The Cold War Vault

Recently, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the minute hand of the "Doomsday Clock" to 90 seconds to midnight. Since 1947, the clock has been a symbol of existential dread. But has it outlived its purpose?

This is a short one. It's a show update for the new YouTube series on the alternate end of the Cuban Missile Crisis on this 60th Anniversary. And a little speculation on how things might have been. I have lots to share on the new channel https://www.youtube.com/@coldwarvault  The new series is just a start. Come see what I'm building there and subscribe.  And come to Patreon.com/coldwarvault for more material, early releases and a direct line to my ear.  --DJ

The final installment of the series on cinema of nuclear war brings us to the uncertain world of the "aftermath." From immediate effects to decades after, who knows what the world after a nuclear war will be like? Movies of the Cold War have made an attempt to figure it out. 

In the third episode of this series of nuclear war on film, we look at the moment the missiles land and how it was depicted through the decades of the Cold War--from survival to hopeless destuction.

This is the second part of a series about the films of the Cold War. This time we go beyond escalation to launching the war. What kinds of glitches and mistakes might have caused the balloon to go up and how it was represented in the movies.

In this series we'll break down the greatest films of the Cold War and see each phase of a conflict through the lens of the movies. The first episode is "escalation." What do films have to say about the period leading up to the war? What lessons can be learned about the fears of the public and the intentions of the filmmakers? This is episode 1 of a four part series. 

We start with whales and end with aliens on this episode of the Cold War Vault. By exploring geophysicist Maurice Ewing's contributions to the national defense in submarine warfare, we will go on a journey that takes us to the darkest depths, to Roswell, New Mexico, and on to other unsolved mysteries of the skies and the seas.

John McEuen was a founding member of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and in 1977 was invited on a musical tour of the Soviet Union. On this episode, John McEuen recounts some stories about the tour and thoughts on what the Soviet Union was like in those days.

Recently uncovered documents reveal how close the 1958 Taiwan Crisis came to going nuclear. Important context to have in the current world.

An interview with author Ann Hagedorn about an early Cold War espionage ring and the American-born spy who escaped to the Soviet Union--but only after stealing secrets from the Manhattan Project. Sleeper Agent by Ann Hagedorn was released on 20 July 2021.  

In this episode we'll look at the most serious mishaps at NORAD during the most tense days of the War Scare years and compare the very similar crisis faced by Stansilav Petrov in the Soviet Union in 1983. 

A techno-thriller, exploring the technological background of many of the nuclear near misses and close calls of the Cold War. Inferior computer systems and common sense battled it out for the survival of human kind. 

Could it have been that the most dangerous year of the Great War Scare wasn't 1983 with Able Archer, but 1984, when the danger receded into the mechanisms of the Soviet intelligence apparatus? Yes it could. For nearly a full year, the Soviet Union continued to operate on the assumption that the United States was going to launch a surprise attack. And the U.S. didn't seem to have a clue.

In part three of the 1983 series, we go deeper into what Exercise Able Archer actually was and why it scared the Soviet Union. After all this, was the war scare real? Recently released documents answer the question. 

The second part of the series on the Great War Scare goes into even more incidents and accidents that heightened tensions in advance of the events of Autumn Forge 1983. Reagan's rhetoric, the Star Wars Program, Operation RYaN, and the shootdown of KAL 007 all play a role in setting the stage for the real drama...and the real danger.

We explore the 1981-83 nuclear war scare, what caused it, and what almost set the missiles flying during the Able Archer 83 exercise. This episode offers some background, and an introduction to Operation RYaN, the Soviet effort to predict a U.S. first strike. Very dangerous days. This time on the Vault. 

The stories we tell about ourselves are all fiction. Especially when you are the god-king of a cult of personality. Doing research on a few interesting stories, these outrageous characters needed a little narrative. These aren't all, of course, just a few little tales I wanted to tell. Papa Doc Duvalier, the infamous Turkmenbashi, and the changing Cult of Kim.

Doomtown. Ah, my home address. This time, we look at the rise and fall of civil defense in the United States, with all of the virtual nuclear wars at the center. From irradiating cans of peaches to tens of millions of Americans evacuating the cities, the civil defense project truly was a lesson in imagined disaster. 

In Part 1 of this series, the Vault looks at early attempts by the U.S. federal government to save itself in the face of nuclear war. What started out as a hopeful scheme was eventually abandoned when the Soviet weapons technology outpaced the ability of the government to survive. 

In this episode we discover Moscow's “Summer of Love” of 1957, when Khrushchev, 30 years ahead of his time, attempted a social and cultural “opening.” Nothing embodied this more than the Sixth Festival of Youth and Students, a cultural and political free for all that descended on Moscow for two weeks in July and August and forever changed the sociopolitical landscape of the Soviet Union, no matter how hard later leaders tried to suppress what the Festival had unleashed.

On this current events episode, we look at all of the ins, outs, ups, and downs of the Korean Balloon Crisis of June 2020 and speculate about the potential reasons for such an overreaction to what has been happening regularly since at least 2004. Something strange is afoot!

When the Soviet ambassador started looking for a new embassy, he couldn't have known it would take decades. This episode looks at the various games each side played as the United States and the Soviet Union built new embassies, spying on each other in wild ways...all the while.

A current events episode. How does a global crisis reveal even more clearly the new Cold War with Communist China? Let's explore it together, shall we? I'm going to take heat for this episode. So please support the show. 

