The Man Who Saved the World — Part 2: 85 Seconds to Midnight

The Old Man and the Longest Race - Part 1: The potato farming, gumboot wearing, ultradistance runner.

SHOW NOTES - CLIFF YOUNG EPISODE 1 The Underdog In April 1983, a 61-year-old potato farmer from Beech Forest lined up alongside elite ultramarathoners for the inaugural Westfield Sydney to Melbourne ultramarathon—864 kilometres across Australia. Nobody took him seriously. Except the runners themselves. This is the story of how an old bloke in gumboots almost didn't make it through the first night, nearly hit by a semi-trailer and forced to rest on baked beans, setting up one of sport's greatest comebacks. PEOPLE * Cliff Young – 61-year-old potato farmer, Beech Forest, Victoria * Siggy Bauer – 1000-mile record holder * Robert Bruner – 200km Sri Chinmoy Festival champion * George Perdon – Australian ultradistance runner, Fremantle to Sydney record * Tony Rafferty – Irish expat, rival ultramarathoner * John Hughes – New Zealand runner, cocky frontrunner * John Toleman – Running coach, race organiser * Martin Noonan – Westfield marketing executive * Wally Zunneberg – Cliff's trainer and support crew * Mary Young – Cliff's mother TOPICS * The 1983 Westfield Sydney to Melbourne ultramarathon * Cliff's failed 1000-mile run attempt (November 1982) * The water tank incident (January 1983) * Ultramarathon training and preparation * Support crews and logistics * The psychology of the underdog * Running on the Hume Highway in 1983 TIMESTAMPS (approximate) * 0:00 – Opening: Westfield Shopping Centre, April 26, 1983 * 3:45 – The field: Siggy Bauer, Robert Bruner, George Perdon, Tony Rafferty * 7:20 – Cliff Young introduced * 10:15 – How the race came to be: Toleman, Perdon, Rafferty rivalry * 15:30 – Martin Noonan's vision * 18:00 – The test run: Noonan and Cliff * 22:15 – The gumboots press conference * 26:00 – The 1000-mile run (November 1982) * 30:15 – The water tank disaster (January 1983) * 34:00 – Race day begins * 36:45 – The mad dash: Hughes, the cracking pace * 38:30 – The semi-trailer near-miss and Wally's alarm mistake * 40:00 – END OF PART 1 RESOURCES * "Cliffy: The Cliff Young Story" by Julietta Jameson * "Cliffy's Book" by Cliff Young

The Man Who Saved the World — Part 2: 85 Seconds to Midnight

On the night of September 26th, 1983, Stanislav Petrov stood alone in a Soviet bunker outside Moscow while every alarm in the building screamed that America had launched its missiles. He didn't make the call. This is the second and final part of the story of the man who may have saved human civilisation.. and was punished for it. In this episode: What was the Perimeter system — and why did the Soviets build it? The answer reveals everything about how close the world came to automated annihilation, and why the decision that night rested on one man's shoulders rather than a machine's. Why was Petrov different from every other officer in that bunker? His upbringing, his education, and the family trauma that shaped him all suggest the system had produced exactly one person capable of doing what he did. What happened when he was proved right? A reprimand. And what became of Petrov after the Soviet Union collapsed is covered. Primary and secondary sources for this episode: The principal secondary sources for this episode and its companion are: Taylor Downing, 1983: Reagan, Andropov and a World on the Brink (2018) — the most comprehensive single-volume account of the 1983 war scare. Nate Jones (ed.), Able Archer 83: The Secret History of the NATO Exercise that Almost Triggered Nuclear War (2016) — a collection of declassified primary documents, including CIA assessments, NSA intercepts, and internal NATO communications, assembled by the National Security Archive. Additional material drawn from: Petrov's own interviews, particularly his 2013 BBC interview on the thirtieth anniversary of the incident, and the 2014 documentary The Man Who Saved the World. David Hoffman, The Dead Hand (2009) — Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the Soviet nuclear programme and the 1983 war scare.

