Original subtitles

(dramatic music)

Weapons have existed as long as humankind.

(dramatic music)

For millennia, they have determined

the destiny of generations.

(dramatic music)

(cannon booms)

Weapons bring suffering and death.

They show what humans can inflict upon other humans.

But they're also intended to keep the peace

and pave new ways for technology.

(dramatic music)

Almost every war claims the lives of innocent people.

Women, children, civilians.

Some weapons are developed exactly for this purpose.

We are taking a look at the historical background.

Why does mankind build the atomic bomb?

The most terrible of all weapons.

It can actually destroy everybody,

it can destroy civilization.

How were biological

and chemical weapons invented?

Winning is the only thing that matters.

Once you've won, nobody minds how you've won.

What sealed the fate of thousands of people

living in cities and castles.

Wow.

Let's go and see.

Our first weapon.

The trebuchet.

A wonder weapon for sieges in the Middle Ages.

(dramatic music)

For centuries, high castle walls pose

a near-insurmountable feat.

One of the first technical solutions to this, siege towers.

(dramatic music)

It basically takes the attackers up to the same level

as the castle wall, on a rolling platform

that can be pushed up against the castle wall,

and the attackers can then go across a drawbridge

onto the top of the castle.

(dramatic music)

But siege tower maneuvers result

in a tremendous loss for the attackers.

Even if they outnumber the defenders.

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It's not a place where men will willingly go.

A large wooden tower with people firing fire arrows at you.

It doesn't look good.

So they're not hugely successful.

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Attacks from a distance are far less perilous.

(dramatic music)

With catapults, they are time consuming,

but save soldiers' lives.

In the 12th century, a new catapult technology

from Asia conquers the battlefields.

It is called trebuchet.

A reconstruction in Beckdorf, Lower Saxony, Germany.

Weapons expert Mike Loades is impressed.

It's the most imposing and the most iconic

of all medieval siege engines.

And in an age before gunpowder,

this was the heavy artillery.

What makes the trebuchet

so revolutionary is its efficiency.

And on the end of that beam is, in fact, a sling.

And the stone sits in the sling.

The principle of a sling is that it makes

the levers of your arm longer.

And so throws further.

If you were to put that sling on the end of a long stick,

you would have an even longer system of levers.

Which is what we have here.

The trouble is, the beam is so big and so heavy

that you need a machine to operate it.

So you can think of the stone as the ammunition,

the sling is the weapon.

And the big wooden trebuchet is simply

the engine that powers that weapon.

(soothing music)

Building a trebuchet

with medieval tools is a real challenge.

(dramatic music)

It is simply not possible to move it,

a fully erected trebuchet, you can't move it.

The solution.

Attackers put the individual parts on oxcarts

to transport them to the besieged city.

And then assemble the trebuchet onsite.

So your military engineers would come and make the machine

and use it in the place where they made it.

So part of the siege would be watching the enemy build

the trebuchets that would knock its walls down.

And you would hope that he would say, okay, I surrender now.

You'd know what's coming.

And it's very big, and it's gonna knock the wall down.

So there's a psychological element

as well as a physcial element.

The hard work pays off.

Depictions from the 12th and 13th century show

how the trebuchet is used in all corners of the known world.

For example, in northern Germany.

Lake Dannsee was locked near Beckdorf.

But today, it has completely dried up.

Back in 1311, robber baron Heinrich von Bulow

uses it as a hideout.

The north German bishops want to take him down.

Iron Heinrich, as he is also called,

is able to flee from them.

(dramatic music)

(speaks foreign language)

A coalition of the bishops of Bremen and Faten

and the Duke of Ludeberg goes after a robber knight

nicknamed Iron Heinrich, who was hiding

in Dannsee Castle in northwestern Germany.

Back then, bishops were clerical

and political representatives, and it therefore

was their duty to make sure everyone abided by the rules.

Here, they want to force the robber baron

out of his hideout.

