time once again for community form and we're very lucky to have with us live in the studio this morning denise ohio denise ohio is a washington based writer producer director and filmmaker she is the author of several books including the finer grained end of empire a novel the five and the five essential steps in digital video her films include amazing world family business and her latest film which start out tell us what was your motivation in producing your film verona the story of the ever massacre several years ago about fifteen or sixteen years ago i was asked to a meeting with people who wanted to create a fiction feature about this particular historical event and i realized in the middle of that meeting that even the middle about five minutes and that this movie was never going to get made but i saw a guy sitting at the opposite end of this table and we locked eyes and i realized this was a local historian who had some things to say and he began to tell this story and as i said i realize this movie was never going to get made but i wanted to hear more about what had happened on that day eighteen and i realized i wanted to know more because i wanted to know how did people get to this point where shooting at each other was somehow the solution to a whole series of problems i wanted to know why they made the decisions they made who they were and what happened to them before and after this event and an obsession was born so i followed that and i'm still following still following that story up until today well i had the i was fortunate to be able to actually watch your film yesterday it is clearly a labor of love it's a it's a wonderful film that i'm thinking would be great to integrate into our school systems if nothing else so maybe prior to talking about the events of sunday november fifteenth one thousand sixteen you could set us up with a bit of however it came to be and  and more sure i spend an hour and a half in this documentary discussing those very issues and i start with the founding of everett which is an eight hundred ninety eight two and basically as my friend de bellegarde local historian has said ever it was a speculative development on an uninhabited peninsula essentially the railroad wanted to come in and had and terminate somewhere in puget sound and a bunch of guys back east colluding with a fellow named henry hewett from tacoma thought maybe they could convince james j hill of the great northern railroad to terminate his railroad if this place that didn't even exist and this is we're all familiar with the dot com bubble this was essentially the equivalent but out there wherever it now is it's completely speculation and people thought they were going to be able to buy pieces of land and turn around and sell them and they would get very rich and norm clark also another historian described them as screaming hysterical people that they thought they were going to get rich overnight so everett started in in a fever of gambling interestingly enough after a series of economic disasters that affected the entire country at the silver panic of one thousand nine hundred six we've got another wall street panic in one thousand nine hundred seventy by a by the turn of the century ever it had become an established city and the people had come out to live and work in this place because there were jobs and a lot of those jobs  in the shingle mills western red cedar shingles were a great product to put on your roof you want to build a house you better put a roof on it there's still a great product for roofs so people went to work in the shingle mills and if you went to work in shingle mills particularly if you're a shingle sawyer you better have a lot of courage stand up shingle saws have two blades on them that are three feet across they spin very fast and if you trip if you fall you will lose a hand or an arm or your life they're very dangerous they work they create a great product but it takes very courageous people to operate those saws i happen to know that because my friend bill maher can tell  it's sitting on a trailer and it was amazing they're terrifying of course bill being the guy has asked me if i wanted to cut some shingles and normally i like that kind of thing and i just i could not do it is too terrifying this gives you an idea of the kind of people who formed the shingle weavers union which started in about the first one started in about one nine hundred to one thousand nine hundred three the shingle we re union weavers union was for everybody who worked in a shingle mill that was everything from the guy who shoveled wood into the into the incinerator to keep the boilers going to the people who packed the shingles to the shingle everybody in a shingle mill and this was a very militant these were very militant unions you could find them all over the pacific northwest and in everett particularly these unions were very powerful and very very militant because ever it was the world capital of western red cedar shingles so we get up to nine hundred fourteen thousand nine hundred fourteen in them in the spring and went on strike recession going on and wartime inflation and the strike immediately turned violent and so there was fistfights and clubbing and the usual things that happened with these kinds of conflicts between unions and management perfectly reasonable and i think pretty much all anybody else would think this was pretty reasonable and by one thousand nine hundred eighteen the united states was saying an economic boom because of world war one and the prices of shingles started to go up and all over the pacific northwest the wages of the people in the shingle mills started to go up except in everett so the shingle weavers went on strike again on may first because they said to the miller's we had a deal and again seems very reasonable to me this shingle mill owners however just said