#2174 - Annie Jacobsen

Joe Rogan (0:14)

Good to see you again.

Annie Jacobsen (0:15)

Hi Joe, thanks for having me. Thanks for having me back, a lot's happening.

Joe Rogan (0:19)

My pleasure, I've heard a lot about your book. I haven't read it, but I've heard a lot about your book from a lot of people that you freaked out.

Annie Jacobsen (0:26)

Okay, well hopefully you can read it, and then you can decide if you're of the freaked out crowd or of the really freaked out crowd.

Joe Rogan (0:33)

Oh, there's only two options?

Annie Jacobsen (0:36)

I think so, it doesn't end well. That's the spoiler alert.

Joe Rogan (0:39)

Okay, hold the book up, it's called Nuclear War. Yeah, what motivated you?

Annie Jacobsen (0:44)

Nuclear War, A Scenario, and a very plausible scenario from what I understand from all the defense officials I interviewed.

Joe Rogan (0:55)

What motivated you to write this?

Annie Jacobsen (0:57)

Well, six previous books on war, weapons, US national security secrets, imagine how many people told me they dedicated their lives to preventing nuclear World War III. And so during the previous administration, fire and fury rhetoric, I began to think what happens if deterrence fails, that idea of prevention, what happens? And I took that question to the people who advise the president, who work at STRATCOM, who, you know, command the nuclear sub-forces, and learned that it doesn't end well. Not only does it not end well, five billion people are dead at the end of 72 minutes. Jesus.

You begin to realize when you, well you quickly realize as you read the book that, you know, there are...

Joe Rogan (1:56)

Jamie, your mic's on or something? Something just made a weird noise.

Oh, yeah.

Annie Jacobsen (2:02)

It's Carl.

Joe Rogan (2:03)

Oh, it's Carl.

Annie Jacobsen (2:06)

It's the animal humor in a difficult subject.

You know, there's, you know, literally hundreds of thousands of people in nuclear command and control who practice 24-7-365 what would happen if deterrence failed and we had a nuclear war. They are practicing this, Joe. And it's like, talk about being behind the veil. No one knows. It's why I think the response to this book, it's been out for three months, has been so extraordinary and from both sides of the aisle. Because people now are beginning to realize if nuclear war begins, it doesn't end until there is a nuclear holocaust. And it happens so fast, there is no quickly going to your secret bunker you have.

Joe Rogan (2:58)

Yeah, all that's nonsense. These people think like Zuckerberg is building a bunker in Hawaii, he's going to survive.

He's building a hurricane shelter.

Annie Jacobsen (3:07)

And also, unless he happened to be there in the exact moment when all of this went down.

Joe Rogan (3:12)

Yeah, you'd have to know in advance that we're about to launch.

The whole thing is terrifying. It's also, I don't see a way that it, like, if you think about the timeline between 1945 and today, it's kind of extraordinary that no one has launched a nuke, no one's, but it almost seems like a matter of time, like, it'll be a blip in history, like, we look at it now, oh, because of mutually assured self-destruction or mutually assured destruction, that's what's prevented people from using nuclear weapons, like, until now, like, what is 80 years in terms of human history? It's nothing. It's a tiny little blink. It's a little nothing. And it could go sideways at any moment, and then we're back to the cave era.

Annie Jacobsen (4:02)

We are hunter-gatherers again. In the words of Carl Sagan, who is the author of Nuclear Winter. But I think what's also crazy to your point about 1945 is like when this was all set up, when the nuclear arsenals were beginning, and I take the reader through it really quickly, because I want them to just get to what happens at nuclear launch. I mean, the book is really about nuclear launch to Nuclear Winter. But the buildup is fascinating because, first of all, it happened so incredibly fast. And it happened under incredibly secret classified terms. So there was no like outside opinion.

And originally, nuclear war was set up to be fought and won, which itself is absurd. And we know that now. So the rules of the game have fundamentally changed. And yet, the systems are all the same.

That's what I think the most dangerous component of today versus, let's say, 1952, when the thermonuclear began.

Joe Rogan (5:07)

And when you say the systems are the same, what do you mean exactly?

Annie Jacobsen (5:10)

So the system of nuclear war, this idea that, well, okay, so let's start with some basic facts. There's a nuclear triad. You know what that, okay, so triad, really simple, three. So we have missile silos. They're called ICBMs inside of them, 400 of them. Then we have nuclear-powered nuclear submarines that launch nuclear missiles.