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June 11, 2005 - Art Bell

02:29:53

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Dale Brown - Dropping the Bomb - Susan Meckley - Cross-Pacific Sailing Adventure

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	We talked to her out in the Pacific Ocean.
	I think she was about, oh, I don't know, 200 miles from Hilo, Hawaii.
	Something along those lines.
	In fact, here's a little bit of it so you might remember.
	This is Biometer Radio, the only method of communication she had.
	And she's on the line right now, so she can hear it.
	Here we go.
	Well, let's see.
	I'm a 72-year-old great-grandmother.
	It's been a lifelong ambition to take a boat and sail off into the Pacific.
	And I found that at this age I could no longer safely handle my 46-foot sailboat offshore.
	It just was too much boat for me, so I traded down to a 32-foot.
	And although this is like a little toy with not that much room on it, I can handle it.
	So I left Oakland, California a couple of years ago, sailed down, spent two years cruising in Mexico all over, and now I have left Mexico, Puerto Vallarta actually, and heading for Hilo.
	And I am told that if you do a circumnavigation The Panama or Mexican mainland to Hilo is the longest open water passage.
	So far, it's been, I think, 31 or 32 days.
	I should be there in another two, two and a half days.
	I wonder if that brings back memories for Susan.
	Here she is.
	Susan, welcome to the program.
	Well, thank you.
	Yes, it does bring back memories.
	But you know, those 34 days, I don't remember it as 34 days.
	It's kind of an all blur.
	Blended into just a couple.
	Now that's a very interesting comment.
	I interviewed Susan, an astronaut who walked on the moon, Edgar Mitchell, and when I asked him about what he felt and what he thought when he was on the moon, he said, you know Art, it's funny, there's a lot of it I should remember that I don't.
	Yeah, that's exactly the same thing.
	I know it was 34 days because I left April 28th, But I do not remember all of the days.
	Things just kind of blended in.
	Of course, I was sleeping in 20 and 25 minute stints, so I'd wake up, look at the radar, look around, no ships, go back to sleep.
	And sleep was day and night.
	And you slept what, in 45 minute shifts, right?
	No, 25.
	25 minute shifts.
	I remember a tanker or a cargo ship with about a 22 knots of what they go.
	It takes them about 15-20 minutes to come up over the horizon and come alongside of you.
	So you have to watch.
	I look on the radar.
	There's nothing there.
	I get out my night vision.
	If it's at night, look around.
	No lights out there.
	Then I go back to sleep.
	Um, what's it like out there with the giant people?
	I don't think have a sense of how gigantic the waves and the Pacific Ocean is.
	It's just incredible.
	I mean, for a lady your age, you don't sound your age, by the way.
	Oh, thank you.
	To be doing this is, I mean, for most people, it's outrageous.
	Susan, how come?
	Why?
	It's just been a lifelong dream to do this.
	And the waves out there, The only thing, and I remember, I kept thinking, there's a poem or something that says, the ocean's so big and my boat is so small.
	Good God, that's true!
	Because some of those swells, I mean, I knew I was going to die!
	Oh, you know, that's something I was wondering about, too.
	Before you'd embark on a mission like this, to take a small sailboat from Mexico to Hawaii and then further on, we'll talk about that here in a bit, you'd almost have to, I think, make peace with your maker and say, you know, something I'm going to do and, you know, if the odds stack up against me and I don't make it, then hey, Did you do something like that?
	That's exactly right, because I've done more in my life than most people ever think of doing.
	I'm living my dream, and I figure if I go now, well, I go.
	I'm not going to do anything to hasten it, but I'm going to go.
	And then each day, I would thank the Lord for, hey, you got me through safely.
	Can I please have another 24 hours?
	Well, it varied in conditions, I'm sure, from absolutely beautiful, with nice lazy afternoons in the sun, to probably the worst was what?
	The worst was about 25 or 30 foot seas, 30 knot winds, surfing down, breaking pitch black out that you can't see where you're going or what's coming, and you just hold on, and you hope for the best.
	But out there in the middle, A number of times I thought, it is such a shame that so few people get to see what the mid-ocean is like in the trade winds.
	It is so gorgeous during the daytime, when the winds and the swells are nice.
	And scary at night, huh?
	Oh, gosh, yes.
	And then I remembered I had night vision on board.
	I brought that out, and then, even in starlight, I was able to look out, see the swells, see what was going on, And that reduced the pucker factor.
	Somewhat, yes.
	You had, obviously, ham radio on board for communication.
	I had talked to you, I recall, down in Mexico and said, look, just for fun, see how far out into the Pacific you can hear us on 75 meters.
	And I'll be damned if you didn't hear us the whole way, huh?
	Yeah, your signal from there in Pahrump, it just booms in.
	I think the only thing that's getting me now is the difference in time.
	Sure.
	Because I try to figure about three o'clock in the morning is when you were on and when I was in Mexico.
	And of course we did publicize a little bit, you know, just before you got to Hilo.
	So what happened when you got to Hilo?
	Oh, I have never been anywhere in the world where there are so friendly people.
	I got here and there were people down on the dock.
	I didn't think I did anything fantastic, but... Oh, I do.
	The radio here, the radio station wanted an interview, the local newspapers, they had a photo and picture and about half a page on the front page about me.
	Oh my goodness.
	I've had people every day, I've been here over a week now, every day there's somebody coming down wanting to take me somewhere and show me some more of the island.
	In fact, while I was here waiting on the phone, Yes.
	A lady came down and she wants to take me up to see the volcanoes tomorrow.
	No kidding.
	It's amazing.
	Susan, hold on one moment.
	I want to do a quick break so I can get it out of the way and then get more of this story.
	Susan just having traversed the wild, wild Pacific Ocean between Mexico and Hawaii.
	Sound of a jet taking off.
	Music.
	You know I think the thing that would utterly freak me out would be awakening from a nap
	and looking up and seeing the something maru, you know a million ton freighter bearing down on my little sailboat.
	Do you ever have a... Oh, God, yes.
	And that has not happened.
	I have dreamed about it, but it's not happened.
	I can imagine.
	The Crusher Maru, and just to look up and see this steel bearing down on you, how much of a danger is that when you're sailing?
	If you're in the shipping lanes, yes.
	On the 3,000 mile trip across, I must have run across maybe six or seven large ships, but the closest one only came about three miles away.
	I'm not really in much of the shipping lanes.
	Some friends and I were having a discussion, Susan.
	You have a radar on board of some kind, right?
	Right.
	I have a 24-mile radar, but I usually pick up the big ships about 16, 17 miles away.
	So, a big ship, you might see at 16, 17 miles in time.
	How much time is that between you and that ship coming together, if that were to happen?
	Well, they're doing 22 knots, so you're maybe, oh, a half hour, 45 minutes, something like that, until they come up to you.
	You had, so you had ham radio, you had some radar.
	I'm told that you've got to put some kind of cross-section up on your mast, some sort of like aluminum or metal, so that people can... Yes, you do.
	You try and put up a cross-section.
	It forms a corner reflector.
	Which I know you're familiar with.
	Sure.
	But I have three of those radar reflectors up there and I would call them on the radio and say, do you see me?
	No.
	Do you see my light?
	No.
	Just a moment.
	I'll turn on a strobe light.
	I turn on the strobe light on the top of my mask.
	They say, ah, there you are.
	Yes.
	You have a small target.
	A small target.
	Even though it is illegal.
	Uh, when I see a vessel, I call them on the radio and say, I'm turning on my strobe light.
	Why is that non-legal?
	Well, that means, uh, distress or whatever.
	Oh, I see.
	Oh, well, if you're telling them you're doing it.
	Yeah, I tell them I'm doing it, I leave it on until they come abeam of me, and then I, then I turn it off.
	Alright, I remember when you were like, maybe a little better than halfway there, Susan, I connected with you on 20 meters briefly and I asked you how it was going and whether you'd changed your mind and you were going to continue on into the Pacific, beyond Hawaii, and you said, no, I'm miserable, this is not what I thought it was going to be, it was kind of a depressing Yes, and Bob K5SFA, a man I talk to daily on the radio, on 20 Meters, he recognized that I was really getting depressed and he took me off frequency and we talked quite a bit.
	And he always buoyed me up and made me feel better.
	And then I had email also, and I would email my children, and they would email back.
	So it was sort of a mid-depression, a midway depression kind of deal?
	Mid-Pacific Depression.
	Well, it's something, there's no way that you can prepare for this.
	You don't know what it's going to be until you get out there.
	Well, now you've experienced it.
	You found out what you did or didn't prepare for.
	And so, what are you going to do now?
	Are you going to remain until August and then take off again?
	Or are you going to make roots in Hawaii?
	Well, I'm going to Pearl Harbor.
	The Navy has invited me to come into the marina there.
	No kidding?
	Yeah, of course I'm retired military.
	So I'm going into the Pearl Harbor Marina for about a month.
	And then by August 1st, I want to be out of Hawaii and on my way to the Marshall Islands.
	Oh my God.
	That's another 2,100 miles.
	Oh my God.
	And the Marshall Islands are about 5 to 7 degrees above the equator, so they don't have cyclones.
	And it's supposed to be a fantastic place.
	You would love mid-Pacific.
	Well, I love the Pacific.
	I lived on Okinawa for 10 years.
	The radio conditions are much quieter than high desert in Nevada.
	Oh, I can imagine that.
	I just finished listening to all the static we're putting up with yet again tonight.
	All the Midwest thunderstorms are raging away.
	Believe me, Susan.
	Did you have any serious, real serious moments on the voyage to Hawaii?
	Yes, I did.
	Somewhere out there, I forget exactly where, I think about three quarters of the way across, I did an accidental jibe with a boat and the boom swung across with such force that it actually ripped components right off of the boat and I had no choice, even though it was bouncing around, I had to climb up there and repair things and make jury rig so that I could continue going.
	That did get to me.
	I can well imagine, sure.
	But you're not deterred.
	You're going to keep going.
	This is my life's dream.
	I've been planning this since 1952.
	Well, what is the end of this dream?
	I mean, you were a resident of Pahrump, technically, at least.
	Right.
	Because when one looks, oh, by the way, your call letters, W7KFI.
	Right.
	How did you get those call letters?
	I mean, you know, I have an affiliate, KFI, there in Los Angeles.
	When I came to Nevada, oh, 30 years ago, whenever, that's what the, at that time, you had to change, I was a W2, You had to change your call to a W7, and that's what the FCC changed it to.
	Oh, so that's not a vanity call.
	They just gave that boy talk about a stroke of luck.
	Right.
	Yikes.
	All right, so ultimately, anyway, you're looking for a place to live.
	That's right.
	I'm looking for a place to live, and I want to look at the Marshall Islands, Apia in western Samoa, and Palau.
	And I'll hit lots of places in between, and after about three years, I'll go back to wherever it was that I really liked, or I will continue on to Phuket, Thailand, because I really love Thailand.
	It is a beautiful country.
	I've been there, too.
	And the people are fantastic.
	So it's sort of a just sort of, I don't know, I'm leaving here and I'm not coming back, and I'm going to go find a place I like, and I'll know when I find it, and that's where I'll end up.
	That's it, exactly.
	It's been a lifelong deal.
	I remember when I first got my license, I used to read about Danny Wheel on the Yosemite, the radio operator, and I said, my gosh, I want to do that.
	So my whole life has been aimed towards getting to the point where I could do it.
	I sure have done it.
	Is there anything at all, being the curious ham operator I am, that you're going to change?
	I mean, was your antenna appropriate?
	Was your radio the one you wanted?
	Would you change anything?
	I am going to change from a backstay to a sloping dipole.
	And I think that will work out a little bit better.
	And I started work today on satellite.
	Within two or three days I'll be working ham satellites.
	Oh, well there might be.
	I suppose as you get out into the Pacific it's going to get a little rougher.
	That's true.
	The further out you get.
	So satellite is a good idea.
	And then there are a lot of hams that want contacts from particular locations in the Pacific in the grid squares.
	Sure, I'll be happy to do that.
	Yes, these contest people.
	It's a total madness.
	Anyway, I guess you're going to still be there for a while.
	I'll be here.
	I talked to the commanding officer of the Coast Guard cutter here, the Kiska, and he says I should wait until there's a period of about three days when the trade winds drop, and then run like heck to get out of here.
	Through the channels here in Hawaii, they scare the heck out of me, because with trade winds going, you can easily get 50 and 60 foot waves.
	And I want nothing to do with it, so I'm going to bypass most of Hawaii, and go maybe 50 miles offshore, go along the north of the islands, and then at the last channel, trust to luck, and cut down towards Oahu and the Navy base.
	Well, as you know, we will follow you for as long as we're able, and if the press or whatever wants to get hold of you, I wouldn't be... They obviously found you, I don't know how.
