Name: How A Nuclear War Will Start - Minute by Minute
Uploaded: 2026-01-22T17:14:55.000Z
Duration: 8 min 54 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Mr. President, nuclear missiles will strike our country in 14 minutes.

But you're the only one who can authorize our nuclear retaliation in response.

And you've only got a few minutes to make a decision.

As you know, tensions have escalated rapidly in the past few days.

Today's joint allied aerial defense exercise began just minutes before we detected the launch.

We assume the sudden attack is meant to neutralize as many of our nuclear forces as possible, but

Missiles are in the air and we can't shoot all of them down.

Because intercontinental ballistic missiles are basically rockets launched into space before re entering the atmosphere over their target and releasing many different warheads higher and faster than anything you can send after them.

Four minutes ago, our new infrared monitoring satellites detected 112 bursts consistent with ICBM launch from the enemy's inner territories.

For some reason, only 20 of their 80 underground nuclear silos seem to have fired.

So we suspect most of them were transporter erector launchers, you know, trucks with big missiles on them.

It's unclear why they didn't use all their silos.

They might just not work after more than 30 years.

Or they might be keeping them in reserve.

The fog of war is keeping many things unclear.

Aerospace Command thinks the ICBMs are targeting our nuclear command centers, silos and major Air Force and Navy bases.

Ending this war before we have a chance to.

The enemy's strategic doctrine prioritizes military targets and our nuclear weapon systems.

But their secondary targets are our industry and infrastructure.

All refineries, power stations and deep water ports, all located near or in major population centers.

We won't know the exact casualty count for a few weeks.

Deaths from the blast and burns may be a few million today.

It's morning rush hour and there's not much to be done for people stuck in traffic.

People in major metro areas can't really evacuate, but

emergency broadcasts are being sent out to shelter in place and away from windows.

Radiation exposure for intact population centers is highly dependent on the weather.

Over the next week, we might be looking at dozens of millions of deaths by the end of the month.

For the next few minutes, we can still respond.

We've got 1500 warheads across our silos, bombers and submarines.

The 400 in silos need to be launched now before they get taken out.

46 nuclear capable bombers on high Alert can be ready to take off in two minutes.

Though we need to transmit the order right away to get them out of the blast radius.

Of our 40 nuclear submarines, five are presently at sea.

While they're submerged, they're undetectable.

So that's our backup for a nuclear retaliation.

If we lose our silos and bombers, we could try to use them to bomb out their remaining silo fields before they can launch them.

The sooner you commit to it, the better the chance we have of preventing a further exchange.

After our retaliation updates, we have radar confirmation that the enemy ICBMs have completed their burn and deployed their warheads.

Our best guess is that each missile will Deploy at least 6 re entry vehicles.

Which is the part that carries a warhead back into the atmosphere during its terminal descent onto the target.

And with many more decoys on top of that, inflatable balloons meant to waste any anti missiles.

We're now tracking nearly 4,000 potential targets.

Our anti ballistic missiles have been launched and will begin their intercept in another minute.

We'll do our best to protect the capital, although there really is no defense.

The enemy must have anticipated we'd launch our interceptors and pre detonated a few warheads at high altitude.

That ionizes the atmosphere and creates radar interference.

Our interceptors should still operate okay.

They've had a 55% success rate in tests, but

never with this many decoys or with radar interference this intense.

We might shoot down 50 objects, but there's no guarantee they're warheads.

It looks like most bombs are going to get through.

This is our last chance to counterattack.

Our silo launch sequence takes five minutes.

We have to transmit and confirm a launch order.

And the missile needs time to clear the blast radius of the incoming bomb.

You just need to enter the launch authorization codes and push this button to transmit them.

You can't do anything else to save more of our people.

If you don't launch now, then this war will be over before it even begins.

You understand this is our one chance, right?

Enemy civilian casualties are hard to estimate, but should be similar to ours.

Perhaps a few tens of million by the end of the month.

The total fallout from their attacks and ours might trigger a nuclear winter, potentially killing billions around the world.

But that might happen even if we don't Retaliate.

I'm sure you have questions, but you have to give orders without expecting answers right now.

With an attack of this scale, there's no guarantee communications or assets will be intact in a few minutes.

And in times of crisis, small conflicts can rapidly spiral out of control.

Anything from small communication lags to sensor errors to just uncertainty in the fog of war mean that no leader will ever have a complete idea of what's happening as a crisis unfolds.

When tensions are high, accidents or misunderstandings can steer leaders, even those with good intentions to launch a nuclear attack, confused and with incomplete information.

Yes, it's really just one single person who decides can literally make civilization ending decisions.

Killing hundreds of millions of people in the time it takes to watch a YouTube video.

This story is fiction, but the world came very close to this several times.

In 1995, Russian radar detected a submarine launched missile and their nuclear forces went on full alert.

Except it was actually a scientific rocket to study Auroras.

In 1979, US computers reported a full scale Soviet attack with only minutes to respond.

Except it was a training tape being incorrectly loaded into a computer.

In 1983, the Soviet Satellite Alert System showed five ICBMs launched from the US but it was a false alarm caused by sunlight reflected on clouds.

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How A Nuclear War Will Start - Minute by Minute

inevitable

guarantee

crisis

scale