Nine countries have enough nuclear weapons stockpiled to destroy the globe eight times over. It’s about 12,000 bombs, and most of them belong to the United States and Russia.
WGLT's new Twelve Thousand Bombs podcast examines the history, science and policy behind the United States nuclear program—and why the threat of a nuclear conflict is as high as it’s ever been.
In the first episode, listeners hear highlights from WGLT's conversation with Matt Caplan, a nuclear physicist and professor at Illinois State University who has organized a companion speaker series taking place on ISU’s campus with leading scholars and policy advocates with expertise in a wide range of topics related to nuclear weapons. Topics include a hypothetical nuclear winter, the ongoing impact of testing fallout in the American West, ballistic missile defense and nuclear fusion.
Why this? And why now? Twelve Thousand Bombs frames nuclear policy as an election issue that has escaped notice since the 1980s leading up to the fall of the Soviet Union. The existential threat of nuclear conflict during the Cold War was a topic explored by political campaigns at the time, including a call from some to forge peace treaties and move toward disarmament.
President Joe Biden has said, “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” yet proposed legislation seeks to spend $1.5 Trillion on updating the U.S. nuclear arsenal. With possible conflicts between India and Pakistan, the dissolving of the Iran nuclear deal, growing arsenals in North Korea and China, and continued Russian aggression in Ukraine, the threat of global nuclear conflict has never been higher.
The first episode of Twelve Thousand Bombs explores this and the current presidential candidates’ platforms—or lack thereof—on nuclear weapons, plus a primer on questions like: What is the football? Why is the president the only one who can authorize a nuclear strike? What are the checks and balances around a president’s use of nuclear weapons should he/she become compromised in some way? (Spoiler: Not many.)
Listen to Twelve Thousand Bombs on the NPR App or wherever you get your podcasts. For a full transcript, visit this episode on Apple Podcasts.