	Maybe the Hilo Harbor is small, and you just say, hey, where's Susan?
	And they point.
	That's about it.
	Really?
	It's that small.
	Radio Bay.
	I'm in Radio Bay.
	There's room for maybe 15 boats here, and that's it.
	Wow.
	Have you ever considered taking a shipmate?
	Yes, but I haven't found anyone brave enough or stupid enough to go with me.
	Have you actually consulted with people about this?
	I mean, that have considered it and then said, well, you know what?
	I don't think so.
	I did, yes.
	There was one girl in Mexico that was going to go with me, but I make it a point, if I'm going to have a crew member, I lay everything they have out in the dock and we go through it.
	And I found too many drugs.
	And I said, no, no, no, no.
	Oh.
	We don't do that on my boat.
	No, no, no.
	And I said, thank you very much, but you'll have to go with someone else.
	And it just, you can lose your boat to the coast guard.
	God, what a trip.
	I mean, to just lay your life out and say, this is it.
	I'm going to do it.
	Come hell or high water.
	Well, the boat I have is a very strong boat.
	It's three hulls.
	Fiberglass, wood fiberglass.
	It's a Challenger 32.
	And the boat can take more than I can.
	And then I have sail mail and wind length, you know, for email.
	Right.
	Which lets me keep in contact with people.
	And the Pacific Seafarers Net every afternoon.
	To check in and people are following me and wanting to know where I'm at and what's going on.
	If anybody out in this audience wants to do something like this, do you have any advice for them?
	Yes, in the food category.
	Bring along things that are really going to spark your taste buds.
	Halfway across, I couldn't look another bowl of rice in the face.
	And then I started...
	What I did is I hid a jar of dill pickles on board.
	I hid packages of M&M's.
	I had things hidden all over the boat.
	And I would start, I didn't know where they were, and I would scramble and find them and say, oh my God, look at this!
	M&M's!
	Civilization!
	It's here!
	Oh well, what you have done is absolutely incredible.
	I'm sure that you could, and you know, you could write a book.
	The people at Borders here have already said, We want to be on the book signing, and I said, I haven't finished The Voice, let alone done the book.
	Susan, thanks for the interview.
	As you went, listen, when you get ready to head west, we'll do another one.
	Okay, good night.
	I'll see you on 80 Meters.
	Take care.
	Very briefly around the world, the Aruba story continues to be a virtual mystery.
	Three young men who took an Alabama honors student to the beach before she disappeared must stay in jail, according to a judge.
	But there are now denials that there was some sort of confession and somebody was going to be willing to point to the body.
	And so, everybody prays she's still alive.
	Tropical Storm Arlene weakened as it blew ashore Saturday.
	On the Gulf Coast, but still packed enough punch that it brought sheets of rain, 20 foot waves, heavy winds to the same area that was devastated by Hurricane Ivan nine months ago.
	And I'm sure the people in Florida are sort of bracing themselves.
	This seems like an early start to what could be a bad year.
	A former commando in the feared Wolf Brigade blew himself up after sneaking into the morning roll call at the unit's heavily fortified headquarters Saturday.
	One series of weekend insurgent attacks that killed at least 35, including youngsters waiting to buy sandwiches and ice cream.
	So it just goes on and on and on.
	An army sergeant convicted of shooting two fellow soldiers to death last year at his farmhouse is going to serve life in prison, no chance of parole.
	The world's richest country has agreed Saturday to a historic deal to write off more than $40 billion in debt owed by the very poorest nations in the world.
	So, you know, that's interesting.
	We just write off $40 billion in debt.
	So who pays for that?
	You ever wonder about that kind of stuff?
	I mean, okay, we write it off.
	We say, alright, so you don't owe us the 40 billion dollars.
	That's a lot of money.
	You don't owe us the 40 billion anymore.
	So then who has to come up with that 40 billion dollars?
	Oh well, to forgive is good.
	The water in the Great Salt Lake has begun rising again after years of drought, changing the landscape, starting to submerge one of Utah's best-known artifacts, an enormous earth sculpture called the Spiral Jetty.
	The six years of drought had allowed the curious to flock to the lakeside to see the 1,500-foot-long salt-encrusted spiral.
	That Robert Smithson built in 1970 using backhoes to pile up rock and earth.
	And that's kind of the state of the world, such as it is.
	And I'll hold the other, or the rest of the news, as Paul would say, for tomorrow evening in order to get a few of you in.
	First time caller line, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hi Art, this is Tammy calling from San Antonio.
	Hey Tammy.
	Long time listener.
	First-time caller, and I'm happy to be able to talk to you tonight.
	Listen, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about cats, because I'm in my mid-40s, and I've been allergic to cats my whole life.
	But about two years ago, a kitten showed up at my door and wouldn't go away, and one of my friends told me that I kind of had to feed it or take it to the pound.
	And, you know, I'm talking about allergies that would have me in the hospital if I went to somebody's house and stayed too long, you know.
	Serious, yeah.
	And over a period of time I let him in and he didn't make me sick.
	He sleeps on top of me.
	And I went to the vet to get all the shots and they told me that all these years I've been probably treated for the dander, but that a lot of people are allergic to cat urine.
	And this guy would never get used to a litter box, so he goes outside.
	He goes to the door like the dog and asks to go out.
	And I thought people ought to know that.
	He's always wanted a cat.
	Well, maybe.
	Well, maybe. Or maybe you never were allergic to cats. Or maybe you simply grew out of it.
	I mean it does happen.
	My wife has asthma and all her early life her mom told her that she was allergic to cats and as soon as we got married, first night in fact, we got a cat and it's all gone.
	It hasn't bothered her a bit and now we have a total of four.
	Heaven help us.
	And she's not bothered at all.
	So I don't know.
	Maybe they cure you.
	Maybe it's one of their magical powers.
	They do seem mystical, don't they?
	They absolutely do.
	I'm a cat convert.
	The Egyptians certainly thought so.
	Absolutely.
	I can see why.
	And me too.
	Thank you very much for the call.
	Thank you.
	And take care.
	That is interesting.
	But that occurred with my wife as well.
	Cats are mystical creatures.
	There's no doubt about it.
	If you have cats, you know what I mean.
	If not, then you're probably going, ha, ha, ha, yeah, right, mystical, sure.
	Well, they are.
	Their little personalities are extremely distinct and full of mystery.
	Well, Carline, you're on the air.
	Good morning.
	Oh, thanks so much.
	Hey, this is Jim from Cupertino, a medical marijuana activist and grower.
	Ah, yes.
	And I just wanted to say real quick, you know, everybody that may be watching this race decision in the Supreme Court, forget marijuana.
	Look at federalism.
	I'm with Clarence Thomas on this.
	Did you look at Clarence Thomas' how he sided with the marijuana patients?
	Yes.
	I mean, people need to understand how important this is.
	For example, yourself, doesn't this sort of tell the FCC that they can just Do whatever they want regardless of state laws.
	I'm still trying to think of what other areas get affected by this.
	They basically said if Congress can make a law strong enough that it's enforceable without the Supreme Court really reviewing it.
	Yes.
	I'm sure that you were sort of crushed, were you not, by the... I mean we haven't talked since California.
	Well, the super quick summary is that most of the patients are following what our Attorney General said.
	He said that the laws aren't changing, the Supreme Court doesn't affect the state law.
	It really does.
	I won't go into my long explanation here, but, you know, for example, when I go into a planning department to try to open a dispensary, I used to be able to tell them that it's not totally against federal law because it's a pending case.
	Now we can't use that argument.
	If I were to try to create a 501c3 nonprofit, which I was on track to, that's no longer a possibility.
	Related to distribution of marijuana to poor people.
	So, you know, in the marijuana world, people aren't taking it seriously, but I'll finish up by saying the law may not change, but the ability of any officer to enforce federal law is there.
	Alright, I appreciate your call and your continued fight.
	I don't think that with the present administration you're going to see anything particularly favorable occur.
	It may take a change in, a further change, in some of the federal judges that have been appointed.
	It may take a new administration, it may take a new attitude, but eventually And I think within our lifetimes, the U.S.
	government is going to reverse or change its position about marijuana.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hello, Art.
	Thank you for taking my call.
	Very welcome.
	This is Brooke.
	I'm calling from Newport, Rhode Island.
	And what was your name?
	I'm sorry, your name again?
	You're on a distorted cell phone.
	Oh, I'm sorry.
	The name was Brooke, and I'm calling from Newport, Rhode Island, home of the America's Cup.
	Okay.
	Oh, yes.
	And the Newport War College.
	And Naval Base, which incidentally is not closing.
	I had a comment and a question, and the comment was, Susan's a really remarkable woman and person, and she would certainly be welcome in Newport, and I hope she can manage to visit us.
	And the question is, regarding remarkable people, at one point in December, you had a psychic named Suleiman from Vancouver, British Columbia, I don't remember him.
	was on the program and Ed Daines was extremely impressed with Suleiman and so have I and
	I was wondering since you were talking about having psychics on your program that impressed
	you if there was any way you can have Suleiman as a guest.
	I don't remember him.
	I don't remember him being on with Ed Daines.
	He called in and Ed Daines was on the show.
	Oh, he was a caller?
	Yeah, and Ed Daines was on the show, and Ed Daines was very impressed with him, and I certainly was also.
	I don't know, I suppose if he wants to contact me, I'd be willing to look at it.
	That's different.
	I thought you were referring to a scheduled guest, and I didn't recall anybody by that name, incidentally.
	I sent, I received the, you know the video up on the website?
	My God!
	This is an incredible video of lights in Phoenix.
	These are not just, this is not just a light in Phoenix.
	I don't know if you've been to the Coast2CoastAM.com website yet, but oh my God!
	July 5th, or rather June 5th, July 5th isn't here yet, in Phoenix, Arizona This incredible sight, fully captured on video, of an object then surrounded by smaller objects in a complete circle.
	It's just an astounding video.
	I mean, absolutely astounding.
	And I sent it, I think it was on Thursday.
	I knew it couldn't wait for the weekend.
	And so thankfully it's up there, but my God, this is an incredible video.
	And you know, I'm getting emails like, Art, can it be verified?
	Can the footage be verified?
	Peter Davenport, somebody, something.
	This would appear to be, I mean, it's far beyond the normal kind of fuzzy UFO photograph.
	These lights appear to take, uh, obviously coordinated, uh, intelligent action.
	I don't think anybody can dispute that.
	How you verify the authenticity of something like this, I have no idea.
	But it seems to me it bears absolute further investigation.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hi.
	Hello.
	Yes.
	It's Connie.
	I am from Roy, Utah.
	Connie, you're going to have to yell at me.
	I'm sorry.
	Yeah, I'm from Roy, Utah.
	Right.
	Can you hear me now?
	You bet.
	And in the late 90s, and I think it was time of year when we'd get fog around, and I was on my way to work.
	I was working early in the morning, like about 2 in the morning.
	I'd go to work, and my husband was up at the time, and he saw the same thing I did, only he didn't follow me to work.
	Which was?
	Well, on my way to work, I saw this thing that had, I couldn't see the actual object, all I could see was the blinking light that was flying low, hovering low above the trees and it was probably maybe 10, 15 feet above the trees and I followed it all the way to work and on the way it kind of hovered over the high school, part of it was over the parking lot and part over the high school for about 3 to 5 minutes.
	I pulled over the side of the road and watched it.
	I also rolled my window down.
	Hearing on your shows that normally there's no sound, which was the situation with me.
	There was no sound.
	Right.
	And, um, and then it was like a blink of an eye.
	It had moved from the high school over, which was, oh, maybe a quarter of a block over the library.
	And it was stationed over there for, oh, one or two minutes.
	And then it kind of moved over to where my work was.
	And it wasn't over that very long, and then it moved over to where our airport is in north, in Ogden, just north of Roy.
	Okay, so after all of this, what is it you believe you saw?
	A UFO.
	Us or them?
	Huh?
	Us or them?
	Them.
	Because the lights With the blink, it would, like, it appeared that it would blink, blink off and on, in one direction, and then it appeared that it was going back the other way.
	So, I could, I mean, it was low enough that I could see these lights, but I couldn't see the object because of the fog.
	It was really a weird situation.
	I understand.
	Here's something I don't understand and that is why UFOs have lights at all.
	Either a very secret experimental US program or aliens who presumably would have technology so far beyond the need for lights that we would see that it just it's unimaginable to me and yet Well, of course there could be many of them up there without lights, and those would never be reported.
	But of those that are, they count now in the millions.
	Millions of people have seen the kind of thing this young lady just described.
	It cannot be nothing.
	It is something.
	And the totality of the numbers of them represent more than just secret U.S.
	aircraft.
	You can bet your bottom dollar on that.
	You're on the air, Coast to Coast AM with ARPEL.
	Where are you, please?
	Hello?