But it's surrounded by water, and protected

by a wooden palisade.

So they have two trebuchets set up along the lake shore.

The intent is to destroy the fortification from a distance.

Mechanics with destructive power.

You just have to release the heavy weight box,

and it races downward to release the long

throwing arm with the sling.

But how can you actually hit a target in this manner?

(dramatic music)

If the tension doesn't decrease,

and the weight of the projectile remains the same,

you can reproduce the shot, it will always cover

the same distance more or less.

In order to get that accuracy, you need to make stones

of the same size, shape and weight.

And these are actual trebuchet stones

that have been chiseled by craftsmen, by a mason,

hammer and chisel, to make them almost identical.

(dramatic music)

Almost 1,000 of these stones are used in 1311

to fight robber baron Henry.

We want to find out how accurate and effective

the trebuchet really is.

We set up a palisade of tree trunks at 150 meters distance,

just like Heinrich had around his castle.

Four meters high, six meters wide.

The trunks have been placed one meter deep in the ground.

(dramatic music)

Does a trebuchet projectile stand a chance

in damaging the palisade?

(suspenseful music)

This has some movement.

It has some elasticity.

I think that might prove quite a challenge for our stones.

(dramatic music)

It takes a whole team to operate

the heaviest medieval siege weapon.

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Firing the trebuchet requires

at least one trained specialist.

And as many hard-working assistants as possible.

They have to fill the counterweight box with stones.

(dramatic music)

They have to grease the firing line used to fire

the projectile, and bring the throwing arm into position.

(dramatic music)

An historical stone taken from the siege of Lake Dannsee

in the year 1311 will serve as our ammunition.

Fire at will.

(dramatic music)

Wow, that was so close.

And it flew true.

Let's go and see.

Our stone gets buried deep in the ground.

Good grief.

That,

I don't know where that stone is.

It's gone down there, like some monster rabbit.

I mean, it's, I can't even.

I can't even feel it.

(dramatic music)

But the trunks are still standing.

(speaks foreign language)

Sometimes they used trebuchets for several hours or days,

until they had achieved the desired result.

Time, a decisive factor in every siege.

Without catapults, sieges can take months or even years.

(dramatic music)

Roman legions typically rely on hunger

as the most potent weapon in sieges.

At some point, the famine will push every opponent

to the brink of despair, and force them to surrender.

One legendary exception to this rule

is the province Judea in 73 CE.

Rebellious Jews barricade themselves

within the Masada fortification.

A Roman legion then besieges the rebels for months in vain.

(dramatic music)

It is only when the legionnaires and slaves

build a massive ramp out of stones and sand

up to the walls of Masada that the tides turn.

(dramatic music)

As they moved up,

the Jewish defenders kept firing at them.

But eventually, the Romans got to the top.

When the Roman troops eventually

entered the fortress, they find the lifeless

bodies of 960 insurgents.

Only two women and five children are found alive.

They'd killed themselves.

They weren't going to surrender.

And they knew that the Romans would kill them,

so they saved them the trouble.

To this day, Masada is the epitome

of the Jews' quest for freedom.

The ramp built by the Romans can still be seen today.

(ominous music)

Meanwhile in Beckdorf, entering the second

round of our experiment.

The first shot was a miss.

We have to aim further to the left.

(dramatic music)

The trebuchet can't be moved.

But the line of fire can be adjusted

with a trajectory guide.

(dramatic music)

Mike Loades takes a closer look at this

crucial detail of the weapon,

together with his experienced trebuchet assistant, Patrick.

And then you can move the whole line left and right.

Going to there, I only need to move that a little bit.

And over distance. Very small.

Very small can make several meters difference.

Of course.

You have to think about one centimeter here

is about two meters behind there.

I hope we can do it.

You are right, Hans.

We will try it again. Thank you.

(dramatic music)

(gears clank)

Positioning the throwing arm,

charging the catapult with a new stone,

and fire.

(dramatic music)

The projectile travels too far.