basically well yanno they decided they were going to live up to that handshake barg again the strike rapidly became violent there was pushing and shoving and clubbing and at one point miller brought out his strike breakers and beat the living hell out of a bunch of shingle weavers who were walking a picket line and the city police stood and watched while this happened when the shingle wavers decided to get their own back along with just people in the town the police suddenly became involved the shot was fired one of the strikers was shot in the leg and then the shingle weavers knew that the that the forces of law enforcement were against them so this is the set up just basically for the environment this is this is july when this is all happening and we see and that's we still have four months to go before we actually get to the shootout on the everett city dock which involves a different set of people so talk a little bit about one of the people featured prominently in your film sheriff don macrae well don mcrae is an interesting guy and one of the reasons i focus on the shingle we version is secretary he was very active he considered himself a very proud trade union weaver and it became pretty clear he had ambitions beyond just working in the mills and being a member of the union hundred twelve he ran for office as the sheriff of snohomish county as a progressive republican and with the help of labor was elected he immediately began  remodelling the county jail his reputation for physical courage his reputation for treating people decently was widely known he was highly respected and when he ran for reelection in one nine hundred fourteen only was he reelected with the help of labor again but as they said he was considered the best sheriff insta homesh county history when he was running for reelection so did saddam mcrae was a union man and proudly so weavers went on strike in one nine hundred sixty he presented them with a check for twenty five dollars for their strike fund that's just a bit less than a thousand dollars in today's money that was real money because he wanted to help so that was that's sort of where we are with john mccrea a man who normally you would think of was rather admirable as a law enforcement officer say that the i w w came to everett in support of the shingle waivers union and while individual members of the certainly did the i w w as an organization did not the organization the wobblies were founded in one nine hundred five partially as a response to the american federation of labor which was a trade union organization and the shingle weavers had affiliated with the a f l trade unions were a little different than an industrial union which is the i w w preached industrial unionism a trade union basically represented everybody with the same trade so in a shingle mill for example all the shingle sawyer is would belong to a shingle sawyer's union the shingle packers who are actually the shingle weavers that's what would that was their nickname all of the packers would have all belonged to a shingle packers union as we know that didn't work that way they were a little more towards this industrial union idea that everybody who worked in that industry was represented by one union so if a shingle mill if the workers decided to go on strike everybody in that mill would walk out not just the shingle sawyer the shingle packers etc and the i w w had a series of split second internal dissension and things like th but they also did some things publicly which is just remarkable considering that not only were they an industrial union and they were revolutionary union they represented not just skilled laborers  laborers people who were carpenters or single starters people who were highly skilled highly trained they wanted to represent everybody and that meant people who sweep up people who do the hardest dirtiest work for the least wages people who have the least power and the i w w was just outspoken in their support because they said the work still has to be done and these are workers so we'll all will represent everyone and that an injury to one was an injury to all and that we should all join the one big union so the industrial workers of the world and the a f l did not see eye to eye and the i w w was not going to support a policy certainly or a f l unions the individual members certainly would and dead and in everett we had dual union people people who had they carried and i do card and they carried a shingle weavers union card up on the picket lines to support the weavers strike so in about july when there was all of this other ruckus going on between the shingle weavers law enforcement strikebreakers pinkerton guards the usual groups of people a man by the name of james rowan arrived in everett second jesus jimmy which was it was his nickname which i love had  been sent on a speaking tour by the general executive board in chicago basically they said we want you to go to all these places speak on street corners try to get new members and we'll pay you and when you come back we'll give you some money and this was his second jesus jimmy was sent out on his speaking tour and he went up to everett he had no idea there was a strike going on when he stood on the corner when mark which was the traditional free speaking corner in everett to talk about the one big union and second g s jimmy was basically he was told by don macrae look we have some stuff going on in town here we got the strike on and maybe if you could go and come back after the strike is over you can say whatever you want for as long as you want nobody's going to care when seconds he's jimmy wasn't called second jesus jimmy because he was a mild mannered fella so james rowland saw an opportunity reported back to the i w w and join them so again we've got a lot of set up here so by that one thing to remember about this is that