	Can you hear me all right?
	Yes.
	Hi, this is Tom.
	I'm calling from Phoenix.
	Yes.
	And the reason I called was I'd heard your program numerous times.
	I'm a first-time caller.
	But, uh, I'm a retired detective out of Kansas City.
	Oh.
	And, uh, oh, speaking of Phoenix, they did have that light show that you talked about, and it seemed to be a very credible guy that had that.
	It was on the news here in town.
	Well, the whole thing is credible, uh, but the lights themselves and what they did, good God!
	It was like a large round light in the center and it showed like smaller lights were coming down and they went around in a circle around the large light.
	That's right.
	And then they dissipated and went off one at a time from around the large light before the large light dissipated.
	Yeah, I mean this is so weird and so out there.
	I don't know what it is about Phoenix, sir, but anybody in Phoenix better keep their eyes pointed upward.
	Well, you know, as a retired detective, I have to look at everything before I believe anything.
	I used to be, I didn't believe any of this, but when I lived in Kansas City years ago, I was kind of an antique car collector, memorabilia collector, and I bought an old organ.
	And the organ was a smaller size organ, probably about, oh, four feet wide and probably about five feet high.
	It was a pretty old organ that had porcelain knobs that would pull out and everything on
	it.
	It had a red felt background, like a speaker type deal with it.
	It didn't really work that well, but it was just a gorgeous piece, so I put it in my house,
	not thinking anything about it, but we had a larger home back in Missouri.
	And at that time, my youngest daughter was just a baby.
	And like most husbands, late at night I'm watching the news or whatever on TV in the
	evening, and the baby was brand new back in the back bedroom, which is right across from
	our bedroom, and it felt like something had breathed on it.
	You know, you feel like a breeze on the back of your head.
	Yes.
	And I turn around, and I'm like, what the heck is that?
	Well, anyway, I heard a baby crying.
	Well, I'm thinking it's our baby, and I thought, well, my wife being there so quick, she won't even let me get up.
	And the crying and crying went on, and finally I thought, well, the wife can't hear that baby.
	I can't believe it.
	So I got up and started walking down the hall.
	Baby quit crying.
	I looked inside the room.
	The baby hadn't been crying.
	So I looked inside our bedroom.
	The wife was sitting there reading, and I said, why didn't you get up to take care of the baby?
	She said, what about the baby?
	I said, well, the baby was crying.
	She said, I didn't hear the baby crying.
	I said, you're kidding.
	So we started talking about different things that we felt in the house and little things going on.
	And she talked about one time she was in the kitchen and she was peeling some potatoes and she felt like somebody was breathing on her.
	I said, it's the same thing I get in the living room.
	And then I'd sit in the living room.
	We had like a second floor, a little balcony to look down at you.
	And I would feel like somebody was standing there at that balcony looking at me.
	Bottom line, you think your house is haunted.
	Well, I didn't think it was half.
	We thought it was maybe that old organ.
	So, the old organ, we saw there was an antique sale in Oklahoma, so we're going to get rid of that organ.
	We think that organ, maybe we brought something into the house.
	Yes, well, when you advertised it, did you specify that it was haunted?
	Well, nobody would buy it or anything, so what I did, I had an old bus.
	In fact, it used to be Dolly Parton's old bus.
	Really?
	And I had the hitch put on the back.
	Back in that part of the country there's a muffler shop on every corner.
	Kind of a mom and pop guy.
	And a friend of mine put a hitch on the back of that bus.
	We're going to drive it to Oklahoma.
	And he put a hitch on there that was like the Empire State Building.
	Wait a minute.
	You're going to drive the Oregon?
	We're going to put the Oregon in the trailer and haul it down to this auction in Oklahoma.
	Uh huh.
	I went by and I had this hitch put on the back of the bus, which was done in C-Channel, just heavy-duty C-Channel.
	About 30 seconds, sir.
	Okay, so anyway, we put that organ in the trailer, started in that trailer, started taking down Oklahoma.
	The trailer hitch bends on the bus before it even leaves town.
	No way in the world it could have bent, but it bent.
	Went back and got a truck that had dual tanks on it, put it in the trailer.
	Took that truck, got as far as the border of Oklahoma, and the tanks wouldn't switch or run out of fuel.
	I had to fight like crazy all night long to get this organ to Oklahoma to sale.
	The organ that didn't want to leave?
	No.
	And then we got it to Oklahoma, and they had it lined up in there, and they had hundreds of items that sold for whatever they'd bring.
	And after the end of that auction, we kept watching people.
	They'd walk up and kind of look at it, wouldn't touch it, and walk away from it.
	Well, when the auction was over, everything sold in that sale, but that organ did not sell.
	Nobody even bid a dollar on it.
	Our time is up.
	So, what happened?
	Did you have to take the organ home?
	No, we drove off and left it.
	We couldn't believe that nobody even bid a dollar on that gorgeous old organ, but we had so many problems, weird things in our house.
	It was unbelievable.
	So, have these things now stopped?
	They did stop after we had that problem and got rid of it and didn't bring it back to our house.
	We didn't have anymore of those unusual problems in our house.
	He was also one of the nation's first Air Force ROTC candidates to qualify and to complete the grueling three-week U.S.
	Army Airborne Infantry Paratrooper Training Course.
	Dale is a director and volunteer pilot for Air Lifeline.
	That's a non-profit national charitable medical transportation organization who fly needy persons free of charge to receive some sort of medical emergency medical treatment, something like that.
	He is also a member of the Writers Guild, of course, a life member of the Air Force Association and U.S.
	Naval Institute.
	He is a multi-engine and instrument-rated private pilot and can often be found in the skies all across the U.S.
	piloting his own plane.
	He is also the author of, as I mentioned, 11 consecutive New York Times best-selling military action aviation adventure novels, which I think all really kind of came from Flight of the Old Dog, I guess, in a way.
	Dale Brown, welcome to the program.
	What an honor.
	Thank you very much.
	It's an honor for me to be here, Art.
	Thank you very much.
	You just really crank them out and I eat them up.
	I mean, it's just, and I guess you've got a gigantic readership out there who just sort of, and now you're in a position, you've got to be in a position, Dale, where all you've got to do is turn out a book and it's like automatically going to be a bestseller.
	I'm not sure if it's that automatic.
	I have to sell every book, and I go out there, I love doing book signings, I love doing appearances, I love doing radio, and it's a real privilege being on your show, but I have to sell every book as if it's the first book, and that's always been a real treat for me.
	All right.
	Well, we have so much we can talk about.
	You, indeed, used to be in B-52s.
	And I was Air Force, but I was a medic, and I was in a hospital.
	And so I didn't experience what you have.
	B-52s, F-111s.
	But with regard to the B-52, it's a legendary aircraft.
	They fly now, right?
	They sure do.
	We have about 60 of them in the The active inventory, they're all B-52Hs, but the youngest one was built and was rolled off the assembly line in 1963.
	Wow.
	That's the newest one we have.
	That's the newest one?
	Yep.
	But the thing about the B-52, of course, is that for most of their life, up until about 1991, about the middle of 1991, they didn't fly very much.
	Their job was to pull alerts.
	and and that's what i did on them for uh...
	for four years a they have a set for ten months out of the year
	getting ready to fight world war three so right so uh... so before they started flying a more regularly
	like an operation desert storm they have very few hours on the airframe so there
	they were still almost new jets I see.
	I can't even imagine what it was like sitting in a B-52, and I guess... Do you always know when it's a training exercise or not?
	Well, for the training flights, yes, you definitely knew that those were training flights, but when you sat alert, Especially in the B-52, the FB-111 was a different mission and a different mindset with the FB-111s.
	They didn't really like to exercise those jets too much.
	At a time when there were 300 B-52s in the inventory, there were only 40 FB-111s on alert.
	when there was 300 B-52s in the inventory, there were only 40 FB-111s on alert.
	So they didn't really want to bend those airplanes.
	But when I pulled alert on the B-52s, when the horn went off, you never knew if that
	was the real thing or if that was just an exercise.
	The perfect example of a defining moment in your life is when I actually copied my first and only actual combat message pulling alert on the B-52.
	When you run out to the airplanes, you know, the klaxon goes off, you run out to the airplanes.
	We had out there, up there at Mather Air Force Base in Sacramento, at the time we had 12 B-52s sitting around the clock alert.
	Six guys per airplane, plus the KC-135 tankers.
	We had ten of those sitting alert also.
	All those aircrews running out there, getting the airplane ready to taxi.
	When the klaxon goes off, your order is To start engines and copy the coded message and prepare for takeoff.
	That's the automatic response.
	But when you pull alert, of course, you get the intelligence briefings every day, you sort of know what the world situation is, you know what the political situation is, you know what the military situation is, but you still never know when the horn goes off if it's the real thing or not.
	As the navigator and the radar navigator was to get inside the airplane, make sure the power was on, and then copy the coded message that was being broadcast by the command post.
	And the first few letters would tell you immediately if it was an exercise or an actual go-to-war message.
	You were carrying nuclear weapons?
	Yes, absolutely.
	We had both gravity weapons and missiles, plus Plus a full load of fuel.
	We were half a million pounds gross weight getting ready for takeoff.
	Oh my God.
	Dale, what's it like to be... I don't even know where to begin.
	Just to be carrying nuclear weapons alone.
	Has got to be a kind of a strange, unsettling situation to be in.
	I mean, you're going to try and get to a target.
	For example, alright, here's a good question.
	Let's say that the real thing happened.
	What were your calculated chances of making it to your target, dropping your weapons, and then getting out alive?
	Our chances actually were very, very good.
	Really?
	And the reason was that the B-52s would actually be part of the third wave that would go in.
	Of course, the intercontinental ballistic missiles were the first ones to go.
	Right.
	Both the land-launched ones and the sea-launched ones.
	Right.
	So we were actually the fourth wave.
	Each target that you would have would be already deconflicted.
	With other explosions going off nearby, your entire route, in fact, would be deconflicted.
	So the idea was that those initial attacks, first of all, would take care of some of those land-based defenses.
	They would take care of things like the enemy airfields.
	So hopefully the defenses would pretty much be knocked down by the time the B-52s would arrive.
	And that was done on purpose, of course, because the B-52s at that time We're much more accurate and much more reliable and they were the only weapon systems that you could recall the weapons.
	That's right.
	If the Soviets survived the initial lay down from the missiles and if they wanted to call it off at that point they could send us a coded message and we would respond to that and we would immediately reverse course.
	How much were you as part of the B-52 crew told about The reality of a nuclear conflict, if we had an all-out nuclear conflict with the Soviets, would there be much to call off?
	I mean, after we had fired our missiles and they had fired theirs, how much would be left?
	Did you guys really know?
	The idea was that we knew exactly what our position in the whole strategic outlook was.
	We knew that That the chances of us actually being called upon to actually drop a weapon in the Soviet Union, or wherever our target was, was very, very slim.
	We knew precisely what our job was, and our job was to prove to the Soviet Union, prove to the People's Republic of China, and actually prove to the rest of the world that we were ready to do it.
	That the United States was committed with those expenditures of aircraft, Air crews, weapons, fuel, and all the infrastructure necessary in order to have us sit 24-hour alert 365 days a year and get ready to do it.
	And it wasn't just us being on alert, but it was us exercising.
	They would monitor our exercises very precisely, and they would have a stopwatch on us also.
	And they would time us.
	How quick it took us to start engines.
	How quickly it took us to taxi to the runway and actually get ready to launch.
	By the time the klaxon, from the time the klaxon went off until you could get safely into the air would be how long?
	About five minutes.
	Five minutes.
	A lot longer than it would take for an ICBM to blow your base to smithereens.
	Right.
	On normal alert The, uh, everything was, all the aircraft were positioned, uh, based on the, on the missile flight time at that point.
	And of course we would have sub chasers out there in the Pacific or the Atlantic pinpointing as closely as possible where the Soviet submarines were stationed.
	If they moved a certain distance based on the projected missile flight time, we were on normal alert.
	If they moved in closer, Then they would step up our alert status.
	Sometimes they would restrict us to the alert facility.
	We couldn't go out into the base like normal.
	If they moved in even closer, they would reposition the planes as if we had already taxied onto the runway.
	And if they moved in even closer, we would actually set alert inside the airplanes with our fingers on the battery power switch ready to Ready to start the engines.
	We could start all eight engines almost simultaneously.
	So we could have the engines running in two minutes and be off the ground probably 60 seconds later.
	It all depended on that missile flight time.
	Dale, hold on just one second.
	I lied a little.
	I got started with this interview so quickly I didn't do the normal break I would do at the beginning of this hour.
	So let me take care of that now.
	here you go.
	I wonder how many of you have ever seen a B-52 AI?
	You know, certainly in the movies or on television, but it doesn't do justice to the sheer size of those aircraft.
