The United States has 5,244 nuclear weapons,\h and a whole bunch of different ways to move\h\h
them. Some can be fired from the ground, others\h from submarines. Some can be dropped from planes,\h\h
and others are just collecting dust. But all\h of these systems for moving nuclear weapons are\h\h
systems for deploying them; as in, that’s how\h we move them from here, in Montana, to here,\h\h
where the bad people are—but what about when we\h need to transport nuclear weapons without blowing\h\h
them up? Well, it turns out that moving a warhead\h from one part of the United States to another is,\h\h
like, a whole thing, so… you know\h the drill: we’ll explain the thing,\h\h
and then we’ll tell you to go buy something, and\h then about 2% of you will buy it, and then I will\h\h
give my writer Ben some money to go buy more\h croissants, which he needs to live. Here we go.\h
Nuclear warheads in the United States live\h here: in the 450-or-so missile silos in Montana,\h\h
Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, and North Dakota,\h with a few spread out in other states. But,\h\h
throughout their lives, these warheads also\h sometimes need to be here, here, here, here,\h\h
here, here, or here. And at this point, you\h probably have the same question that I did when I\h\h
started writing this video: “Why, exactly, are we\h moving nuclear warheads in the first place? It’s\h\h
not like we’re using them. This must only happen,\h like, every few decades.” And you’d be right,\h\h
if you just replaced “every few decades” with\h “several times a week,” which I guess means that\h\h
you weren’t very right at all. The US Department\h of Energy moves warheads all the time, and it is\h\h
precisely because we aren’t doing anything with\h them that they have to be moved so often; you see,\h\h
the delicious plutonium center of every nuclear\h warhead has an expiration date—a point past which\h\h
it won’t detonate reliably—and the problem is…\h we don’t really know when that expiration date\h\h
is. So instead of rolling the dice on World War 3,\h the Department of Energy has started the process\h\h
of recycling and replacing the plutonium in each\h of these warheads, and that means bringing them\h\h
from their silos to one of these locations for\h disassembly, reassembly, maintenance, or testing.\h
But the question is: how do you get a warhead from\h here to here—safely—multiple times a week? Surely,\h\h
we don’t just… bring a nuclear bomb onto a public\h interstate highway, and… no… we do do that,\h\h
don’t we? Yes, in fact, here is a map of\h the interstates that the Department of\h\h
Energy uses to transport their warheads—but\h it’s not quite that simple because bringing\h\h
a nuclear bomb onto a public interstate\h highway requires a carefully coordinated\h\h
operation that is almost entirely classified,\h except for the fact that this Department\h\h
of Energy nuclear warhead transportation\h training video ended up on YouTube somehow,\h\h
and now I can tell you exactly how it works. The warhead itself is first loaded into one\h\h
of these. “I know about those,” you might\h be saying. “That’s called a truck.” But oh,\h\h
dear, simple viewer, you have once again been\h fooled by the US Department of Energy Office of\h\h
Secure Transportation, because that is no simple\h truck, that is a US Safeguards Transporter, and\h\h
this grainy picture is actually one of the only\h verified photos of one in existence. While they’re\h\h
designed to look like a typical 18-wheeler—with no\h recognizable markings and an uniformed driver—they\h\h
are anything but. The entire truck is bulletproof,\h with 12-inch steel doors, invulnerable tires,\h\h
and can sit directly in the middle of a fuel\h fire for up to 60 minutes without the cargo\h\h
taking any damage. The axles will explode if an\h attacker tries to tow it, and the entire trailer\h\h
will fill itself with rapidly-expanding foam if\h the truck goes off-axis. It’s also equipped with\h\h
various ways to kill you, the details of which the\h Department of Energy still refuses to disclose,\h\h
though independent journalists have found good\h evidence for at least two: it can electrocute\h\h
you to death, and, by reading through the DOE’s\h contract with an Australian arms manufacturer from\h\h
2005, we’re pretty sure that it has a robotic\h 40-millimeter turret that is designed to,\h\h
“distribute large quantities of ammunition\h over a large area in an extremely short time\h\h
frame.” So, no, it’s not really a truck. But even with its fancy foams and turrets,\h\h
this truck-looking-thing is only one part of\h moving the warhead. Every safeguards transporter\h\h
moves as part of a convoy, alongside two to three\h other unmarked and armored emergency response\h\h
vehicles—one of which acts as the convoy’s\h command center—and aerial support, which can\h\h
conduct surveillance, or, like every other part\h of the convoy, kill you super dead. Each one of\h\h
these vehicles is operated by armed OST agents,\h which is a federal agency that you’re probably\h\h
not familiar with, but all you really need to know\h is that you probably shouldn’t try to steal one of\h\h
their cars; every single one of these agents has Q\h clearance—the highest level of clearance that the\h\h
Department of Energy can issue—and they also have\h the authority to directly enforce 28 federal laws,\h\h
most of which allow them to, you guessed it,\h kill you. These agents can also—in the event\h\h
of an emergency—create what’s called a “National\h Security Area,” which essentially allows them to\h\h
put any non-federal land in the United States\h under the control of the Department of Energy,\h\h
regardless of who owns it. So these\h agents—empowered to kill you and steal\h\h
your house—escort the safeguards transporter\h along a classified, predetermined route,\h\h
which is monitored at all times by the Emergency\h Control Center in Albuquerque; this center is\h\h
responsible for contacting all of the local law\h enforcement departments along the route to give\h\h
them a sort of… vague message about a “special\h mission” that they’re not allowed to know\h\h
about and definitely shouldn’t mess with. In the\h event that local police do encounter the convoy,\h\h
tensions might be a little high, given that both\h parties have guns and one of them has a nuclear\h\h
bomb, so the Emergency Control Center can give\h both parties what’s called a “sign-countersign,”\h\h
where the police state a codeword and the OST\h agents respond with another codeword. And all\h\h
of these elements and procedures need to come\h together flawlessly in order to get the cargo\h\h
from point A to point B, so it’s a good thing\h that our nuclear warheads are in the hands of\h\h
an agency that truly does not mess around… unless\h you consider “drinking on the job” messing around,\h\h
or “threatening to kill each other” messing\h around, or “being severely understaffed and\h\h
not having the money for weapons training anymore”\h messing around, but they sure don’t seem so, and\h\h
I’m not in the business of disagreeing with people\h who, again, can legally kill me and take my house.\h
Anyway, it would seem that I have once again\h written a video that probably would not be\h\h
possible if I were not using NordVPN—and it’s\h not just because Nord encrypted and anonymized\h\h
my internet connection when I was googling “how\h to transport nuclear bomb” and “how to hijack\h\h
Department of Energy emergency response vehicle,”\h but also because it enabled me to do a lot of\h\h
research on sites that I might have not otherwise\h had access to. Lately, for my other channel,\h\h
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