the i w w had in the recent past fought a series of what was called free employment agency basically if you were worker you paid the agency a certain amount of money a dollar they would get you a job they would send you out to that job and often you'd get out to the job you work for a week they'd fire you need have to go back into town pay employment agency a dollar and it was just it was a scam and the worker said this is a scam it's wrong we should be it we should be bang for these jobs and the i w w led the charge to let people know that this was going on and it was wrong and something we should put a stop to it so they began speaking on the street corners for example in spokane i believe in one nine hundred ten and the spokane police arrested them and the you said i have every right in the world to stand on street corners speak my mind which is absolutely correct so they made a call for wobblies from all over the country to come and stand on the street corner and speak their minds and somebody would get up a soapbox fellow workers they'd be dragged away in arrested they would fill the jails and clog the courts and this of course cost these jurisdictions money and they realised we can't afford this twelve got them a lot of publicity and support because i i would dare you to find anyone in the united states who would say oh no that's ok for the cops to throw you in jail because they don't like your opinions i mean even my eighty three year old mother got angry when she heard about that we don't do that here we're not supposed to it happens but we do have these principles and we do have these you know these things are supposed to be something that can't be denied us and the i w w in fact prove that that even the least of us those of us with the least money the least power the least good grooming he does that or that stuff mattered you have the right to speak your mind however and again you hear people say that the i w w was all about free speech the i w w was an industrial union they were a revolutionary union they were all about organizing workers free speech was a means to an end and while they got a ton of publicity and support for their free speech fights rightfully so they stopped doing them because they were never able to capitalize on those victories on these free speech fights that they would win  and keep their new members remaining members so by nine hundred twelve he said we're not going to do the free speech fights anymore because it's a waste of our energy we really want to organize workers into the one big union and move forward say here on the free speech corner you don't want more we don't want to hear what you have to say and a free speech fight would get them attention and support so the free speech fight was on in ever so somewhere prior to november fifth there was an event called that happened and are called beverly park can you talk about that the fall early fall was filled with confrontations arrests people getting thrown out of town often they were just acts scored to the interval tracks and told you no get out of town and they would walk back from to seattle twenty five thirty miles or they were stopped from getting into the county at all because the who had been made the police power in town had to actually patrol the entire county and in order to do that deputized about four hundred citizen deputies to assist that's something a sheriff can do a police chief can't which is one of the reasons he was given police power in the city and the everett city police weren't in charge anymore these citizen deputies were made up of just again regular people people like me and you and they were not averse to using the clubs that had been made for them in the in the lumber mills they were not averse to punching somebody or they were not averse to using the power that they'd been given to repress not just free speech freedom of association and just the freedom to be left alone beverly park is very is very upsetting to me in many ways and probably primarily because this was something they plan park his work as you know road is in everett now it's it's it was basically just the middle of nowhere in the middle of this populated area and still kind of is it's kind of dark out there for the night and they were taken to the in urban tracks and they were forced to run a gauntlet so the wobblies one at a time were sent through two lines of citizen deputies who were armed with clubs wasn't just citizen deputies there were some regular deputies there's well they were forced to run between these two rows of men and were beaten as they ran through these lines again as i say this was planned this was a sort of situation where my friend margaret riddle says it is surprising no one was killed and we're talking about the kind of mindset and planning that things lynching is somehow an acceptable thing to do the men sent through the gauntlet were there were some of the stories are really just terrible and the next morning when witnesses went out to this site there was there were pools of blood there were broken teeth there were pieces of clothing that men trying to get away from the beating were would have their clothing torn from their bodies as they were trying to get away and reverend oscar miguel a clergyman in everett contacted the office in seattle and said we have to do something about this because even many people in everett at this point were shocked stunned and angry at the police repression that was going on and they wanted to protest these actions and reverend miguel talked to herbert mahler of the seattle and said why don't corner and agreed to this and they set a date and a time and they were going to meet at the corner of hewitt and wetmore in the afternoon of november fifth so beverly park was really it's interesting because later there was a trial and the county prosecutor said  beverly park was