	They're unbelievable.
	I lived off base at Kadena Air Base on Okinawa when we were flying our B-52s, well, frankly,
	into Vietnam and beyond, actually.
	And they used to roar down the runway every few seconds at times, and things would rattle
	off the walls in my house.
	It was just an astounding aircraft.
	It is an astounding aircraft.
	Putting your fingers on those switches, ready to start eight engines.
	Dale, I guess all of you went through psychological profiles, didn't you?
	Yes, sure did.
	I mean, I could see, for example, not having too hard a time dispatching a gravity bomb, for example, on top of an ICBM site, but dispatching one on top of a medium to large Russian city, that's a different story, kind of.
	Well, I think for a For a young lieutenant and a young captain, as I was when I was flying the B-52 and the FB-111, it really wasn't any different.
	All the targets were pretty much the same.
	You were very concerned about your mission.
	You were very concerned about your fellow crew members.
	As a lieutenant in the B-52, as a navigator, My job was to get the airplane where we're supposed to be on time.
	Right.
	And that was a flight plan, that was the navigation equipment, that was the radar scope, and that's pretty much my whole world.
	But it was to get a specific job done, though.
	I never really thought about the job itself.
	I knew that my job was to get the aircraft to the initial point where the radar navigator took over from there, and he Actually dropped the bombs.
	I never really thought about the actual targets.
	I knew exactly what the targets were and where they were positioned in relation to population centers and things like that.
	But I never really thought about how many thousands or how many even millions of people I would kill.
	After releasing those weapons.
	I don't know if there are things, even after all these years, that you cannot discuss, but do you recall anything about the bombs you carried, the megatonage?
	Did you know?
	I knew all about them.
	We pre-flighted them every day.
	We checked them over very carefully.
	We got briefings.
	We had to certify twice a year on what the weapons were, what their effects were, what all the safety features of the weapons were.
	We knew We knew them upside down and backwards.
	Now, it's not like Hollywood where we knew how to disarm them, how to fix them if they broke and things like that.
	But we knew all the procedures for how they were handled on the airplane.
	We had very specific procedures about keeping them out of enemy hands in case we had to crash land or ditch or things like that.
	So we knew quite a bit about the weapons.
	We knew about their megatonnage.
	We knew exactly what they could do and what they couldn't do.
	Are you able to say how big they were?
	The main gravity weapons were, for the B-52, they were the B-81 bomb, which actually had what we call a dial-a-boom.
	Dial-a-boom.
	It was actually selectable anywhere from, I believe, 150 kilotons up to 1.1 megatons.
	Oh my God.
	For the FB-111, The basic weapon was the B-63, which could be carried externally on the aircraft and go supersonic, which was great for the FB-111.
	That weapon, I believe, was 300 kilotons.
	300 kilotons?
	the B6, that weapon I believe was 300 kilotons.
	300 kilotons? Which is, that's about 20 times larger than the weapon that
	destroyed Hiroshima. And how many weapons were carried by a B6?
	That's a big aircraft.
	Yeah, the B-52 had four of the large gravity weapons in the forward part of the bomb bay, and then it had a rotary launcher in the back part of the bomb bay that launched the short-range attack missile.
	We had eight of those on the rotary launcher, and those had a range Of anywhere from about 30 miles out to about 60 miles.
	And they were designed to destroy the surface-to-air missiles.
	As we were going coast-in, we would launch those missiles first, and they would destroy the enemy air defenses, the enemy airfields close to the coast, so that would allow us to go in behind them.
	Well, close counts with horseshoes, hand grenades, and atomic weapons, right?
	Right, absolutely.
	The missiles were fairly accurate.
	After flying for that distance, they had an accuracy of probably a quarter of a mile or so.
	They were supersonic missiles.
	You couldn't really shoot them down.
	They had a selectable flight path.
	Some of them would go completely ballistic for the really long-range ones.
	Some of them could go terrain following and stay very low.
	Almost impossible to shoot them down.
	The gravity weapons depended on the skill of the crew and the capabilities of the airplane.
	How much avionics and equipment you still had after making the 8 plus hour flight across the ocean.
	Yes.
	If you were... At that time, of course, we didn't use GPS and things like that.
	We relied on radar.
	For gross navigation, we relied on celestial navigation.
	We had some, some inertial navigation stuff.
	But if you had everything working properly and you had a really good crew,
	dropping a weapon from low altitude, say 300-400 feet above the ground,
	you could probably get the weapon easily within 1 or 200 feet of the target.
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	The whole movie is classic and that was slim on his way down.
	Of those two movies, Dr. Strangelove and Failsafe, which one, Dale, do you think might have been closer to reality?
	I think a lot of people would be surprised, but I would say Dr. Strangelove.
	Everybody would have said Failsafe, of course.
	Well, Failsafe looked and felt, of course, the most realistic, but it is really surprising to me how actually, how very close they got Dr. Strangelove.
	You know, the whole thing with General Ripper kind of losing it and all that, that's not anywhere near reality, but the air crews What the air crews were going through and what they did on their way to the target, the decisions they made, all those procedures were amazingly accurate.
	And that's a really good look at what the air crews go through when they have to make a decision about whether or not they have a valid execution, whether or not they're going to go for which target if they don't have the capability of losing Of making it to one target, are they going to go for the other targets?
	Exactly what they do.
	Was there a point of no return, even with B-52s?
	In other words, was there a final, I don't care what you hear, you finish the mission?
	Yes, absolutely.
	If you receive, just like the movie, if you received a valid execution message, it was confirmed by the crew, and everybody agrees that it's a valid message, That was your order to go, and if you heard nothing else, or if you heard voices on the radio saying, you know, don't do it, don't drop those weapons, I'm ordering you not to do it, you could continue on your mission until you received another valid message ordering you to turn around or to withhold your weapons.
	Um, so even the apparent voice of the President of the United States or whatever else, at some point, could be ignored and you'd just go ahead?
	Absolutely.
	You had to, the message had to be in the proper format, in the right order, and then authenticated with the documents that you have on board the airplane.
	And if it was a voice, even if it was your wife's voice on the radio, saying, don't do it, the war is over, please believe me, you were obligated to continue on that mission.
	If folks remember the movie Crimson Tide, it was a submarine crew going to the same thing.
	That one, for an ex-bomber guy, faced with that decision all the time, That was, for me, that would have been a very easy decision, and I think Denzel Washington's character was wrong.
	I mean, he didn't have the authority to say, okay, let's wait and see, let's do something else, let's stop what we're doing, stop the checklist, go up to the surface and try to copy another message.
	They had a valid execution order, they were obligated to follow it, even though Denzel's characters didn't make sense.
	No, we shouldn't be doing this.
	Could have actually resulted in a court-martial.
	Absolutely.
	And they would have been fully in their rights to do it, even if it was something happened in the world that they didn't really want to go to war.
	There was a very specific Procedure to follow, and you're obligated to do it.
	Well, Dale, even as much psychological profiling as I'm sure everybody went through, if you were on an actual mission, became aware you were in the air, past fail-safe points, if they really have such a thing.
	By the way, do they?
	Oh, yeah, absolutely.
	Oh, that's all real, huh?
	Yeah.
	They were called the positive control turnaround point, and if you launched You had to follow the mission timing, which also came in a coded message.
	If a lot of those, the timing, most of the planes that launch would actually go into an orbit area, you know, a fail-safe orbit.
	And then when the proper time came, you left the orbit and there was a specific point on the globe that you actually crossed where basically all the aircraft would cross to deconflict Those aircraft from each other, because we had 300 B-52s sitting alert at that point.
	Right.
	Plus all the other aircraft, aircraft from Europe, the FB-111s were faster than us.
	All those aircraft had to be deconflicted.
	There were spy planes up that had to make sure they weren't in the area when an explosion went off.
	So everybody had to cross that point on Earth at a specific time.
	And that was the navigator's job to get that airplane over that point.
	Yeah, and you said as a navigator you kind of wrapped yourself into just getting it where it was supposed to be without thinking about the larger mission, perhaps.
	But, you know, how many on a crew of a B-52, typically?
	Yeah, back then there were six guys on a B-52.
	Now there are only five.
	There's no more tail gunner anymore.
	Okay.
	Well, you know, out of five or six people, if it really came down to what is the end of the world, You know, I think, do you agree that World War III, if carried out all the way, would be, for us, the end of the world?
	Would it be?
	No, absolutely not.
	Oh, a very contrarian view.
	Yeah, I definitely believe that nuclear war is not only possible, but very probable, and it would not be the end of the world.
	In fact, I wrote a novel about it, A Plan of Attack, which deals exactly with that question.
	A very limited nuclear attack.
	Somebody could order a nuclear attack and then promise the other side that that was a response.
	That attack brings us to parity.
	Yes, it was a bolt out of the blue.
	Yes, it was unprovoked.
	All this and that.
	But now we're equal.
	And I promise I'm going to stop.
	And if you're smart, you won't retaliate.
	And I believe...
	I truly believe that in the case of the United States, we would not retaliate.
	Okay, that was going to be my next question.
	We should discuss that book a little bit.
	I thought it was an awesome book, by the way.
	Thank you.
	So, the general contention of the book was that we're hit.
	We get hit.
	And hit pretty hard, and as you point out, then, the promise is, well, we won't go any further if you don't, but if you do, then it's full nuclear war.
	Actually, my initial question to you is, if we had an all-out World War III, and by all-out I mean we've used it all, you know, the ICBMs, the sub-launch stuff, and then finally the B-52s or whatever else we've got in the air these days, and we dropped everything we had and they dropped everything they had, Would that be the end of the world?
	No, I still don't think it would be.
	I think the areas of devastation would be very isolated.
	They would be really restricted to the Northern Hemisphere.
	I think the amount of damage, especially in Russia, the targets are so Are so concentrated in one specific area, if you're talking about the population areas, and then going after ICBM sites.
	They're very scattered across a very large continent, so I really don't think, even if it was all-out nuclear war, there would be a lot of devastation for many years or even Many decades after that, but I don't believe it would be the end of the world.
	You wouldn't have a scenario where the radiation poisoning would virtually, you'll remember this movie, wipe out North America and then circulate to the Southern Hemisphere eventually, ultimately killing everybody.
	You don't believe that at all?
	No, no.
	So this kind of thing, were you instructed on this kind of thing about what would happen?
	And do you think that they might have sort of I don't know, given you the optimistic side of it, making your mission perhaps easier than it otherwise would be?
	Well, we were very used to getting the optimistic view of the entire mission.
	When you look at your mission, and even you were relying on a lot of things to happen, you're relying on that initial nuclear laydown, but I mean in order to keep the aircraft safe from enemy defenses, but that meant that you were flying through Through dozens and perhaps hundreds of nuclear explosions, and you're relying on the ability on the planners to keep you away from the explosions far enough where you wouldn't fly through a mushroom cloud.
	Right.
	But still, you knew you were going to do it.
	You knew there was going to be fallout all around you.
	There would be the electromagnetic pulse shutting down communications, disrupting radar.
	By the time you actually made it over to your target, exactly how much of your airplane would still be working?
	Did they understand then, and you were in the B-52s in what years, Dale?
	I started in 1978 and finished up in 1984.
	So I suppose by then they did understand what the effects of EMP would be?
	Oh, very much so.
	And they assured us that even the B-52s back in the late 70s, We're hardened enough that we could survive most of it.
	Now, we practiced on a continual basis about releasing weapons no matter what kind of equipment you had.
	So we could release weapons just based on airspeed and time.
	I mean, with nothing else except for a whiskey compass, we had the capability of getting weapons off the B-52 With no hydraulic power, no pneumatic power, no electrical power, we could pull a handle on the ceiling and we could open up the bomb doors and drop the bombs out.
	And we were trained to do it based on time and heading.
	Just dead reckoning.
	And ride one down like Slim if you had to, I suppose.
	Probably not.
	They were back there, you could kind of squeeze through the hatch and you can go back there and jump on one.
	I mean, you know, parts of that movie were crazy, but actually most of the movie was really dead on.
	And Failsafe, of course, you know, felt more tense and more accurate and everything, but boy, you know, Dr. Strangelove was hauntingly, really chillingly accurate.
	Dale, if I ask something that you can't answer, then just say so.
	Oh, absolutely.
	How big are nuclear bombs?
	Nowadays, they're anywhere from 1 kiloton or even a half a kiloton, I understand.
	Well, not so much in megaton, I'm in actual physical size.
	Oh, physical size!
	For example, the gravity bombs that you guys carried on B-52s, how big were those?
	They were, let's see, I would say they were about 15 feet long, about 2 feet in diameter.
	This was the big ones, the B-81s.
	We're about 18 inches to two feet in diameter, 15, 16 feet long, probably weighed about 2,500 pounds.
	On a rotary launcher, you could carry eight of them.