We remove a couple of stones from the counterweight box.

This reduces the firing velocity and also the reach.

(dramatic music)

That's the one.

(dramatic music)

(man shouts)

Will it work this time?

(dramatic music)

A clear hit.

The stone goes straight into the wooden palisade.

(workers cheer)

We have a hit.

And let's see what it's done.

Just look at this!

It's just gone down like matchsticks.

As if these great timbers were nothing, they just shattered.

Here is the real damage.

Here on this one.

Here, this is where the stone must have struck.

And it's just splintered this timber.

The walls are now breached.

And the opposing army will be on its way.

(dramatic music)

Our trebuchet has hit the wood,

20 centimeters thick, and destroyed it.

(dramatic music)

Just like it did 700 years ago.

(dramatic music)

Back then, the troops of the north German bishops

managed to penetrate the protective palisade

of Iron Heinrich with two trebuchets.

The robber baron is thrown into the dungeon.

But destruction is not always the objective of sieges.

(dramatic music)

You actually want the castle,

because it's a useful strategic tool.

So if you can persuade them to surrender

by frightening them, that's much better.

In 1346, Taratarian troops make use

of a particularly perfidious tactic.

They are besieging the city of Kaffa in Crimea.

And want to bring the plague behind the enemy walls.

But how are they able to do this

without infecting themselves?

(speaks foreign language)

They understood it was a contagious disease.

So they protected their hands for example.

That means they could transport the dead bodies

of plague victims to a trebuchet,

basically without any problem,

without putting themselves in danger.

(dramatic music)

Using trebuchets, the besiegers throw

infected corpses over the walls of Kaffa.

The message is clear.

(ominous music)

Surrender now, or we'll kill you all.

This is classic siege warfare.

So it's psychological, it's biological.

And ultimately, it's remarkably barbaric.

(dramatic music)

This is how the trebuchet becomes

a part of a particularly insidious way of warfare.

Biological and chemical weapons

have existed since antiquity.

And the attempts to outlaw such attacks

probably go back just as far.

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Greece, sixth century BCE.

The Oracle of Delphi is the Greek's

most important sacred site, attracting pilgrims

and guidance seekers alike.

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The coastal town of Kirra benefits

from conducting business with the pilgrims.

However, an alliance of the powerful city of Athens

wants to seize the earnings from Delphi.

They besiege Kirra.

According to historical reports, the attackers are using

a weapon that can be obtained straight from the ground.

They throw hellebore root into the Pleistos River that runs

through Kirra, an attack with serious repercussions.

(speaks foreign language)

The consequences of a hellebore poisoning,

vomiting, nausea, vertigo, and of course, diarrhea.

And everyone knows that vomiting and diarrhea

cause dehydration after a certain amount of time.

And the body will become very weak due to this.

In next to no time,

half of the residents of Kirra are bedridden.

It's impossible for them to defend their city any longer.

The attackers kill all of them,

and raze the entire city to the ground.

Any means of getting an advantage,

and anything that will disable the enemy,

demoralize them, weaken them, these are all good things,

because winning is the only thing that matters.

Once you've won, nobody minds how you won.

(dramatic music)

Another historical example

of biological warfare.

In 1267, the Mongols besieged the Chinese city of Xiangyang.

The Chinese fight tooth and nail.

They also use a weapon originally developed for attacks.

They call it (speaks foreign language)

which means feces throwing bomb.

It proves particularly effective in sieges.

The most important ingredient, dried human excrement

that is set on fire and thrown at the enemy.

Everybody knows that horrid odors

can cause strong reactions.

(dramatic music)

But is it really possible to put the enemy

to rout with stench alone?

Medieval Chinese documents describe how

such stink bombs were manufactured.

Weapons expert Mike Loades wants to try out the recipe.

The first evidence we've got for the stinkpot

comes from China in 1044, it's recorded use.

And we have a number of recipes,

all sorts of acids and plants.