had nothing to do with what happened in november fifth and the i w w in the courtroom laugh day they arrived at about two o'clock in the afternoon where they were met with sheriff done by sheriff mcrae with about one hundred forty citizen deputies you will hear people say there were hundreds of deputies on the dock there were one hundred forty was stipulated in the trial and of those deputies about half of them were carrying guns the men on the verona were also armed you will again hear people tell you they weren't they most certainly were the industrial workers the paper identify between eighteen and twenty five men carrying guns and turn state's evidence said there were about twenty nine men carrying guns again and i would say this doesn't strike me as something unusual yeah ten proximately ten percent of the people aboard that ship carrying guns would sound about right maybe even a little low but because of the romanticism of this event everybody on the verona can't be you know they've all got to be clean shaven and complete innocent lambs instead of the people that they are the verona pulled up the sheriff raised his right hand remembered two hundred fifty guys and as they're singing on their way up to everett when the sheriff steps up steps out they're hooting they're hollering they're making all kinds of noise sheriff raises right hand and says we can't and there's a moment of silence don mcrae turned back to talk to his deputies and then there was a shot possibly two and a volley of shots don mcrae his back to the ship was hit in his lower left leg if not the first man shot one of the first men shot he spun around raised his gun and started firing back and so did his deputies at the end of the shooting we don't know how long it lasted estimates were anywhere from three and a half minutes to ten minutes hundreds of shots were fired at the end of it five men were dead dozens were wounded and about six men who had fallen and into the water from the ship had disappeared nobody knew what happened to them when the shots started coming the men on the ship ran from the port side to the starboard side of the ship the ship tilted men fell onto the dock they were trapped beneath one another they couldn't get away other men fell into the that water only one man made it back to the ship on the dock of course the shooting started the deputies who did not have their guns out they were not ambushing there was not a machine gun they turned and ran for the cover of the warehouses it was insane and panicked and there was bloodshed and cursing and it would have been a nightmare imagine being that man on the forward deck of the verona you're just trying to get off the ship you turned and run you trip over somebody who's already fallen and somebody falls on top of you and somebody else falls on top you and somebody else falls on top of him and he's bleeding because he's been hit in the leg or the back or the neck where the head and well unfortunately we are right a time we're talking with denise ohio she is producer and director of a new film verona the story of the ever massacre and your failed you did multiple showings last week  so with luck we'll get in some festivals love to get into seth and then we may be able to parlay that into a sale see if we can get the ethical release or broadcast well that at a time nuke watch he is a regular contributor to counterpunch and truthout and coeditor of the revised edition of nuclear heartland a guide to the four hundred fifty land based missiles of on the downside of nuclear power nuclear weapons and radiation accidents primarily republished a quarterly newsletter on these issues and report on the health hazards of radiation nuclear weapons and nuclear reactor accidents and alternatives to these dangers and when did you get both involve a new question involved in nuclear issues oh nine hundred seventy  nine was a big year for me and for nuclear issues three mile island the parcel meltdown and pennsylvania happened the same year that the soviet union the former soviet union invaded afghanistan and in response then president jimmy carter reinstated draft registration those three things really lit a fire under the little peace group we had it out minnesota college i was attending and  started resisting nuclear weapons then so you have just recently you're on tour you spoke last night at the ground zero center for nonviolent action and will give details going to be speaking this coming monday at the university on the university of washington campus but you were out and about basically bringing to light the great book that you had published back in eighty eight originally that's right and in the revised edition of nuclear heartland which at the time you've done an updated it's just down to i guess four hundred fifty nuclear missile silos in the u s but at the time it was very groundbreaking with the maps and  basically brain to people this horrifying picture of the silos and and i just posted last night to friends on social media the map of montana with just how many missiles are currently on montana it's phenomenal one hundred fifty are still in silos alerts that as in the same for the colorado nebraska wyoming field which covers a corner of those three states where they meet and then another one hundred fifty are in north dakota field almost encircling the city of mine and so the four hundred fifty all together still so so talk about what you see as the problems and issues with  our current u s nuclear missile program well these weapons are cold war relics and there are these stabilizing in that they they've over the years gotten more accurate then they they need to be for retaliation accuracy in nuclear weapons is only necessary if you intend to hit the opponent's weapons or bases or command centers before anything's happened otherwise the effects of nuclear weapons that and they