Book Bites (Expanded Edition) - Nuclear War: A Scenario

Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

TL;DR - If the North Koreans want to end the world, then consider the world ended.

Nuclear War is the most gripping work of nonfiction in recent memory. Jacobsen's war game, culled from a host of expert interviews and declassified documents, starts with a 1 Megaton nuclear warhead obliterating Washington DC and, almost without a breath, dissects the parade of horrors that will end the world in the ensuing 72 minutes. It reads like a masterful Nelson DeMille thriller run off the rails. We get descriptions, borrowed from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of the walking dead shambling in the blast zone, holding their own moldering body parts. We get the Washington Nationals' season opener atomized into a cloud of concrete and meat in the blink of an eye.

And that's just the start.

Jacobsen's sources quickly punch a hole after hole in the myth of US nuclear superiority, pointing out the devastation of a single, focused strike. Pointing out a nuclear defense system with all the integrity of melted Swiss cheese. Pointing out how shockingly ignorant those in the highest seats of power truly are when it comes to full-on nuclear war.

Perhaps worst of all: every nuclear weapon in the United Stats, and probably the wider world, is wired to counterstrike if an unprovoked "bolt out of the blue" attack ever occurs. Much like the conquering Napoleon, much like the Nazis deciding in the early 1940s that the logical end of their domination meant the murder of millions of Jews, US Nuclear Policy has long been: Après moi le déluge. After [us], the flood. 

Now.

As horrifying as this all sounds (and truly is), it should be noted that Jacobsen's Title: "Nuclear War: A Scenario" omits a key phrase: "worst-case." The continuing carnage of later chapters require a number of variables to go horribly wrong. It requires a delay in evacuating the president, resulting in his being temporarily unreachable (and later dying of his injuries) while parachuting out of an EMP-disabled Marine 1. It requires those left in charge to end up in a dick measuring contest of who outranks who. It requires the Russians to see ICBMs inbound to North Korea and, ignoring logic and the pleas from high-ranking US Cabinet Officials, decide Moscow is the actual target and launch their own counter-strike. It requires, at almost every step, for those making decisions to reflect on the humanity of their actions and say, "no."

Which is not to contradict Jacobsen's thesis, shouted again and again in a clear, unequivocal voice: one nuclear weapon is one too many. As history has shown us, and truly may show us again, even a single detonation is a tragedy on an unimaginable scale.

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