Here's one that was commonly used, aconite.

And it's the roots that are deadly poisonous.

If you ingest those roots, then it causes

stomach hemorrhaging, your stomach bleeds,

your intestines bleed, it causes

terrible, terrible suffering.

And another common ingredient was the heliocopris beetle.

These nasty little fellows, it feeds on waste.

And it absorbs poison.

And so when cut apart, there are all sorts

of poisonous properties with that.

Tung oil, deadly poisonous from the tung tree,

in Southeast Asia and China.

Lime, basic chalk.

But when that's heated to very high temperatures,

that itself becomes a deadly substance.

If it mixes with the moist parts of the body,

like the tears of the eyes or mucus in the nose,

or you get it mixed with the saliva in the throat,

that becomes a deadly burning acid.

So this is all very noxious substances.

And they're all mixed together, pulverized with human feces.

I'm happy to say the producers have given me

horse dung to demonstrate with.

And this is the fuel.

When dried, this becomes an unpleasant-smelling

fuel that will burn.

And it was the burning excrement that created the smoke,

the smoke that carried the toxic substances

from the plants and the beetles.

And that is what got into the enemy's eyes.

It got into their lungs, it got into their stomachs.

And it made them run out of the buildings,

run out of the ships.

The purpose of the stinkpot was to get

people out of the place without destroying the place.

A horrible, disgusting, cowardly, shameful chemical warfare.

(dramatic music)

The recipes vary.

Biological and chemical warfare begin

with many malodorous experiments.

(dramatic music)

So they've got a clear advantage over their enemy

who is a less sophisticated society with less knowledge

of these techniques, so it gives them an edge.

And that's what they're looking for, that's why they use it.

(dramatic music)

For centuries, warlords continued to commission

new experiments with gaseous warfare agents.

Producing them efficiently at a large scale is,

however, not possible yet.

The most far-reaching biological attack

in history was actually an accident.

In 1492, Christopher Columbus doesn't disembark in India

as intended, but rather reaches a whole new continent.

For the indigenous population, this marks

the beginning of a catastrophe.

An ever-growing number of Europeans set out for America.

They bring in bacteria and viruses that prove perilous

for large populations of indigenous Americans,

whose immune systems cannot cope.

Within only a couple of decades, as many as 15 million

people die from diseases such as the measles or flu.

(ominous music)

But in some cases, European conquerors

intentionally use viruses as a weapon.

For example, in Pennsylvania in 1763,

Indian tribes are besieging Fort Pitt.

Some of the British colonizers inside

the fort suffer from smallpox.

(dramatic music)

Their commander in chief, Jeffrey Amherst,

knows of the disastrous effects of smallpox

among the Indian tribes.

(speaks foreign language)

They intentionally gave blankets used by people

with smallpox to First Nation tribes who didn't have

any antibodies against this disease,

with disastrous impact on their ability

to defend themselves.

(ominous music)

Targeted biological warfare.

The Indians are forced to end the siege of Fort Pitt.

(ominous music)

Summer 1914.

World War I brings about entirely new forms

of warfare on all levels.

German chemist Fritz Haber intends to seal

the fate of battles with gas.

(ominous music)

On the 22nd of April, 1915, a pale yellow cloud

drifts over the battlefield towards

the French front lines in Flanders, Belgium.

Under the observing eyes of Haber himself,

German troops release 150 tons of chlorine gas.

(speaks foreign language)

Chlorine gas was actually the byproduct

of the synthetic dye-making process,

and then they found out it can serve other purposes too.

It's as very dangerous weapon that can

cause death by suffocation.

More than 1,000 French soldiers died.

Several thousands are injured.

The Germans were the first, but the British and French

were quite happy to retaliate.

Industrial production renders

large scale gas war possible.

Thousands of tons of gas are produced.

But also millions of gas masks.

They're supposed to protect the soldiers from chlorine gas.