The Man Who Saved the World — Part 1: Stanislav Petrov and the most dangerous moment of the Cold War

Shortly after midnight on the 27th of September 1983, a forty-four-year-old Soviet military officer named Stanislav Petrov was sitting in a reclining chair in a bunker eighty miles south of Moscow when his early warning system told him that the United States had launched a nuclear missile at the Soviet Union. He had minutes to decide whether to believe it. This is the first of a two-part episode on Stanislav Petrov and the most dangerous moment of the Cold War that almost nobody has heard of. In this episode we set the scene: who Stanislav Petrov was, what he was doing in that bunker, and why the autumn of 1983 was the most terrifying season of the entire Cold War. Along the way we cover: The OKO satellite network — the Soviet early warning system that Petrov had helped build, and that he was now being asked to trust with the fate of civilisation. The near-misses that preceded 1983 — Vasili Arkhipov and the Soviet submarine B-59 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the man who refused to authorise a nuclear torpedo launch when his captain was convinced the war had already started. And Zbigniew Brzezinski, who in 1979 got out of bed at 3am and decided not to wake his wife before calling the president to recommend a retaliatory nuclear strike — only to be told, thirty seconds later, that someone had accidentally loaded a training tape into a NORAD computer. The state of the world in 1983, Reagan's Evil Empire speech, the Strategic Defense Initiative, the deployment of Pershing II missiles to West Germany, and why the Soviet Union read all of these not as defensive posturing but as the systematic assembly of a first-strike capability. Yuri Andropov: the former KGB chief who succeeded Nikita Brezhnev as General Secretary in November 1982. A dying man, conducting the business of running a nuclear superpower from a hospital clinic, connected to a dialysis machine, watching Ronald Reagan describe his country as the focus of evil in the modern world. Korean Air Lines Flight 007: shot down by a Soviet interceptor on the 1st of September 1983, killing 269 people including a US Congressman. The event that poisoned an already toxic relationship just weeks before Petrov's night in the bunker. And Reagan himself: who despite his bellicose rhetoric was privately horrified by Pentagon officials who believed nuclear war was winnable. "I can't believe that this world can go on beyond our generation," he said in a radio address from Camp David, "without someday some fool or some maniac or some accident triggering the kind of war that is the end of the line for all of us." The episode ends where it began — in Serpukhov-15, with Stanislav Petrov staring at a screen that now reads not launch, but missile attack. What he does next is the subject of Part 2. Content note: this episode contains discussion of nuclear weapons, mass casualty scenarios, and Cold War geopolitical history. No graphic content. Primary and secondary sources for this episode: The principal secondary sources for this episode and its companion are: Taylor Downing, 1983: Reagan, Andropov and a World on the Brink (2018) — the most comprehensive single-volume account of the 1983 war scare. Nate Jones (ed.), Able Archer 83: The Secret History of the NATO Exercise that Almost Triggered Nuclear War (2016) — a collection of declassified primary documents, including CIA assessments, NSA intercepts, and internal NATO communications, assembled by the National Security Archive. Additional material drawn from: Petrov's own interviews, particularly his 2013 BBC interview on the thirtieth anniversary of the incident, and the 2014 documentary The Man Who Saved the World. The Reagan Presidential Library's archive of public papers and radio addresses. David Hoffman, The Dead Hand (2009) — Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the Soviet nuclear programme and the 1983 war scare.

The Heroine of Singapore - Part 5: The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond

