In this episode, we scrambled our B-52s so we could watch the in-flight movie By Dawn’s Early Light (1990). What is the U.S. president to do once a nuclear war begins? Who is in command of the nuclear stockpile when POTUS is missing? Why is James Earl Jones always finding his finger on the nuclear button? Tim Westmyer (@NuclearPodcast) and special guest Sylvia Mishra (@MishraSylvia), doctoral researcher at King’s College London where studies nuclear strategy and emerging technologies, answer these questions and more.
Before we reach our positive control point, we recommend:
-Sylvia Mishra, “Directing Doomsday: Lessons Learned from Nuclear War in Film,” CSIS Next Generation Nuclear Network, July 8, 2020
-Fail-Safe, 1964 movie
-Countdown to Looking Glass, 1984 movie
-David Hoffman, The Dead Hand, The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy, 2010
-Daniel Ellsberg, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, 2017
-Christian Brose, The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare, 2020
Super Critical Podcast 