	Wow.
	On the B-52s, we carried four of them in a clip-in rack in the forward part of the bomb bay.
	Most of the weapon was actually parachutes.
	They would, when you dropped them out of the B-52, they had a humongous parachute.
	They would, they would drop out and these things would, you know, would land with the parachute behind them and they would, you know, land fairly softly.
	And then they would, would sit on the ground for anywhere from 60 seconds to, to, to probably a minute and a half and basically just tick.
	And that would allow the, allow the aircraft time to get away before going off.
	Oh, that's right.
	You don't want to be above the bomb you just dropped.
	Yeah.
	If they landed just without the parachute, they would probably just break apart.
	They were designed to land softly.
	Some of the short-range attack missile, which isn't in service anymore, but that had a contact fuse on it where once it hit the ground or once it descended through a certain altitude, it would go off in the air.
	Then it had a backup fuse, where once it hit something, it would actually go off.
	Dale, how far away from the bomb that you just dropped does a B-52 have to get to be safe?
	We would get about 10 miles or so away, and if you were tail-on to the explosion, we were assured, and again that's one of those leaps of faith, where they told us we could survive the blast effects and the And all the effects of a nuclear weapon.
	Of course, we're still low, a very low altitude, so you rely on the ground cover.
	These were ground explosions, so hopefully a lot of the terrain would sort of soak up the blast and things like that.
	But again, it was a leap of faith.
	You hoped you were far enough away.
	Of course, once you got rid of the weapon, the throttles went to maximum, you were at military power.
	Or even, you know, when supersonic, in the case of the FB-111, you wanted to get as far away from that as possible, and you didn't want to turn perpendicular to the blast.
	You didn't want to have the sides of the airplane exposed to the blast.
	You wanted your tail to be exposed to it.
	The concern, the EMP, or the actual still buffeting from the explosion?
	The actual force of the explosion itself, the blast of heat, you wanted as little of the of the cross-section of the airplane exposed to that blast.
	So you didn't want to turn sideways to it.
	You didn't want to face it.
	So the crew had their eye protection on.
	The pilots would close off the lead curtains in the airplane.
	If they had to leave them open for navigation purposes, they had these really cool electronic goggles that would instantaneously darken if there was a flash of light outside.
	So, called PLZT goggles, and I can't remember what that stood for, but they were very cool Darth Vader-looking glasses that they wore on their helmets.
	And if they were required to have the curtains open, now that wouldn't protect you against the heat, but it would protect you against the light.
	So the rest of the crew either just put down their other regular goggles, or else we also had lead eye patches that we would wear.
	And, you know, this is another one of those things that you live with as a strategic bomber crew member.
	I mean, you put these eyepatches on.
	When you copied the message and said, actual, as I did once, you had to get all the gear out of the box, just like Dr. Strangelove.
	You get the stuff out of the box, and one of the things you get out is the eyepatch.
	And you put this thing on, and of course the engines are running and kind of confusion in the plane.
	But the idea behind the eye patch is that you put it over one eye,
	and if the curtains are open for some reason, usually a bad reason,
	and there's a flash of light outside, the exposed eye is going to be wiped out,
	maybe even destroyed.
	So you've got one good eye left.
	So the idea is that you're supposed to calmly and coolly and collectively
	take the eye patch from the good eye and put it over the bad eye,
	and then use the other eye to continue the mission.
	I mean, theoretically, we brief this stuff and we practice it in the simulator, but the first time you have to put that eyepatch on after copying an actual message, that was the defining moment in my life, sitting there in a B-52 with that eyepatch on and realizing that you are about to, very possibly, fight World War III.
	Do you remember how you felt?
	It was, you feel, very hard to describe.
	It's, I mean, you realize that your life is on the line now, and you have a mission to do, and you don't know what else is going on in the world that prompted that actual message.
	But you know that bad things are happening out there, and now it's time to go to work.
	Alright.
	Well, boys, we've got three innings to go.
	I sure do.
	It's classic.
	holes in us and our horse traders mule. The radio is gone and we're leaking fuel. We is
	flying in lower while we need sleigh bells on this thing.
	But we got one little budge on him, Rooskies. This height, why, they might harpoon us,
	but they dang sure ain't gonna spot us on no radar screen.
	You remember that, Dale?
	I sure do.
	Yeah.
	It's classic. Yeah, that was exactly our job, to get, fly as low as possible.
	The first bomb I ever dropped from a B-52 was from 80 feet above the ground.
	Oh my god.
	I can't even imagine what the ground looks like going by at about what speed?
	Well, to the B-52s, relatively slow, about 6 miles a minute.
	Still fast?
	To the FB-111s, we got them up to 10 miles a minute.
	10 miles a minute.
	That's the ground going by real fast at 80 feet.
	Yep.
	You don't even notice it.
	Of course, the B-52s were down there, what we call the wine cellar, which was downstairs.
	No windows or anything.
	Everything was all the radar scoped.
	And the FB-111s, it's different because we had We had windows, and the navigator, the bombardier, had a stick and throttles, and we were the co-pilots also.
	But when you're going that low and that fast, everything is kind of a blur.
	Things sort of tunnel vision on you, and you don't really notice things off to the side.
	You can only really see things directly in front, and of course you're focused on the radar scope and the instruments.
	And a little checklist book strapped to your leg.
	Was Strangelove realistic in the sense that as you approached a country's airspace or a target within that country, that they'd start throwing nuclear missiles at you?
	I'm sure they would, right?
	At the time, yes.
	The Soviet Union had, and I think still does, have some nuclear-tipped surface-to-air missiles.
	The SA-2 and the SA-3, I know, had a capability for it.
	So we were prepared for that, and that was what the short-range attack missile was designed to counter.
	It had a range slightly longer than the SA-2 missile, so we were supposed to knock them out before they could get a shot off at us.
	All right, let's go back for a second to the book that postulates an attack on the U.S.
	Now, it's highly likely, I suppose, in this day and age, that one day one of our cities is going to virtually vaporize.
	It's just going to happen, whether it's carried in on somebody's backpack or Comes in on a container ship and explodes in a harbor.
	I don't know.
	Everybody sort of knows that it could happen.
	Yes.
	Is it your position that even if we understood who attacked us, that we would respond in the manner you've suggested and end it?
	That we would not?
	Any U.S.
	President almost, I don't care, either party, wouldn't be forced to retaliate in kind?
	Absolutely not.
	Really?
	Yeah, I believe American presidents, American politicians would not react to an attack.
	I think our mindset, even back then, even back in the late 70s and early 80s, really was to ride it out.
	We believed, as Americans, that we could ride it out.
	That no matter what they threw at us, the preservation of the government, the way military bases were set up, You know, how fast the B-52s could get off the ground.
	Whatever they did to us, we could survive that first strike, and we still had enough weapons, we still had enough subs, we still had enough planes in the air that we could still strike at them.
	And the logic that we developed at that time was, why would you attack us if you know we've got 16 nuclear submarines, each one with anywhere from 12 to 20 missiles on board, And each one of those missiles having anywhere from three to ten warheads on it.
	Why in the world would you risk it?
	Okay, well that makes sense when you're facing another national adversary, of course.
	But in today's world, I suppose we'd know where the atomic weapon was made after it went off.
	They all have some sort of signature or something.
	Oh, not at all.
	No?
	No, not at all.
	I mean, we know the signatures of a lot of different weapons, the so-called backpack Nuclear bomb.
	It's not really a backpack size.
	It's very small.
	I would say it's a car trunk size, maybe not a backpack.
	A car trunk size.
	So these really exist.
	I mean, there's been a lot of controversy about whether they even really exist.
	You're saying, oh, yes, they do.
	Oh, absolutely.
	You know, definitely not a backpack size of anything that could destroy anything to any consequence.
	But there were Thousands of nuclear artillery shells on all sides.
	The Chinese, the Soviets, and the Americans that existed out there on the battlefield.
	And there's absolutely no way we can catalog or anywhere track those weapons.
	But we knew their signature.
	We knew how big the explosions were of the weapons that the Soviets had, that the Chinese had, that the Americans had.
	We can pretty much guess from the size of the explosion, from the chemical makeup of the residue left behind, exactly who might have had it.
	Now as far as who actually employed the weapon, that's another question.
	A Russian nuclear artillery shell could have landed in anybody's hands, so we wouldn't be sure exactly Who did it?
	And in that case, there's no target to strike yet.
	Are the safety features on, say, a Russian artillery shell, as impressive as they are on the big gravity bombs or the ICBMs or what have you?
	I think in the case of an artillery shell, they're even more so.
	Really?
	Because they were handled by guys out in the field.
	They had to be trucked in by trucks, usually.
	Usually cross-country.
	If they're the size of an ICBM warhead, they had much different handling.
	But the guys out in the field, they had to handle them by hand.
	They had to truck them by truck.
	So I think the safety devices had to be more sophisticated for the artillery shells.
	You definitely didn't want one of these things arming themselves.
	Before they flew a decent distance away.
	So I think the safety devices had to be more sophisticated for the artillery shells than they did for like an ICBM.
	So then you think if we're attacked by a terrorist and we lose an American city, even if we can identify the source of the bomb, we would not retaliate in kind?
	Right, absolutely.
	Because we wouldn't have anybody to retaliate against.
	Now in the case of Of a different kind of attack.
	Say North Korea launches a missile against Alaska or against Okinawa.
	That's a different topic.
	And I think we've got, I think we've got just about every possible target against a country like North Korea mapped out where we could retaliate.
	And the objective would not be just to punish North Korea, but to deny them to the capability of striking out against any other Targets against Japan, against South Korea itself, against the South Korean capital, against military bases in that entire region.
	But the Koreans, of course, would understand that, and so wouldn't they be likely to use what assets they had all at once, simultaneously?
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	They would attack on many different fronts.
	If they decided to use a nuclear weapon aboard an ICBM, They would employ everyone they had, and at the same time they would use all the other assets.
	They would use aircraft, artillery, special operations forces sneaking in through tunnels, bring in ships and things like that.
	It would be a multi-faceted attack.
	And they would go after every possible target, every American military base in South Korea, Every military base in Japan, even as far away as Alaska, and they would just do it.
	Plus, other targets, I believe, they would go against other targets in order to create confusion.
	They would attack targets inside China, they would attack targets inside Russia, and not just for confusion factors, but also to deny those bases to American forces, because the North Koreans know If they initiate a first-strike attack like that, then Russia, China, all those countries in that region will turn against them, and they would very likely invite American troops onto Russian soil or onto Chinese soil in order to retaliate against the North.
	So they would want to deny those bases to the Americans.
	so i believe north korea if they were going to initiate uh... a large-scale war
	would not only go against united states south korea japan and other other countries but they would
	also go against china
	russia and and other so-called friendly communist
	i'd I read a lot of the North Korean propaganda and it's really scary.
	I mean, the things they say is just unbelievable.
	How they do nothing but rattle sabers, talk about nuclear warfare.
	Dale, in your opinion, are they crazy enough to do it?
	I really don't believe it.
	I believe there are a lot of back-channel sources open to them
	if uh... if if the confidence of their uh... of of
	of friendlier countries like china and russia
	ever started to turn i think you would see see more serious developments but i really don't believe
	first of all i don't believe that they're crazy at all i don't
	uh...
	such a little after such an such an attack would be viewed by
	many as crazy I mean, we would obliterate North Korea.
	Or do you think we would not?
	I mean, if they attack Japan, with whom we have a treaty, Okinawa, where we have a ton of assets, not to mention Alaska, in that case there would be no choice, would there?
	No, absolutely not.
	We would go after them with, I think we have With every asset we have, I believe a lot of the ICBMs, the sea-launched ballistic missiles, formerly targeted towards Russia, are now targeted against targets in North Korea, we would immediately retaliate against them, without question.
	I've heard we're moving a number of assets out to, is it Midway, or one of those islands?
	We have, on Guam, we actually have the B-2 bombers on alert, right?
	Right now in Guam.
	In fact, I think the North Koreans scream bloody murder about the B-2s going out there.
	Supposedly, they're only loaded with conventional weapons.
	Do you believe that?
	I think we have nuclear weapons very close at hand, where if the situation started to get bad, we could drop the conventional weapons and load them up with nukes.
	So that's the reason I said crazy.
	I mean, we would hit them really, really hard.
	We'd virtually, I guess, eliminate their country.
	So, crazy from that perspective.
	I think if they were going to initiate some sort of an attack, that one of the first things that they would do is disperse their government.
	So even if we did attack, that enough of their government would survive That even the president or a good part of the military, a good part of the government would still survive and they would rise up out of their shelters and say, see, I told you they were after us all the time.
	They're all warmongers and something's got to be done about the United States.
	Is Korea the greatest danger or what about China these days, Dale?
	China is going to be a developing problem.
