Nathan Radke

But then Sputnik gets launched, because again, we're clever and we can figure these things out.

And war planners realized, wait, if you can put a satellite into space on a rocket, you could put a nuclear warhead into a city with a missile.

And unlike bombers, there's no way to shoot down a missile or is there?

Ooh.

So they came up with all sorts of plans.

My favorite is you'd put a bunch of space stations in orbit.

And when the Soviets launched missiles, the space stations would release these enormous nets.

And the nets would like- Like physical nets?

Like physical nets, like big fish nets.

Okay.

You'd catch the missiles with the big nets.

And that was one of my favorites.

But it was ruled out as being too impractical.

But-

There was this Greek elevator repairman named Nicholas Christophoulos.

And during World War II, he had taught himself particle physics.

And so he wrote to the American government with a plan.

And the plan goes like this.

The Earth has a magnetic field.

And if you set off a bunch of atom bombs in the upper atmosphere, then radioactive particles would get caught up in that field and create sort of an artificial Van Allen belt.