me,

that kept me awake at night.

Reporter:
ln the capital, lslamabad,

word hit the streets
in early afternoon--

another nuclear device
tested successfully.

( crowd cheering )

Reporter #2:
As Pakistan celebrated,

the public hailed A.Q. Khan

as the father of the lslamic bomb.

Andrew Koch: ln 1974
A.Q. Khan was working at a company

that was developing
a brand-new process for enriching uranium.

He stole their designs

and took the list
of all their suppliers.

At the end of the day,
he's not really a master scientist,

but he's a master smuggler
and a master organizer.

He knows how to get the pieces
out of the countries

and how to find stuff and buy stuff.

Ahmed Rashid: There was
this whole clandestine apparatus

that was set up
by the intelligence services,

by the army and by Dr. Khan.

Restrictions were placed.
Sanctions were placed.

But somehow the Pakistanis
got around that.

And the formal help actually came
from lndia's enemy-- China.

China gave a blueprint

of a nuclear bomb to Pakistan.

Koch:
Somewhere around the early 1980s

Khan makes contact
with the lranians

who are very interested
in getting a bomb

but clearly don't have the scientific

or industrial capacity
to do it themselves.

And thus he starts
on a commercial enterprise.

Khan has got a full marketing
regime laid out

with brochures and videotapes
to offer his nuclear wares.

Wilson:
lt's extremely lucrative business.

He had extensive contacts, networks,

and he didn't much care about

who the ultimate client
was going to be.

Joe Cirincione:
He contacted lran,

North Korea, Libya.

But he didn't just give them
the technologies.

He also took the bomb designs
that the Pakistanis had

and threw those in as a sweetener.

He gave them
24/7 technology support.

Got a problem?
Call 1-800-AQKHAN.

lt was a full-service operation.

Wilson:
U.S. intelligence

began to focus
on A.Q. Khan in the late 1990s.

The home run was
in December 2003 with Libya.

Rashid:
The C.l.A. and British intelligence

essentially caught
the Khan network red-handed

selling a full-scale
nuclear weapon to Libya.

Cirincione:
lf it wasn't for A.Q. Khan,

Libya never would have
gotten the centrifuges

that they've now, thankfully, given up.

lf it wasn't for A.Q. Khan,

there wouldn't be
an lranian nuclear program.

( applause )

lran is the tip of the spear.

lt's the big problem
that we have to solve.

They promised not to build
nuclear weapons.

But the problem is that
the very same centrifuges,

the very same factory
that can enrich uranium

to low quantities for nuclear fuel

can enrich it to high quantities
for nuclear weapons.

So the question is,
do you trust lran?

( crowd cheering )

By their own admission,
they deceived inspectors

about their nuclear activities
for 17 years.

( Ahmadinejad speaking Farsi )

Wilson: Without question,
lran is trying to get a nuclear bomb.

They've made that very clear,

despite their promises
that they are only pursuing

civilian, peaceful objectives

for their nuclear program.

They're really good at trying
to bring things in

that can be used
for their nuclear program.

The lranians have worked very hard

at disguising
and hiding their facilities.

Many of their facilities are

in crowded urban areas
and underground,

extremely well-protected
from any sort of aerial bombing.

Tony Blair: lf lran were
to acquire nuclear weapons capability,

the impact is across
the whole of the region.

You will get a whole set
of other countries

deciding they've got to acquire
nuclear weapons capability.

Cirincione:
Syria, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt--

the rivals of the lranian Shia state

would match their capabilities

and we would go from a Middle East

with one nuclear-armed nation-- lsrael--

to one with three, four or five
nuclear-armed nations.

Wilson:
They are surrounded by

very unstable regimes
and countries.

lf lran acquires everything it needs,

without doubt, pieces of that

become more readily available

to terrorist organizations like Hamas.

Tony Blair:
The risk that you have today

with a regime like lran or North Korea

is they are prepared to start trading

that nuclear weapons capability
and technology.

Chinoy:
The Pakistanis had the nuclear know-how.

They didn't have the delivery system.

The North Koreans had the missile

and didn't have the nuclear know-how.

So there was a natural convergence
of interests here.

The North Koreans have
a long track record

of selling military technology
and missiles

to the Syrians, to the lranians,

to the lraqis, to the Pakistanis.

They don't really have
any other exports.

Daily life is very grim.

Food is in short supply.