sins are so enormous and overwhelming that you don't need any accuracy of any kind if you're retaliating or if you only need to threaten to do that to prevent an attack on us in the first place accuracy is completely unnecessary so these weapons destabilize and put the opponent on a hair trigger sort of launch on warning position just as our weapons are and just raise the risk of accidents this is been true for a long time and italy when one thousand of these minuteman missiles were deployed across six states or six missile fields the seven states in the book first came out the public was basically unaware of the size of the nuclear arsenal and how near it is to break their homes and schools and communities that was the shocking thing about the publication in one thousand nine hundred eight of these  because they really never been made public before they were going to county emergency management response teams and whatnot and the air force itself into the russians you can see all these things on satellites but the u s public was virtually unaware of the size of this nuclear arsenal so there's been some progress since the publication in eighty eight half of those weapons are now gone the book produced a lot of protest in the missile fields hundreds of people walked right up to these places many went inside to protest and fight against the little protection afforded nuclear weapons you know this country pretends nuclear weapons are lawful to use in warfare a lot of nuclear weapon states play this same charade however we know that the commission of massacres is not lawful in warfare or any time and that's all that nuclear weapons can do so our argument is that they're not useful in warfare they're destabilizing short of warfare and they're such a colossal waste of money in view of the overwhelming size and power of our conventional military that they can be done away with without affecting the security or the military defensiveness of the united states and this isn't just peace activists and religious leaders saying these things no most recently these  land based nuclear missiles which can travel six thousand miles have been condemned by high level military officials from all over the spectrum of political and military expertise referring specifically to general james cartwright former vice chairman of the joint chiefs of staff so the second highest military official in the country he was the chair of a major commission  concluded that there's no sensible argument this is the commission's language that's been put forward for using nuclear weapons to solve any of the major twenty first century problems we face in fact nuclear weapons have on balance i gridley become more a part of the problem than in the solution and quote the commission went on to suggest that eliminating the land based nuclear weapons these four hundred fifty minute and three missiles would save one hundred billion dollars and would be according to general cartwright the best option interestingly then senator chuck hagel was on this commission and signed off on this report  he later was nominated as secretary of defense and when he went before the senate confirmation committee hearing he came up against these ten senators in the missile silo fields who do everything they can bat backflips and everything else to protect these archaic weapons who questioned him severely about signing on to this report and he stuck to his position he said we can get rid of the land based missiles and more recently former secretary of defense william perry who was secretary from one nine hundred ninety four to ninety seven under bill clinton he's been even more adamant about getting rid of these particular weapons he says december third last year i c b m s are necessary or they're not needed and he went on to warn that there is simply too easy to launch on bad information and this is what we've been warning of for decades that there are accident prone and the accidents that they have caused are simply too dangerous to allow to continue and this is william perry just recently september thirtieth this year in in a major up in the new york times he says these missiles are some of the most dangerous weapons in the world the u s can safely phase oh it land base i c b m force and he quotes several senators and house members who write to the president urging the president to back away from his plans through not only retain these missiles but replace them with a brand new followon i c b m which would cost as cartwright said about one hundred hundred billion dollars is that part of the new trillion dollar upgrade that president obama is currently proposing yes that's right this one hundred of this trillion dollar project that obama has proposed of course was explained as a quid pro quo to get the senate to approve this new start treaty with russia it's a terrible program it would bankrupt the country a trillion dollars is something of course the united states can't afford and  replace plutonium pit production nuclear warheads that is in los alamos new mexico their uranium jacket or the secondary that goes around hydrogen weapons are supposedly going to be produced at the y twelve ridge tennessee and the third facility in kansas city called the kansas city plant which makes the non nuclear components of nuclear weapons that plant has already been completely replaced and is up and  running so this plan is going forward to rebuild the infrastructure and produce up to eighty new nuclear warheads a year and this is preposterous when the rest of the world is clamoring for nuclear disarmament and none of the nuclear weapon states can any longer afford the expense of maintaining and dealing with the waste that these weapons produce well as you pointed out you know we have new so many times come so close to having you know serious accidents with these different weapons can you