Season 7
EP06 - ICBM (it won't miss unless you're on a Flat Earth)
Understand how ICBMs achieve intercontinental precision using inertial navigation and stellar fix updates. Learn the gyroscopic physics and guidance algorithms that keep a nuclear warhead on course across 10,000 kilometers of free flight.
Tweet coming soon
And now, the endgame. The ultimate problem-solver!
I'm not going to bother with a ground invasion. I'll just level them back to the Stone Age! I just click the coordinates...
...And a divine explosion drops from the heavens like a smite! It's so easy! Thank god for GPS!
"GPS."
You think the single most terrifying weapon ever engineered by mankind... the weapon designed to function during the literal apocalypse... relies on a fragile, unencrypted radio signal broadcast from a commercial satellite that can be knocked out by a single solar flare?
You didn't just click a coordinate, Shez. You initiated a symphony of pure, un-jammable calculus.
Log off. Welcome to the Guidance Void.
Its target is a specific missile silo, one meter wide. It has been flying for 30 minutes. It has traveled five thousand miles.
Hitting that target is the mathematical equivalent of a pitcher standing in Los Angeles throwing a baseball and having it land perfectly inside a teacup in Tokyo.
Right! So it just asks the GPS satellites where it is! They guide it in! Easy!
Let’s play that out. Your enemy knows you are launching a nuclear missile. What is the very first thing they do?
They jam the signal.
GPS is a whisper. Electronic Warfare is a hurricane. The whisper is now dead.
Your missile is now completely blind and deaf. What now, Shez?
It... it just crashes randomly?
No. Because the engineers who built this weapon in the 1950s were not idiots.
They knew that any weapon that relies on an external signal is a weapon with a single, massive point of failure.
An ICBM does not look outside for a map.
It wakes up inside a black box, and it asks itself one question: "Where am I?" And it answers that question by feeling.
This is an Inertial Guidance System (INS). It is a masterpiece of analog physics. No radios. No signals. Just pure, self-contained mechanics.
Imagine you wake up in this box. How do you know if you are moving?
I felt that! I felt the push!
Correct. That is an Accelerometer. It measures linear change in velocity. The INS has three of them, one for each axis: X, Y, and Z.
And I can feel myself turning!
Ah, but your inner ear can be fooled. A machine needs something more absolute.
This is a Gyroscope. A perfect spinning mass.
Because of the conservation of angular momentum, once this wheel is spinning, its axis will remain pointed at the exact same, fixed spot in the universe, no matter how the box around it tumbles.
The missile's body rotates around the stable gyroscope.
By measuring the angle between its own chassis and the immovable gyro, the missile knows its exact orientation in three-dimensional space.
It... it has its own internal compass. A compass for space.
So, the missile launches. It knows its starting coordinates perfectly.
From that moment on, its internal computer does nothing but pure, relentless calculus.
It measures every tiny push from the accelerometer, every infinitesimal turn from the gyroscope, and adds it all up, hundreds of times a second.
This is called Dead Reckoning. It is calculating its new position based entirely on its last known position and how it has moved since.
It is literally feeling the rotation of the Earth pass underneath it.
But wait! What if the gyroscope isn't perfect? What if there’s a tiny bit of friction?
Over 30 minutes, even a microscopic error would add up! It would drift miles off course!
Correct. Dead reckoning is never perfect. The math always drifts.
So, every few minutes, the missile needs to look outside and correct its math. But it can't use your fragile GPS. It needs a signal that is older, more reliable, and completely impossible to jam.
It opens its eye.
You can jam a signal.
You can't jam the stars.
It takes a celestial fix, just like an ancient sailor. It corrects its math. Then it closes its eye and goes back to flying on pure feeling.
It navigates by watching the ghosts of dead suns...
Yes. Your "divine smite" is just a thermos full of 1950s calculus and celestial mechanics.
I thought technology was all Wi-Fi and satellites and magic.
But the ultimate weapon... is a clock. It’s a spinning top and a star chart.
The most robust systems are always the simplest.
When the apocalypse comes and all the satellites are burning in the sky, the only things that will still work are the laws of physics.
It doesn't need to hear. It doesn't need to see.
It just needs to feel the universe spin.
EP05 - Night Vision (Why you can't see in the dark, but electricity can)
Discover how night vision technology amplifies individual photons to let electronics see in near-total darkness. Learn the physics of image intensification tubes, photocathode emission, and thermal imaging that give soldiers a decisive night advantage.
EP07 - Active Protection (you can actually parry a bomb)
Explore how active protection systems enable tanks to parry incoming missiles and RPGs with outgoing projectiles. Learn the radar detection, fire control computing, and kinetic interceptor physics behind systems like Trophy and Arena.