But in 1917, the Germans deploy a new agent,

yparite, also known as mustard gas,

(ominous music)

(speaks foreign language)

Mustard gas was extremely effective

because it reacts upon contact with the human skin.

It causes blisters and burns.

What was really vicious about this weapon

was that gas masks were useless against it.

It was about contact with skin.

The fear of deadly gas clouds marks

the experiences of an entire generation.

Poison gas kills about 100,000 people in World War I,

and leaves more than one million injured.

(ominous music)

US nurse Shirely Millard writes about everyday life

in the gas war in her diary.

They just struggle for breath, nothing can be done.

Their lungs are gone, literally burned out.

Some with their eyes and faces entirely

eaten away by the gas.

After the end of World War I,

a new peace order is meant to prevent the bloodshed

of millions from ever happening again.

In 1920, 32 states form an organization

called the League of Nations.

In 1925, they agree on prohibiting the use

of chemical and biological weapons.

But the League of Nations proves to be too weak.

By the mid-30s, it becomes increasingly clear

that the world is on the brink of yet another

major war with countless victims.

25th of June, 1945 in Europe, World War II is over.

50 countries found the United Nations in San Francisco.

The new organization has the same

purpose as its predecessor, securing peace.

But this time, it is supposed to work.

And the UN have proven to withstand the test of time.

By 2017, there are 193 member states.

They have signed the Charter of the United Nations,

with all its rights and obligations.

UN soldiers are deployed to make sure

the rules are observed.

Their mission, however, typically does not involve combat.

Their job is to observe and to secure peace.

Step by step joint treaties promote the prohibition

of chemical and biological weapons.

But not all states honor the agreements.

Just like Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 40s,

producing chemical weapons like sarin

or tabun despite the ban.

(dramatic music)

It remains one of the big riddles of World War Two.

Both sides are fighting bitterly,

but all chemical agents remain unused.

(dramatic music)

And in the second world war, nobody uses poison gas.

Not because they don't have it, but because there's no

particular utility in using something everybody has.

It won't advantage anybody strategically.

In the last months of the war,

Hitler wants to take all the Germans down with him.

He sends everyone to the front lines,

old men and boys alike.

He intends to destroy Germany's infrastructure.

Influential military officers ultimately suggest

attacking the enemies with gas.

Hitler doesn't heed their advice,

perhaps because he also fell victim to a gas attack

in World War I and temporarily lost his sight.

(dramatic music)

The Germans are spared a potential retaliation attack

from the allies that would probably have involved

not only poisonous gas, but also biological agents.

Anthrax.

A rod-shaped bacterium.

Inhaling their spores can prove lethal.

(speaks foreign language)

The problem is that when the symptoms manifest themselves,

the disease has usually progressed so much

that it may already be too late to treat it directly,

even immediately after detection.

(dramatic music)

Scotland 1942.

On the uninhabited island of Gruinard, the British

are testing the effects of the anthrax bacterium on sheep.

The plan, airplanes drop anthrax-infested animal food

made out of flax seeds all over Germany.

Their spores would spread rapidly.

Moribund animals would cause a famine.

(sheep bleat)

All of the 80 sheep on Gruinard died.

A large-scale anthrax attack on Germany

would have been possible.

(dramatic music)

What I imagine is the case is that had Germany

started using these weapons against Britain,

the British wanted to be in a position

to retaliate immediately.

But it's highly unlikely they would have initiated

an exchange of these weapons.

(dramatic music)

Germany is defeated

with conventional weapons.

The development of chemical and biological weapons,

however, persists after 1945.

So too does the fear of an attack.

In the late 50s, scientists commissioned

by the US Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization

develop a bioweapon mask.

It is designed to filter the air

before inhalation during an emergency.

Its user-friendly design is demonstrated

to people everywhere.

But the masks are never used.

The danger, however, remains real

also decades later.

New York, 2001.

One week after the 9/11 terror attacks.

(dramatic music)

Newspaper agencies, broadcasting companies

and senators receive letters with a sinister message.