You drive around
the capital Pyongyang at night,

and it's basically dark.

There's a famous satellite photo

that shows
the Korean peninsula.

And in the South you see
all these lights,

and then it's just black.

Wilson:
We are still dealing with

his years of unchecked activity
and contacts.

And it really is
a genie out of the bottle

that cannot be easily put back.

Cirincione:
We've spent billions of dollars

putting in radiation detectors,

but highly-enriched uranium
is easily shielded.

lf you are depending
on portal monitors

to defend a city
against a nuclear detonation,

you have done
far too much too late.

Nuclear weapons

don't have to be exactly on target.

Close is good enough.

lf a terrorist thinks that the portal monitor
might detect the weapon,

they set it off in the port.

Bunn: Highly-enriched uranium
is easy to smuggle.

The radiation is very weak.

The detectors
that we're putting in place now

would have no chance of detecting

highly-enriched uranium
in a cargo container.

Cirincione: The signature
from highly enriched uranium is so slight

that they have to set the monitors
very high to detect it.

And so they're getting thousands
of false alarms every day.

Toilets will set it off--
china, porcelain,

a lot of biological materials

like tobacco, some algae,

televisions--
the old-style televisions--

kitty litter,
a lot of chemical products,

and a lot of other stuff also.

You want to smuggle
a bomb into the United States?

Ship it in a truck with kitty litter.

No one would ever find it.

Bunn:
They're great for really radioactive stuff

like cesium or something

that might be used in a dirty bomb.

But for the stuff that you would use
to make a nuclear bomb

that would incinerate
the heart of a major city--

they're not gonna detect that.

Mowatt-Larssen:
Robert Oppenheimer-- in 1946

he appeared
in a closed session of the Senate.

And one of the senators asked him

if nuclear terrorism
was a potential threat.

He said, "Of course.

Terrorists could bring a bomb
into New York City

and destroy the city."

Somebody asked him,
"How would you stop it?"

He said,
"With a screwdriver,

to open up every container
that comes into the city."

Jeffrey Lewis: Once you've smuggled
the highly-enriched uranium

into the U.S., you will need
a place to build the bomb.

The bomb could be built
right in the target city.

The hard part was
what we did in 1945.

The hard part is doing it
the first time.

This is no longer
a conceptual challenge.

There is no trick.

There is no magic that needs
to be figured out.

lt's really just
an engineering challenge.

lt's definitely not rocket science.

Rocket science is hard.

Glaser:
You can make a very simple weapon,

a so-called "gun-type" weapon

which was the one used
in Hiroshima.

Lewis:
lt was so simple,

we didn't even test it
before we dropped it.

lt is essentially
just a gun barrel.

And you have a target.
And you have a projectile.

And you propel the projectile
into the target.

You'll need
an artillery gun

to fire one piece of H.E.U.
at the other,

which would be bolted onto
the muzzle of the gun.

The military sells
these things as surplus,

but they sell them
disabled.

You would have to make the gun
capable of shooting again.

And you'd want
to test-fire the gun to make sure

that it fired the projectile
at the right speed.

This is the only thing
that you would need to do off site.

You would need
a group of people--

let's say,
between 15 to 20 to 25--

who would be knowledgeable
in particular aspects

of weapons design, of explosives.

Two or three people
to do the machining,

two or three people to work
on the gun,

two or three people
to work on electronics,

people who are experts in ballistics.

People who know something
about nuclear physics.

You'd need the machinists
and the metallurgists

to make your pieces
into the right shape

and make sure
they all fit together.

Hoodbhoy:
Ordinary explosives and detonators,

maybe some electronic equipment.

Lewis:
You could go online

and easily find the lathe for $10,000.

You can find the furnace
for about $50,000.

And you can even find
a surplus recoilless rifle

probably also for $10,000.

Bunn: More than 90%
of the effort in the Manhattan Project

was making the nuclear material

to make the nuclear bomb.

lf you can get hold of
that nuclear material,

then it doesn't take
a Manhattan Project to make a bomb.

Mowatt-Larssen:
lf the circumstances are right,

acquiring a complete bomb
may be easier than building one.

ln Algeria in 1961 ,

officers within
the French military revolted

and tried to seize a nuclear weapon.

As the rebels closed in,

the weapon was detonated
in a degraded explosion

to prevent it
from falling into the hands

of the rebelling officers.