	I don't believe there are They're a big strategic military obstacle to us right now, but they're developing into a back into superpower status that will affect us in the next generation.
	Right now, I don't think they're there.
	They don't have much of a very strategic military.
	They don't have a blue water navy.
	They have a very limited ICBM fleet.
	Their military technology is growing, but it's not up to par with the European allies.
	It's nowhere close to the United States' capabilities.
	But they're developing it. They're increasing their capabilities all the time.
	And I think in the next 15, 20 years, it'll be a much bigger factor.
	Back to North Korea for a second.
	What do we know, Dale, about what they actually possess?
	How much do you know?
	We have very limited concrete information about what they have.
	What we do know about North Korea is that they have an extremely large and very sophisticated Military society.
	Everything revolves around the military.
	Everything revolves around defense.
	So their entire national mindset has to do with defense and reunification.
	Yes, of that I'm aware of it.
	No, when I said what they have, I meant nuclear capability.
	Oh, I think that we have very educated guesses about what they might have.
	I believe their nuclear capability is very limited.
	They may have a handful of weapons that they could possibly detonate, but maybe not ride on a missile or put on an aircraft.
	I believe that they've reversed-engineered a lot of weapons, possibly from China or from Russia, but I don't think they have the sophistication that they could load them up on a plane Or load them up on a missile and expect it to work.
	So you think they're going to mainly use these as bargaining chips?
	Propaganda tools.
	Bargaining chips.
	And unfortunately, I think the United States and the world is responding to that.
	I think we're getting sucked in by their rhetoric.
	We're actually giving them a lot more credence as far as their nuclear weapons program than I think they deserve.
	What do you think about the possibility of an Islamic bomb?
	And by that I mean, oh, I don't know, for example, something getting out of hand in Pakistan and the wrong people getting their hands on a bomb.
	Maybe even a means of delivery like a submarine, for example.
	That I think is a much more serious problem than, far more serious than North Korea.
	Really?
	Absolutely.
	I wrote books ten years ago, based on research that I did, that the Iranians had actually purchased nuclear weapons, nuclear gravity bombs, from Russia.
	A lot of technology was flowing between Russia and Iran, and I believe Iran today has a handful of actual, not just diagrams and designs, not reverse-engineered weapons, but actual Nuclear torpedoes and nuclear gravity bombs.
	Along with the codes?
	Yes, with the ability to have a full nuclear yield out of them.
	Oh my God, when do you think that that exchange occurred?
	I believe it was shortly after the breakup of the Soviet Union.
	I think there's always been a close relationship between Iran and Russia.
	They did.
	I believe it's still active.
	They have a mutual defense treaty, which isn't really talked about that much.
	But a lot of weapons were flowing back and forth.
	When nobody else really was dealing with Iran after the embassy takeover, after the U.S.
	embassy takeover, when the embargo was set up, the only people really dealing with Iran was the Soviet Union slash Russia.
	And I believe they got a lot of weapons technology, including nuclear weapon technology.
	Now, those weapons, I don't know what sort of state they would be in, whether or not they're actually deliverable, or if they were just meant to be reverse engineered.
	But you believe they have them?
	Absolutely.
	All right, hold it right there.
	I suppose somebody could sort of fake their way through the psych tests, you know, based
	on the inner knowledge that, you know, this is never really going to happen.
	So, I don't know if that could happen.
	But Dale, did you ever have moments where you wondered if one of your other crew members, when it really came down to it, couldn't do it?
	That incident, we actually copied the actual message and the message directed us to have to taxi to the whole line and await the order to launch.
	Yes.
	So we actually did the Dr. Strangelove thing.
	We opened up the safe and passed out the classified documents, the mission routing, the flight plans, the PLZT electronic goggles, the eyepatches and all that.
	We had several guys in the unit that really didn't handle it too well, and they were out of the Air Force shortly thereafter.
	It actually came as a great surprise to me.
	I thought that all the guys around me were fairly—and it wasn't a great number of guys.
	We really didn't talk about it that much, and even when some of these guys left, we didn't you really talk about that you know i think it was a sort
	of stunned everybody
	when uh...
	but but people actually actually
	were were surprised to find out that that some guys couldn't couldn't handle the
	distress and strain of of of the thought of actually actually going on a nuclear
	war Well, yeah.
	I do understand that.
	So you're telling me that that did produce some people that had to leave the Air Force?
	Yes.
	Very definitely.
	And I'm sure some revisions in the psychological profiling.
	The whole psychological test thing, you know, you didn't really know that you were going through a psychological test.
	I think it was a combination of the regular Flight surgeons, and I think people in the squadron, and one or two experts here and there that would observe your work.
	It wasn't really that you sat down with a psychiatrist and he asked you certain questions about warfare or about killing and things like that.
	No kidding, I would have thought they would have required that almost.
	I don't recall ever talking to a psychologist or actually Actually taking anything.
	The Personnel Reliability Program is what it was called, and it's a mixture of a whole different series of things.
	But as far as I can remember, it never really included sitting down with a psychiatrist or a psychologist and talking about, can you do this?
	Can you kill somebody?
	Could you stay on the thought of Killing hundreds of thousands of people in one shot.
	Exactly.
	It was done in the context of looking at your job performance, looking at you as a person, looking at you as a family member, looking at your background, at your family and your upbringing and things like that, and sort of combining all this into some, I don't know if it was a computer program or just some guy reviewing all this stuff.
	And then making an educated guess about what kind of person you were.
	Off the wall question, along with the goggles and all the other things they gave you, did they or did they not give out suicide pills?
	No.
	No, I never had an idea what a suicide pill was.
	I think the whole mission was a suicide pill.
	I mean, I never did when I was a crew member.
	Yes. If you actually, I mean I never did when I was a crew member, I mean I think about it all the time now, but I
	still write about it as if I was still experiencing it.
	When I was a young lieutenant and a young captain, I believed firmly that it was possible to do the mission.
	I mean, no matter what was going on around you, you had enough experience and enough smarts and enough support from your crew members that you could actually do it, no matter what was happening, no matter what you lost.
	No matter who was alive or dead on the airplane, you could still get the weapons off and you could still survive it.
	Dale, I was Air Force, as I mentioned, so I know in the military, there's just one thing.
	There's following orders.
	And in your novels, it's like you specialize in generals and characters in your books that, I don't know, have more of an attitude of forgiveness is so much easier to ask for than permission.
	Don't you?
	My novels really don't have that much to do with the real world.
	I try to create a good story and I don't let the truth get in the way of a good story.
	I want to create conflict and I want to create a sense of confusion in the book.
	I want the reader to always be knocked back on their heels and guessing what's going to happen on the next page.
	I try very hard and sometimes I succeed and sometimes I don't, but I don't want to create cookie-cutter characters that are predictable.
	And there's always a danger of that, isn't there?
	Absolutely.
	People have a certain expectation about what a general does and says, what an admiral does and says, and I don't want to fall into the trap of writing what the reader would expect.
	I want something different.
	I want irreverent characters.
	I want good guys that act like bad guys, and I want bad guys that end up being sympathetic.
	I always want to keep the reader on his toes and always guessing, and always turning the pages.
	Your main generals are always on the edge of a court-martial, or worse.
	My heroes?
	Yes.
	My heroes turn out to be bad guys.
	I get letters from readers all the time asking, If Patrick McClanahan was in today's Air Force, not only would he be out of the Air Force, he'd be in prison, and that's what I want.
	I want people to react to the characters, and I don't want them to be predictable.
	I want the readers to be shocked every time.
	That means a lot to me, Art.
	I mean, it's like if I'm anywhere near, and I'm always near, every other day when they
	restock books down at the store, I'm there that day to look over the books.
	And if I see Dale Brown, that's like automatic.
	I just pick it up no matter what else.
	I can just look at your name and I just, yeah, Dale Brown.
	That means a lot to me, Art.
	I mean, I don't want this to turn into a mutual love society here, but I've listened to you
	for so long, and I'm just riveted to your show, and there are certain times that when
	I listen to your show, it's the worst possible time, because you don't want to be in a dark
	room.
	You don't want to be by yourself.
	You don't want to be out someplace and then listen to your show, because you're scared
	to death the rest of the night.
	Hey Dale, you're like, where are you?
	I'm up in Lake Tahoe.
	Lake Tahoe, you were close by the area code.
	You write a lot, you know I'm in Pahrump.
	And I'm not far from Area 51, and you write a great deal about Dreamland, huh?
	Yes.
	Let's see, how much do you know about the real Dreamland?
	What I know about Dreamland is I've seen more and more detailed satellite photos of it, talked to some people who have worked out there.
	You know, talk to some people from Nellis who go out there on a regular basis.
	Yes.
	What I'm starting to realize is that Dreamland is nothing more than a little Air Force base.
	And it's a place that is constantly changing.
	They've expanded the base.
	They've taken down the base.
	They add things onto it.
	But in all respects, the people I've talked to and the things I've seen, It is nothing more than a small version of Edwards Air Force Base.
	It's another base that's on the edge of a dry lake bed where the military pretty much gets to do whatever they want.
	And they get to build bases, and they get to abandon them, and they get to move equipment out there, and they get to leave it and build something else.
	But also, it's a regular Air Force base.
	I know they have a theater, I know they have softball fields, I know they have a running track, and so I think that you could take any military person, you could stick him on, you could blindfold him and fly him out there and take the blindfold off and he wouldn't know, I mean, you would think that he's at Edwards or he's at Nellis or he's at Is that the way they fly people out there, Dale?
	Well, they pretty much do.
	They load them up in a little 727 and fly them out there.
	They stay out there for anywhere from one to four days, and then they fly them back.
	Well, listen, Dale, I swear to God that what I'm going to tell you is true.
	On my way home one night from Las Vegas to here in Peru, not far from home, dead quiet summer night, much like the one we have out there right now, a little warmer, almost full moon, and a silent, flying, no, not flying, floating triangle came above my wife and myself.
	We got out of the car, stood and watched it float Float, not fly.
	I know what aerodynamic flight is.
	Guarantee it wasn't that.
	No engines, no sound.
	Could hear crickets a quarter of a mile away as this thing came over.
	Felt like I could have thrown a rock at it.
	It was gigantic, Dale.
	Now...
	That was either, and it was headed, by the way, out across the valley toward Area 51, the mountains in Area 51.
	So it was either something we have that is so damn far advanced that we've learned to control gravity, or I don't think I believe that it was hot air.
	Although I've heard rumors about craft of that sort, but I'm telling you, brother, this flew over my head.
	It was them or it was us.
	Either way, it's a gigantic story.
	Anything on these triangles?
	You know anything about them?
	No.
	I do know about airships, you know, very high altitude airships that are in development.
	I'm talking about an airship that can fly at a hundred thousand feet and stay aloft for months at a time.
	I know we're We're developing things like that.
	I've done extensive research into not necessarily floating aircraft, but hypersonic aircraft and the Aurora space plane and things like that.
	I do believe that aircraft like Aurora, the next generation of strategic bombers, exist.
	I believe that's one reason why at one time we were going to build 120 Stealth bombers, and the buy went down to 20.
	So then, these people in Southern California who swear that they hear these thundering roars and bangs, which they have assumed to be the Aurora coming in from the Pacific toward Dreamland.
	You think that has substance?
	Absolutely.
	I believe Aurora has been flying since the first Persian Gulf War.
	And I believe it does exist.
	I believe there's as many as three aircraft that can routinely fly at Mach 5 to Mach 8.
	Wow.
	And do it on a regular basis, and they have a full complement of reconnaissance photo equipment, side-looking radar, things like that, that we use on a regular basis.
	Is America's most secret aircraft research going on at Dreamland?
	No, Dreamland was never designed for the actual research.
	It was designed to once they actually develop an aircraft that could fly or that could actually launch a weapon, that device goes out to Dreamland and they actually put it in the hands of some military crew members.
	And that's where they test fly?
	Yes.
	Well, it's not exactly test flight.
	It's some regime between the actual research and just before it goes into production.
	It's sort of a proof of concept type of activity.
	I see.
	There have been rumors, nothing more really, well, maybe more, of things out at Dreamland that might even be extraterrestrial in origin, that attempts at back engineering and even flight have been attempted out there.
	Certainly weird things have been observed in that area over the years.
	Flying.
	Very weird things.
	See, I've worked around that whole area for years.
	I've flown out at Red Flag, had short assignments to Nellis.
	Yes.
	I never even really heard the term Area 51 until relatively recently.
	We never used the term Area 51 before.
	It has a restricted area number and it has a name on it that we were careful not to overfly the area unless you had permission to do so.
	But we never called it Area 51.
	Never really knew where all the rumors about aliens, you know, I never heard any of that stuff.
	And I've been to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and I've never heard anything about the, you know, the hangars that have the aliens in it until relatively recently.
