Nuclear war : a scenario /

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Every generation, a journalist has looked deep into the heart of the nuclear military establishment: the technologies, the safeguards, the plans, and the risks. These projects are vital to how we understand the world we really live in: where one nuclear missile begets one in return; where the choreography of the world's end requires massive decisions made on seconds-notice, with information that is only as good as the intelligence we have. Annie Jacobsen's Nuclear War: A Scenario explores this ticking clock scenario, based on dozens of new interviews with military and civilian experts who have built the weapons; created the response plans; and been responsible for those decisions should they need to have been made. Nuclear War: A Scenario is unlike any other book in its depth and urgency.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Author's Note (xi)
• Interviews (xiii)
• Prologue: Hell on Earth (xvii)
• Part I The Buildup (Or, How We Got Here) (1)
• Part II The First 24 Minutes (31)
• Part III The Next 24 Minutes (139)
• Part IV The Next (and Final) 24 Minutes (233)
• Part V The Next 24 Months and Beyond (Or, Where We Are Headed after a Nuclear Exchange) (279)
• Acknowledgments (298)
• Notes (303)
• Bibliography (345)
• Index (361)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Kirkus Book Review

A scarifying, play-by-play exercise in gaming an apocalyptic war. When the Cold War ended, military tacticians pronounced nuclear warfare a thing of the past. Instead, writes Jacobsen, author of The Pentagon's Brain, Area 51, and Operation Paperclip, the threat of nuclear holocaust is ever with us. Her scenario--based, she notes, on facts that will lead readers "to the razor's edge of what can legally be known"--begins with a single thermonuclear missile landing on the Pentagon, atomizing millions of Washingtonians far out into the distant suburbs. That scenario hinges on the gamed-out supposition that it will be a rogue North Korea that fires a single offending missile, one hard to detect given that the existing technology can track the heat signature of a "hot" missile and perhaps shoot it down if given a time frame of five minutes, after which, as one technician says, "they cannot see the rocket after the rocket motor stops." Still worse is to come, for in a counterlaunch that would surely vaporize North Korea with overwhelming force, Russia, fearing that some of those American rockets are heading its way, might launch a retaliatory strike that would unleash every available resource in the arsenal of both nations--collectively capable of destroying humankind hundreds of times over. Updating Orville Schell's groundbreaking (and better written) 1982 book The Fate of the Earth, Jacobsen then outlines the very rapid collapse of civilization and the erasure of all our technologies--no more electricity grid, no more industrially farmed food, certainly no more internet--all leading to a world in which "only the ruthless survive" and in which "everyone loses. Everyone." It's a cheerless prognosis; however, by Jacobsen's account, it's altogether plausible. An urgent warning guaranteed to cause nightmares--and frustrating, since we're all powerless in the face of nuclear weapons. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Annie Jacobsen is the author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist in history The Pentagon's Brain , the New York Times bestsellers Area 51 and Operation Paperclip , and other books. She was a contributing editor at the Los Angeles Times Magazine . A graduate of Princeton University, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two sons. Jacobsen's books have been named Best of the Year and Most Anticipated by outlets including The Washington Post , USA Today , The Boston Globe , Apple, and Amazon. Coverage has ranged from The New York Times to Joe Rogan's podcast.