( explosion )

Mowatt-Larssen: The Japanese
death terror cult Aum Shinrikyo

attempted to buy a nuclear bomb
in the Soviet Union.

They had a lot of resources.

We're talking well over
$1 billion of assets.

And secondly,
they had tremendous access.

At one point the group had
more members in Russia,

in the former Soviet Union
than they had in Japan.

ln 1994 a senior leader

made eight trips to Russia.

His personal notebook
included a shopping list

for buying a nuclear warhead
for $15 million.

Hoodbhoy:
A perfectly secure nuclear weapon

is also a perfectly unusable one.

So here one has this paradox

between security and usability.

Cirincione:
Where's the most dangerous place

in the world right now?

For my money, it is Pakistan.

You've got an unstable government,

plus enough material
for up to 100 nuclear weapons,

plus Osama Bin Laden
in the country.

( man speaking Urdu
over speaker )

Rashid:
What we've seen

over the last two or three years

has been a spiral
that is going downwards--

destabilization,
the spread of the Taliban,

the spread of radicalism,
the collapse of the economy.

So could there be
a colonels' coup in Pakistan

by lslamic radicals
within the military?

And then could
nuclear weapons be at risk?

Cirincione:
What happens if that country destabilizes?

What happens if the army splits?

Who gets the weapons?

Who gets the material
for the weapons?

Who gets the scientists

who know how to build
the weapons?

Bruce Blair:
There's no such thing as perfect command

and control over nuclear weapons

even in the most
sophisticated of arsenals.

From the level
of the president on down,

there are human weaknesses,

technical problems,

deficiencies and vulnerabilities.

l was a launch officer
for Minuteman missiles

and spent three years
in Montana in a hole--

in an underground
launch control center.

l was one of the guys responsible

for getting these missiles
off the ground in one minute.

We didn't call them
"Minuteman missiles" for nothing.

When l was serving

in the air force
as a launch officer,

there was a device
in the launch control center

into which 12 digits
had to be dialed in

in order to unlock
the missiles for firing.

This had been installed
under Robert McNamara

over the objections
of the Strategic Air Command.

Since they couldn't prevent

the panel from being installed,

the Strategic Air Command in Omaha

had set these codes to zero,
and we all knew it.

That was the secret
unlock code

for firing our missiles--

12 zeros.

ln fact,
in our launch checklist

we had to ensure

that the unlock code
was set to all zeros

before we completed
the launch sequence.

( panel clicking )

This changed in 1977

when they started using
actual codes.

But until then,
l and one other crew member

could have actually formatted
a launch order--

a completely valid launch order

and transmitted it

to the entire American
strategic arsenal.

lt looks like
we're in a shooting war.

Aw hell.

Are the Russians involved, sir?

Mandrake, that's all l've been told.

lt just came in on the red phone.

My orders are for this base
to be sealed tight,

and that's what l mean to do--
seal it tight.

Now l want you to transmit Plan R--

R for Robert-- to the wing.

- Plan R, for Robert.
- ls it that bad, sir?

- lt looks like it's pretty hairy.
- Yes, sir.

Bruce Blair:
l remember watching "Dr. Strangelove"

and thinking
they had it all wrong.

You don't need to be a general.

We were only lieutenants,

but we could've started World War lll

just as easily
as General Jack Ripper.

We could have triggered implementation

of the U.S. nuclear war plan

involving thousands
and thousands of nuclear weapons

fired at the Soviet Union and China.

Man over speaker:
Stand by. Message follows.

Alfa Tango Golf Lima.

Bruce Blair:
The life of a launch officer

is really kind of Pavlovian.

You have been trained
and conditioned so thoroughly,

you kind of march lockstep

into a very well-rehearsed script

that's driven by checklists.

Man:
Step one-- launch keys inserted.

Roger.

Bruce Blair:
We would jump up, unlock our safe,

take out codes...

( alarm blaring )

...check the codes
against the message,

then proceed through
a launch checklist

that takes about one minute
to carry out.

Man: Let's enable the missiles.
Program slide switch enabled.

- Roger.
- Flight all. L.F. all.

Online code inserted.

Stand by.

Online codes inserted.

- Enable switch enabled.
- lt's enabled.

Bruce Blair:
At the end of that process

the two of you turn keys

and launch up to 50 missiles

at the Soviet Union and/or China.

Today, the posture
of the United States and Russia

is exactly the same
as it was during the Cold War.

