Eric Weinstein

Before November of 1952, with the test known as Ivy Mike, the first hydrogen bomb, you know, there's like before Christ and after Christ, and they're just very different.

Suddenly, we were like gods.

And that is the BCAD of human history.

It's much more important than the birth of Christ.

Well, there was no point to duck and cover.

I mean, you weren't going to survive this thing.

My guess is that one or two devices means that Los Angeles is no more.

No one is interested in the idea that the solar system is an escape room and that Einstein is our jailer.

We've got to get past Einstein before the thing goes off.

We're on the eve of destruction and take a Jewish attitude, which is survival at all costs.

This is the end.

This is the apocalypse.

Thanks, guys.

Great to be here.

We really shouldn't talk about that.

it's awfully nice to see the two of you and on to nuclear weapons um i've been talking about this for a while somehow there was a crazy idea at the end of the cold war the berlin wall fell nukes became a non-issue which was never true and there was never a peace dividend because there will never be a peace dividend as long as we know how to create this technology from physics and this issue about fictionalizing nukes what they mean and how to think about them

so that we can live our lives i mean right now we're looking out at los angeles and there exists websites that will allow you to simulate the effect of any of the tests with any epicenter you like chosen at any point here and whether or not you're going to have gamma radiation as you will from the thermonuclear weapons or cesium fission weapons or dirty bombs or who knows what

All of our cities, other than two in Japan, have been untested as to how they'll perform under these circumstances.

So it's not clear that it even makes sense to build cities.

But because no one's used a nuclear weapon in anger since 1945, we don't know whether this is a silly thing to be worried about or the most important thing to be worried about.