This is the final episode of the Heroine of Singapore arc. It begins with Elizabeth Choy sliding under the bars of her cell for the last time — certain she is being taken to Johor to be beheaded. Instead, a guard hands her her handbag and tells her she can go. After 193 days of imprisonment, beatings, starvation, and electrocution, the Kempeitai concluded that Elizabeth Choy was just trying to help. In this episode we also learn the truth about the missing $10,000 that triggered her arrest, a mystery whose answer, when it finally came, was almost unbearably simple. Sumida Haruzo was tried at the Double Tenth Trial in Singapore's Supreme Court. He smiled throughout even when giving testimony about the deaths of internees. Robert Heatlie Scott survived. Barely. When Singapore was liberated, he broadcast a message across Malaya and named Elizabeth Choy by name. After the war, Elizabeth met Mountbatten, attended the Instrument of Surrender, travelled to England, met the Queen, and became a national hero of Singapore. Research for this podcast episode was based entirely on my book, Survival in Singapore [https://www.amazon.com.au/Survival-Singapore-Australias-greatest-operation-ebook/dp/B0F4537QB2]. The recording of Elizabeth Choy was made in 1985, and is available at the National Archive of Singapore's webpage [https://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/oral_history_interviews/record-details/94edbbb2-115f-11e3-83d5-0050568939ad]. Next on In Extremis — Operation Able Archer. 1983. The NATO exercise that nearly ended the world.

The Heroine of Singapore — Part 4: The battery, the blade and those who chose death over betrayal

A warning before we start — this episode contains detailed descriptions of torture and extreme physical and psychological violence. Probably not one to have on in the car with the kids. Research for this episode comes from my book Survival in Singapore. [https://www.amazon.com.au/Survival-Singapore-Australias-greatest-operation-ebook/dp/B0F4537QB2] Summary By the time this episode begins, Sumida Haruzo's investigation has been running for months. Dozens of British internees have been arrested and interrogated. Scores — possibly hundreds — of Chinese civilians have passed through the cells of the YMCA on Stamford Road. And Sumida has almost nothing to show for it. The radios in Changi were receivers, not transmitters. The money was funding a black market, not a sabotage operation. Elizabeth Choy had been helping the internees. Robert Heatlie Scott had been running a news committee. There was no fifth column. There was no conspiracy. And yet Sumida pressed on. In this episode we examine why and the answer says something uncomfortable about the nature of confirmation bias, institutional pressure, and what happens when a man of intelligence and ambition becomes too invested in a theory to abandon it. But the heart of this episode belongs to the people in the cells. Elizabeth Choy is subjected to electrocution while bound to a wooden frame, unable to move. She does not break. Then she and her husband Choy Khun Heng are brought into the same room, and the sadist Sgt Monai Tadamori deploys the cruelest instrument available to him: he tortures Elizabeth in front of her husband, and her husband in front of her. Both are told that tomorrow they will be executed. Alone together in the room, they reach an agreement. If they are to die, they will die for the truth. It would be an honourable death. A confession, they know, would cost others their lives. Then there is Robert Heatlie Scott. Scott has spent three months preparing for what is coming. He has reframed torture not as a horror to be feared but as an enemy tactic to be countered. He knows he will probably not survive. What matters is that nothing he says broadens the investigation. Nothing he says costs anyone else their life. When Monai finally comes for him — six days of sustained physical violence, sleep deprivation, the rack, the instruments laid out across the floor — Scott doesn't break. His answers never waver. And on the sixth day, when Monai places a farewell letter on the ground before him and draws his sword, Scott remains unmoved. The fate of Elizabeth Choy and Robert Heatlie Scott — and the final reckoning of Sumida Haruzo's investigation — will be told in the concluding episode of the Heroine of Singapore arc, next week on In Extremis. If you're enjoying In Extremis, the single best thing you can do is share it — with a friend, a colleague, anyone you think might find these stories as compelling as you do. Follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and if you feel moved to leave a review, that makes an enormous difference to how easily new listeners can find the show. People and places mentioned in this episode: * Elizabeth Choy — Changi money pipeline courier; prisoner at the YMCA * Choy Khun Heng — Elizabeth's husband; fellow prisoner * Monai Tadamori — Kempeitai sergeant; Major Sumida's chief interrogator * Sumida Haruzo — Head of the Singaporean Kempeitai * Robert Heatlie Scott — British diplomat and propagandist; the man the Japanese called the master spy * John Long — Ambulance driver; Changi news committee member * Walter Yoxall — Changi camp treasurer * KT Alexander — Secretary to the Bishop of Singapore * The YMCA, Stamford Road, Singapore — Kempeitai interrogation centre * Changi Prison — Allied civilian internment camp