So if the orders went down right now,

20 years after the fall
of the Berlin Wall,

it would take about two minutes

to launch all
of the U.S. nuclear ballistic missiles

out of their tubes in the Midwest,

about that length of time

for the Russians to do the same.

And then it would take
another 10 to 12 minutes

for everything else
that's on launch-ready alert

to be fired...

so that within 15 minutes

all of the forces
on launch-ready alert

would be in the air

on their flight to the other
side of the planet--

2000 bombs,

strategic nuclear weapons,
very high-yield.

And they could kill

over 100 million Russians
and Americans

within 30 minutes.

Roger Molander: When we were
working on nuclear arms control,

l found myself in a meeting
in the Pentagon with a colonel

and we got into a short
exchange about this.

And in the context
of this exchange, he said:

"But l don't understand
what would be such a big deal

if there were
a nuclear exchange.

Only about 500 million
people would die.

Life would go on aftewards."

And l can remember
having a feeling

like Woody Allen
in "Annie Hall"--

"l'm sorry, l've got an appointment
back on planet Earth."

Man:
l don't think that anyone really knows

how many nuclear weapons
there are on the planet today.

- l haven't got a--
- Does anyone know that?

100?

Maybe thousands, l don't know.
Far more than l know.

6,000.

l don't know.
15,000.

- 20,000.
- 50,000?

- 100,000.
- 500,000.

There's enough nuclear firepower
on one U.S. nuclear sub

to annihilate probably
half the planet.

l've heard people say

that we have enough nuclear
weapons to create a new sun.

lt only takes a couple
to eliminate this city.

Do you know
how many there are?

Cirincione: We estimate that
there are about 23,000 nuclear weapons

in the world still.

The good news is
there used to be 60,000.

So we've cut those arsenals
by more than half.

But we-- the United States still has

about 1500 hydrogen bombs
on missiles

poised for launch
in 15 minutes or less.

The really bad news is
the Russians have the same.

Bruce Blair:
lf the Russians fired missiles

at the United States,

the first warning
would come from satellites.

And they could detect

the flame from the booster rocket

within seconds,

easily within a minute.

Suddenly this early-warning hub

in the United States

would become very frenzied

to try to figure out

whether this is a false alarm

or whether this is a real attack,

and determine this
within 60 seconds.

The president would receive a briefing

from the duty officer

at Strategic Command Headquarters.

That briefing of the president

of his response options
and their consequences

has to be delivered
in as little as 30 seconds.

The president
normally would have

no more than 12 minutes
to make a decision,

and maybe as little as 10 seconds.

Jimmy Carter: l knew
that if the Soviets did launch an attack,

that it would take 26 minutes
for an l.C.B.M.

to leave Russian soil

and land in Washington
or New York.

And l had that much time
to decide how to respond.

( Gorbachev speaking Russian )

Zbigniew Brzezinski:
The timeline was very short.

He had just a few minutes
to make a decision

how to respond,
at what level of intensity.

Somewhere before the 10th minute

the order to execute would be issued.

Strategic Air Command

probably would be
airborne already by then

just as a precaution.

There might be
a presidential evacuation

so that the president would survive

an attack on Washington,

although l know of cases

in which the president chose
not to be evacuated.

And roughly by the 28th minute

at the latest,

those of us not evacuated
would be dead.

Bruce Blair:
For us it was a kind of suicide duty.

Any missile landing
within half a mile of our location

would probably have killed us.

lf we had survived the attack,

we were supposed to go
to a designated rendezvous point.

Our air would only last 24 hours.

So we'd go out through an escape tube

which was filled with sand.

We would have to release
the bolts on the cover

and let the sand fall through

and then crawl up the tube.

Our tube came up
under the parking lot,

so we would have to
break through the asphalt to get out.

The rendezvous point
might be 50 or 100 miles away,

and you'd have to walk.

Didn't really matter though.

Everyone knew the radiation
would kill us quickly anyway

and you'd never make it
to the rendezvous.

Cirincione:
ln 1995 Pete Sampras won

the U.S. Open and Wimbledon;

George Clooney made
his first big movie;

a bomb destroyed
the federal building in Oklahoma City;

O.J. Simpson was
acquitted of murder;

and we also came close

to an accidental
nuclear missile launch.

lra Helfand:
On January 25th, 1995,

the United States launched
a rocket from Norway

to study the northern lights.