	And in my Air Force experience... Until relatively recently?
	What have you heard relatively recently?
	I mean, just in the press?
	No, I mean just the...
	Things that have come out in motion pictures and the press about so-called Area 51, and I really don't know.
	I mean, I know all the areas at Groom Lake and the different research centers and the various areas, like the bomb disposal areas and things like that, but I'm not exactly sure where Area 51 is.
	I know where Groom Lake is.
	I'm very familiar with the airfields.
	But I don't exactly know where Area 51 is, unless they're talking about the same place.
	You've written so many great novels now, and so many people who try to write novels, of course, don't.
	They fail.
	Where is it they fail, and how do you think you succeeded?
	Writing a novel, it's a very personal thing.
	If you're going to do it right, you have to put a lot of yourself into the book.
	It doesn't mean you have to have personal experiences like I did.
	My first novel was a fantasy autobiography.
	Patrick McClanahan in Flight of the Old Dog was the bombardier I always wanted to be, and I put him in the book.
	You have to be able to do that.
	I think people who want to write a novel are very reluctant to put part of themselves in the book because that exposes you.
	Know who you are, what you think, and what you want to be.
	And it's a very difficult thing to do.
	And I think the other difficult thing is to get rejected.
	I sent out easily a hundred query letters to agents and to publishers before I actually had an agent agree to read Flight of the Old Dog.
	Oh, I'm sure many of them, if they save them, drag them out every now and then and cry on them.
	Oh, I have my scrapbook with every rejection letter that I ever received for Flight of the Old Dog, and those are just the ones that came back.
	Maybe 25% of them actually come back.
	But I think most people give up too easily.
	They get two or three rejection letters, and they're pretty much the same.
	They're very boilerplate, they're very impersonal, and very seldom do you actually get a personal response.
	I think you get these rejections, and you get a few of them, and you say, well, you know, that's that.
	I must be writing really bad stuff.
	So they give up too easy.
	And I've seen some really excellent writers out there who have just given up.
	They either can't stand to have somebody else reading their stuff, or they can't stand to have anybody reject it.
	Slide of the Old Dog was rejected.
	At least a hundred times.
	At least a hundred times.
	Oh my God, that's incredible.
	All those people to have regrets.
	I mean, some great editors too.
	Ben Bova of Nova Magazine rejected Flight of the Old Dog, and he actually sent a very nice letter, but he rejected it.
	And a lot of great, I mean all the big publishing houses, it was finally published by a relatively small publishing house, Donald I. Fine, who was He was the guy who started Arbor House and he worked for William Randolph Hearst and founded Delacorte Publishing.
	He was the guy who actually took a chance on me.
	Dale, for the most part, writes about men, sort of rebellious men, heroes, bad guys, in aircraft.
	But, you know, it may not be this war, it may not be the next war, but at some point we're going to fight a war mostly with robots, aren't we, Dan?
	Absolutely.
	I think that's going to be the next wave of technology, along with space weapons and with With more information technology, more intelligence technology, I believe the area on the battlefield, over the battlefield, will be done by unmanned aircraft.
	Do we have unmanned drones or robots, if you will, that we can now launch from platforms like a B-52 or whatever, and then have them dispatch, do a job of bombing or strafing or whatever, and then return to the craft that launched it?
	No, we don't have any that can return back to the aircraft.
	We have many different kinds of unmanned, basically cruise missiles, That can be launched from an aircraft and that can go out and find their own targets, but they can't really return back to the aircraft.
	A lot of these cruise missiles have multiple bomb bays where they can attack several different targets, and then the last target will actually suicide themselves into the last target.
	You've written quite a bit about that sort of thing and that sort of thing being developed and added to, for example, B-52s.
	Absolutely.
	So you really stuck with the B-52 in your writings for a long time, didn't you?
	Sure did.
	The B-52 is one of the most remarkable weapon systems out there because it does have the capability of carrying so many weapons and so much fuel that it really is a global of a global weapons platform. It can go
	it can go anywhere on the planet within 24 hours.
	Given enough aerial refueling tanker support it can go around the world in 24 hours. It can hit
	it can hit any target on the planet within within 12 hours of launching. Do you think Dale that they
	should have built the B-52 that you imagined
	in your book with all these advanced systems?
	In other words, is it such a unique platform that they actually should have done that?
	Well, I think some of the other aircraft that they built after the B-52 had more of a place in the world that was developing in the 70s and 80s.
	and eighties. The B-52 really wasn't survivable, still isn't survivable as a primary weapons
	platform. It did okay during the Cold War, but especially when I flew them, we really
	relied on that initial nuclear lay down to have any chance whatsoever.
	We did have a few missions where the B-52 was designed to go into the target alone, just like I described in Flight of the Old Dog, but for the most part the B-52 was not ...was not really survivable in that mode.
	The aircraft like the B-1 bomber, because of its speed and low-level flight capability, and then the B-2 bomber with its stealth capability, those were the aircraft made for the threats developing in the 80s and 90s, not the B-15s.
	Are we going to end up with a situation where we have a bunch of hot dogs sitting in chairs with joysticks in front of monitors fighting a war thousands of miles away?
	We have it right now.
	That's been flying since Afghanistan.
	We actually started it first in Bosnia.
	But easily since 2002, we've been doing exactly that.
	We've had the Predator B, and now pretty soon The Predator C will actually have the capability.
	The launch from Saudi Arabia or the launch from Bahrain, the aircraft will actually be flown by guys sitting over Beale Air Force Base with two guys sitting side by side linked by satellite to this little aircraft and it's going to have two Hellfire missiles on board and they're going to They're going to be responding to intelligence information that a bad guy is traveling this area, or that terrorists have set up a training camp, and they're going to fly one of these little aircraft from Marysville, California, all the way by satellite, and control this thing, either flown by the Air Force or by the CIA, and they'll be able to launch Hellfire missiles using
	Using sensors on board the aircraft.
	Just amazing technology.
	Do you see anything morally difficult with that kind of remote killing?
	None whatsoever.
	I think that's what the United States needs to do to win.
	It has used every bit of our technology to win any conflict that we get ourselves involved with.
	What I really got sick about with Operation Enduring Freedom And Iraq and Operation Iraqi Freedom is to watch the great beards in the military take control of young airmen, young soldiers, young Marines, and have them fighting a war that these guys fought 40 years ago and 30 years ago.
	and and you know thirty years ago when i see
	i see pictures on the tv of of a of an entire company of marines
	getting bogged down by by three
	insurgents in the building half a mile away And the entire column of Marines stops and they surround this building.
	And I'm not exactly sure why they surrounded it, but they could have sent in one tank to just blow up the building.
	I don't know if they wanted to capture the guy or something, but I hate to see 20th 20th century technology and 20th century tactics being used in the 21st century, and it seems to me that there are too many 20th century guys that are hanging on in the military, and the first weapon system improvement I want to see is to have all those guys leave, retire, and let the young guys come in.
	Let the young guys who are used to the I was going to say the joystick crowd, right?
	Absolutely.
	Those are the guys who can fight the wars that we need to fight to win.
	Well, I'll tell you what the ground guys would say.
	They say, Dale, you're full of it.
	Wars are still, ground is taken.
	On the ground.
	And that's the way you've still got to fight a war when push comes to shove.
	This has always been the mantra, right?
	The ground can only be taken by the guys on the ground.
	And I would tell them in response, it depends on what you want.
	If you want to bring down a regime, you don't need to take the ground.
	In fact, I think we would have been better off in Iraq If we hadn't made the decision to take the ground, it's that 20th century thinking again that we need to get away from.
	If we had fought another Persian Gulf War I, if we had gone for shock and awe again, we wouldn't be bogged down with the insurgent conflict that the United States military, I believe, is still It's still not able to fight.
	All right, what about this though, Dale?
	Some might make the argument that we could have done it perhaps from the air and essentially had control in a very short amount of time, but without follow-through on the ground, Iraq would quickly be taken over beyond our ability to do anything about it by Iran.
	I believe we could have We could have switched very easily to air operations over Iraq to just as effective air operations over Iran.
	I still think we could have fought the entire conflict from the air.
	I'm still online and I'm getting dozens of emails already from guys reacting to what we've been talking about.
	Oh, I'm sure, I'm sure.
	A lot of these guys are angry, but I believe that it's a 20th century mindset.
	I think with the way that we've developed tactics, with the way we've improved weapons technology, that if you're talking about taking out a target, I'm not talking about the political endgame, I'm talking about the military procedures, the military tactics, I believe in the 21st century it's going to have to be done from the air.
	It's going to have to be done with intelligence.
	It's going to have to be done with improved sensor technology, but that's all remote control war fighting.
	And a lot of people recoil from that.
	They think it's science fiction.
	I know.
	It really is not.
	And it's really here already.
	It absolutely is.
	All right.
	I want to allow some people to ask you questions.
	Would that be all right?
	I would be happy to.
	First time caller line, you are on the air with Dale Brown.
	Good morning.
	Yes, Mr. Bell.
	You're going to have to yell at us.
	You're not too loud.
	Yes, Mr. Bell.
	Pleasure to speak to you.
	And you.
	I'd like to know if your guest is at all troubled by the recent controversy at the Air Force Academy.
	It seems to me that it's perfect paranoid fantasy material for thinking that someone might be flying around with heavy ordnance and deciding that it's time for Armageddon.
	I'll take your answer off the air.
	Dale?
	I'm not really that familiar with the controversy at the Air Force Academy.
	I wish he hadn't gone away to explain what's going on.
	All right.
	Well, he said that, you know, I'm not so familiar with it either, to be honest with you, but I guess the inference was that somebody would decide it was their job to bring on Armageddon.
	And I don't know how that relates to any ongoing controversy, but... Yeah, I'm just not familiar with that.
	Yeah, I mean, I think the military is a microcosm of the society as a whole.
	I think most of the guys in the military are dedicated.
	I think they're a little idealistic.
	They want to defend their country.
	But I think most importantly, they want to do a good job.
	They want to look good in front of their fellow airmen or their fellow soldiers.
	They want to show off what they can do, they want to show off what they know, and they want to do a good job, and they want to come home alive.
	And I think that's true of everybody in the military.
	You have some people who love to fight, who love the idea of going into battle, but I think most soldiers hate the idea of actually going into war.
	They want to live, they want their buddies to live, they want their families to live, but they don't want They don't want war, and I never really knew anybody in the military who wanted to go to war.
	I didn't either.
	Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Dale Brown.
	Good morning.
	Yes, good morning.
	And hello, Dale.
	I have a two-pronged question.
	Number one, what's your opinion of the former MAD doctrine, which had been incorporated in our policies?
	And number two, what is your opinion of our possible vulnerability of U.S.
	satellites which are so important to our subs and our guidance systems around the world.
	That's a great question, Collar. Let's take the second one first. Our satellites, all
	there's talk now from our military, Dale, that we have an incredible investment in military
	intelligence satellites and domestic satellites.
	All of our satellites require weapons in space.
	I think what you were referring to mostly is the GPS constellation, global positioning system.
	Which we really do rely on, I mean not just for the military, but civilian and civil uses.
	Yeah.
	I think that is a very great vulnerability, and I think plans, I think the basic constellation is fairly secure.
	26 satellites up there, 24 that are in use all the time, and then a couple spares up there.
	I think the current plans we have for the Galileo constellation, The European version of the GPS system, I think that's going to increase the usability of the system during wartime.
	But satellite vulnerability, I think, not necessarily right now.
	I think in the next generation, most wars will be fought in space and we won't even know that the war has started because the war will be up in space.
	And I think that's a That's a subject that I'm looking at for a future series.
	I'll bet it is.
	Well, then, your feelings on the weaponization of space?
	You're saying not yet?
	No, I believe that the U.S.
	is working on it.
	I think the U.S.
	Air Force is going to transform itself into a U.S.
	Space Force.
	That other services will take over the air-breathing aspect of the military, and that the Air Force will be Primarily a space force.
	I think we're going to have lasers in space.
	I think already, while we've got a very sophisticated sensor system already in space, we're going to have an improved infrared sensor capability.
	We're going to have space-based radar, space-based lasers.
	In my feeling, we probably already have space-based weapons of all sorts.
	That's just me.
	Well, I don't believe we have things like nuclear bombs in space and things like that.
	Well, why not, Dale?
	I mean, if you wanted to be absolutely sure of your ICBM not detected during launch phase and destroyed, not detected at launch phase or later and then intercepted and destroyed, but, my God, if you had a nuclear weapon in orbit There'd be no warning.
	You'd just push a button and she'd re-enter and explode.
	That'd be it.
	Yeah, but thinking as a general, if I was the guy that had that weapon at my fingertips, if I knew I had that weapon up there, I'd be very worried about the orbital mechanics and the actual mechanism for getting that thing out of orbit.
	Absolutely.