You cannot stop us.

We have this anthrax.

You die now.

Are you afraid?

Death to America.

Death to Israel.

Allah is great.

(dramatic music)

the letters contained anthrax spores.

22 people are infected, five of them die.

(dramatic music)

Is this the next attack by Al Qaeda terrorists?

US President George W. Bush shows his determination.

The American people need to go about their lives.

We cannot let the terrorists lock our country down.

But everything is different than it seems.

The FBI believes the spores came

from a laboratory in Maryland.

The scientist Bruce Edwards Ivins

becomes their main suspect.

But before they can question him, he commits suicide.

If or why he sent the anthrax letters remains a mystery.

(dramatic music)

During the Cold War, both sides develop

even deadlier warfare agents,

despite all international conventions.

The nerve agent VX is one such example.

Invented as an insecticide, it is 20 times more poisonous

than the toxic substance Sarin produced in World War Two.

In the 60s, US soldiers used training films

to practice for emergencies.

Upon contact with nerve agents,

only injecting an antidote can help.

(dramatic music)

But it has to be the right one.

(ominous music)

16th of March, 1988.

The Iraqi air force, under Saddam Hussein,

drops poisonous gas bombs over the city of Halabja.

The dictator suspects that the Kurds are defecting

and must therefore be punished.

3,000 to 5,000 people lose their lives.

Men, women, and children.

Since 2013, poison gas has also been used

in the Syrian Civil War.

Western states accuse dictator Basha Al-Assad

of attacking rebel strongholds with poisonous gas.

Assad and his allies dismiss the allegations

as propaganda by the opponents.

But independent experts, the WHO or Doctors Without Borders,

confirm the suspicions.

Biological and chemical weapons,

for the great powers of the 20th century,

they are not the most important means of mass destruction.

The search for the most effective of all weapons

brings about unthinkable dimensions of destruction.

The atomic bomb.

16th of July, 1945, a desert in New Mexico.

The Americans want to test the prototype of a new bomb.

Code name of the experiment, Trinity.

(dramatic music)

(explosion booms)

The first nuclear bomb in history.

It's the dawn of a new era.

(dramatic music)

Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Top researchers have worked relentlessly on the bomb,

so the US would have it before Germany.

The basic principle, physics.

(dramatic music)

(speaks foreign language)

Uranium 235, for example, has quite a large nucleus

containing 235 of these small atoms,

with another part of the nucleus on neutrons.

If you shoot a neutron at this nucleus, it causes a fission,

the nucleus splits into two smaller nuclei.

This releases energy, not a whole lot,

but enough to be measured, setting free three neutrons.

If these three neutrons hit another uranium nucleus,

they will produce the same effect again.

This can set off a chain reaction.

And if a critical mass is achieved,

that means when there are enough uranium nuclei

packed together, this chain reaction self-perpetuates.

That alone is already perilous.

But if I were to increase the mass,

I can achieve what is called a supercritical mass.

And then the chain reaction not only sustains itself,

it increases exponentially,

releasing an incredible amount of energy.

The first nuclear bomb

uses plutonium to achieve this.

It is surrounded by a normal explosive.

Once the explosive is ignited, the plutonium is compressed.

This produces a fission reaction.

The bomb has explosive capabilities equivalent

to 20,000 tons of conventional explosives.

The US military has identified various targets

for a nuclear attack in Germany.

But in May 1945, the war in Europe comes to an end.

The Germans are spared the atomic bomb.

In the Pacific however, the fighting continues.

The Japanese army has basically been defeated,

but is unwilling to surrender.

(speaks foreign language)

In World War Two, the Japanese are convinced

that surrendering is dishonorable.

They think they owe it to their emperor

to fight until the bitter end,

and to sacrifice their lives if necessary.

Of course, this makes it really, really hard

to bring a state like Japan to its knees.

US President Truman conditions the dropping

of nuclear bombs on Japan.