We told the Russians
that we were gonna launch that rocket,

but somebody in Moscow
forgot to pass word on it.

When they picked up
the four stages of this rocket,

they initially interpreted this

as four warheads
from a U.S. nuclear submarine

which we often station
off the coast of Noway,

possibly directed at Moscow.

That fit exactly the characteristics

of the beginning of a nuclear strike:

One missile coming over,

exploding in the atmosphere

sending out an electromagnetic pulse

that would fry all the electronics--

radar, surveillance, computers--

in the country to be attacked,

followed by an onslaught
of nuclear weapons.

And for the first time
in the nuclear age,

the Russians actually opened up
the nuclear football.

They went to President Yeltsin;
they opened up

the command and control
launch codes-- the button--

put it on the desk and said,
"We're under attack."

Helfand:
Boris Yeltsin was basically given

five minutes
to decide what to do.

Fortunately, Yeltsin wasn't drunk

and he didn't believe
what the military was telling him.

He said,
"There must be some mistake."

Both the U.S. and Russia guide
their nuclear response

with a doctrine called
"Launch on Warning."

lt is the policy that if you believe
you're under attack,

you're supposed to launch your missiles.
You don't wait for them to land.

According to Russian military doctrine,

Boris Yeltsin should have launched
an all-out nuclear attack

on the United States that morning.

We don't know what happened
in the Kremlin.

All we know is that he didn't.

Cirincione:
There have been a number of false alarms

during the Cold War.

We've had occasions
when the rising moon

was interpreted to be
a Russian l.C.B.M. attack.

A flock of geese was thought
to be bombers.

A training tape was
slipped into a computer

at our command and control
headquarters at NORAD.

Everyone involved thought

there was an actual attack underway.

Bruce Blair:
A tape was inserted into

the early warning hub in Colorado

that simulated
a large-scale Soviet nuclear attack.

And no one realized

that it was just a training tape

until the United States had gone into

this sort of frenzied
checklist procedure

to prepare for nuclear war.

Airborne command posts actually

in some cases took off.

The president's doomsday plane

actually left its base in preparation

for an incoming Soviet strike.

Senator Charles Percy

happened to be there at the time

and said there was absolute panic.

( alarm blaring )

Bruce Blair:
Another false alarm was caused

by a computer chip malfunction

that generated indications

of a large-scale Soviet attack.

We raised the alert levels.

Crews took launch codes
out of their safes.

They inserted keys into
the launch switches.

Cirincione:
Zbigniew Brzezinski

was woken up
in the middle of the night

with the assured instruction

that a nuclear attack
was underway

and he had to go wake up
President Carter.

There was eight minutes' worth

of nuclear launch preparations

that were triggered

by a malfunctioning computer chip

that cost less than a dollar.

Frank Von Hippel: You know,
having missiles on hair trigger

is an accident waiting to happen.

You know, as Fermi said about physics,

"What isn't forbidden is compulsory,"

will eventually happen.

There's nothing that makes

the launch
of nuclear weapons impossible.

lf the probability isn't zero,

it will happen.

( siren blaring )

♪ Reckoner... ♪

R. Scott Kemp:
Right now the world has a policy

that is based heavily
on technology denial--

you keep something secret
and you call it a day.

But secrecy has a half-life.

Things leak out.

Centrifuges happen to be
the technology

that is going to change the game.

They are going to democratize

the process of building
nuclear weapons.

Uranium exists everywhere on earth.

lt's more common than tin.

99.3% of all uranium
is uranium 238,

the isotope that cannot be
used for nuclear weapons.

lt's that 0.7% that you need
to separate out.

A centrifuge-- it's basically a tube.

lt spins the uranium
in gas form

and it pushes
the heavier atoms towards the wall

and the lighter atoms
towards the center.

And then you can skim off
the light atoms.

And you do this over
and over and over again

many dozens of times

and eventually you purify it

to a level that you can
use in a bomb.

The common wisdom is
that they're very complicated--

technologies that take
countries decades to build

and are the highest achievements.

But the fact is that centrifuges are

1950s technology.

And this is 2010.

Enriching uranium is still

beyond the reach of the individual.

lt's a logistical feat,

requiring thousands of centrifuges

working for months or years.

But highly-enriched uranium

is now within the grasp
of really any country.

And once you have the H.E.U.,

making a crude bomb is easy.

