Annie Jacobsen: Why Biological War Scares Her More Than Nuclear

**Lee C. Camp** (0:02)
I'm Lee C. Camp. This is No Small Endeavor, exploring what it means to live a good life.

**Annie Jacobsen** (0:10)
I was doing an interview with former Stratcom commander, General Keeler, and Stratcom is US strategic command that is the steward of all nuclear weapons in the US arsenal. And I went right with candor, General Keeler, what would happen in a full scale nuclear exchange with Russia? And he took a very short pause and then said, Annie, the world could end in the next couple of hours.

**Lee C. Camp** (0:41)
This is Annie Jacobsen. Annie is an investigative journalist and a 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist. Here she's talking about writing her New York Times bestselling book, Nuclear War, A Scenario.

**Annie Jacobsen** (0:54)
That is the premier authority in nuclear war, if you will, even more so than the president. And to have General Keeler say that to me, I realized, oh my God, that is the terrifying ending of this book.

**Lee C. Camp** (1:10)
Her book describes with painstaking specificity what would happen if a nuclear nation launched a missile at the United States, that in just 72 minutes, the world could utterly change as we know it, with millions upon millions of deaths and those not killed likely envying the dead and nuclear winter on its way. Here's how the countdown begins.

**Annie Jacobsen** (1:34)
An ICBM, which is an intercontinental ballistic missile, goes from one continent to another. And that is what strategic nuclear weapons are set up to do. We're not talking about battlefield nukes. We are talking about ICBMs. And it takes approximately 30 minutes. 30 minutes for a launch in Pyongyang or outside of Moscow to reach Washington, DC.
And the second most important component of that is that an ICBM cannot be redirected or recalled. So once it launches, it's game over. It is going to hit its target.

**Lee C. Camp** (2:14)
Once the US military and US intelligence detect that an ICBM is on its way, a series of internal nuclear protocols begin.

**Annie Jacobsen** (2:24)
The president has to decide to make a counterattack because that is US nuclear doctrine, very simply called launch on warning policy. And he has only six minutes to make that decision from a predetermined list of decisions because the clock is ticking and then he must be moved from Washington, DC.

**Lee C. Camp** (2:51)
Six minutes, less than the amount of time it took me to make a cup of coffee this morning. That's how much time the president of the United States has to decide which counterattack he will launch, setting up the possibility of a near extinction level event.
And it's not like he has six minutes of quiet contemplation to consider the options.

**Annie Jacobsen** (3:12)
Wait a minute. President is making that six-minute window from the Situation Room at the White House. The missile is on its way to Washington, DC.
What's the Secret Service going to do? And knowing the answer that the Secret Service is going to move the president out of Washington, DC. And then you realize you have all these complications that make things really confused and chaotic and only add to the ratcheting up existential end that is coming. It is almost impossible to stop.

**Lee C. Camp** (3:48)
Annie has been working as a national security reporter for over 15 years investigating classified military and intelligence programs. She's written eight books on the topic involving war, weapons, and government secrecy.
It's not hyperbole to describe her journalist's beat as a terrifying one, but she describes herself as, get this, hopeful.

**Annie Jacobsen** (4:11)
I just don't see the world through the lens of doom and gloom, which is so ironic because I'm writing this incredibly dystopian cautionary tale, but it is a cautionary tale, hence the hope. And any kind of pushback like, Annie, this is a bridge too far. You're like talking about the end of the world is going to freak people out. It's fear mongering. I was like, no, it's not. You cannot fix what you can't face. We know this is true in our personal lives, in our family lives.
So, of course, it's true in the public sphere.

**Lee C. Camp** (4:42)
Today, we discuss the danger of refusing to face facts, the potential for a world with many fewer nuclear weapons, and her newest book, Biological War, A Scenario.

**Annie Jacobsen** (4:54)
The weapon delivery system in biological war is a pair of lungs.
You don't need an ICBM. You don't need an aircraft. You don't need a submarine launch vehicle. You just need a breathing human, and that is terrifying.

**Lee C. Camp** (5:12)
Today, my sobering conversation with Annie Jacobsen.