(dramatic music)

Unlike in the Trinity test, the bomb Little Boy

carries an uranium bullet.

In order to reach the supercritical mass of uranium,

the bullet contains an additional uranium cylinder.

(dramatic music)

Little Boy weighs just 64 kilograms,

but has the explosive power of 15,000 tons of TNT.

(dramatic music)

6th of August, 1945.

An American B-29 bomber leaves the Pacific island of Tinian.

At 8:15 a.m., Little Boy annihilates Hiroshima.

(explosion booms)

Three days later, the plutonium bomb

Fat Man explodes over Nagasaki.

(explosion booms)

(ominous music)

The heat and blast waves of the bombs are devastating.

Then there's the radiation.

More than 160,000 people die instantly.

(ominous music)

The Japanese minister of foreign affairs

signs the surrender documents on the 2nd of September, 1945.

With the atomic bomb, the US emerges

as the victor of World War Two on two fronts.

The Americans had to have a knockout.

They had to finish the war with something

really big and quite spectacular.

The Japanese know they've lost, but the Americans

don't realize they've won until those bombs go off.

And then they know they've won the war.

(crowd cheering)

All that is left from Hiroshima

and Nagasaki are contaminated ruins.

In the months and years following the attacks,

tens of thousands die from longterm

consequences of the attack, with acute radiation syndrome

being the most common cause of death.

(speaks foreign language)

Nuclear radiation affects cell proliferation.

You start bleeding from the nose, from the oral mucosa.

It affects the bowel tissue, the entire

gastro-intestinal tract.

The radiation is most harmful to the blood itself.

The number of red blood cells drops,

and so does the number of platelets.

In the end, the entire bone marrow basically dissolves,

or can no longer regenerate.

And without the bone marrow,

our immune system fails completely.

(speaks foreign language)

Doctors are helpless.

(speaks foreign language)

You can try and stabilize the blood count.

You can transplant bone marrow.

But the overall symptoms and progression

depend on how high the original radiation exposure was.

And how long you were exposed to it.

For decades, more people developed cancer

in Hiroshima and Nagasaki than in the rest of the country.

Nuclear weapons have only been used once.

But the horrors they've caused

leave their mark on an entire era.

The US military conducts another nuclear test

with a bomb baker on the 25th of July, 1946.

Back then, only few people know that the nuclear

arms race is already in full swing.

(explosion booms)

The Soviet Union is the first to follow suit.

On the 29th of August, 1949, the first Communist

atomic bomb is successfully tested.

A third nuclear world war seems to be a real danger.

In the East and West, even children prepare

for the worst case scenario.

♪ He did what we all must learn to do ♪

♪ You ♪

♪ And you ♪

♪ And you ♪

♪ And you ♪

(firecracker pops) ♪ Duck ♪

♪ And cover ♪

I remember being a child and having being shown

videos at school of what to do in the case

of an atomic bomb, and therefore we had this fear

we didn't really understand it, but we were terrified of it.

Protests form.

Like here in New York in 1960.

Nuclear opponents from all corners of the Western world

demand the prohibition of all nuclear weapons.

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People don't think, it's them over there fighting the war.

It can actually destroy everybody.

It can destroy civilization.

It's almost become this ultimate fear factor.

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The demonstrations remain fruitless.

People became alarmed and they started

to think about disarmament.

They started to think about peace.

They started to think about ways

they could avoid the risk of war.

The problem was that the people who were thinking

about this the most clearly were, of course,

the military and the politicians,

and they worked out that the best way to stop war

was to be so powerful that nobody would dare to start one.

The superpowers continue to arm themselves.

They develop hydrogen bombs, also known as H-bombs,

that are a thousand times more powerful

than the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Mankind is now able to eradicate itself completely.

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The principle of the new superbomb.

Two hydrogen isotopes combine and form one single new atom.

This process, releasing vast amounts of energy,

is called a fusion.

Now, fusion is only possible at extreme temperatures.