( Gorbachev speaking Russian )

Ronald Reagan:
We're not just discussing limits

on a further increase
of nuclear weapons.

We seek instead
to reduce their number.

We seek the total elimination one day

of nuclear weapons
from the face of the earth.

Crowd:
10, nine, eight,

seven, six, five,

four, three, two, one!

( crowd cheering,
song playing )

♪ Somewhere ♪

♪ Over the rainbow ♪

♪ Way up high... ♪

Man:
Happy New Year, man!

♪ Dreams that you dream... ♪

Man #2:
Happy New Year! Love you all!

♪ Once in a lullaby ♪

- ♪ Somewhere ♪
- ( counter beeping )

♪ Over the rainbow ♪

♪ Bluebirds fly... ♪

Cirincione:
ln the first millionth of a second,

the fireball is 500' across.

Within 10 seconds,

it would grow to over one mile.

Helfand: The temperature
would rise to 20,000,000ᵒF--

hotter than the surface of the sun.

The blast would generate winds

in excess of 650mph.

Forces of that magnitude can destroy

anything that people can build.

Cirincione: The strongest buildings
would be reduced to rubble.

Tens of square blocks

would just be melted,
would just be evaporated.

Helfand:
Everything would be vaporized--

the buildings, the cars,

the trees, the people,

the upper level of the earth itself.

( crowd continues cheering )

Cirincione: There were
76,000 buildings in Hiroshima.

70,000 of them
were destroyed.

The hospitals,
the fire stations,

the communication equipment
the military installations--

everything just flattened.

Leaning:
ln the first five to six miles,

virtually everyone
in that five-mile radius is going to die.

Somewhere between
three and four million people

dead immediately
in the first five miles.

Cirincione:
lf you're lucky enough

to be eight or nine miles
away from the blast,

then you would experience it

as blast effects--
windows being shattered.

Helfand:
Enough to shatter every window

and turn it into hundreds
of missiles flying outward

from the center of the explosion
at speeds more than 100mph.

Cirincione:
After the blast, it's the firestorm

that would just combust
everything in sight.

Helfand:
Everything flammable would burn.

Paper, cardboard, cloth,

heating oil, gasoline--
everything would ignite.

Oelrich:
Whole blocks would catch fire.

Helfand: Hundreds of thousands
of fires would coalesce

into a giant firestorm 1 1 miles across.

Oelrich: Everything catches on fire.
Then there's no air to breathe.

Helfand: All the oxygen would
be consumed and everyone would die.

Leaning:
lt is useless to talk about--

will you die because
you're burned to death

or because you've been blown
to bits by the blast?

Molander:
Anyone looking in the direction

of the nuclear explosion--
they will be blinded.

Helfand: Lungs or eardrums
ruptured by the pressure,

crush injuries from buildings
falling onto them,

broken bones when they've been
thrown through the air against buildings.

Hundreds of thousands,
possibly even millions,

would die from the fallout.

Leaning: The body does have
a repair rate for radiation.

But the doses are so heavy
and coming so quickly

that it will overwhelm
the body's repair mechanisms.

The 450 to 700 RAD dose kills you

because it wipes out
your blood cells.

Over 3000 RADs--
you will go into seizures, immediate coma,

and you will die within a matter
of minutes to hours.

Helfand:
Most of the doctors are gonna be dead.

Most of the nurses are
gonna be dead.

Most of the hospitals
are gonna be destroyed.

Huge numbers of casualties
and no medical equipment.

Leaning:
There will be a need for antibiotics--

tens of units of blood per person.

Oelrich:
There won't be any electrical power.

Leaning:
Vast amounts of intravenous fluid

to sustain people who've been
burned-- just burned.

Oelrich:
You couldn't treat all the burn victims.

Leaning: And then at a certain point
the casualties become so high,

it's pointless to try to make
any sense out of it.

The doctor in the Red Cross hospital

who turns into an automaton,

binding, swabbing, daubing,

binding, swabbing,
daubing.

And that's what descended
on the physicians and nurses

in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Bunn: Someone would
surely claim they had 10 more

that were already hidden somewhere

and they'd start setting them off
unless their demands were met.

Molander:
Every other big city is gonna wonder

whether they might be a target.

Bunn: Public panic,
people fleeing major cities.

You could forget about rules
about search and seizure.

You're gonna have to be
searching everywhere.