talk a little bit more about that specifically with the missiles and missile silos yeah in the new book we added three chapters and one is deal one deals specifically with scandals and accidents that have plagued the missile silo system in the last twenty seven years william perry spies september thirtieth mentioned one incident that he was personally involved in he's on a book tour promoting his book my journey at the nuclear brink where he talks about how dangerous these weapons are even in their modern upgraded and sophisticated state he says i was awakened in the middle of the night and told that some defense department computers were showing two hundred i c b m s on the way from the soviet union for one horrifying moment i thought it was the end of civilization the general on the phone explained that it was a false alarm he was calling to see if i could help him determine what had gone wrong with the computer this happens more frequently than people are aware  because oftentimes the accidents are covered up for months if not years before some stealthy reporter can dig it out with the nuclear missiles and heads situations where  the launch control officers down in their underground launch control centers are given messages from the missiles themselves that they're undergoing their own launch sequence and several times air force security people have had to send heavy armored cars out to the silo and park them on the lead in the event that the the lid flies away to launch the missile the truck will then fall into the silo and prevent the rocket from coming a troubleshooting team was sent out to a missile in montana which was indicating some problem and the team itself that went to troubleshoot cause an additional problem this accident was covered up for months on earth by c b s news in january of this year in the scandal just gets deeper and deeper this thing was being dealt with may have twenty fifteen as i said at the very same time that a high level pentagon delegation was out at this  air force base investigating a drug distribution just scandal among the missileers as they call themselves the people who work in the launch control centers ready to send these things off on the order of the president you know you can imagine your twelve hour shift three days at a time underground with nothing to do twenty seven years after the end of the cold war this is probably the most tedious the most boring job in the air force and yet  seven thousand six hundred missileers are still out there on duty or that's the total excell missile system force they're not all missile launch officers but with this sort of tedium and relentless  boredom you can imagine the need for amphetamines that's what happened these some of these officers were selling amphetamine in ecstasy to one another in the investigation by the air force an in house investigation that has now expanded to nineteen members of the missile force selling drugs to one another again an indication of the dangerousness that we've established we set ourselves up for a terrible accident and it's not just a joking matter although i do like to call it the nuclear war on drugs well it's a combination of incredible boredom and tedium combined with the stress and the underlying knowledge that you know when you do press the button one of these days it's not going to be a drill and you're basically going to be you know nial aiding a large portion of the people on this planet yet there does seem to be a growing awareness of the overwhelming explosive and destructive force of nuclear weapons something that has been ignored ever since the end of the cold war that's another reason why we decided to do a second edition of the book this is the first time we've gone back and re address this issue because after the cold war came to an end i think a lot of the american people got the mistaken impression that these weapons went away half of them did eventually go to retirement the missiles themselves are sometimes re used by the space program warheads sent back to pentax texas where they're kept in bunkers unless they're rehabilitated many of which have now gone back into use after being reconditioned and put on the trident missile system the submarine base ballistic missile system but they're still there and that's that's why the international campaign has been generated with offices almost in every european capital now the international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons i can dot au argy is just a great relatively new organization of mostly young people pushing for a treaty ban at the united nations that would forbid manufacture sale and possession of nuclear weapons and so i encourage people to check out their website i can dot org has a lot of really great background information also new quite his website has these maps available so you can see where they are in your neck of the woods that's new kwacha info dot org and if you if you would like this hear more about it i as you said mike will be speaking on the subject of the new book monday night at the yes that's going to be happening monday night at the university of washington at the hub at room two thirty eight from five thirty to six thirty pm so for those you that want to check that out so one thing i know you touched on this but in terms of the accidents that we have found out about like for instance the one that where they basically drove the vehicle on top of the silo in hopes that should the missile launch for real that it would just slam i guess slam into the the vehicle and explode there and prevent its it going much further that whole incident was just from a reporter digging up info years after the fact and in fact all the emergency personnel and things like that that you would think would be notified if there was an incident like this hadn't been at the time is that true yeah that's right