	And I know they can bring a spacecraft down within With incredible precision.
	I mean, very definitely with enough precision for a nuclear weapon.
	But, you know, it's not a perfect science.
	And if you mess up those deorbit calculations, That war has just as likely to come down over your own head as it is the enemy.
	Speaking of your own head, the first part of his question was interesting.
	Mutual assured destruction.
	Yes.
	Is that, in fact, what kept us from going to war, or the Soviets from going to war?
	Is that what it was?
	Absolutely.
	Mutual fear.
	That was my job, was to enforce the mutually Assured Destruction Doctrine.
	I mean, my job was, I mean, I flew bombers and dropped bombs, but my primary job was to prove to the generals in the Air Force, to prove to the Soviets, excuse me, and to prove to the rest of the world that I was ready and able to do the mission.
	That if they, even if they launched an attack out of the blue, I could prove to them on a daily basis that I could launch my bomber in time to survive even a nuclear missile launch from a submarine with a missile flight time of even less than eight minutes.
	Mutual assured destruction, Dale, depends on the other man or the other nation being at least semi-rational and not suicidal.
	And doggone, you could pretty well depend on that, and so that's why it worked.
	Right.
	Only thing is, we live in this really different world right now, Dale.
	So being absolutely blunt about it, Dale, you think a lot of people have been killed uselessly when air power could
	have prevented those deaths?
	Absolutely.
	I'm not sure if we would have lost any fewer people, but I know that if you can think of a way to avoid fighting a war that we're not prepared for, if special operations fighters have their use But I believe that special ops is another term for guerrilla warfare, and we're not equipped.
	The military that we have today is in a transition phase between the Cold War military and what we need right now to fight terrorist threats.
	We're in a gray zone right now that we can't really do either type of warfare very well right now.
	What do we need now?
	To take advantage of the technological superiority we have, and we need to get rid of the old weapon systems, get rid of the old tactics, get rid of the old ways of thinking.
	We need to skip a generation of weapons, and we need to start working on the weapons that we're going to need in the year 2010, 2015, and beyond.
	Are we doing that?
	No, we're not.
	I'm a big fan of new weapon systems coming out, but when they're weapon systems like the FA-22, the Raptor, the Joint Strike Fighter, aircraft like that that were designed in the 80s, that won't even be built probably for the next two to five years, that's old technology.
	That's old thinking.
	We need to move ahead from that.
	We need to keep on developing unmanned aircraft.
	We need to keep on developing Smart weapons, even if we put them on old platforms like older ships or the B-52 bomber.
	We need to keep on stepping ahead.
	We can't be stepping backwards.
	A lot of the weapons systems that we're bringing on board right now are old technology.
	Um, you do have these supermen, these exoskeletons, these men dressed in these incredible suits that let them virtually fly and jump and have incredible strength and vision beyond, you know, supermen, really?
	Yes, absolutely.
	That's what you've envisioned as a fighting, or part of a fighting force, I guess.
	Absolutely.
	And could we be on our way to actually doing that?
	Yes, I believe we are.
	We've been developing things like exoskeletons for many years.
	The ability to wear some device that enhances human strength and human performance.
	We've been working on that really for decades.
	We're now right on the threshold of actually deploying that technology right now.
	Really?
	Now, whether or not that's actually going to replace anything, or if that's going to be sort of a nifty addition to what we already have, what I wanted to do at Active War, Active War is an anti-terrorist, it's a special operations story going after a group of global terrorists.
	But I didn't want to do the usual story.
	After 9-11, a lot of these anti-terrorist books popped up, and they're all pretty much the same.
	So they deal with the real life units that are out there, real special ops guys adapted to chasing down terrorists.
	And I didn't want to do the usual story.
	So I wanted to take the next leap forward.
	I wanted to look forward two to five years and see what we're going to be using in the year 2010.
	And I don't believe it's going to be the special operations guys that we see right now.
	It's going to be exoskeletons, it's going to be unmanned aircraft, it's going to be very heavy on intelligence gathering operations, and it's going to be very heavy on very lethal, very powerful, very highly mobile units with special capabilities.
	Do you think we can win the war on terror this way?
	Absolutely.
	That's the only way we can use it.
	We cannot fight on the terrorist level.
	We can't pretend we're terrorists.
	We can't pretend that we're guerrilla soldiers.
	We can't send these little special ops groups out there acting like terrorists and try to hunt these guys down.
	Because the network is so large, it's not centralized.
	There's no nation.
	There's no uniform.
	There's no flag.
	There's no order of battle we can study.
	Beforehand, everything is different now, and we have to create technology to adapt to the new reality.
	Is it going to take another 9-11 before we heavily move that way?
	I believe, unfortunately, that's the way, when you combine society with politics, I believe that's what happens.
	I think when politics enter into it, When the money enters into it, when you talk about making the kind of investments that you need to do to fight this new kind of warfare, there's going to be a backlash.
	And it's a political backlash.
	People angling for power, for authority, for their voice to be heard.
	And I think all those things combine and people start to tune it out.
	And people want to restore order.
	back the way it was before.
	And I think, unfortunately, there's a few people in government, a few people in the military, who aren't afraid to shake things up on a continual basis.
	But for most of us, I believe it takes a 9-11 to jar us awake again.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Dale Brown.
	Good morning.
	Yes, hi.
	It's too bad we're not technologically advanced enough to I wish we could switch to something that wouldn't cause our own lack of health and life with radiation that gets deposited on one side of the planet and then the planet turns and within 12 hours something that occurred on the opposite side of the planet's airspace is now in our airspace.
	You know, as far as the radiation goes.
	I'm not sure if that's really true.
	Is it, Dale?
	If the caller's talking about nuclear warfare, the effects of fallout and radiation, things like that, it doesn't happen like that.
	It depends on the size of the weapon, it depends on the size of the attack.
	If you're talking about a massive nuclear exchange like was envisioned in the 60s and 70s, that sort of circle of death that Carl Sagan I wrote about for so many years.
	I think that's a possibility, but that would suppose that all the weapons that existed back in the 1970s were detonated at the same time, and I believe that that could cause some sort of a global cataclysm.
	But if you're talking about reality, you're talking about a very low-scale nuclear attack in a very small geographic area with very low-yield warheads.
	I don't believe anything like that would occur.
	I think there would be a lot of death and devastation, but as far as far-reaching implications for the entire globe, I just don't believe that would happen.
	Got it.
	You're on the air with Dale Brown.
	Good morning.
	Well, wait a minute.
	Now you're on the air.
	Hello?
	Hello?
	Yes, sir.
	Mr. Brown, the question is about the B-1 bomber.
	Yes.
	Absolutely before it was built.
	It had a lot of developmental problems like most weapon systems did.
	I still believe it's the most capable aircraft in the inventory right now.
	I truly do.
	And I think we have 30 of those things in what they call flyable storage.
	They're basically mothballs.
	It would take Six months to a year to get them out, and I think that's a crime.
	One of the controversies about it was that it actually was visible on radar.
	Was that so?
	It was.
	All aircraft are visible on radar, even the B-2 stealth bomber.
	But it's a matter of exactly when you see it, when you can be able to track it and engage it on radar.
	And the reality is that compared to a B-52, the B-1 could get 100 times closer to its target than the B-52 could, and the B-2 could get closer to its
	target by another factor of 100.
	So all those aircraft are visible on radar, but it all depends on how close you are to the target
	before you're able to be tracked and engaged is the question.
	Okay, Will in Tyler, Texas writes to me on the computer, Art, with respect to the Air Force Academy controversy,
	second in command and several other officers, football coach, several senior candidates
	accused of active Christian proselytizing while on duty, contrary to law and regulation.
	Now, that's why the caller asked the question about Armageddon.
	In other words, whether somebody could get through the system who might feel that it was their hand and their job to initiate the beginning of the end.
	If that person could become both the President and the Secretary of Defense, absolutely.
	Because those are the two people that need to get together to issue the order to To release nuclear weapons.
	Otherwise, as far as you know, now, what is the current status, Dale, of our submarines?
	Do you know?
	I mean, at one point, submarine commanders did have some independent authority, right?
	They have standing orders.
	They're basically put on alert status with the ability to And still have the same capability.
	We have eight nuclear ballistic missile submarines that are on patrol right now.
	Four in the Atlantic, four in the Pacific.
	They have standing orders.
	They receive their orders usually by satellite, a very low frequency radio that they have for For a certain period of time, they're on a certain state of alert.
	Those orders can be changed at any time, but depending on the world situation, they're given a set of orders that they put their weapons in a certain posture.
	So if the threat level was brought up to a certain level, they could put the weapons at a certain posture where they could launch quicker.
	Well, I guess what I'm getting at is that the commanders of those submarines, under certain circumstances, had the sole ability, perhaps with the authority of one other, to launch those weapons with no other action from command.
	If they would need the authorization from the President and the Secretary of Defense, you're right, that they had the ability to launch, but they would need the execution order from the president or or the secretary of defense to put their weapons in a posture to be able to launch uh... at it to within a certain given given period of time so there's no danger of a madman do you would have to have at least two
	Tubeman on board to be able to do it.
	Well, that's not out of the realm.
	Not out of the question.
	I think it's extremely unlikely.
	And also, at the current state of readiness right now, supposedly, and this is what I've heard from several sources, is that the missiles that are in the tubes right now, ready to launch, do not have actual target coordinates set in them.
	They're basically open ocean or ice packs, targets loaded in them right now, and that's to, in case of some sort of accidental launch, that the missiles wouldn't impact a real target.
	Now that suggests to me that there is a significant risk, or at least some risk, of an accidental launch.
	No, I don't think so.
	Then why bother to target ice flows?
	Well, I think that's more of a political decision.
	The question is whether or not you want to take the missiles out of the ocean completely, or just do something else to keep them still on alert, but not a threat to anybody.
	And I think the answer was, on both sides, was to leave the missiles in the ocean, leave the missiles in the silos, but don't have them targeted at any At a real target.
	So we need, what, about 20 minutes, Dale?
	I think even less than that.
	Less than that.
	So I can re-target them.
	Alright.
	Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Dale Brown.
	Hello.
	Yeah, Dale and Art, good to talk to y'all.
	I got a question there.
	I noticed y'all was talking about that you could reprogram a heavier-yield missile down to a lower-yield missile.
	When those missiles, when those uh... weapons go off to the uh... if you've got them
	crank down to the low end and that that create a more barrier bomb
	so i i want to know just uh...
	notice the lower yield just a just a smaller explosion I guess he was imagining that the uranium that wasn't used, if you dialed down the boom, as you put it, would then be perhaps dispersed in the explosion in some other manner, and it would be a dirtier bomb.
	I get his idea.
	Yeah, no, I don't think it would work like that.
	I think the remaining material would just be vaporized.
	You know, dirty bombs Dirty bombs are just basically regular explosions with a little bit of nuclear material mixed in there, where the nuclear material is dispersed by the explosion.
	A neutron bomb is a regular thermonuclear bomb with the outer shell removed, so it just lets the neutrons escape instead of causing a second chain reaction explosion.
	So no, I think if you had a full yield, just a smaller yield, but a full nuclear yield, it would probably take care of the rest of the material that wasn't used in the explosion.
	Remember Strangelove and the Doomsday Device?
	Yes.
	Ever heard any talk about anything like that?
	I think... I never heard of a weapon so big that it would...
	I don't remember all the details about the doomsday device, but I'm not sure if it was one bomb or a series of bombs circling the earth or something like that that would create a huge cataclysm, but no, I don't believe there's anything like that.
	I think the fear was that during the 60s and 70s we had so many nuclear weapons, so many warheads out there, that some triggers, some Something happening in the world, you know, a dead Soviet premier or some sort of accident between submarines or some false alarm would cause a massive retaliation on both sides.
	And I think that although it was possible, I think that the mechanisms in place, the orders that you had to give in order to actually initiate an attack like that, We're just so complicated.
	They had enough checks and balances built into it that it wasn't like President Reagan rolling over in bed and hitting a button and the world would end.
	So there were enough procedures, at least on my level, especially on my level, where we had so many things we had to do, so many milestones we had to pass before we could actually get a weapon off.
	That it was just inconceivable that there could be some misfortune or some misunderstanding.
	Well, it's worked so far, Dale.
	Listen, we're at the end of the program.
	It's amazing.
	It absolutely flew by.
	It really does.
	Your writing now is going to space, isn't it?
	Right now, I'm sticking with the anti-terrorist stories.
	I'm working on the sequel to Act of War, but I think the next series of books, the next series of McClanahan books, We'll deal with space, because that's where I think the future of the Air Force is.
	All right.
	My friend, thank you so much.
	It's been an honor.
	It's been my privilege, Art.
	Thank you very much.
	Have a good night, Dale.
	That's Dale Brown, one of my favorite authors.

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