Not Quite "Science and the CIA," but definitely a sequel to those last couple of episodes, this show deals with a subproject of MKULTRA called "Magic Manual." Long thought to just be a myth in the walls of the CIA, the "Magic Manual" written by famed magician John Mulholland for the MKULTRA program finally surfaced in an unrelated archive. This episode will look at how the CIA put the tricks of stage magic to work, from Sidney Gotlieb's LSD experiments to the exfiltration of KGB agents. Trick your friends and disappear your enemies! 

In this very special episode, we'll look at the very real world examples of times that biological weapons have slipped the grip of their government handlers and posed a risk to all humankind.

This episode delves into the origin and realities of the sometimes mundane (and sometimes insane) world of MKULTRA and particularly its most lurid episode: Subproject 42, also known as Operation Midnight Climax. Sex and the CIA. This time on the Cold War Vault.

In 1953, a CIA experiment with LSD triggered deep depression in a Department of Defense biochemist. Dr. Frank Olson committed suicide - or was murdered - a few days later. This story is a lense through which we will delve into the shadowy history of the CIA's experimentation with psychedelic drugs and mind control.

Fearmonger Fridays brings a little information and sanity to the recent events in the Persian Gulf, reminding everyone that it's not as bad as they make it sound...until it is. Then it's too late.

In the years since the Cuban Missile Crisis, new facts have been revealed that shed light on just how close the crisis came to spiraling out of control. In this final episode of the series, we will explore a few of those incidents and revelations and wonder, what might have been?

The most dangerous day of the Cuban Missile Crisis was also its last day. There was no cooling-off period. It was going to burn out, or it was going to explode. Saturday just sucked.

In this episode, we focus on the days leading up to the climax of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the second Tuesday through Friday. These days include the showdown at the U.N. with Adlai Stevenson and Khrushchev's first, emotional letter to Kennedy on Friday night. These truly are, the Days of Danger.

A quick update on the podcast an appeal for normalcy in the comments section.

A day-by-day account of the first week of the crisis and what key actors really thought. This is a set-up for the real thought experiments of the next episode. But on its own, it really does illuminate the gloom and doom running through the heads of the most powerful people on Earth. I hope this has some interesting new personal information in the tale....

57 years ago this month, humanity was faced with what was potentially the most dangerous crisis in history. Cooler heads prevailed, but it might not have gone that way. In fact, given what we know, it's hard to imagine that it did. This episode and a couple more will explore what happened and what might have happened, hopefully in a slightly new way.

What seemed like a necessary and prudent precaution in the face of a Warsaw Pact invasion of Western Europe, became deeply controversial after the fall of the Soviet Union and the revelation of the European stay-behind networks and their ties to NATO and the CIA.

In the 1950s, an unsuspecting group of Alaska residents were recruited by the FBI to stand against the Soviet invaders. This is their story.

A listener question leads to a discussion on what Russia was up to a couple of weeks ago when a new cruise missile exploded...with radioactive implications.

What does the wreck of the titanic have to do with the loss of two U.S. nuclear submarines? This episode tells the story of the four submarine disasters of 1968.

In this timely news-based episode we will look at some of the trouble in the Persian Gulf, and a history of tanker trouble in the Strait of Hormuz. Also up, 17 CIA spies surprisingly not executed by Iran, and long lost French submarine found as I was writing that it had never been found. 

The third installment of this journey into the Arctic with the U.S. Army in the 1950s. This time, we take a trip onto the icecap with fully equipped convoys, trying to prove that the Army was a force to be reckoned with!

In this second episode of the series, "Cold War on Ice," we will go under the Greenland Icecap and explore the Army's snowbase Century and its bid for relevance in the race between branches.

This is the first episode in a series that will delve into the role that the far north played in the Cold War. This episode deals with Operation Bluejay, the construction of Thule Air Base in Greenland in 1951. From here we'll explore everything that Thule allowed the U.S. Army and Air Force to do in the farthest reaches of the Arctic. 

Some interesting Cold War related stories that came across my desk this week. Some scary and some strange, but I hope all will be thought provoking and interesting. We begin with a retro look at some British Cold War civil defense advice, touch on the current state of North Korea, and end with a look under the sea at some radioactive shrimp.

On this anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, what begins as a film review becomes something more, as we delve into the relationship between Ukraine and Russia and the rise of a new Russian Empire, all the while looking at the fascinating award-winning documentary, The Russian Woodpecker.

In this final episode of the "Otters of Amchitka" series, see how the Alaskan nuclear testing series, the ecological movement, the antinuclear movement, and a general distrust of government agencies led to the birth of the modern environmental movement. Not only that, it brought about a new kind of thinking that hounded government policy until the end of the Cold War. 

The Otters of Amchitka Part Two reveals the birth of the environmental movement and all of the conflicting international forces. 

Understand why new nuclear holocausts on film don't work anymore, and why, while, they exist, they have moved past their time. 

The first part of a series on the birth of the environmental movement and how it ties in with nuclear testing in Alaska and the conservation of sea otters. As a historian of science, with a focus on environmental science, this story has always fascinated me. Not only does it have implications for environmentalism, but it plants the seeds of serious mass protest that agitate for the end of the Cold War. Otters! Who knew?

This week on Fearmonger Friday, we look at the week's events in the ongoing drama between India and Pakistan and think about where it might lead and how we might get to World War III. If you're interested in current events, you can get some context here.

In the final installment of the NESC story, Kennedy and Johnson get their briefings and the world comes so close to nuclear war. Gosh I just love the Cold War!

In this episode of Fearmonger Fridays we explore not only the failure of international treaties of the Cold War, but the intentional reversal for reasons that seem somewhat arbitrary.