but interesting y the reporter for the casper wyoming star who dug this up reported getting a lot of anonymous calls after the paper published a report telling her oh this happens all the time obviously these things are a chronic problem it is the computer generated misinformation about these weapons is a regular incidence a regular habit of these weapons they're very complex they're connected underground by cables that are subject to corrosion and cause a lot of problems over the years these cables have been dug up and replaced over and over again in north dakota field in particular there used to be two sets of one hundred fifty missiles one in the east one in the western part of north dakota when the base realignment and closure commission was tasked with the choice of did deciding which of those two missile fields would be retired they chose the grand forks missile field because they said it was subject to flooding more frequently than the mine not field of course the mine outfield was flooded severely in two thousand and eleven when the saurus river raised over its banks with a five hundred year flood that was never supposed to happen the city of my not twelve thousand people was evacuated and we put a photograph of the  flooded mud hole missile on the cover the book just to show people how dangerous these potential floods really are and this was in the field that was supposedly drier than the field that was retired so these accidents  that's something that is hardly ever known to reported in the press the one newscaster that really dug into this was rachel maddow so i recommend people check out her report on missiles  about eighteen minute long investigation how close these fracking drill heads are to alert status thermonuclear weapons on in silos underground right across in some cases a set of railroad tracks from one another and you know this goes in the what could go wrong file it's more hair raising then you can imagine because fracking is a real inexact science it causes a lot of problems as you know earthquakes  some of the consequences of this for i can campaign all over the country there hasn't been an earthquake in north dakota happily but there is a lot of movement of water underground that's caused and exacerbated by these explosions and by the smashing of these high pressure chemicals into the ground and that's of a great report that rachel maddow did on her show about this risk that's so it isn't unheard of for for quakes to be occurring in regions where they are doing fracking and the way we got about five minutes left so i want to go back to you talked about that there's ten key representatives that appear to be making sure that the money flows into their region that's why they appear primarily supportive of these land based nuclear missiles so what can people do to address that and the obviously the  the military industrial contractors that are reaping billions out of this whole deal you know that's a good point they call themselves these ten senators they i c b m coalition we like to call them the doomsday club they are actually the single group that's now foiling these voices of reason like general cartwright secretary perry secretary hagel who are calling for the elimination of the missiles they as you point  out senators from wyoming montana north dakota utah and louisiana like them hundreds of millions of dollars that come into their state they like the campaign contributions that are coming from lockheed martin grumman and the other missile site or missile contractors the senators the doomsday lobby foiled a two thousand and twelve russian proposal to cut another four hundred warheads from the arsenal this is a straight up offer from the russians max baucus then from montana complained that the cut would have meant closing an entire missile base and he said probably mine meaning the one near melhem strum montana as if that's his air force base so they foiled that very reasonable effort by the russians to cut another four hundred warheads simply because of the jobs the votes in the campaign contributions that come into their coffers and this is a tiny group of us senators they can be foiled by the majority of the senate they need to be undone by these rational arguments that point out the danger and redundancy of the missile system bill hard tongue for the center for responsive politics he said these ten people got at least five hundred thirteen thousand dollars in the previous election cycle from g e northrop coming boeing boeing and united technologies so it's just a matter of political corruption that keeps these weapons alive there is a  campaign to address these particular senators and the rest of our elected representatives you can see our petition to congress to eliminate this weapon system on our website nick watch in full and please sign on to that petition and urge your especially fiscally conservative representatives to end this boondoggle and bring a halt to plans to replace the missiles and rebuild the nuclear weapons complex those ten senators sit on any key committees that further allow them to keep the missile fun going that's a great question i'm not sure of their committee status right now i know some of them and louisiana has the barksdale air force base which is the u s operations headquarters for war in the middle east so when one of your trident subs gets reconditioned for a conventional warfare and its nuclear weapons are extensions with conventional ones and when there's talk of taking and putting conventional warheads on these i c b m s barksdale comes into play because some of these giant weapons might then be used in so called conventional warfare in the middle east who are listening would like to hear more john is going to be speaking this coming monday at the university of washington campus at the hub room two thirty eight from five thirty to six th