Name: Grazed by the Apocalypse
Uploaded: 2017-11-13T18:25:32.000Z
Duration: 15 min 20 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

On these African plains some 60,000 years
ago our ancestors began migrating north.

A trek that would ultimately give rise to modern
day civilization. And it's nothing short of

a miracle that we've progressed as far as
we have, especially in such a short amount

of time. It's really not that difficult to
see why intelligent life may be extremely

sparse across the universe given how absurdly
fortunate we've been. So many things could've

gone wrong along the way and so many times
it almost did.

On the morning of the 12th of August, 1883,
Mexican astronomer, José Bonilla, was observing

the Sun when numerous UFOs began to sweep
across the solar disk. The objects were surrounded

by a coronal haze and left behind a trailing
mist. The phenomenon continued for two consecutive

days and Bonilla counted 447 objects in total.
As the event could not be explained the UFOs

were simply dismissed as birds, insects, or
dust passing in front of the telescope.

But based upon Bonilla's description of the event
coupled with an improved understanding of various

astronomical phenomena, an article published
in 2011 hypothesized that the objects where

fragments of a comet nearly colliding with
the Earth. The only bodies in the solar system

that leave trails and are surrounded by a
bright haze are comets. And much like this

comet observed in 2006, we now know that
fragmentation is a frequent occurrence. It is estimated

that the comet broke into more than 3,200
fragments ranging in size between 50-1000

meters in diameter and sailed past the earth
at a distance of no more than a few thousand

kilometers. Had only one of these fragments
struck the planet, it could have resulted

in millions of casualties. Had all or at least
a significant portion of the fragments impacted

the Earth, we're looking at an extinction
level event.

It's the middle of the Siberian taiga, around
7:00 AM, when a powerful explosion would lit

up the sky. An eyewitness 65 kilometers away
from the blast accounts that:

"...the sky split in two and fire appeared high and wide
over the forest. At that moment I became so

hot that I couldn't bear it, as if my shirt
was on fire... I wanted to tear off my shirt

and throw it down but then the sky shut closed. A strong
thump sounded and I was thrown a few meters."

Two decades later in 1927, the first expedition to
the blast site would capture this footage.

Some 2000 km² of forest, some
80 million trees in total, had been completely

fattened by the event. The broad consensus is that
an asteroid or comet, less than 200 meters wide,

exploded a few kilometers above ground and produced a fireball as demonstrated in this simulation.

Transposed over New York City its 
destructive power becomes a lot more apparent.

[Edward Lu]
This one is a little bit harder to say. The one that..

Over Tunguska, the one that was slightly larger.
Had that happened over a city.

Let's say New York City, we would have
7 million casualties.

At least, whatever the population of New York City is, they would be gone.

While the  two bombs dropped on Japan marked a
dramatic end to the war, they also marked the beginning

of an entirely new kind of fear. A fear of
annihilation by incompetence. Humans are fallible.

We make mistakes. And knowing this, coupled
with the realization that one mistake could

result in apocalyptic levels of destruction,
the likes of which had so far been reserved

by nature, this new kind of fear was undeniably
justified.

In early October of 1960 a new early warning
system on Greenland had just become operational.

In the event that the Soviet Union should
launch an attack against the United States,

a level 5 warning would be sent to the command
center located in Colorado. On October the 5th,

the number on the display suddenly changed
from 0 to 1. Indicating that a low-risk unidentified

object had been detected. A bit strange but
no immediate cause for alarm. But then the

number continued to climb until a level 5
warning was issued, meaning that long-range

missiles would strike the United States in
less than 20 minutes. The alert quickly worked

its way up the chain of command and a slight
panic ensued. But it was quickly eased by

the realization that Nikita Khrushchev, leader
of the Soviet Union at the time, was currently

visiting the United States. Not exactly where
you'd expect him to be in the event of a nuclear attack.

20 minutes passed and the value of
bottle caps remained the same. A subsequent

investigation revealed that the base on Greenland had
mistaken the rising Moon for an incoming Soviet attack.

In the early morning of January the 24th,
1961, an American B-52 bomber carrying two

hydrogen bombs crashed into an empty field
in the state of North Carolina. Officials

quickly issued a report stating that there
was no cause for alarm and that there was

no danger of a nuclear explosion or radiation.
However, declassified documents released in

2013, reveal that one of the two bombs actually
came extremely close to a full scale detonation.

Three out of four safety switches erroneously
activated upon impact with the ground and

the slight separation of two wires was the
only thing standing in the way of a nuclear

explosion. Had this 3.8 Mt bomb detonated,
and had the wind condition been just right,

the radioactive fallout could've reached Washington,
Philadelphia, and even New York.

In the early 1960s, tensions between the US
and the Soviet Union is strained to the breaking

point and culminated in a situation known
as the Cuban Missile Crisis. It is perhaps

the closest we've ever come to committing
omnicide. The short version is that the US

installed nuclear missiles near the Soviet
union, specifically in Turkey, so in response,

the Soviet Union installed nuclear missiles
near the United States, specifically in Cuba.

The US would have none of that. "Hey, you
can't do that! Only we are allowed to do that!"

said the United States. "I don't know what
you're talking about?" the Soviet Union replied.

I'm paraphrasing of course as these 
where classified communications.

While the impasse in and of itself
came extremely close to disaster,

one specific event stands out. After the US
imposed a blockade to prevent the Soviet Union

from exporting even more missiles to Cuba,
a Soviet submarine was detected near Cuban

shores. In an attempt to force the submarine
to surface so that they could have a friendly

chat, multiple US naval destroyers dropped
low intensity explosives to signal the submarine

to surface. However, the captain of the submarine
misinterpreted this as an attack and ordered

his men to retaliate against one of the US
destroyers by launching a nuclear-armed torpedo.

Fortunately, one of the two senior officers
aboard disagreed with the captain's decision

and eventually managed to convince him that
they should surface and await orders form

Moscow. And that's exactly what they did and
thus the apocalypse had to reschedule.

On May the 23rd, 1967, all of the early warning
systems across the United States ceased to function.

In fact, all manner of military
communications and radar technology malfunction

simultaneously and it was interpreted as intentional
jamming by the Soviets. Bomber planes immediately

scrambled and prepared to launch an attack. But as luck
would have it just a few years prior, a branch of the US

military had begun observing solar activity
and its effects on the Earth. And on this

day in 1967, the Sun had ejected a powerful
solar storm that had stuck the planet and

knocked out military defenses and other equipment.
Had a project for something as unrelated as

studying the Sun been delayed for just a few
years, no one could've explained this nationwide

interference in time to
prevent World War III.

In the mid 1980s squadrons of US aircrafts
would often fly straight towards Soviet airspace,

thus triggering their early warning systems,
only to turn around at the very last moment.

A form of psychological warfare that kept
the Soviets on edge for an attack. In the

early hours of September the 26th, 1983, the
command center just outside Moscow was awoken

An intercontinental
ballistic missile had just been launched by

the US and was now heading towards the Soviet
Union. In the event of a nuclear attack by

the Americans it was standard procedure to
launch an immediate counter-attack. It was

now up to the man in charge, Stanislav Petrov,
to contact his superiors and to inform them

that a nuclear attack was imminent. A few
minutes passed when four additional missiles

were detected. However, Petrov decided to
go against his training and did nothing.