On Last Week Tonight, John Oliver looks at our terrifying and blunder-riddled relationship with nuclear weapons. The U.S. has over 4,800 nuclear weapons and – surprisingly, we don’t take good care of them. In fact, a locker at the bus depot is more secure than some of our Minuteman Missile silos, and I am not exaggerating. When you’re guarding anything – but let’s just say ‘a missile’ with the launch codes, it’s bad form to leave the door wide open and take a snooze. Fortunately a guy delivering burritos woke the officer in this instance. John has a bundle of these bumbling incidents which would be hysterically funny if they didn’t involve 4,800 deadly nukes – and those are just ours! Who’s to say that Russia – for example, does a better job of securing their weapons.
You will meet the people at the top of the chain of command. . If the call had come in the last twelve months, these are the men who would have transferred the President’s command to the ultimate big bang. . First is a man who was caught gambling with fake poker chips, who would try to phone a drunk General in Russia, who is wrestling a guitar away from a fake George Harrison. If that went well, a call would go to a man with a bag full of burritos, who would then (walk into the command center) and wake the officer with the launch codes, to start the process of ending the world as we know it…And that’s only one series of events. John’s report is full of near-misses and astonishing blunders, which truly goes to show, we are our own worst enemy!