2018-07-02

[public] 464K views, 18.5K likes, 83.0 dislikes audio only

Tom Scott

In the far north of Canada sit the DEW Line stations: "Distant Early Warning". Built in the 1950s, these were the sites that would have sounded the alarm if the Soviet Union ever attacked North America. Or at least, they were until they went obsolete just a few years later.

This video relies on public domain archive footage from:

DEW Line Story (1958):

https://archive.org/details/dew_line_story_1

https://archive.org/details/dew_line_story_2

Atlas the ICBM (1957):

https://archive.org/details/342SFP00583AtlasTheIcbmCape

And is based on the research of:

Louis Isemann, James. (2018). To detect, to deter, to defend: the Distant Early Warning (DEW) line and early cold war defense policy, 1953-1957. http://krex.k-state.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2097/2161/JamesIsemann2009.pdf;sequence=1 [PDF]

Schlosser, E. (2009). Command and Control. [https://amzn.to/2sQd6Fq (aff. link)]

Edited by Michelle Martin (@mrsmmartin)

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