You need to read this. It is crucial.
Nuclear war is more imminent than ever since the end of the Cold War, and unless the Biden administration changes course, it can become a real possibility.
As a nation, we are NOT prepared. But YOU can take steps NOW to give you and your family the best chance of survival in a worst-case scenario.
As we do every week, my team sends my email subscribers the exclusive documents behind the Glenn TV special. This week includes practical steps to prepare for nuclear war.
It is vitally important that you have this knowledge. You can enter your email here to get access.
I also wanted to pause and recognize the gravity of the situation.
Many of us remember the looming fear of a nuclear attack.
One of my researchers came to me while working on this particular episode and told me that the weight and fragility of the topic left him feeling helpless, frustrated, and numb.
Many of us remember the looming fear of a nuclear attack while growing up during the Cold War. Now that this fear has returned, it is natural to be overcome by emotion. If you were born after the Cold War, this is likely a fresh new fear that you have no context for.
If either of these feelings resonated with you, you are not alone. I'd like you to read what my researcher shared with me:
On the way into the soundstage yesterday I made the remark to Glenn that we have to research a lot of very depressing subjects in putting together his Wednesday Night Special each week. He laughed because he knows it’s true (and because he comes up with most of these depressing subjects). But, I told him, working on this week’s episode was the most depressed about a subject I’ve been in a long time. Digging into the history of the nuclear arms race and the current nuclear threat was relentlessly disturbing and bleak. The daily headlines about Russia, China, and North Korea just piled onto the misery.
Working on Glenn’s Wednesday Night Special, we’ll often be saturated in a subject for a week and a half, sometimes longer. Doing constant deep dives on the world’s evils, you become numb to it all to a certain extent. But this week’s episode really shook me out of the numbness.
As a child of the 1980s, I have strong memories of being terrified of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. But those fears mostly faded away over the next twenty-five years as communism largely crumbled in Eastern Europe and Russia. We lost our sense of urgency and alarm over nuclear weapons. It was a harsh wake up call to be reminded of the horrific reality that nuclear war would entail. It also didn’t help that I re-watched the 1983 TV movie “The Day After” (which Glenn talks about in this week’s episode).
We always strive to produce important, relevant episodes, but this week’s has a particular urgency as the U.S. deepens its commitment to Ukraine in their war with Russia. The world has changed – we no longer have just one nuclear foe. We desperately need a potent reminder that the world sits on a tinderbox of nearly 13,000 nuclear warheads. And we have cartoonish villains like Kim Jong-un who apparently like to play with matches.
After seeing this week’s episode, some younger members of Glenn’s staff remarked that they didn’t know about “nuclear winter” or the terrifying details about nuclear war and its consequences. It’s not something that’s fun to think about. But it’s vital to think about. We must renew the conclusion reached by Reagan and Gorbachev at their 1985 summit: “…a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
I don't want to create the same type of feelings and paranoia I had growing up during the Cold War, but I do want us to be aware that this is a real possibility that we can prepare for, even if our government isn't. Even though it often feels like there is so little that we can control on the national stage, there is so much you CAN do to protect and prepare you and your family.
PEDRO MATTEY / Contributor | Getty Images
AFP Contributor / Contributor | Getty Images