Generated by the detonation of a normal nuclear bomb,

this fission causes the fusion of the hydrogen cylinder,

a weapon whose force parallels that of the sun.

(explosion booms)

In the 1980s, the Soviet Union and the USA

have an arsenal of more than 70,000 nuclear weapons.

US President Ronald Reagan justifies the enormous costs.

That budget is much more than a long list of numbers.

For behind all the numbers lies America's ability

to prevent the greatest of human tragedies and preserve

our free way of life in a sometimes dangerous world.

The enemies could annihilate each other

several times over with the nuclear weapons they possess.

But eventually, the superpowers come round.

Two rational actors realize that they have nothing to gain

by exchanging nuclear weapons.

At the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory

in California, the nuclear tests of the past

can be seen to this very day.

Every test conducted by the US was filmed.

And the reels were stored as top secret records.

Nuclear physicist Greg Spriggs and field technician

Jim Moye want to change this.

Declassifying the unique film material

is one part of their job.

All of the films that we have declassified

will be posted on our Livermore YouTube site,

so that people can see the films.

And can see what we're seeing.

The explosions were documented,

and in surprising detail, considering the technical

capabilities of film analysis of the time.

Jim Moye has already digitized more than 4,000 reels

from over 210 nuclear tests.

And they recorded

a lot, I don't know they could even have foreseen

how this would be used in the future.

Once the images are digitized,

Greg Spriggs' work begins.

Information on the recordings like from the distance

between the camera and the detonation center,

or the size of the bomb provide a great deal of insight

into the state of research back then.

(ominous music)

The only two times nuclear bombs were used against people

date back more than 70 years.

But the ensuing ethical discussion

is still relevant to this very day.

Yeah, they killed a lot of people there,

but someone could argue that it saved a lot of lives,

because it ended the war sooner.

'Cause who knows how long the Japanese would have fought

without having a weapon like this aimed against them.

Greg Spriggs does more

than just documenting history.

He is convinced that we can only improve

nuclear bombs by learning more about their effects.

(eerie music)

We need to be able to tell the Department of Defense

this is what's gonna happen if you drop this size

weapon on this particular target.

And if somebody happens to bomb us,

we're gonna understand what the effect is.

And if we have to retaliate against them,

they should know that we're probably gonna destroy them.

Peace through deterrents.

To this day, the US is a fierce advocate of this strategy.

In 2017, they maintain an arsenal of 6,800 atomic warheads.

It has been working, until now.

Now, they've fallen into the hands

of irrational actors who have different agendas.

And it does pose a problem.

There is no case study we can make to see how that works.

What we know about heavily armed rogue states in the past

is that they end up starting wars.

And we have to hope that these ones don't.

A balancing act with dangerous consequences.

(crowd cheering)

(ominous music)

Almost 15,000 nuclear weapons in nine countries

are supposed to make our planet a safe place.

(ominous music)

We can only hope that reason will prevail.

(ominous music)

But in the meantime, new weapons exist

that could also hit entire nations,

with fatal repercussions for millions of people.

Digitization has reached nearly every sphere of life.

Access is digitally secured.

This also applies to the weapons industry.

(ominous music)

The control over centrifuges used

to enrich uranium is just one example.

American and or Israeli experts launch an attack

on Iranian nuclear facilities in 2009.

With the help of a digital weapon,

the computer virus Stuxnet,

brings the centrifuges to a still stand.

The Iranian nuclear program is sabotaged.

(ominous music)

This is the kind of warfare that's been

practiced since the dawn of time.

Intelligence, dominance equals blackout,

equals ignorance, equals defeat.

(ominous music)

State secrets can also

fall victim to digital attacks.

(ominous music)

Countries are rearming themselves again.

But this time not with tanks and rifles.

Cybersecurity is becoming increasingly crucial.

Cyber warfare can have far-reaching consequences.

Not only in the digital world,

but also in the world in which we live.

(dramatic music)