Tag: nuclear war

Found: U.S. Government’s Fake Newscast for 1986 Nuclear Training Session

Buck Banks


Gizmodo has uncovered a fake news broadcast created for Mighty Derringer, a large-scale Department of Energy nuclear terrorism training session held in Indianapolis in 1986. It’s pretty good and, yes, pretty scary.

In December of 1986, the Pentagon, the CIA, FBI, the Department of Energy, and just about every other federal agency you can think of came together in Indianapolis for an enormous training exercise code-named Mighty Derringer. The plan was to simulate a nuclear terrorist incident and explore how every agency would react and whether they would cooperate. To enhance the verisimilitude of the war games, the U.S. government went so far as to record a fake news broadcast about a nuclear bomb exploding in Indianapolis.

Watch it here.

Most American Worried About Russian Nukes

Buck Banks

9 in 10

A new AP-NORC poll finds “close to half of Americans say they are very concerned that Russia would directly target the U.S. with nuclear weapons, and an additional 3 in 10 are somewhat concerned about that.” “Roughly 9 in 10 Americans are at least somewhat concerned that Putin might use a nuclear weapon against Ukraine, including about 6 in 10 who are very concerned.”

Why Putin’s Nuclear Threat Resonates

Buck Banks

“The advent of tactical nuclear weapons — a term generally applied to lower-yield devices designed for battlefield use, which can have a fraction of the strength of the Hiroshima bomb — reduced their lethality, limiting the extent of absolute destruction and deadly radiation fields. That’s also made their use less unthinkable, raising the specter that the Russians could opt to use a smaller device without leveling an entire city. Detonate a one kiloton weapon on one side of Kyiv’s Zhuliany airport, for instance, and Russian President Vladimir Putin sends a next-level message with a fireball, shock waves and deadly radiation. But the blast radius wouldn’t reach the end of the runway.”

— Anthony Faiola

‘Doomsday Clock’ Now 100 Seconds to Midnight

Buck Banks

100 seconds

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the “Doomsday Clock” to 100 seconds before midnight, the closest it’s ever been to the metaphorical point of the Earth’s destruction. From the statement: “Humanity continues to face two simultaneous existential dangers—nuclear war and climate change—that are compounded by a threat multiplier, cyber-enabled information warfare, that undercuts society’s ability to respond. The international security situation is dire, not just because these threats exist, but because world leaders have allowed the international political infrastructure for managing them to erode.”