You can forget about civil liberties

when people realize
a whole city was just destroyed.

Cirincione: You'd take the Bill of Rights,
you'd put it up on a shelf,

and you might never see it again.

People would be demanding
draconian measures

to make sure
that another city didn't go up.

Oppenheimer:
A few people laughed.

A few people cried.

Most people were silent.

l remembered the line

from the Hindu scripture,
the Bhagavad Gita--

Vishnu

is trying to persuade the prince

that he should do his duty

and to impress him

takes on his multiarmed form

and says,

"Now l am become Death,

the destroyer of worlds."

John F. Kennedy:
Every man, woman, and child

lives under
a nuclear sword of Damocles,

hanging by the slenderest of threads

capable of being cut at any moment

by accident or miscalculation
or by madness.

The weapons of war
must be abolished

before they abolish us.

( sirens wailing )

Robert McNamara:
The Cuban Missile Crisis endangered

the very existence of our nation.

We came that close to nuclear war.

Neither the Soviets nor we, the U.S.,

intended to put our nations at that risk.

And the next time
we may not be so lucky.

They kill by the millions.
They kill in numbers

that the human imagination

simply cannot comprehend.

Rev. Richard Cizik: l used to think,
"Well, we possess nuclear weapons

in order to prevent their use."

We now know we live in a world in which

if we possess them,

if anyone possesses them,
they will be used.

l don't see any good that a nuclear weapon
could do or bring to the world.

ln my opinion, you can forget them.

l think they should be destroyed.

l think we'd be better off without 'em.

There's 183 countries in the world

that do not have nuclear weapons.

Many of these countries
could have nuclear weapons.

They've chosen not to.

F.W. de Klerk:
We have decided

to take a 180ᵒ turn in South Africa.

When l became president,
l was then informed

that we had completed six devices

more or less comparable to the bombs

which were actually used at Hiroshima.

l indicated

that l would like us
to stop this program

and to become part
of the mainstream in the world again.

Wilson:
The only way to eliminate

the threat of nuclear terrorism

is to eliminate all nuclear weapons
in all countries.

We've got to ensure that never once

do terrorists succeed

in detonating a nuclear weapon.

Thomas D'Agostino:
When you think about nuclear security,

it's all about the material.

The simple physical fact is

that if you don't have
fissile material--

either highly-enriched uranium
or plutonium, for example--

then you cannot have
a nuclear weapon.

The focus is all about the material.

Stop making new material.

Secure the material where
you know it is around the world.

And make sure that you detect
illicit transfer of the material.

And then start getting rid
of the material you have.

Glaser: Today in the world
we have about 1700 tons of H.E.U.

So that's enough material
for, you know,

on the order of
50,000 to 100,000 weapons

and to really create

a truly international system
for these facilities.

Sagan:
lnternational fuel banks

or international reprocessing centers--

that'd be a much safer world.

We haven't lost an ounce
of gold from Fort Knox.

We shouldn't lose
an ounce of plutonium

or highly-enriched uranium.

Bruce Blair:
During the Cold War l believed

in the value of nuclear weapons
to deter an attack.

20 years after the fall
of the Berlin Wall

there's no excuse any longer

for keeping nuclear weapons
on launch-ready alert.

We can remove

all of the warheads on our missiles,

share our safeguards technology

and establish a joint warning center

to ensure nuclear war
cannot happen by mistake.

Richard Burt: When l came
into government in the early 1980s,

the idea that within about 10 years

both sides would have agreed

to a 50% reduction
in their nuclear weapons

would have sounded absurd.
But we achieved it.

That means a reduction

of more than 5,000
nuclear warheads apiece.

We have gone almost 20 years now

without any really demonstrative steps

to nuclear reductions.

Cirincione:
This has to be a step-by-step process.

That's how we did it
with chemical weapons.

These weapons are now taboo.

James Baker lll: The Soviet Union
imploded when l was secretary of state.

And we actually got
an enforceable treaty

where we got Belarus,
Kazakhstan and Ukraine

to give up their nuclear weapons.

All countries in the world have to sign

a legally binding,

intrusively verifiable agreement

to rid the world of nuclear weapons.

Burt:
The choice we face is

eliminating nuclear weapons

or living in a world
with 25 or 30 nuclear powers.

We can do this.

There has to be

a carefully orchestrated
process of reductions.

The United States and Russia,

with 96% of the world's
nuclear weapons,

have to lead the way.

