Nathan Radke

We've got some nuclear expertise.

The thing that they all have in common is that they all require a great deal of intelligence.

And you know what?

There's no denying human beings, they're extremely intelligent.

We got the wheel.

We harnessed fire that time.

We did the internet.

Dippin' dots.

Yeah, dippin' dots.

That's the ice cream of the future.

At least it was supposed to be.

I mean, sometimes that's the case, but then sometimes these nations keep it secret.

And what's the point of having a deterrence device if you don't tell people about it?

What it often is as well, especially during the Cold War, and these are all Cold War doomsday devices, is that if one side got the feeling that the other side was doing something, didn't matter how ridiculous it was, didn't matter how far-fetched it was, if one side said, hey, the other side is doing this, we got to do it too.

You don't want to have a doomsday device gap.

Yes.

And not quite as mature as teenagers in high school.

Fair enough.

Okay, so back in the 1950s, the American government was worried about how to stop Soviet bombers from nuking American cities.

You can build surface-to-air missiles, you got jet interceptors, hopefully shoot the bombers down before they get close enough to deliver their payloads.