Cirincione:
We're starting in a world

where there are 23,000
nuclear weapons.

The very first step is

to cut those arsenals dramatically

in the United States and Russia.

Once you get down to
the low hundreds in the world,

then you will have built up
the confidence and the mechanisms

to ensure that you can
verify this process

so that we can get rid
of the last one.

- None.
- Should be zero.

l say zero.
( laughs )

- Never have it.
- We'd rather not have them, l think.

- None.
- None.

- Zero.
- Zero.

No nuclear weapons. Zero.

- Zero.
- Zero.

No country should have them.

The optimum number is none.

ldeal will be zero.

Zero nuclear weapons.

Nol. Nol.

We've taken important steps foward

to increase nuclear security

and to stop the spread
of nuclear weapons.

This starts with the reduction

of our own nuclear arsenals.

This legally binding treaty

will be completed this year.

Burt:
The arms control agreements we negotiated

between the United States
and the Soviet Union--

you'd think these were
independent initiatives

taken by governments.

But the fact is, public opinion

had a big role to play
in the process.

Cirincione:
President Kennedy,

after he passed
the Limited Test Ban Treaty,

and whenever he mentioned it
on the stump afterwards,

he got thunderous applause.

And he quipped,
"lf l had known it was so popular,

l would have done it
a long time ago."

McNamara:
Elimination of nuclear weapons

has not yet been agreed to

by the political leaders
of the world.

lt's a revolutionary idea,
but they can be eliminated.

Cizik:
We have to change our way of thinking.

And if we can't change
our way of thinking,

we won't survive.
lt's that simple.

l've changed my thinking,

and millions and millions
of other people are changing their thinking.

And frankly, if you've never
changed your mind about something,

l say, you know, pinch yourself.
You may be dead.

( rock music playing )

♪ Hey hey hey ♪

♪ When something's dark ♪

♪ Let me shed a little light on it ♪

♪ When something's cold ♪

♪ Let me put a little fire on it ♪

♪ lf something's old ♪

♪ l wanna put a bit of shine on it ♪

♪ When something's gone ♪

♪ l wanna fight to get it back again ♪

♪ Yeah yeah yeah yeah ♪

♪ Fight to get it back again ♪

♪ Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah ♪

♪ When something's broke ♪

♪ l wanna put a bit of fixin' on it ♪

♪ When something's bored ♪

♪ l wanna put a little exciting on it ♪

♪ lf something's low ♪

♪ l wanna put a little high on it ♪

♪ When something's lost ♪

♪ l wanna fight to get it back again ♪

♪ Yeah yeah yeah yeah ♪

♪ Fight to get it back again ♪

♪ Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah ♪

♪ When signals cross ♪

♪ l wanna put a little straight on it ♪

♪ lf there's no love ♪

♪ l wanna try to love again ♪

♪ l'll say your prayers ♪

♪ l'll take your side ♪

♪ l'll find us a way ♪

♪ To make light ♪

♪ l'll dig your grave ♪

♪ We'll dance and sing ♪

♪ What's saved could be ♪

♪ One last lifetime ♪

♪ Hey hey hey ♪

♪ Ah-ah ah-ah ♪

♪ Ah-ah ah-ah, ah-ah ah-ah ♪

♪ When something's dark ♪

♪ Let me shed a little light on it ♪

♪ When something's cold ♪

♪ Let me put a little fire on it ♪

♪ lf something's old ♪

♪ l wanna put a bit of shine on it ♪

♪ When something's gone ♪

♪ l wanna fight to get it back again ♪

♪ Yeah yeah yeah yeah ♪

♪ Fight to get it back again ♪

♪ Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah ♪

♪ When something's broke ♪

♪ l wanna put a bit of fixin' on it ♪

♪ When something's bored ♪

♪ l wanna put a little exciting on it ♪

♪ lf something's low ♪

♪ l wanna put a little high on it ♪

♪ When something's lost ♪

♪ l wanna fight to get it back again ♪

♪ Yeah yeah yeah yeah ♪

♪ Fight to get it back again ♪

♪ Yeah yeah yeah yeah ♪

♪ Fight to get it back again ♪

♪ Yeah yeah yeah ♪

♪ Fight to get it back again ♪

♪ Yeah yeah yeah ♪

♪ Fight to get it back again ♪

♪ Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah ♪

♪ Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. ♪